Moving day is here...

I can hardly believe that the day has come to pack up and move on. We moved into this house two and a half years ago - the weekend Grace was born! Those years have flown by, and we leave the house with four kids, not three. We also leave with a lot more STUFF! The amount of boxes we've gone through is astounding. I'm sorting and tossing as we pack. Hopefully unpacking will be easier - that's the fun part, get everything set up and making things feel homey!

We are building a new house, and will hopefully be in the end of August! Ryan will be doing a tremendous amount of the work himself. He does a wonderful job, and really enjoys it, but he's doing more in this house than he has before. He'll be tackling the painting, trim, tile, wood flooring, building the front porch and deck, putting stone on the front pillars, and possibly a few other things. Please pray for energy for him, and for enough time to get everything done!

We are so thankful for the generosity of our family and friends, who are letting us invade their homes for various amounts of time. Please pray for the Wehrmans, Havens, Gordillos, Moes, and our parents as we visit them - that we would have wonderful times of fellowship and that the kids would "play nice." : ) We are looking forward to bouncing from home to home. These are all local friends, and this would be one of the few times we would actually have a reason to stay with them (except of course for the occaisional game night/scrapbooking overnight!)

I will do my best to keep things updated, something I haven't done so well lately! I'll try to post some pictures of the new house soon. But - my next post will be on all the sewing I've been doing lately!

Craving Chinese???

We were having friends over for a game night this past Friday, so I decided I'd make chinese for dinner, since I'd been craving it for a while. I was looking through the recipes I've used in the past, and decided to start completely over, and find some new ones. A few people asked for the recipes on Facebook, and I decided it would be easier to put them all here, and whoever wants them can come get them! So here is the menu and recipes I used(I would encourage you to read through the comments left by other people of each recipe on the all recipes website to see what changes other people made):

Egg rolls - These were soooo good! We loved them! Gracie kept asking for more "tootsie roll"! I used pork loin chopped fine instead of ground pork.

Crab Rangoons - Our were "crabless", and still tasted wonderful!

Sweet and Sour Chicken - The only changes I made were to season the chicken before putting it in the batter, and I stir fried the peppers and pineapple with a chopped onion before serving it. The kids all ate this like little piggies! It really did taste like what you get at a chinese restaurant, even the sauce!

MooShu Pork - This was the best Moo shu recipe I've found, hands down. It was wonderful! We ate it without the pancakes because I ran out of time to make them. They say you can use flour tortillas, but they really are too thick, and it just isn't the same.

Trying something new...

I know some of you out there are going to roll your eyes, but I had to try it! I decided, after chatting with a friend a while ago, to make my own laundry soap! I've wanted to do it for several months, but every time we'd get low, Ryan would bring home some more! (He's VERY helpful, and it was sweet of him to take this burden off of me.) But, the other day we were down to about 1/2 a bottle, so I picked up the "ingredients" I need to whip up a batch! After totalling up everything, it is costing us about $.03 per load! (Yes, I realize this is a strange thing to be excited about...) So, here are a few pictures of the process, as well as the recipe I used.

The recipe called for:

8 c. Borax

4 c. Washing Soda

4 c. Baking Soda

4 c. Fels Naptha Soap

I grated the soap, which took about 10 minutes. I was told that it goes really fast if you have a food processor. I'm just not sure I'd want to do it in one I used for food! It has a really nice citrus scent to it, but leaves no scent on your clothes. You can add 15-20 drops of essential oil to the recipe, which I hope to do soon.

This is the laundry soap all mixed up. (Yes, I know you're thinking "why is she posting about this?" I just can't help myself!)

So, here's my laundry soap, all mixed, and stored in a great little tub I picked up. It only takes 2 tablespoons per load, and it's gotten out some spots on my kids clothes that the previous detergent didn't, so overall, I'm really happy with it! (and if anyone is still reading this, well, you need to go find a hobby - maybe making your own laundry soap!)