Sea Grove Beach- Part 2

It's taken me forever to get my other pictures up here...but I finally did! These are a continuation from my last post about our trip to Florida.

Cousin Bennett, leaning down to check on Asa.  Asa looooved his char.  He would sit and watch the waves while enjoying a snack.  :)

Miss Lilly Anne.  She kept those sunglasses on all day! 

"CoCo" and "Pop" with Asa

Poor paci rash from the sand, salt, and sun. : (

(Asa's) Cousin Bennett....Lots of energy and sweet as can be!  They are closest in age, but because Bennett has two older brothers he seems so much older than Asa since he is always off playing with them.  But, its so fun when they do play together. I hope they are all best friends.

Our last night in Seagrove Beach we ate at Cafe Thirty A.  Probably the best meal I have ever purchased. Amazing.

Asa having his first sucker....  and what did he do?!?!

.....he ran his little heart out!  Soooo much energy that night.

My Family

Yes, he is missing a shoe.   What's new?!

Sea Grove Beach 2012- Part 1

 OHHH....I miss this place.  We have never stayed in Sea Grove before, but it was wonderful.  It's just down the road from Seaside which had most of the restaurants and activity, and I loved being more in a community with less traffic and people.  It was great!  Because we took so many pictures, this is just a start.  All our family pictures are to come!

 Our house was just across the street from the ocean, so we rented a golf cart so we wouldn't have to walk with all of our stuff. It was perfect.  We had a private pool in the back so we could still be in the sun and water, but the kids could nap inside.

Our last day :(

 Asa and his three (boy) cousins.

 My beautiful sis in law!  I had on heels and she had on flats. I'm not a giant as the picture would make you think.

 Great Southern restaurant in Seaside. Delish!

 My sis and beautiful niece, Lilly

I got a good snapshot of Branton (middle nephew).  What a cutie!

 They had an outdoor theater and a play happened to just be starting that night. It was so fun to see all the kids enjoy it.

 Asa LOVED the beach. The water, sand, he loved it all.  He just wanted to walk everywhere.

 Twins

His hair was just blowing every which way. I could never expect it to lay just the way I wanted. And..I'm talking about Asa not Joe. :)

 My brother and his sweet family.  I love Bennett's "Cheese" face.

 Every other night, a couple could go on a date night by themselves.  My brother and sister decided to do their date nights on the same night, so we were left with all five kids.  It got kinda crazy, but we managed, and had a great time.  I didn't know a burger the size of a sausage and biscuit for a kids meal would cost $12.  yikes.

 Lilly girl and me

His "camera" eyes...

Asa is 19 months, but  I never updated (mainly for myself) for Asa's 18 month check up, so I'll wrap up by giving Asa's Stats:

(this was not adjusted for his preemie age- yeah!  They will adjust him until he is two, but I decided to list what according to his age now since he is doing so great!!)

25 pounds, 10 ounces (50th)

33 inches long (75th)

Head was 75th. I forget the actual measurement.

Size 4 diaper

Size 5-6 shoe

2T clothes

-Still giving inhaler twice daily until he is 3 years old.

-Had a speech evaluation yesterday, came in at only having a "mild delay".  A moderate delay would require speech.  Only three points from it, but I'm thankful for a good report.  In the last few weeks, he has said SO MANY new words.  It's awesome to hear and watch him learn everyday.  

-He got the MMR shot at his 18 month and had a reaction.  Apparently, 70% of patients have it.  He had measle- like bumps and fever for 4 days, 10 days after he received the shot.  So...for anyone that is about to get it, just a heads up to look out for it.  It wasn't bad at all, and it didn't seem to bother him.

We had a GREAT time in Florida.  Asa did great on the way down and back. Better than expected!

More pics to come!

Community Group at the Park

The weather has been so nice, and even though our group is not meeting for a few weeks, we still love to get together.  We decided grilling hot dogs at the park would be a fun idea, and it was!  I love summer, especially the nights that it's not just completely hot or muggy, and last night was perfect.   Asa is 18 months old now and he LOVES to be outside.  We caught a few pictures before everyone got there.  He is getting SO big!! 

"I want to go on those slides!"

The community group girls, minus Amber. :(  These girls are the best!  They are my best friends and the biggest blessing in my life!

Even though Amber missed out, Cooper got to come and hang out!

Oh Ellery....  Always adventurous!

Amy and Nathan, who are in our community group, lost their little boy, Tucker, on February 28th of this year.  All the kids in the group were born within 6 months.  They played so well together.  My heart hurts for their family, and we miss Tucker so much.  There is not a single day that goes by that we don't think about him.  Asa and Tucker were only 6 weeks apart and I imagined how close they would be growing up together and what fun they would have.  We know Tucker is in such a peaceful place in the arms of Jesus, but our selfish hearts ache as we want him to still be here with us.  I hope the kids know how special Tucker was. We have experienced what a community group is all about.  Coming together to celebrate as well as weep together when tragedies happen. Amy and Nathan's strength is unbelievable, and they have been given peace that is only from God.  What a testimony their faith has been to all of us. You can read about their story here. We miss you and love you Tucker Hill.

Cooking Day

Kara and I decided to do a day of cooking meals to freeze for the next month or so.  We have a wonderful friend in our Tuesday morning biblestudy that offered to come cook and coach us through it.  What a huge blessing!  We made it through our first successful day of cooking around 70-ish meals! We froze them and have enough for around 5 weeks. We spent $127 each and have around 25 meals per person.  We bought things like: 24 Pounds of Ground Beef, 60 Chicken Breast, 18 Potatoes, and 24 Pork Chops. Of course there are a whole lot of spices, veggies, sauces, ect...  That's a LOT of food!! It is definitely more cost effective to buy in bulk though. We got a lot of comments and stares from people at Sam's - Everyone wanted to know why in the heck we had so much meat!!

Here is what we made for EACH person:

Chicken Pot pie (4)

Twice Baked Potatoes (12)

Chicken Marinades (6)

Pork Chop Marinade (6)

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce (3 large containers)

Upside down Pizza (3)

Meatloaf (2)

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (28)

That's a TON of meat.

We started at 8:00 in the morning with cooking the potatoes and chicken.  We did all the prep work for the meals that had a cooked meat in it, then went down the list from there.  The chicken and pork chop marinades were easy since we just made the marinades, poured it over the meat and froze them.  We ended around 4:30 with our yummy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and even baked a few for us to enjoy as a reward.  The kids were great all day and took both their naps, so we were able to get a lot of things done without having to watch them. 

I don't make a lot of cookies from scratch because of the extra time it takes than just having to pop some ready made dough in.  So, I will definitely be doing it this way from now on and just freezing the dough.  I can now just take out as many as I need to cook!  It's just as much effort to make 12 cookies as it is to make 48, so I wanted to share the recipe if you would like to make them and freeze them for later use.  They are delicious!!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

(yields 4 dozen cookies)

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 T. vanilla

2 cups flour

2 1/2 cups oatmeal, powdered (i will explain this)

1/2 t. salt

1 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

12 oz. chocolate chips

4 oz. Hershey chocolate bar, grated

Cream together butter and sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla. Powder oatmeal by placing in a blender or food processor. Combine flour, powdered oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add to butter and sugar mixture and mix well.  Add in chocolate chips and grated Hershey bar. Form into golf ball -size balls and "flash freeze" (ab 15 min), and then put into freezer bags for whenever you are ready to use them. 

When ready to cook: Thaw and Bake at 350 degrees on ungreased cookie sheet for 9-11 minutes.

I bought the great value brand of old fashioned oats at wal-mart.

It was worth it all!!! It was so easy and fun to do with a friend.  It was even worth grocery shopping for 3 hours the day before Easter. :)

If you can grab one or two friends and have never done this before, I highly encourage you to do it!  Its very cost effective and I'll be glad to answer any questions!

Easter 2012

We had a wonderful Easter! This was the first year in all 5 years of our marriage that we did not travel to Little Rock to be with our families. I missed them very much, but we did enjoy the holiday with good family time and friend time. We ate lunch with two other couples in our community group who also stayed in town. We attempted a few family pictures as well as kid pictures. Pictures these days are almost impossible. I try to at least grab a few even if he is walking around. And trying to get 3 kids to look at the camera and into the sunshine...well, so much for that!  Here are a few pictures from our day:

Ellery, Cooper, and Asa. Ellery was busy playing "He loves me, he loves me not" with a flower and the boys were waiting to see who won!!

Ohh...the hair!!  I just don't know what to do with it.  I brush it and it goes crazy.  He has hair where its bald looking, but it just doesn't show up on pictures. :)  Haha!

Our best attempts at family pictures...

Happy Easter!!

Gotta go!