Here we go...

Satan's little minions are attacking the physical well-being of each of us today. David feels like he is coming down with something (hopefully he won't). I am fighting off an infection as we speak. And Drew... he has had a runny nose since yesterday, and I pray it clears up soon, for his sake. There is no such thing as a 'cold' with him because of his asthma. It always means lots of rescue meds, including one particular steroid that I passionately dislike. Then, to top it off, sweet boy was messing around on the couch tonight, fell off backwards, and hit his head on the edge of the coffee table on the way down. Nice little knot on the back of the head, but otherwise seems to be okay. However, close observation by Dave and me will continue through the night. We are praying for strong immune systems and if sickness has to occur, praying that it will end before the weekend. We have lots of important things to do as a family in the coming week!

$4 Chicken, Four Ways

I want to share with you all the things I made this week with a whole chicken. I will include recipes (as I prepared them), but am not able to provide photos. The camera batteries are dead, and preggo brain keeps forgetting to charge them. :)

I had several whole chickens in the freezer that I bought for under $1 per pound a while ago. This particular chicken was $4.86.

MEAL ONE: My take on a cuban favorite, Fricase de Pollo.

1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp pepper
5 lb. whole chicken (rinsed, patted dry, inner parts removed and reserved for later use)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 large yellow spanish onion, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup red, green, and orange bell pepper strips, sliced very thin
15 oz. can plain tomato sauce
1 cup dry white cooking wine
1/4 cup pitted and chopped kalamata olives

I put the chicken in the crockpot, and added all the other ingredients to it. I mixed the liquid as best I could. Cook for 8 hours on HIGH setting. The result is unbelievable tender, fall off the bone, tasty chicken with a nice sauce that is great to have because I served it with rice. There will be a lot of sauce/liquid left. Strain and save it; you will need it later for another meal.

MEAL TWO: A soup I prepared using the chicken stock I made from the whole chicken.

To make the stock, I deboned the whole chicken, reserving the meat (there was lots of it) in a seperate container. Put the bones and reserved inner parts in a large saucepan, and add 3 to 4 cups water. Bring to a boil, and simmer for about 1 hour. Remove bones and inner parts; discard.This is how I make the basic stock- I don't add seasonings until I put the stock in a soup.

Eggplant and Edamame Soup

1 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 large onion, roughly chopped
3 to 4 cups eggplant, peeled and cut into cubes
Chicken stock
1/3 to 1/2 package frozen shelled edamame
3 tbsp. tomato paste
1/2 tsp. dried marjoram
1/8 tsp. black pepper

Add the olive oil and onions to the pan. Cook about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggplant. Cook 3 minutes more. Stir in chicken stock, edamame, tomato paste, marjoram and pepper. Boil and reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 5 minutes until eggplant is just tender. Do not over cook.

This soup was very tasty for me, as right now meat is not all that appealing and veggies are :)

MEAL THREE: Using the chicken meat I pulled off the bone and saved, I made Chicken Enchiladas.

Enchilada Sauce:
2 tbsp. butter
2 tbsp. flour
3.5 tsp. red chili powder, or to taste
1/2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. garlic powder
6 oz. can tomato paste
Reserved sauce/liquid from Fricase de Pollo
salt and pepper to taste

Add flour to melted butter and whisk until smooth. Add spices and tomato paste until well blended. Add reserved sauce/liquid gradually, whisking constantly. Simmer until desired thickness and season to taste. Remove from heat.

Line the bottom of a baking pan with a layer of enchilada sauce. Using 6 inch tortillas of your choice, wrap 1/4 cup chicken and 1 tbsp. shredded mexican blend cheese into each tortilla. Roll closed and place seam-side down in the pan on top of sauce. Continue until all enchiladas are made. Spoon remaining sauce over top and sides of enchiladas in baking pan. Sprinkle a little cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, or chill and microwave one by one as needed.

This recipe will also leave you with more enchilada sauce than you need (unless you like a LOT of sauce). There will be enough to freeze for another time, about 1 cup.

I hope you enjoy!

Drew and Some of His Best Buddies

Evan, Aidan and Drew


Hannah Mae and Drew


Hunter and Drew

Ways I Like to Be Like Daddy

Drew is well into the phase of wanting to do all that Daddy does. It is so precious to see for two reasons: 1) how sweet it is to see your little boy want so badly to be like his hero, his Daddy, and 2) how wonderful to have a godly husband who wants to show his little boy how to be like Daddy.

Here a just a few photos of Drew 'doing what Daddy does.'

Do I Have to LOOK Pregnant?!

I am more vain than I thought. Okay, I guess I knew it; I just kept wanting to believe differently. When I was pregnant with Andrew, some of my early thoughts on the subject of size and appearance included: Who cares if I get big? I'm carrying a baby, right? No one is going to say anything about the size of a pregnant woman! And so on and so forth...

Well, I learned all too quickly how those were naive thoughts of the first-time, newly pregnant. It wasn't long before I felt overly large, considering my stature doesn't allow much room for baby to spread out vertically. Soon I was getting comments not unlike what any other pregnant woman has heard: Are you having twins? When are you due- you look like you are ready now! Boy, you've really popped out! Wow, you're huge (yes, that was my favorite - not!)! Now, before you all think this is merely a commentary on the thoughtless things people say, stay with me. It really isn't.

As the months went by, particularly entering months 7 and 8, I really thought it was a joke. My swelling kicked into high gear, I had started outgrowing some of my maternity clothes (yikes!), and I developed cankles: you couldn't tell where my calves ended and my ankles began. I began to refer to the lower portion of my used-to-be legs as elephant feet.

While I would never trade all this for the alternative of not having been pregnant, I entered quite a dark time about two months before Drew was born and it lasted until about he was six months old. The reason for this is because I felt the most unfeminine, unattractive, and uncoordinated I had ever felt in my entire life.

Fast forward to now, and as soon as I knew I was pregnant, I have been telling myself: Maybe you can be different this time. Maybe you can walk and run so much that you don't gain much weight. Maybe this time you'll be prettier while you're pregnant. Maybe you can try harder to deny yourself all the little edible indulgences you allowed yourself last time. Maybe this, maybe that... you get the idea.

I have come to realize I can do all I can to keep healthy, but (duh!), I am going to look pregnant! Why? Because I am! I am supposed to! I know I am going to struggle with this in my thought life. I am asking, with all sincerity, if you all will pray, first and foremost, for a healthy pregnancy and safe baby. Second, will you moms pray for me in this area with which I know I struggle? Your prayers, along with my own, and my daily casting this burden on the Lord, will make all the difference.

As excited as I am to be carrying our second child, it is still humbling to dig out the maternity clothes and even start putting some on (but just the small ones so far!). I keep wondering if I can just suck in my stomach, but as I learned last time, that only works for so long!

This Week's Produce

Andrew and I take Saturday morning trips to the Farmer's Market near our house. Because of the wonderful prices they have on everything produce, I have a budget that allows me to spend $15-$18 each week on fresh fruit and vegetables.

Let me also say, that, before, when I would go to the store for my produce, I always felt guilty for spending money on fresh veggies. Isn't that strange? It's because I knew we couldn't spend that kind of money each week to eat fresh. Well, I don't feel an ounce of guilty anymore. In fact, I feel rather victorious, and I think you will see why. Look at what $18 bought us this morning (minus one apple, as Drew ate it for a snack):


1 pineapple
6 fuji apples
3 eggplant (thanks, Cherie L)
2 green bell peppers
1 red bell pepper
3 orange bell peppers
8 zucchini
7 yellow squash
5 tomatoes
1 lb. green beans
8 large carrots

If I would have purchased these exact items, even if from Wal-Mart, I would have paid at least
$38 to $40. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I try to get all my groceries for an avg. of $60 per week. I don't want to spend 2/3 of that budget in produce.

I encourage you to visit the Farmer's Market closest to you; while I can't vouch for the prices in each one, two that I know for sure have great prices: the one at the Collier Co. Fairgrounds (that's where we go) and the one at the Promenade Shopping Center in Bonita Springs. There are more around town, wherever you look. I just don't know what they are like.

Study of Esther

I am almost through the book of Esther with the Bible study I have been participating in at church with the RefresHer ladies. However, I thought it would be a good time to share some of the things that have stood out most to me during this study.

When we first began the study, Week One Day One's lesson posed this question: What are you hoping for as you begin this Bible study? My answer to that was to return to the faith that allows me to carry everything to my heavenly Father, and to lovingly and willingly trust His hand in all things, past and present. That doesn't mean that I had lost my faith. It just means that I had chosen to not be confident in the fact that I can take everything to the Lord... nothing is trivial when I share with Him.

Week 2's most powerful conclusion to me was this: "Sometimes providence can be defined as times when God trumps your perfectly good plan with one of His own... then seems to disappear from it. Take heart, Beloved! He's right there and He's there right."

In Week 3, I was reminded that Satan's most powerful tactics are psychological. Brings Philipians 4:8 back to mind as one that I need to 'bind around my neck and hide in my heart.' "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

This also spoke to me: "Sometimes God uses the winds of a new threat to blow the dust off a past miracle that has moved from our active file into the archives."

Week 4: "We are wise to force ourselves to keep differentiating between simple inconveniences and authentic tribulations. The more detached and self-absorbed we become, the more we mistake annoyances for agonies." The recent inconveniences I have been tempted to treat as agonies include not being able to access certain relationships the way I would like and losing my patience with 'little' things in mine and Andrew's day.

Week 5: this week started by tackling fears and included the lesson of "If I perish, I perish." I wish I could tell you all that about 2 weeks after this lesson, when faced with what I thought was going to be a life-changing crisis in my life, that I passed this test. I did not- I begged and pleaded with God. I will share more about it in another post.

Also in Week 5, we discussed the stronghold of perfectionism. This was something I battled with day in and day out, hour by hour, minute by minute, until about 3 years ago, when the Lord miraculously took it away. I was able to reflect on the ways a continued stronghold of perfectionism had been a severe detriment to my destiny.

• It, at times, prevented me from going where God directed me to be His hands and feet
• It had hindered relationships where I had stopped trying, because I couldn't be 'perfect'
• It had paralyzed me on occasion from actions that may have been God-ordained because of my fear of completing those actions in a 'less-than-perfect' manner

This is not a well-polished essay on what the Lord has used to speak to me in this study. In a 'perfect' world (ha), I would have blogged a little more consistently through the study. But, I just wasn't able to do it as I had set out to do it. And, at the risk of not doing this because it was 'less than perfect,' here it is, in all it's imperfect form. The Lord will fill in the blanks for me, and will have His way with it. I pray it is an encouragement to you!