We have quite a week here this week. School is winding down for Eden; she's down to her last subject. Josh has a busy few days of work before he takes a couple of days off, and on Thursday ALL the family is coming to town to celebrate Josh's three siblings who are graduating from Multnomah University at the end of the week. We have Josh's sister and her family staying with us, so our house is going to be busy (and full - there will be 12 of us!) until Monday when things return to normal(ish).

But we're gearing up for Cinco de Mayo next week, but between now and then I've got a new recipe for you to enjoy! I'm quite proud of this recipe, to be honest. I consider it a personal victory, but you'll read about that in the post...

For now, the sun is out. It's supposed to be beautiful up until Thursday and then Friday it would appear that the rain returns for a bit.

I could choose to be annoyed, but instead I'm grateful that we've had sun at all! [Read more...]

We had a really long week last week. For a number of reasons, it felt like Friday was never going to arrive. But, it did, like it always does.

I think so often we think that we have so many undependable things in our life, but you know what, Friday always comes around, and hopefully it gives us that chance to inhale and exhale (slowly) and catch our collective breath.

That's what we did over the weekend. We ran a few errands, we treated the kids to breakfast out to celebrate Grace's good grades in school, we rested, and we watched movies. I can't remember the last time we had an open weekend like this.

You may have noticed that we were unable to get a weekly menu up last week. I like to think that the weekly menu took a break too. Even though it didn't, of course. I still cooked and followed the menu I had made out, but due to a lot of events in our life last week, it just never got published. [Read more...]

Usually, the week of spring break is rainy and miserable, but our spring break was actually really nice! I think we had one day or two that were not great, but for the most part, the weather was nice and a few days actually got pretty warm (that's high 50s here in the Pacific Northwest in March...)!

I hope everyone had a really nice Easter Sunday. It actually rained yesterday which hindered our egg hunt a bit, but the kids had fun racing through the house looking for a lot of eggs. We had a nice, quiet evening at home where Josh cooked a ham but then made asparagus, ham, and Swiss crepes for dinner. Which was actually a compromise between the kids. The girls wanted ham and Christian wanted crepes (nobody specifically requested asparagus, but we snuck it in there anyway - actually, Christian loves asparagus, the goofball).

They were delicious, by the way! Not very pretty (Josh wants to work on that), but definitely delicious and could easily be made in advance if needed. [Read more...]

It's spring break, baby!!! I've been looking forward to this week since Christmas break ended. Maybe it's because I homeschool and always have the kids with me, but I love school breaks. No schedules. No plans. Just easy mornings where we can sleep in if we choose (and Miss Ruby allows) and move at our own pace.

I'm already anxiously awaiting summer break, which for us, will be in May this year. Sometimes, its at the end of April if it's not a testing year, but this year, Grace has state testing in May. So whenever that is over, that is when school will be done, too.

I did have a menu planned out last week for you and written, but between traveling with our brood and jumping back into real life, we're beat. Me especially. I don't know if it's allergies or if I'm fighting off something, but I don't feel like myself. Headaches and fatigue are kind of plaguing me right now. Blah.

Again, thank goodness it's Spring Break week. [Read more...]

Holy smokes it looks like spring and it even feels like spring...could it possibly be Oregon's first glimpse of spring? I'm hoping so because this weekend's weather was beautiful. I got outside and weeded the backyard - which looks 10x better. I wore sandals and a skirt on Sunday and sat outside for awhile, even!

The best part? Josh grabbed some more wood for another project at Home Depot. We gave our old patio set away and Josh is planning on building a table based on the ones at the Magnolia Silos. When we visited the Silos last April, I fell in love with the outdoor tables and knew that's what I wanted for our outdoor space. If all goes according to plan, he'll make two benches to go alongside it and we've already purchased a couple of chairs from Target to be placed at the ends of the table. If it works out, we'll blog the project, of course...

Can you tell I'm excited and ready for warmer weather? I think we all are at this point, especially if you're living on the East Coast...brrr!

We're actually heading out of town to see my dad in Las Vegas for a few days - I'm hoping for more sun and maybe even a light tan. But I think that's probably wishful thinking. They're not quite into the 70's and 80's yet, darn it! [Read more...]

If you follow my Instagram account or the Catz Facebook page, then you know why the weekly menu is late this week (as opposed to last week when life just ran our lives a little crazy...does that make sense?).

Sunday morning we woke up to a text from my sister-in-love who was on her way to the hospital in labor - cue all the family grabbing up their belongings and rushing out of town! Josh's parents and his other siblings left early that morning and we left later in the day (we had to wait until Grace got back from a beach trip before we could leave). We arrived in Aberdeen, WA with about an hour left before the little one made her appearance. [Read more...]