The Saturday 7

1. My kids were all sick at different times this week. Lucy puked before school on Tuesday morning, so she stayed home the rest of the day. She acted mostly fine. Occasionally she'd run to the bathroom thinking she was going to puke, but she never did. She ate like normal and played with Lena all day. On Wednesday, Lena started out fine, but steadily went downhill throughout the day. She had a really barky cough, a fever, and complained all afternoon of a belly-ache. She even fell asleep at rest time, which never happens. But she never puked and she was mostly fine by the next day. At least it was a fast-moving illness! Levi, on the other hand, has been grumpy all week thanks to teeth. His top right is so close to poking through and it's really bothering him. The poor kid is miserable. :-(

2. I tried a couple new meals this week. The first was a desperation meal. I intended to go grocery shopping on Tuesday, but I refused to bring Lucy out in public while she was sick, so I had to get creative with what I had on hand. I ended up finding a recipe on allrecipes called "Pantry Raid Enchiladas." Haha. And I had to tweak even that because I didn't have all the ingredients. Basically it's shredded chicken, cream cheese, enchilada sauce, black beans and shredded cheese, covered with prepared cornbread mix and baked in the oven. I didn't think I'd really like it, but it was actually good! I liked the combination of spicy chicken with sweet cornbread.

And then I found another recipe on Pinterest that looked unusually good to me. I'm normally not a big fan of vegetables, but I strangely love Brussels sprouts. I also don't mind sweet potatoes, so I thought I'd give this a whirl. It took me a solid hour to chop and saute all of the ingredients.

Also, cinnamon. I couldn't fit it all in the three lines snapchat allows.

Unfortunately the finished product was not that good. :-( In all fairness to the recipe, I didn't have thyme and I think it could have benefited from that savory herb. The cinnamon made it too sweet. We had a lot leftover, so last night I re-heated it with lots more bacon and some lemon pepper seasoning. It was much better that way. At least I thought so. My mom had a taste and declared it "nasty." Lol. I come by my distaste of vegetables honestly.

3. I got a new phone this week. My old one was only 8 GB which is not enough for more than a few apps and pictures. I finally upgraded to a 16 GB with a SIM card. Woot! I like it a lot except that it's way bigger than my old one, and the light doesn't flash when I have a notification. That's how I knew when I had texts on my old phone. But now I have to remember to check it all the time. So if you're trying to get ahold of me, you might just have to text me 100 times in a row until I finally hear it go off. Sorry in advance.

4. I only read one book this week: Still Life by Louise Penny. I really liked it. See my review over there ---> I've been loving tracking my books on Goodreads. I can get so sucked into that site going down rabbit trails of recommended books, but I've realized that I won't add a book to my "To Read" list if it's rated lower than 4 stars (out of 5). I'm not an indie reader. I like well-liked books. Haha.

5. My mom is leaving for Florida tomorrow. She's going to be gone for a whole month!! I don't know what I'm going to do without her. I've been joking that it's going to be rough having to hold my own baby all the time. Haha. But seriously, she has Levi so unbelievably spoiled. If she walks by him without picking him up he loses his mind. Tonight, she was literally crouched down behind a table trying to get past him without being spotted. Haha. It's so nice to have that extra set of hands in the evenings while I'm making dinner or we're trying to bathe the girls or wrangle them into bed. Or just to have a break from the crying and clinginess while he's teething. We're all going to miss Grandma!

6. Today was Walk-a-Thon at Lucy's school. The pre-k, kindergarten, and 1st grade all ask for pledges to raise money for the school, then walk laps around the gym. This year Lucy walked 38 laps and Lena did 30. Plus Lucy got her name drawn for a prize! There were all kinds of prizes: a kindle fire, passes to the children's museum, Meijer gift cards, even $100 off tuition. Did Lucy get any of those? No. She got this:

A huge bean bag chair!

It's actually really cool and she loves it. I just couldn't believe she got something so big when we're already crammed in my parents' house and have no more room for anything. Haha.

7. Our week in pictures: