Food!

So lately I have wanted to start learning how to cook more things. I have been inspired by all the friends around me that have been cooking awesome meals. You see I was raised in a broken home. My mother worked full time and went to school at night, there wasnt time for a great home cooked meal all the time, the crock pot was her best friend. We had a lot of the same meals often. And my father, with home I spent most of my time in my teenage years.. well he cooked very rarely and if he did it was SPAM, or sloppy joes.. or cheese in a tortilla in the microwave lol..

If I gleaned any cooking knowledge, it was from my grandmothers. Two women that I respect. I lost one a year and a month ago. I still have my other grandmother though, sadly she lives across the country, but she will be here this weekend.

Anyways. I wanted to share the meal I made last night. It started with a food network recipe. Then I changed it a bit. I am all about pocket book friendly food (thank you Dave Ramsey for helping to make me a budgeter! )

I used Rice a Roni fried rice
Plus Oriental top ramen
And carrots and peas.

And I used cubed tofu instead of tofu strips. I didnt have sherry vinegar, so I used white wine vinegar. I also increased the Worcester sauce.

Here is the link to the recipe for the tofu, as well as the recipe.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/fillet-ofu-recipe/index.html

Ingredients
1 (19-ounce) block firm tofu
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Few dashes of hot pepper sauce
Canola oil to cover skillet by 1/8-inch
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Directions
Slice the block of tofu into 4 equal portions. Place the slices on paper towels and fold the towels over in both directions to cover the tofu. Place a baking sheet on top of the tofu and weigh it down with a 28-ounce can of tomatoes for 1 hour.

Combine the sherry vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and hot pepper sauce and place the tofu into the marinade. Marinate for 15 minutes on each side.

Place the flour into a shallow dish and the eggs into another. Lightly beat the eggs.

Heat the canola oil in the skillet over medium-high heat.

Remove tofu from marinade and drain on paper towels to remove any excess marinade.

Lightly dredge the tofu in the flour, knocking off any excess flour and slide into the eggs until completely, but thinly, coated on both sides.

Slide tofu gently into the hot oil and fry for 2 minutes until golden brown and delicious. Flip the tofu using the tongs, and cook for another 2 minutes.

And here is the finished product.. all mixed together


And the best part of the whole thing was my husband... He said he loved it, that I need to make it more often, and that it was better than rest restaurant Chinese food! (And he doesnt lie... if he doesnt like something, he will tell me so that I dont make it again lol)

Maybe A little too much Green...

So I am sure most of you are aware, St. Patty's day just came and went. It was a busy day for us, so I have not shared our pictures with anyone. I thought here would be a great place to do it. I put the corned beef in the crock pot. The kiddos ate and then dressed in their St. Patty's day tops then we went out to run some errands. After the errands were ran we went to the park where the kids played and played.
Here they are in their shirts


Then we went for a short walk up to the local shopping center, we bought some items to make goodies for later. We stopped for a drink and a snack, then back home.





Johnny went down for a nap while Aurora and I baked some St.Patty's day desserts.


Finally, When daddy came home, we had corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes. With green cookies and green swirl cake for dinner....


After dinner, I had to run off to class.
However this was not the last of green we would see lol.

Thoughts run swiftly through my head, If only I could catch one and hold onto it!

I have been so busy lately. Let us start with my favorite subject, my kids.

Aurora has been doing so well on her potty training, if it weren't for her lack of night time potty training, then I would call her potty trained. She wears underwear during the day with a rare accident, maybe once every two weeks or a month. She still wears pull ups at night, though most of the night she wakes up and they are dry. She is a talker, like her mommy. Oh my how that little girl can talk! Mommy what time is it? Mommy what color is this? or my newest favorite, Eyy Eyee Captain mommy! (I have no clue where she found this little phrase, but I think its adorable!) She can recognize colors now, but does not get them perfect all the time. She also can count 1 to 10, but has not mastered the skill quite yet. She can go higher, but she starts making more slip ups as the time goes on. I am not forcing her to learn these things, she just does. She has such an imagination! We will go to the park and play with the pretend store. She will get leaves and they will be all kind of food, as well as money. Currently she is obsessed with all of the classic Disney movies. She is also a big animal lover. Recently we went on a little trip with a neighbor and her son, to his school farm. There she was able to see a few different farm animals and feed a goat. She loved it. Here is a recent picture of my love, my doodle.



Now to talk about my little boy, Johnny. This little one has my will. Today he was determined to touch my brand new printer, I would tell him no. Then he would look and me, smile and try again. I would smack his hand and move him away. This repeated about five times before I said it was time for all of us to leave my bedroom. The laundry would just have to wait. My aunt tells me that I was the same exact way. Aurora has always been a more compliant child, not that she does not have her moments. When we all took our trip to the farm, johnny was leery of the animals and gave them all a wide berth. He is a musical child. Since the moment of his birth music has been a part of his life. When born he would scream and scream and yet rocking and humming made him happy. This was the instant after his birth. This was so noticeable that our delivery nurse mentioned it. To this day he has kept up the love of music. If a tune comes on that he likes, which is most music, he will sway back and forth, as well as attempt to dance. He says a few words now, grandpa, mommy, ball, no (a favorite of his), go, car, aunt suss, nana, etc. Here is a new picture of my dudsey.



Well my friend our financial peace university is going well, still going. We are still paying off debt, but we are keeping up the debt snowball. I think we may have our credit cards paid off by August, then our car by next March or so. Then it will be time to tackle the student loan debt and I believe we will begin our emergency fun then as well. (Seeing as the student loans could take some time)

On another note. John is doing well in school (as always). I think he will be scheduled to graduate with his B.A. in about a year and a half. I am still working on my general req's for my AA degree. Though it seems to be coming to an end, but then I will need to tackle my major req's. This is where I lose my mind. My current major is Chemistry. I have been giving it some though and I am considering a Biochem major. My lit teacher would like me to minor in literature. Maybe I will, time will tell. I have so much to think about.

And then at last let us close with my thoughts. I would have to say I have had issues dealing with myself lately. Not that I am sad, upset or even depressed. I love my life, but I have this personality.. where I feel like I need to know how everything works, to experience many things. I see things around me and I think I could do that. I want to know how to do everything. My math teacher has a calculus class prior to the current math I am in, I stare at the board in sheer curiosity. I want to know what it all means. Or I see images of a social lite college student. I think I could do that, I could have been that kind of person.

But then alas I can not do everything. lol... I have been blessed with two beautiful children and a wonderful loving husband. I am ready to follow the path God would lead us down and accept his trials and blessings to come.

Love,
Mrs.JohnBrown

Trust in the Lord

That was the sermon today. Trust in the Lord with our lives, with our whole self, our future, with everything, but especially with our fear. It was a great sermon. They incorporate great songs and clips of videos, commercials, tons of stuff that coincide with what we are discussing in the bible. John seemed to enjoy this sermon than the last. So as of right now, we are hoping to plant ourselves at this church. We also took Aurora for the first time to this church. She had not been to a church or church nursery since she was nine months or so..and back then I did the nursery for that service most of the time.

However she was very excited to go, did fine when we left, and only cried a little when we returned. She was upset because she saw us and ran to meet us, but had to go back inside to get her coat, I think she thought we were leaving her again, but once she realized we weren't, she was fine. She said she enjoyed herself, she "played", colored a little bible verse book, and had a good time. So she will happily be returning with us next week. The next step is introducing johnny. Hubby and I are uncertain about how he is gong to take this. However at some point we will have to attempt it. Currently he stays at home with grandpa, but I think in the next two weeks we are going to start taking him as well.

Well I guess thats the only news I really have to report for now. : )

Annoyed...

My hubby had his yearly review at work today. He is always a model employee. Has never called in sick, always gets great reviews (which means the best raise they give), etc. Well last year he got in trouble for using the internet at work. I dont know how many people remember this, but they put him on paid leave and we feared he was going to lose his job. Yet when they found out he was just doing school work in his lunch times and such, they gave him a final warning and that was it (They thought his school program had been hacking their system, which turned out to be not the case)

So fast forward to almost a year later. He is up for his review, his probation period has been over since September... In every category he received, exceeds expectations, as always. Yet that one mishap took him down to, sometimes meets expectations! His bonus was reduced (Oh well) and he gets NO raise! Nothing, nada, zero, zip...

Oh well.. thats life, part of me is really mad at the company because obviously he does above and beyond what they ask, he scored the best he could in every category, but then again I do realize he was breaking the rules by using the internet to do his school work.. I just don't know if the punishment fits the crime. Yet his work has a no exceptions policy (something I didnt know about) and he cant even complain to hr.

They made him the unofficial admin of a certain program, so now he is all upset because he is currently doing more work for the same pay. The worst part is it is all up to HR so there is no point to complain, his bosses have no say in it. His boss did give a little hope. His boss did inform him that they are trying to make him the Official admin, and they said they are working on getting him that title and a raise. Yet we know not to count on any of it. He has been promised so many promotions in the past (by different bosses) that we know enough to not count on any of it.

Im not as upset by the whole thing as much as my poor hubby is. I know that the money doesn't matter, we will be fine without it. But he feels like he could have or should have been a horrible employee the whole year, not covered for anyone, half-a##ed his work and he would have ended up with the same ending score. But no, he worked his butt off and he still gets screwed over : (

FPU- Week 1

Financial Peace University Class one!!

It went well, It was hilarious and we really enjoyed it. John and I look forward to getting out of debt, giving, and saving. We also can't wait to get more involved in this church. : )

Been busy.

Keeping the ball rolling....

Okay, so we have paid off a few more credit cards... just left with two that have balances... one with a lower balance and one with a higher...We will have those paid of by September, possibly sooner. We will see how we do at the yard sale. The yard sale money will be going to paying off our credit card debt.

Today we went through and reorganized the storage room at the back of the building. Next weekend and possibly slowly over the next week, we will be going through our storage that we pay for and throwing stuff out, putting stuff in the yard sale pile and moving stuff into the house or storage here. We found even more stuff to sell while going through the back room, I know we will find more to sell in our storage.. We are on a roll.

We would work on it tomorrow, BUT john picked up some overtime, soo after we go to check out a new church he will be heading off to work : ( But any overtime he works is more to put towards being debt free!

Once we have the cards paid off we will be doubling up the car payment. Then when income tax comes around, we will put what we get back to paying off the car, if there is any leftover then it will go to paying off the student loans. Once the car is paid off then we will attack the student loans. They are quite extensive, so I fear it may take us at least two years or longer for them alone. We will see ; )

The kids are doing good. Auroras eye infection seems to be completely gone, we did all the drops. Today she was able to go back to ballet class, which she was very excited about. Johnny is good, just here there and everywhere, picking up new words all the time. I am trying to work ahead on my school work.

Oh and we got new tires for the car, it was badly needed. I guess the front tires were almost bald, we were happily able to pay cash. We will also be paying cash for our vacation in a little over a week. I almost feel guilty for going on this little vacation because we could be putting the money towards the bills. Yet we did scale down our vacation considerably (We are talking thousands of dollars here...)