I love this outfit, it reminds me of something you would have seen on Jackie O. Sophie loves (to eat) it.

When I was laboring with Sophie, my mom made me a Thai peanut chicken dish which has become my comfort meal. It is not cheap to make per se, but can be made with many staples, much variation and just a couple ingredients you may not have on hand, but can easily get on sale and store (I had a coupon for the coconut milk a few weeks ago, score!) and the few ingredients you need are pretty inexpensive. I use rice instead of noodles and buy whatever I can with generic ingredients and use frozen pepper (see yesterday’s bell pepper money saving tip).

This is the recipe that is on the back of “A Taste of Thai” peanut sauce mix, I just added my own little notes, variations, and elaborations; the original recipe is in bold. My changes also make the recipe stretch farther without taking away any flavor.

Peanut Chicken & Vegetables with Noodles
The way I make it, it serves my family of rugrats with enough left over for the next day when it is even yummier

INGREDIENTS
1/2 - 16 oz box (8 oz) Rice Noodles
I use rice instead, I use Jasmine Rice and use 2 cups uncooked rice prepared by package directions in my rice maker)
1 tablespoon oil
If I have sesame oil I use 1/2 T olive or canola oil and 1/2 T sesame oil
1 1/4 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, thinly sliced
not sure how much I use, about 3 large breasts
3 cups favorite chopped vegetables
I know I use more, I usually use 1 large onion thinly sliced, 1/2 red/yellow/orange/green bell pepper and 1/2 a second color bell pepper (for color and taste), 3-4 boiled diced potatoes, and whatever else I have on hand, tonight I added one bunch of diced fresh spinach added in the last 3 minutes
1 tablespoon Fish Sauce, or 1 teaspoon salt
I use fish sauce
1-13.5 oz can Coconut Milk
1 packet “A Taste of Thai” Peanut Sauce Mix, both inner envelopes This is the one ingredient that I use name brand, all else I buy the cheapest available

DIRECTIONS

1. Soak Noodles according to directions for stir-fry. OR prepare rice according to directions
2. Heat oil in large skillet over high heat. Add chicken (I cook the chicken fully before adding veggies), vegetables and Fish Sauce (don’t be alarmed when you add fish sauce, it stinks like sweaty gym socks… tastes much better than it smells). Sauté 3 minutes.
3. Add Coconut Milk and Peanut Sauce Mix. Bring to boil while stirring and boil 3 minutes, if you use spinach, add it now. Add drained noodles and combine. Stirring, cook until noodles are firm but tender, if using rice, just serve over rice.

If you want to add a little more spice, you can add Sriracha Sauce either a couple small squirts when you add the coconut milk and peanut sauce mix, or have it on the table and allow the individual to season it themselves. This stuff packs a punch, so less is more.

I have been on a quest to live a better life, part of that was to bring Dave Ramsey’s teachings into the family and the other part is to learn to be happy with what I have instead of wanting bigger and better. Living frugally is living smart, not living poor. Why live on steak and lobster and have debt when you can live on rice and beans and pay a few hundred more dollars on the credit card balance.

Today I had a light bulb moment when I realized that with small changes, I would appreciate my house a little bit more. When I was at the library I found two books that caught my eyes, one was by “The Queen of Clean”, Linda Cobb, called The Queen of Clean Conquers Clutter and the other was Mary Ellen’s Guide to Good Enough Housekeeping. I recognized that part of my problem was lack of organization making my house feel smaller than it is and seem difficult to clean because it is cluttered.

When Bobby came home today, he came upstairs and found me in the bathroom with 100% of its contents in baskets in the bedroom and I was washing the light bulbs, he looked at my boys and said “uh-oh, mama has gone off the deep end again!” and he rescued Sophie and went to another room to play with her so I could finish my task.

I think I got rid of 3 bags full of junk, from magazines to expired products to the makeup I rarely wear, but Matthew frequently uses to “paint” my bathroom door with. I also got all the products off my counters (like mouthwash and detangler) and they now have new homes in my clean medicine cabinet or under the sink. I also hung a couple tiles that I have had for years that I planned on hanging after I painted, but we never got around to painting. My bathroom feels SO BIG now, I love it!

I am so impressed with how well Bobby is doing on our new “cash diet”, he decided he wanted a Coke, but we have been soda free for a few weeks now, so he got into his change jar and pulled out some silver to run to 7-11 to get a coke, I asked him if I chipped in some quarters if he would get me one too. He calls me from Safeway and says “wow, it is so expensive there, I decided to go to Safeway to get a better deal”. This is something I have been nagging at him forever, but Dave is right, it is a LOT harder to spend a dollar than it is just to swipe your debit card. I cannot believe how on board he has been with all this.

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Finally, a rice & bean recipe for you all.

Dad’s Red Beans & Rice (this is a recipe I grew up, my dad made this a lot)

1 cup of long/medium grain rice
2 cans of red beans (undrained)
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1 kielbasa (cut into 1/4 inch disks)
1 T minced garlic

Prepare rice according to package, either in a rice cooker (my way) or on the stove top (my dad’s way). Saute together onion, bell pepper, kielbasa, and garlic over medium heat. Combine cooked rice, undrained red beans, and kielbasa & veggie mix in a 2 quart casserole dish and bake until heated through on 350 (about 30 minutes).

I like to serve this with cornbread since all of the ingredients for those are staples.

*Money saving tip… get your green peppers when they are on sale and freeze them, that way you always have green pepper on hand. I wait for them to go on sale at King Sooper (our local Kroger chain) and I buy red, yellow, orange and green peppers and then slice them lengthwise and freeze on wax paper on a cookie sheet for an hour, then I put them into sandwich baggies and put in the freezer (1 pepper per baggie). Then I dice about 2 or three green peppers and do the same, again one pepper per baggie. The pre-freezing keeps them from sticking together, so you can use half a baggie in this recipe without having to thaw.

So today Isis had her reunion that the breeder hosts every year for the families who have purchased dogs from them can all get their dogs together and let their dogs play, talk about how much they love their four legged family members and for the breeders to see all their “babies” grown up.

Bobby was feeling sick, so I worried the day would be a bust, but the weather was great, the kids were great, Bobby did not complain (much) and Isis had A BLAST! It was the first time we had let her roam off leash (it was hosted at a small neighborhood park) and she was so obedient and sweet, it was like she was a different dog. Her tail was up, she was socializing with the other dogs and people and she made sure she was never out of our sight.

The surprise of the day was when we ran into the boys’ old taekwondo teacher. He and his wife not only had a new puppy, but a brand new baby girl (like 10 days old). Master B. had met Isis when she was 8 months old and mentioned that he wanted a Dane more than anything and someday he would get Mrs. B to agree. Guess he finally wore her down! His pup, Bella, is ADORABLE and I look forward to some day getting another pup… of course this is like 10 years away, but I told Bobby he could pick out the next Dane, he plans on getting a male. I am hooked, I will never get another breed again.

The other day I first heard the term “Free Range Kids“, and when I started reading more about what raising a free range child is about, the more I got it. DH and I always joke how different things were when we were children. His mom used to send him a few blocks away to play in the 3rd largest river in the US (Columbia River) where he and his buddies would shoot at each other with their BB guns (no one shot their eye out), or rode bikes down hills too steep for cars to drive up in the winter with a friend on the handlebar.

We have friends whose 10 year old has never ridden a bike out of fear. In my hometown Tag has been prohibited at the school, all because of fear of safety for the kids. Puh-lease! What ever happened to kids learning natural consequences? Why do they need full body armor to go out and play in the back yard (heaven forbid they set foot in the front yard without at least two, armed, secret service agents). Heck, when I was a kid, my parents would not even know if I had been abducted until at least 20 minutes after the street lights went on. And what the hell is up with ‘play dates’?? Are parents now days so over scheduled that they have to pencil in little Johnny’s play time between pee-wee soccer and his gymnastics class? That is what I love about this neighborhood, if a child wants to play with my kids… they knock on the door and ask if they can come out and play…. get this, WITHOUT their parents hovering behind them making sure their 10 year old can walk a block away without being stolen.

Now I am not saying we should air drop our children over a South American jungle with two quarters and a rubber band and expect them to MacGyver their way home, but seriously, don’t you think our kids should get to share memories of skinned knees, chasing the ice cream truck, drinking from the hose, building forts in the woods, walking to the supermarket with a dollar to buy candy or soda, climbing trees, skipping rocks and wading in the creek, and snowball fights?

Now I am not criticizing anyone else, you parent your child the way you see fit, but I found letting go works for us, as long as my child shows they are mature and capable of making reasonable decisions. At the park, I have no problem watching Austin climbing a tree 10 feet in the air, or walking to the convenience store to buy treats for his brothers. When I was in labor with Sophie, I mentioned Christopher broke his arm on his scooter. He was so proud of his injury, just like he is of his appendectomy scar. When Matthew falls down we tell him to “get up and do it again”. We still kiss his owies when he hurts himself, but we don’t act like the world is going to end if he draws blood when he falls down.

Someday, I hope my kids can look back and tell their own kids how much fun they had when they were kids, and all the risks they took and adventures they created.

Woohoo! We are going to attend Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University in November at a local church. Woohoo!! I am so excited!

So, last night, my little boy slept in underwear and woke up dry!! YAY! I was pretty hesitant to make the plunge since his Fuzzi Bunz were wet every morning when he woke up, but he has been potty trained during the day since August, so hubby convinced me it was time to trust him. I only have one kiddo in diapers now, that means less diapers to wash.

Speaking of the kiddo in diapers… baby girl rolled over from back to belly, and then belly to back this morning. This is a day for milestones indeed!

I just got my first AMAZING score at King Soopers today (Kroger), the first time I have ever saved above 34%, I saved 72%!

I got

3 gallons of milk
2 boxes of cereal
2 onions
1 4 pack of cottonelle bath tissue
2 packs of bologna
1 bag of spring mix salad
1 jar grape jelly

Shelf Price - $23.17
I paid $6.57!!

Milk was $1.97 a gallon, -.91*3 or -2.73
Bologna was BOGO, -1.89
Salad was 2/$5, +.75 coupon (dbl +.45) for -1.99
TP was .99, -.50q (dbl -.49) for FREE!
Then I had two $2.00 off q’s on anything in the store (I got these my last trip for buying Glade plug in air fresheners)
AND a $5 gc from The Denver Post for subscribing

Woohoo! I saved $16.60!! Plus I got .10 a gallon off my gas to boot!

Terri Tagged Me!

Here’s the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 6 random things/unspectacular quirks about yourself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

6 Random Things

1. I am covered in baby poo & breast milk right now, lovely huh? I started leaking while nursing Soph and before I could change my top, she pooped, but because she was nursing it blew out (her diaper gapped just a bit from being on her side). Then she promptly fell asleep. Everyone knows rule #1 of parenting is “NEVER wake a sleeping baby” and since she has not napped today AND has been a pill, we both get to suffer until she wakes up.
2. I adore documentaries, the more obscure, the better. One I can think of off the top of my head that I loved was “Little Man“, or “Born into Brothels“, I liked that one too.
3. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, but no one can tell because rather than organize my garage correctly, I just let it stay dirty. When I vacuum, I have to pull out the hose to get the edges, as I cannot just “trust” the vacuum to get it good enough.
4. I HATE owing people money. It eats away at me, even if it is just $5. If I win an auction on eBay, I pay for it within seconds of getting the notification because I just cannot stand giving my word to pay something and not paying it. If I forget to pay something, I really makes me feel guilty.
5. Along the same lines, I almost “dined and dashed” last week without even realizing it. I ate lunch with a couple friends and when we were splitting the bill I misunderstood when she was telling the waitress how to split the bill (and now I feel like an idiot because she meant her daughter’s food when she said “I am paying for her too”, duh) so when I thanked her as we were getting ready to leave she was like “I didn’t get your lunch” and the waitress never gave me a receipt so I just assumed. Thank goodness I caught it in time because I would have left without paying and not known it, OR figured it out at a much later time and felt like an asshole for life (and I would have of course gone back to pay, even if it was months later when I realized).
6. I wish yahoo IM had a spell check. I adore spell check, and will often copy and paste stuff into Word if it has no spell check. I love Fire Fox for having built in spell check. I have made sure to integrate spell check into Outlook Express any time I set it up. I am not a horrid speller, nor am I a wonderful speller, but it bugs me if I misspell something. - With that said, I am SURE my blog is chock-full of spelling and grammar errors.

So here is who I am going to tag, lets see who does it!

1. Earthmama
2. Tali (who is probably too busy with school to do it, but check out her blog anyways, her adorable little guy just got his first “boy badge” and he’s just too darn cute not to go look at)
3. Dana (PG-13, or maybe just PG)
4. Elisa (also PG-13 or just PG depending on your level of prudence
5. Amy
6. Allison
Permalink

Two months ago, when we picked up Sophie’s birth certificate, I headed to the Social Security office to get her SS card ordered. They would not give me one because I did not have enough documentation to prover her identity, I had a little giggle because she just did not seem to understand by “home birth” I meant “not at the hospital” because she mentioned about a dozen times that “the hospital she was born at was supposed to file that” to “can you get certified copies of her newborn screening from the hospital?” We had only at that point had well baby checks from our midwife as our insurance was also having issues getting her added to our policy.

So time rolls on, the insurance FINALLY adds her to our plan after the papers were submitted a second time Sophie has her well baby exam so I ask her ped to write a letter so I can get her SS card. I get it home to find the doctor has added an i to the end of her last name! I find out yesterday, that the medical group she goes to has a Sophia [our last name] + i in the practice, hence the confusion on the letter. Can you believe it??

Wait, it gets better!

My midwife calls today to see if she had left her air pump & thermometers at my house when she attended my birth (she hadn’t) and I asked her if any of her other clients had ever had this nightmare getting their babies numbers. She said “no, it should have come in the mail 4-8 weeks after I submitted the paperwork.” I guess in that paperwork packet that Bobby and her filled out to get her birth certificate, ALSO goes to the SSA to get her SS card. I did not know this (I was a little busy the next day when they did the paperwork) and Bobby only remembered after I reminded him (he was a little sleep deprived also). So Jan (midwife) calls her contact in the records division and her checks on her SS card and apparently it was rejected on 6/17 for incorrect characters in the address. Our address is odd because we do not have a N, S, E, or W in the typical sense, it is in the street name itself. So my address is not like 123 N Main, my address is more like 123 Main Ave W, and the sign at the end of the block says something like “Main Ave W”. I guess SSA did not like that, and rejected it without notifying Jan or us.

So I call the SSA again and fight with the automated service that wants nothing else but to get me to go to the website or use the automated library, but neither one can answer the question so I hold for about 15 minutes where the woman explains to me that they cannot re-do the paperwork because after 30 days if an application is rejected the info is dumped… BUT since no one *told* us they could not process it, we had no way to *fix* the error.

Since she does not have a photo ID as her second proof of ID, they gave me a list of “acceptable” documentation, most stuff being things she would not have like school records, drivers license, etc. They said I could use her original medical records (which my dr’s office cannot release for legal reasons) a certified copy of her records (which she did not know what the difference between a copy & a certified copy was), but not a notarized copy. They would not accept records from my midwife, who is a state licensed, legal medical provider, but they would accept shot records if she had them, which is not even signed by a Dr, but rather initialed by a RN. Whatever.

Jan is sending me Sophie’s PKU results which is from the state, and I am hoping her ped mails me a corrected letter soon, so maybe I can brave the trenches of the SSA again next week. I also have to update Austin’s social security info anyways, so I am hoping I can kill two birds with one stone so to speak. I hope we can get this done ASAP so we can get her added to his VA benefits. What a pain.