She's Home!!

I know, kind of an obvious thing after my last post, but we're just very happy.
We're adjusting to a whole new routine.  We've got a new medication list; all of which have to be ground in a morter and blended with water to put in her PEG line, but it's not hard, just different.  We've worked out a different feeding schedual for her already since the one at the rehab. center was giving her a final feeding in the middle of the night.   Ridiculous!  She has to sit up for 30 min. after each feeding, so that meant she wasn't getting to bed for good until almost 1am.  Like I said, ridiculous.  Our feeding schedual will be 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, and 10pm.  Everyone gets to go to bed at a decent time. 
Yesterday was full, to overflowing, with everything that was going on - remember, on top of all the business of getting her home and having all her supplies, and a medical bed delivered (which got here about 7pm), it was milk day.  Today was going to be equally busy with all the normal stuff, plus a visit from the home health care nurse (the 1st visit is always long), tutoring my cousin, a trip to the library and the drug store, another visit from my uncle (to bring some more supplies), and Beenie's guitar lesson.  Hubby very generously offered to take Beenie to her guitar lesson for me, so (this might be considered taking advantage of the proferred generosity, but...) I told him of the other errands I was going to run, and asked him if he would do it for me.  He did - isn't he great!  That just freed up my entire afternoon! 

Okay - so my ENTIRE afternoon wasn't free.  I got a call at 2:15 (the lesson is at 2:30), and guess what was left at the house???  For all you mom's out there, you only get one chance - yep, you guessed it, the guitar.  So I tell hubby to go ahead and I'll meet them there.  It takes more than 15 min. to drive, and I had to stop to put gas in hubby's car, but the teacher was utilizing the time well, and the guitar was only 10min. late.  Not too bad, and the rest of the afternoon is fairly free, so, as Superman would say, "It's all good." (I have to assume this is a popular saying with public schooled kids.)

Ri has already, very kindly, offered to make supper, and Kay will head up the general tidying up once she gets home (she and Bree were the ones that needed to go to the library).  I'll put Bree on laundry duty (leaving Beenie and T.Lynn to help Kay and Ri as needed), and that will free me up to finish looking over school work,  and, if I'm very lucky, finish the ironing (I will leave the napkins for T.; she loves ironing them),  Right now I'm going to try to slip in a 30 min. nap - if at all humanly possible.

Grandma's Coming Home!!

It's official.  Grandma's coming home tomorrow.  My father, my uncle, Ri and I all went up to the rehab. facility today to learn how to do her feedings through the tube and how to work with her on her swallowing.  Kay will learn how to do it too, but tomorrow is milk day, and since Kay is going to SC with me tomorrow, that would leave Ri here with Grandma, once she was home - obviously, she needed to be the first to learn.  Everyone is excited.  We've throughly cleaned her room and put fresh bedding on her bed.  We are so glad that she will finally be back home.  Thanks to everyone for their prayers!!

When not to post on your blog

If yesterday is any indication, you should never try to slip a last minute post in when you're trying to get everyone headed out the door.
I had sooooo many typos in my post yesterday.  I also forgot to put in a link that should have been there.  I ended up editing it four times, catching various things wrong at different times; when I was trying to link the post to Mother Hen's post - apparently I even flubbed in the title  - as I was linking up, I realized that the title read Cooling with Kids, instead of the intended Cooking with Kids :), when I was answering a comment (that drew my attention to the missing link - thanks Mother Hen!), when I was showing the post to T.Lynn, and when Ri was looking at it. 
Whew!!  I got tired of finding mistakes.  I'm sure anyone who read the post before all the editing was done, was wondering about me - at least a little.
And for the record (the post has been corrected now),  it was Pumpkin muffins, not Butterscotch muffins.
At any rate, I appologize to anyone out there who had to stumble through my post before I fixed it, and in the future I'll try to get my cooling (:D) with the kids done, BEFORE Friday afternoon.

Becky

Cooking with Kids

Here we are, week two of cooking with children (you can check out Mother Hen's site here or you can use the Sally Mae cooks button on my side bar too).  T.Lynn was helping again today, and she made pumpkin muffins.  We got the recipe from Tammy's Recipes , and we just love them.  They are great for making ahead and keeping in the freezer to pull out for a quick breakfast. 

Adding flour...

baking soda

baking powder

brown sugar

cinnamon

grating nutmeg - careful with those fingers!

Mixing the dry ingredients together.

Sniffing that egg - it's a keeper

She wanted everyone to see the two chips

that were stuck together.

Taste testing again.  Hey - she's using a spoon

this time - but you don't want to know how

big a spoonful she picked up at first.  That

didn't fly, she had to try again.

Filling the muffin tins.

All done.

Don't these look nummy?

If you're wondering why the last two photos look better, it's because Ri took them.  I used Bree's camera in the first photos and something on it wasn't set right (at least that's what Ri told me).  I picked the best of the photos I did take, but as you can see, a camera in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing makes all the difference.  Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin Muffins

2 & 1/2 c. flour

1 Tbls. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 & 1/2 c. brown sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon

3/4 tsp. nutmeg

1 & 3/4 c. pumpkin

4 eggs

1/2 c. oil

2 c. nuts (optional)

2 c. butterscotch chips (op)

Combine all dry ingredients.  Add pumpkin, eggs, and oil.  Mix until smooth.  Add nuts and butterscotch chips if desired.  Bake at 350 for 20 min., or until top springs back when gently touched.

The changes I make to this are:  You can use freshly ground pastry flour in place of some of the regular flour.  I use melted butter instead of oil.  If I'm using canned pumpkin, I never bother measuring it, I just use a small can (it's about the same amount).  This time I used some of the pumpkin I cooked and froze last year.  I froze them in pint bags, and I didn't bother to drain it.  I use an 11oz bag of butterscotch chips - it's not quite 2 cups (more like 1 & 1/2), but trust me, that's plenty.

We hope you'll give these a try sometime soon, and I'll try to make something really healthy next time.

Becky

Butter

I made butter today.  I know, not rocket science.  I've actually made butter plenty of times, but today I made it in the blender instead of my food processor.  Why is this news worthy?  Because I managed to make it this time without having cream or buttermilk all over the counter, food processor, and anything else nearby.  I know I probably wouldn't make such a mess if I didn't put so much cream in, but who wants to make butter in 6 tiny little batches, when you can make it in two (and complain about the mess :D ).  At any rate, I tried it in the blender today, and it did great. 

See that neat little ball of butter at the

bottom of the pitcher?

And here it is in the bowl.

I didn't bother washing it until I had the entire quart of cream done.  I ended up with another ball of butter just a bit smaller than this one, so when all was said and done, we had a nice amount of butter made.

Becky