Binkies and Briefcases

Building a Dream: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:14:00 +0000

I was going to wait a few more weeks to share this news, but I'm too excited to wait much longer and things seem to be moving pretty quickly now.

We have been waiting for this since October when we found the lot, but we wanted to wait until the start of the new year for a few reasons like the new baby coming and tax purposes, etc.

We're finally under contract on an amazing piece of property! We were able to negotiate a pretty awesome deal because of the way the market is right now.

It's almost 2 and a half acres, just 15 minutes from Eddie's office, and right across the street from the elementary school the kids will attend.

Over the course of the next few months we'll be working with a modular home company to create our dream home, which we've already picked out and started designing. Our goal is to hopefully be in our new home by September when Nicholas starts kindergarten.

My mom is investing in the property with us and in a few years the plan is to subdivide a smaller lot on the property and build her a little house right next door so that she can retire near her grandkids.

I'll be sharing the entire process over the next few months & then I hope you'll stick around as we work on decorating it! :)

Introducing

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:18:00 +0000

Penelope (Penny) Christine

Born December 30th, 2011 at 11:01am
6 lbs 9.9 oz, 17 and three quarter inches long

Penny was born via c-section, which went very well. She is very small and we had a bit of a scare with a slight heart murmur, but it went away very quickly.

We are still working on nursing, which is going much better than it did when we had Abby, but we haven't quite mastered it yet.

She is a very sweet baby who seems to like her sleep. Tonight will be our first night home from the hospital, so we are hoping that trend continues!

2 Recipes

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:06:00 +0000

I'm super proud of myself because I actually got my Christmas cards in the mail and made applesauce ornaments. I'm trying to only do one or two things a day so I don't overexert myself and bring on labor because I'd really like to hold off on delivering until after Christmas.

The first recipe is one for old-fashioned applesauce ornaments I found last year, although I can't remember where I got it. We're making it into a tradition to make these each year as a gift for our Sunday school teachers.

It's the easiest recipe ever

1. Mix equal parts cinnamon and applesauce. (I always find it needs extra applesauce, though)
2. Roll out dough and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.
3. Use a straw to poke a hole so that ribbon can be added later for hanging.
4. Let air dry for several days until hardened or bake in a low oven (175-200 degrees) for a few hours, checking frequently after the first hour.

Some recipes for these ornaments include glue, but it doesn't seem to be necessary and Abby kept eating the dough so I'm glad we didn't use it. I used 3 containers of cinnamon and 7 single serving cups of unsweetened applesauce and got 3 dozen+ ornaments.

And while we're talking about recipes, I thought I'd share a dinner I made last week that was a big hit with the kids. Abby had seconds and Nicholas had thirds. We had no left-overs that night & it was pretty easy to make. I modified it from a much more complicated Pampered Chef recipe for pinwheel sandwiches.

Philly Steak & Cheese Bake

1 package of refrigerated crescent roll dough
1/2 lb thinly sliced deli roast beef
Several slices thinly sliced cheese, I used white American
1/2 green pepper, diced
1/4 medium onion, diced

In a skillet, saute diced onion and pepper until tender.
Shred roast beef and add to skillet to heat through.
In a round baking dish, lay our crescent dough in a pinwheel pattern
Lay a few cheese slices on top of dough
Pour beef, onion, and pepper mixture into dish
Top with additional cheese slices
Fold dough over mixture
Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes or until top is golden brown.

We served ours with spinach. It's very heavy, so it would pair nicely with a fresh salad.

I love collecting recipes. I'm in the middle of putting together a family traditions cookbook for our mom' s group and it's been fun to see what kinds of food each family is submitting.

Maternity Photos

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:39:00 +0000

I don't know about you, but I've always had a dream of letting my weight balloon to almost 200 pounds, then posting half-naked pictures of myself on the internet, stretch marks and all. (kidding. sort of.) We keep it real, people.

My amazing talented friend, Satoko, took some maternity pictures for me over the weekend and I'm so excited to share some of them with you.

I'm officially in my 9th month, so I am HUGE. It probably would have been a better idea to do the pictures a few months back, but since this is probably the last time my body will be growing a new life I wanted to commemorate it.

I am really happy with the way they turned out, I just wish I would have scheduled an appointment when I had a few less stretch marks. It's all good, though.

and because I told you we keep it real...

Mommy Guilt Is Dumb

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:47:00 +0000

This year I'm kind of a Grinch. Not in a bad attitude sort of way, but in a rob innocent little children of decorations and experiences sort of way.

In the past 12 days we've had a gas leak and I've been hospitalized twice for preterm labor issues. (Don't worry, everything's ok, I just started having contractions and some other gross labor-y symptoms at 34 weeks and since that's too early to deliver they put me on a special medicine to stop them.) I'm at 35 and a half weeks now so we are getting really close to the point where it will be ok if she decides to come a little early.

So we (I) decided that this year we shouldn't really bother doing much decorating for Christmas. We put up our pre-lit tree and that was it. No ornaments, no outside lights, no wreaths, nothin'. Nick was upset about the lack of ornaments, so we made a deal with him that any ornament he made at preschool or Sunday school could go on the tree. Then he started talking about when the Elf On A Shelf was coming. Geez, kid, you are 4. How do you remember that from last year? So I guess we might need to dig that out too, but I am not doing any of the adorable ideas from Pinterest. He can sit on top of a cabinet and stay there for 3 weeks.

I wanted to have apple butter canned to give away. I didn't do it.

I wanted to have over a dozen heating pads made, I've only made half.

I wanted to make applesauce ornaments for the Sunday school teachers. Haven't gotten to that yet. Not sure if I will.

I wanted to crochet a few scarves to give as gifts. I've made none.

We're not making Christmas cookies. (Unless they are the already decorated with the reindeer face slice and bake kind)

The Christmas event at Dutch Wonderland (a local amusement park) and the ride on the train with Santa at the Strasbourg railroad? Not happening.

Neither is my tradition of going outlet shopping with a girlfriend.

We might not even wrap the kids presents to go under the tree. (Eddie & I debate this every year. I came from a family where Santa didn't wrap presents because that is a lot of extra work/mess, but Eddie prefers Santa's presents wrapped so that the kids can concentrate on one gift at a time and because it looks nice.)

I spent way more money buying store bought gifts this year for the kids than I did last year when I made almost every single one.

My kids have hardly had any vegetables for the past several weeks because I've been feeding them Chef Boyardee and frozen chicken nuggets. (Well, they aren't frozen anymore when I serve them.)

But why is it so hard to give yourself a break? Nobody's expecting me to do anything. Lots of people have even asked if we were planning to even attend family holiday traditions, because they would understand if I just wanted to stay home.

When Eddie comes home from work and starts cleaning up around the house because I didn't do it I feel guilty.

When we look across the street and see the neighbors' house all decked out and pretty I feel guilty because we're certainly not giving them much to look at right now.

When I have to call and ask people to watch my kids for an indefinite amount of time because I'm being sent in to the hospital again I feel guilty.

When I know the awesome plans I had to make people gifts this year and what they will be getting instead, I feel guilty.

Knowing my sister is spending her last college vacation ever staying at my house to watch my kids and cook and clean for us while I'm having my c-section makes me feel kind of guilty.

I know I shouldn't because it's really, really stupid.

I know everyone is happy to help and that I can't do everything, but I also wanted to make this year extra special for Nick & Abby since they will be feeling left out when the new baby comes.

It's dumb to think that they even care.

We try to focus more on Jesus's birthday than the commercial side of it, but Santa will still be coming with every toy on their list, plus some. (Lucky for us all they asked for was an airplane and a Dora doll.)

There will still be cookies, although they might be Oreos. When you are in preschool a cookie is a cookie.

My family still gets fed. (And Nicholas still tells me, "Mommy, you are a good chef-er." when I feed him frozen pizzas.)

They like driving around at night looking at other people's Christmas lights.

They'll probably look back at this year just like all the others, but I still know it's different.

And at the end of it we'll have one of the best Christmas presents ever, another one of these:

Our Little Scare

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:42:00 +0000

First, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday!

I wish I had a picture to go with this post, but it was pandemonium here for a few hours yesterday & I didn't even think of taking one in all the chaos.

So...Sunday we were out of town visiting with our parents. When we came back that night there was a faint, weird smell in our house. Eddie & I looked at each other and were like, "What is that? Is that gas? We'd know if it was gas, right?" Like I said, it was very faint, we figured it was probably just because the heat had kicked on while we were out and you know how the heat smells a little funny the first few times it runs for the season?

Then yesterday (Monday) I took the kids out to meet my grandmother for lunch. When we got back as soon as I walked in I noticed the gas smell was much stronger. I called the gas company and they told us to get out of the house right away, leave windows open, and not to touch anything electrical. They said they would be responding immediately and that I should stay close to the property, if possible because they would need a homeowner present when they got there.

So the kids and I waited outside. I grabbed a few toys from the garage on our way out and I had some candy canes in my purse to entertain them with. I called Eddie to let him know what was happening.

The gas company took forever to respond. I literally waited for almost two hours outside with a toddler and a preschooler and me being 8 months pregnant, just waiting & hoping our house didn't explode in the meantime. The kids were terrible because it was supposed to be nap time & they were exhausted. At one point Nicholas tried to sleep in a pile of leaves in the gutter. It was not fun. At all. But I was very thankful that we've been having unseasonably warm weather for this time of year, because it would have been a lot less fun if it was cold & icy.

Eventually I called Eddie & my in-laws (my father in-law works for the Baltimore gas company) to see how long it should be taking to respond. Eddie got annoyed & called the gas company again to ask how much longer it would be and they said they were very busy with emergency calls and they had no idea how much longer we would need to wait, so he called me back and said to call 911 and ask the fire department to come shut off the gas.

So I did.

About 5 minutes after that the gas company truck pulled up. I had a fleeting thought to call the fire department and tell them never mind, but we could already hear the sirens.

A lot of them.

And the next thing I knew, there were 4 fire trucks and an ambulance lining our street and lots of curious people looking on.

One of our neighbors ran over and offered to take the kids and the dog until things calmed down.

For 20 minutes or so there were about 20 uniformed men swarming our house and our yard, then the fire trucks started to disperse to respond to other emergencies, I'm assuming.

At this point I was actually praying that there was a gas leak because I felt really guilty about taking all that man power away from other actual emergencies, especially if it was going to turn out that I was just some crazy pregnant lady who thought she smelled something. Plus, it was super embarrassing that our house kind of looked like an episode of hoarders because we'd been out every day since Thanksgiving and hadn't even finished cleaning up from that.

I'm not crazy. The guy from the gas company said he found two gas leaks. He showed me where they were after he'd shut everything down and it was safe to be in the house again. The bad news was that they don't fix them, we'd need to get a plumber out and he thought it would be a while before that happened because apparently there were a crazy amount of emergency gas leaks in our area yesterday. (?)

I called Eddie back to update him & he was able to get in touch with a plumber, but they didn't know when they'd be able to get out and they said that if the furnace was affected they might need to order parts and it could take a few days before they could fix it.

That meant we'd have no heat, hot water, or use of our stove indefinitely. That's not a situation that's ideal for a very pregnant lady with very young kids, so I started making calls trying to find a place I could take the kids. We were fortunate enough to get several offers, but decided to go to my grandmom's house.

I had already loaded a suitcase in the car and was on the way out the door with the kids when Eddie called and said he was on his way home early, the plumber had called and said he could be there in 45 minutes. The kids and I stayed put, hoping that the plumber would be able to fix it and we wouldn't have to go anywhere after all.

And he did! Yay! The plumber, Charlie from Haller Plumbing, was very nice. He could only find one of the leaks, which made me very nervous since the guy from the gas company had shown me two spots, so he ran 3 separate leak tests to prove the other leak the gas company found had been a false positive. Then before he wrote out the bill he asked if we had a printer and told us that we could print a coupon off of their company website to save us $25 off the bill. AND when Eddie asked him about a totally separate issue we'd been having with the furnace giving off too much condensation, he went ahead and fixed that for free.

If we had to have a gas leak, I'm glad that this was the way everything went down because everything turned out fine.

Guess what the problem was?

One of the nuts was loose at a joint.

I think Eddie was a little annoyed that it took an entire day, the gas company, 4 fire truck crews, an ambulance (I still don't know why they sent an ambulance, but they did, maybe in case there was an explosion while they were here?) a plumber, and a $200 bill to fix something he could have done in 30 seconds with a wrench, but once you smell gas you don't have much of a choice.

Gas leaks are really serious (as in your entire house can blow up if you do so much as turn on a light switch) so if you ever smell the sulfer-ish rotten egg smell, get out of your house and call your gas company or the fire department right away.

The other thing I learned is that I should probably keep an emergency kit in the car with extra clothes, diapers, dog food, toiletries, etc. in case something like that happens again because the whole time we were stuck outside I was thinking "What I am I going to do if we can't go back in at all today?" "I only have 2 Pull-Ups for Abby and a change of pants for Nick in my purse..." "Shoot. I should have grabbed the sippy cups..." and making a list of stuff I was going to need to go to Target & buy just so we could get through the night. It would have been much easier if I hadn't been worrying about that too.

Lessons learned, I guess.

Couponing Update & 1st month in review

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:12:00 +0000

First, a reminder about why I'm doing this whole couponing experiment...

{smile}

Ok, here is what my $20 "learning how to coupon" budget bought this week

Our town has 2 grocery stores, Weis and Giant. I usually prefer Weis because they are less crowded and the Giant is in a shopping center with a busy parking lot that is not fun to navigate with multiple young kids, Weis has less expensive regular prices, and Weis doubles up to 4 of the same coupon per transaction, whereas giant only doubles the first coupon.

However, Weis doesn't stock as many items, so I'm finding that a lot of the coupons I have I can't redeem there simply because they don't sell the products.

I knew this would be a good week to try Giant because I was running low on prenatal vitamins and they had the brand I use on sale, buy one get one free, plus I had coupons for them.

While I was there I saw a few other things I had good coupons for, so I bought some of those as well.

Cheerios: On sale 2/$5 + used 2 $1 off coupons = 2 boxes for $3 or $1.50 each (normally $3.79 each)

**My favorite deal: Dole salads: on sale 2/$5 + the produce department had put $1 off peelie coupons on each because they expire in a few days + used two 75 cent off coupons + one of the 75 cent coupons doubled (That's $5-$2-$2.25)= $0.75 for 2 or 38 cents each! (Regularly $3.69 each)

Goya Adobo seasoning: $1.39, not on sale - $1.10 (55 cent coupon doubled)= $0.29

Kraft Shredded Cheese: On sale 2/$6 + used 2 coupons for $1.50 each= $3 for 2 or $1.50 each (regularly $3.59 each) I have a big stockpile of shredded cheese after this first month, but it freezes well according to Google, so we'll see about that.

Idahoan Instant Potatoes: On sale for $1 - $1 off coupon= FREE

Nature Made Prenatal Vitamins: on sale 2/$10.77 + 2 $1.00 off coupons= 2 for $8.77 or $4.39 each (regularly $10.77 each)

Altogether I paid $15.81 after using coupons & the store card, and more than half of that went toward the vitamins. The original total was $46.57, so I saved about 66%.

I was happy I was able to save more than 50% on every item I bought this trip, I only bought stuff we normally use anyway (except maybe the instant potatoes, but, hey, they were free) and this was my first time saving on produce.

So, to review, this month I've used coupons to buy all this stuff for $93:

I think $93 seems like kind of a lot, but I have managed to save at least 30%-50% off the total each time, which is certainly better than paying full price and once you get the hang of it, it gets kind of fun to match up the sales & coupons. I actually bought/saved a lot more than I showed you on my regular grocery store trips, these are just the times I tried to stay under $20 for practice.

What I learned:

It takes a few weeks to build up your coupons and for the first few weeks it will be hard to match anything up with store sales.
Even though you look kind of silly, it really is easier to take an organized coupon binder to the store with you
Look up the circulars online before you go to the store. I also look up regular prices on my store's ishop website (they let you order groceries online and even if I'm not placing an order, it's a good resource for looking up prices of things that aren't advertised in the circular)
Print multiple copies of each coupon so you can use 2 coupons on buy one get one free deals.
Search several different zip codes when looking up coupons online.
Follow a service like Couponpro on facebook because they do all the hard work for you, then all you have to do is print the coupons as they come up.
Most of the high value coupons are from liking companies on Facebook.
Since I'm not trying to stockpile 100's of items, I am fine just printing 2 of each coupon from my home computer. I did not use any Sunday paper coupon inserts, I just printed everything online from coupons.com and the Red Plum and Smart Source websites or Facebook or manufacturer websites.
If a coupon has a store logo on it but says "manufacturer coupon" at the top, you should be able to use it at different stores, especially if the bar code starts with a 5.
Only coupons that start the barcode with a 5 will double.
Oh, and this guy is awesome.

Are you trying non-extreme couponing too? Do you have any tips?

Coupon Monday (on Friday)

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:24:00 +0000

oops, I hit publish too early. My bad.

This week I tried Walgreens.

My zip code didn't have a lot of coupons listed when I searched coupons.com this week, so I started fooling around and entering other zip codes. Is that cheating? I don't know, but I'm not sure why when I searched my zip code only 112 coupons came up and when I searched the zip code of the Target that is only two miles from my house 148 popped up, so I don't really feel bad for experimenting with it.

I went a little over my budget and wound up spending about $22 after tax, but I did save over $29.

I broke it into two separate transactions and checked out with all the deals that I knew would print register rewards first.

The best deal was the children's medicine. Walgreen's had Triaminic on sale 2/$10, plus they gave you back $3 in Register Rewards (a coupon for $ off your next purchase) when you bought 2 AND there was a manufacturer coupon attached to the box for $3 off when you bought 2, so they wound up only costing $2 each.

All together for $22 I bought:

2 Boxes of children's cold medicine
2 boxes of Kleenex
2 bottles of hand sanitizer
Gas X
Baby wash
Glade odor eliminator
Windex spray
Windex wipes.

I also managed to save 72% at the grocery store & that time I only spent $9 for

Sargento shredded cheese
2 containers of cashews
2 greek yogurts
2 boxes of instant potatoes
2 boxes of popcorn
2 tubs of margarine
and some Halloween decorations for next year

That one did feel pretty good. Oh, and I put my coupons in a binder. Baby steps.

Coupon Monday

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:10:00 +0000

Time to show you what I got for my $20 coupon practice this week:

Sorry the photo is so dark, all this stuff is now hiding from little eyes until Christmas.

The best deal by far this week was that I only paid $1 each for those Toy Story Operation games, which were regularly $15.99 at Target. Toys R Us has them advertised in their weekly ad this week for $1, but of course they sold out in no time, so I took the ad to Target & they did a price match for me at the customer service desk. They had a limit of 3, but that was fine with me because I'm not trying to be a hoarder, I just wanted some Christmas gifts. They'd also be great to donate to Toys for Tots or if your office or church does an angel tree. It was a lot of fun to watch the register total change from $48 to just $3 plus tax.

The wrapping paper I got with my $5 off a $10 purchase coupon from liking Hallmark on Facebook. They are out of coupons on FB now, but I got the same coupon in my latest issue of Rachel Ray magazine, fyi. The wrapping paper is normally $5/roll, but they had a buy one get one for 99 cents sale, so I bought 4 plus a roll of tape and paid a little over $9 after tax.

I also bought a DVD of Marley & Me, which was on sale at our F.Y.E. in the mall for $9.99, and I had a $3 manufacturer coupon I printed off the internet a few weeks ago, making it $6.99.

So I spent $3 at Target, $9 at Hallmark, and $7 at F.Y.E.

I also saved more than $37 off our grocery bill & took the total down from $108 to just $70 and change.

I am finding that I now have too many coupons to just stuff in an envelope in my purse like I have been doing. It was taking way too much time at the store to dig through my envelope every time I found an item and wanted to pull out the matching coupon.

I'm going to have to start a binder, and I found a free download of one I think will work well for me here.

It's a little discouraging that I'm not saving nearly as much as those women on TV, but 1/3 of the grocery bill is pretty decent, I guess, especially considering I only use coupons I can print for free off the internet. I find it makes me fell better if I go home and use our online banking system to transfer the amount of money I saved into our savings account.

I'm going to start doing this every week with the money I save using coupons at the grocery store. I can't afford to do it every time I save in any store, like Friday when I spent $70 at Kohl's, but saved over $175, but I figure with the grocery money I would have spent it anyway if I wasn't couponing, so I'm not going to miss it out of our weekly budget & it will be a good way to build up our savings. If I can save about the same amount every week, $35-$40, that will be an extra $150 a month, or $1,800 a year, in our savings account. (Sidenote: If you start doing that when your child is a baby, by the time they are 18 you'd have over $32,000 set aside, not even accounting for interest. Just saying. Coupons might just be our college fund.)

Good Deals This Week

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:29:00 +0000

With only 7 weeks until Christmas and only 8 more until the new baby comes, I have some serious shopping (and even more serious budgeting) to do.

I did find some good deals this week that I thought I'd share with you.

Disneystore.com is having a free personalization & free shipping sale, but today is the last day. They have all sorts of blankets, shirts, mugs, jackets, and even children's books that you can have personalized. Use the code FREENAME.

Kohl's is offering an extra 15% off with the code TURKEYFB15. Sorry if this is too much information, but I just bought two good quality bras for a total of $25. (Those suckers can be expensive!)

Hallmark is offering a $5 off any $10 purchase coupon to the first 35,000 people who print it from the Special Offers section of their Facebook page. Note: You can't print it from Firefox, you have yo use a different browser. (I'm hoping I can combine this with this Yankee Candle coupon, if I can it will make the large jar candles that normally sell for over $20 only about $8.75, which is less than the price of the smallest jars.

Until November 8, Snapfish.com is offering 2 free photo books when you buy one with the code MYFALLBKS. I had some trouble with this one, but I called customer service & they were able to fix the problem in about 10 minutes, so I got 3 of the 5x7 photo books for $17, including tax & shipping.

All in Good Time

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:36:00 +0000

November is National Adoption Month & next week I'll be sitting on a panel to share our story. I got an email a few days ago containing some questions for our panel, and most of them were similar to the ones I get all the time. "How did you know you were ready?" "What are the steps I need to take?"etc. I thought this would be a good time to share our story here as well.

As to the first question, honestly, it was just a deep, gut-wrenching need that I knew to be a calling from God. I didn't hear any voices, I just felt a very heavy void and I knew in my heart that this was the way to fill it, the same way that you know eating a sandwich will help you fill the void in your stomach when you are hungry. It was primal and instinctual and I didn't see it as my choice to make. At first Eddie didn't feel called at all. In fact, he told me more than once he thought I needed to see a psychiatrist. We'd only been married for about 6 weeks and we were only 22. It was a test of our marriage, but I was very convicted I couldn't go wrong following what I believed to be a calling from God. So I did what any good wife would do, I nagged. A LOT.

As to the steps to take, they are very different in every situation. We went through foster care in the state of Florida, because that's where we were living at the time. Private and international adoptions are very different, other states are different, and most adoptions in Florida are different than the way ours went down. All I can tell you is our story. And it's a long story, one that spans over the course of several years, so I figured the easiest thing to do would be to share it as timeline. Then I will post a Q & A session with some of our most commonly asked questions.

Here we go...

Our Journey Into Parenthood:

June 2006-Eddie moves to Florida to start his first job after college. Steph follows a few weeks later, on June 19th, after finishing her first year as a teacher, to start looking for a teaching job. She finds a temporary summer job at a gym in the meantime.

September 2006-Steph and Eddie get married and are starting a new life in a new city, Tampa, FL.

October 2006- Steph starts obsessing about adoption & Eddie thinks she is nuts (She also started a new teaching job this month, which came with an incredible amount of stress, and is dealing with the ramifications of leaving her previous job, which did NOT end well. Those are both stories for another time.)

Winter 2006/2007- Steph spends 6 months nagging nagging non-stop and researching adoption.

March 16,2007- Nicholas is born in Tampa, practically 9 months to the day after Steph moved here. We believe this was not a coincidence.

April 2007- Go to orientation with the foster agency, Eddie reluctantly agrees mostly so Steph will shut up. (We don’t know it yet, but our son is 6 weeks old and living with his birth mom in the Salvation Army homeless shelter. He will enter foster care in just a few weeks.)

Summer 2007-Get fingerprinted, fill out paperwork, get approved for classes

September 2007- Take a 10 week parenting class, during which Eddie’s heart changes dramatically. (We don’t know her as his foster mom yet, but Debbie, the woman taking care of Nicholas, visits our class to share her story and we meet some of her children.)

Fall 2007- Several home study interviews

January 2008- Home Study is approved

Winter/Spring 2008- Wait……Our family is presented at a few “match” meetings (when the social workers meet to decide which family they think would be the best match for a foster child) but we are not selected. At this time, we think we are waiting for a child over the age of 6

April 17,2008- Driving to a meeting after work, Steph gets a call that there is a one-year-old little boy available. Because of his age and the fact that he is not a minority, he is not eligible for adoption through the state, although he is in foster care. It is considered a private adoption, we have already been chosen, there will be no match meeting, providing we can afford to pay $5,000 in legal fees and his foster mom agrees that we are a good match for him. We can meet him tomorrow. There will also be none of the normal services, like Medicaid until age 18 and, in the state of Florida, college tuition, since this is now being considered a private adoption.

April 18, 2008- We meet Nicholas and his foster family at a McDonald’s.

Mid-April-mid-May 2008- The social workers want the transition to be fast because he is so young. We’d been preparing for an elementary school-aged child for a year, now we have 3 weeks to prepare our home for a baby. Steph’s co-workers throw an adoption shower and are very helpful donating clothes and furniture. For a few weeks Nicholas is not allowed to spend the night with us, we start visiting with him every day for a few hours, moving up to more and more time.

May 14, 2008- Nicholas moves in.

May 15, 2008- Nicholas has to have a surgical circumcision. It had been previously scheduled, but the timing could not have been worse. His first day with his forever family & our first full day as his parents, we spent the morning in the surgery center, then Eddie went back to work and I spent my first day as a mother getting “baptized by fire” because the anesthesia made him very sick.

Summer 2008-Being a teacher, Steph is off from work and stays home with Nicholas. There is a 90 day trial period before we can go to court and make everything official. Social workers visit to check on us and Nicholas is still getting his medical care through the state because we can’t put him on our insurance until we go to court. We also discover we are pregnant with Abby and decide to move closer to family. Eddie’s company agrees to let him transfer to Pennsylvania after the adoption is finalized. Steph’s principal agrees to let her keep her job until it’s time to move. The Florida housing market has collapsed and there is no telling how long it will be before we can sell our house, but we put it on the market and Steph’s dad helps us buy another house in Pennsylvania.

October 1, 2008-We can finally go to court and sign the papers. We are even given a new birth certificate with our names on it. Nicholas is ours. It’s been 2 years since we started thinking about adoption.

November, 2008- We get an offer on our house. We are going to lose more than $50,000. We have to take it.

December 12, 2008- Family and friends help us pack and make the drive from Florida to Pennsylvania. We drive through the night hoping Nicholas will sleep. We get a flat tire at 1am. What should be a 17 hour drive winds up taking 23 hours. Steph is 5 months pregnant.

February 2009- Steph is 7 months pregnant and hospitalized twice for early labor/contractions & put on modified bed rest. We need to hire a part-time nanny to take care of Nicholas.

April 21,2009- Abby is born.

That is our story. Some of the details might not seem important, but they turned out to be vital later when we discovered that Nicholas had many more attachment issues than anyone thought he would, considering he was only 13 months old when we were placed with him.

Regardless of the trails we have faced with him, or maybe because of them, Nicholas is just as much ours as our biological children. I'll talk about that more in my next post.

Autumn Babymoon

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:20:00 +0000

For a while now, Eddie and I had been planning our "babymoon" to the Shenandoah Valley to visit Skyline Drive. He has accumulated quite a few Holiday Inn points while traveling for work, so we were able to book a free suite for the weekend at the Holiday Inn in Front Royal, VA. (and we still have enough for another weekend....eventually.)

My wonderful in-laws took the kids and the dog for the weekend and we made the trip, which is about a two and a half hour drive from us.

Friday, the day we left, was beautiful. The fall colors of the leaves were breath-taking on the drive down, and we even saw a hot air balloon while we were driving.

The hotel was on a gorgeous golf course with great views.

This was the view Friday evening when we arrived.

Unfortunately, as you may have heard, we had a record early snow on the east coast this weekend, so this is what we woke up to Saturday morning.

We tried the park entrance twice on Saturday and once on Sunday, but it was closed because of the weather, so this was a close as we got to Skyline Drive.

No worries, though, we had a nice time just resting during the day on Saturday and going to dinner, bowling & to see the new Justin Timberlake movie In Time that evening. There was the craziest little theater in town! They made us stand outside in the snow until show time, then they let everyone in and our theater was tiny. Then the show didn't even start for another half an hour because they couldn't figure out how to work the projector. It could have been a frustrating day after not being able to get into the park either, but we were determined not to let anything ruin our trip.

On Sunday we spent the morning visiting some really cool antique shops and an architectural salvage store.

We tried the park again but it was still closed, so we decided that plan B would be to visit Harper's Ferry, which we were going to have to pass through on the way home anyway. So we got to see the fall foliage after all, with a little bit of a history lesson thrown in. (Now I know a lot more about Stonewall Jackson & John Brown.)

If you're looking for an affordable get away, you really should consider visiting the National Parks in your area. We had a great time and we really didn't spend much money at all, no more than we would have staying home for the weekend. :)

Coupon Monday

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:23:00 +0000

It's week 2 of my $20 coupon challenge. I'm new at couponing, so to ease myself into it I'm seeing what I can get for $20 each week.

This week I tried Target. I bought this lot for $15.45:
1 Axe Shower Gel, which came with a bonus travel size
10 Bic Pens
1 Pack of Advil
Paper plates (I didn't use a coupon for those, we just needed them)
Shout laundry stain remover
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
3 cans cream of chicken soup
2 cans tomato soup
3 cans chicken noodle soup

The best deals were the soup and the pens.

The pens were free with a coupon I got for liking Bic on Facebook, and the soups were on sale this week at Tar-jay for between 59-62 cents each & I had 2 coupons from the Campbell's website for $1 off when you bought 5. So they wound up being about 40 cents each. If I wanted to start a stockpile (which I'm still debating) I think I'd go back for a few more of those because I actually do use quite a bit of condensed soup in crock pot meals or for the kid's lunches, plus there are usually quite a few canned food drives going on this time of year and they'd be good for donations.

Have you found any good coupons this week?

$20 Coupon Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:51:00 +0000

With baby #3 on the way and some more exciting news in the not so distant future, we need to cut back right now. After looking at our budget, we saw that we did the most unnecessary spending on food & clothing.

I've decided to start a weekly challenge for myself. I'm going to take $20 and some coupons to the grocery store each week & see what I can get. I'm not very good at couponing right now, like, at all, so my hope is that with practice I will start to get better and it will be fun to see the pile grow bigger over the weeks.

This week I went to Weis, our local super market. I printed a bunch of coupons, but none of them were great deals when I matched them up with the sales at the store except the $1 off Philadelphia cooking cream coupon I got off the internet. The store had the cooking cream on sale 2/$4, and I used 2 coupons since I bought 2 of them, so each one was $1. I was hoping the store would double the coupon & they would be free, but they only double coupons up to 99 cents, so no such luck.

They were also having a sale where if you bought $12 worth of Heinz/OreIda products, you would get a coupon for $3 off your next purchase at the register.

So I broke it into 2 separate transactions & bought the 2 ketchups, hash bowns, french fries, and pasta sauce first for a total of $12.98. Then the registered printed me a $3 off coupon, plus an extra $1 off coupon I wasn't expecting.

I used those to buy the rest of the stuff & my second total was $7.76.

So this week for $20.74 I bought

2 bottles of ketchup
1 bag of frozen hash browns
1 bag of frozen french fries
1 jar of pasta sauce
1 bottle of apple juice
1 64oz Snapple
1 box of oatmeal cream pies
2 Philly cooking cremes
1 bag of baby carrots
and 1 grape fruit

Without coupons & my store card, the total would have been 31.34, so I saved $10.60 this time, which is about 1/3 of the order.

Eh.

I'm no Extreme Couponer, but as my good friend Mr.Steve likes to say, "It's better than a stick in the eye."

Double Take

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:49:00 +0000

My aunt & uncle came to visit us yesterday & they brought me some pictures from my childhood. Everybody thought I looked exactly like Abby does at this age, even Abby, who thought she was looking at pictures of herself.

The picture on the top is one I took this morning of my daughter, the one on the bottom is me in 1987. Can you see the resemblance?

Update on Nicholas

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:39:00 +0000

I'm very happy to report that all of a sudden Nicholas is doing amazingly well! (For those of you who don't know, our son is adopted and has been struggling for a few years with severe behavior problems related to his attachment to me.)

First, apparently we are potty trained! I have to give my husband full credit for that one. On Saturday he decided to put Nick in underwear and stick with it. He took Nicholas everywhere he went (Lowes, Target, the dump...) that day and just kept changing him when he had an accident. Nick had 9 accidents that day and I truly thought that he just wasn't ready yet, but then the next day we tried the underwear again & there were NO accidents. As a matter of fact, he hasn't had one since, and we are going on the fourth day. I think seeing that daddy really wanted this from him made him try harder then when I was doing the same thing. I know there might be some regression, especially with the new baby coming, but I am SO happy that he is making this kind of progress!!! He's going to kindergarten next year and I was worried he would be held back or sent to the school for kids with special needs just because he wasn't potty trained yet.

Second, we have been seeing some dramatic improvement in his behavior. He still hits us and tends to have an inappropriate level of anger over minor issues, but he is really working on it and genuinely sorry afterward. The biting, throwing things, and other destructive behaviors (knocking over the tv, taking markers to the furniture, etc) really haven't been around for a few months. I've sent Abby in with him to his last few play therapy appointments so he could practice playing with peers & I have really seen him trying to apply the skills his therapist has been working on with him. I also haven't gotten any poor behavior reports from preschool, which is awesome because it was about this time last year that he was taking off his clothes and rubbing feces on the floor. (God must have been working overtime in those teachers' hearts, because I truly don't know how he never got expelled.)

And finally, he actually seems to be learning lessons from his mistakes. This is huge because, obviously, that's a really important skill to have as an adult and I honestly didn't know if that would ever happen, so to see it clicking at four and a half is pretty amazing. It gives much more hope to his future.

Yesterday, for example, my friend Staci & I were at our church sorting clothes that had been donated. The clothes were in a small room behind a stage and in front of the stage is a large open area, so my kids and her youngest daughter, who is the same age as Nick, were running around in the open area playing tag while we moved the clothes to where they needed to be, keeping an eye on the kids as best as we could, but there really wasn't much that they could get into.

Except there was a water fountain.

And Nicholas & his friend were very proud of themselves for making up a new version of tag, one where you took a big drink from the water fountain & then ran after your friend spitting the water at him/her. They both got pretty wet and the floor was gross.

But they are four and they honestly didn't know they were doing something wrong, so I didn't feel comfortable punishing them, although it was pretty exasperating for me to have to deal with. So instead I had them clean it up as best as they could with paper towels from the bathroom & I obviously told them that we couldn't play games that involved spitting or destroying the church. But Nick didn't seem to be affected at all by having to clean it up or my talking with him, so I thought I needed to make the lesson stick a little better.

We went home and got some money from his piggy bank & took it back to the church office. I called to make sure someone would be available, then we drove right back over there. Our pastor took some time and talked to Nicholas very patiently about what it means to be tempted & thanked him for admitting he did something wrong & trying to make it right. Then Pastor Bob asked Nick what he should do if he was tempted to spit again & guess what?

Nick actually said, "Maybe don't spit?" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That might not seem like a big deal to you, but my kid has never in his life made a connection like that before & I didn't know if it was a skill I'd ever be able to help him learn, so for us it was huge. In the past, he would have changed the subject & started talking about the airshow he saw last month or something.

And this morning when he hit his sister at breakfast & I asked him what Pastor Bob said to do if we found himself wanting to do something he knew he shouldn't he said, "Don't hit Abby. Sorry Abby. "

That's what I call progress!

It would have been so much easier & faster to just put him in time out for the whole spit tag thing, but I'm really glad I took the time to try to make it a learning experience, because it certainly paid off.

Serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:11:00 +0000

Sigh...Don't you just love when you find exactly what you wanted?

That's what happened to me today at Home Goods.

You might have noticed that yesterday when I posted our bathroom reveal, I left out the corner to the right just as you enter the room. I did that on purpose because I hate the cheap KMart particle board storage unit we were hiding over there. I knew what I wanted, I just hadn't been able to get my hands on it yet.

I've been in love with this ladder shelf from Pottery Barn for about a year. (Is that sad?)

But it costs $200, plus shipping.

Ana White has plans to build your own, and believe me, I wanted to, but all of the angles were just too out of my league. Poor Eddie already has about 70 million honey-do projects on his list, so he wasn't going to be getting around to building me one any time soon. Plus, he said we needed to scale down the plans to fit in our half bath & it was going to be complicated. Blah.

Guess what I found at Home Goods today??? Do you hear a choir of angels singing, or is it just me?

They were only charging 35% of the PB price, I didn't have to pay for shipping, it was already a smaller scale to fit our room and they offered to give me an extra 10% off because it is "damaged." (One paint drip and there are some small gaps where the shelves meet the sides because the manufacturer didn't use caulk.)

There were only two left and one actually was damaged. I literally yelped when I saw them, called Eddie, and proceeded to loop my arm through the top rung, and waddle around the store 6 months pregnant carrying this ladder and pushing the cart that was holding Abby and the baskets I originally walked in to buy. Nobody else was talking this puppy.

Mine.

Powder Room Reveal

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:47:00 +0000

I know I've been MIA from the blog for a while, sorry, life's been getting in the way. :)

I'm 26 weeks pregnant now, we just celebrated Nick's Gotcha Day (the anniversary of his adoption), my mom and I presented at a child development conference, I'm working more hours, and Eddie has been sick.

Although it's not quite finished (most people would probably consider adding a door a pretty important step) our bathroom is finally looking good enough that I thought I could share the pictures with you.

Do you remember where it started?

Yeah, yuck. I really don't know who ever thought brown shag carpet in a bathroom was a good idea. Or that brown as an overall color scheme for a bathroom is a good idea for that matter. It's not. Also, plywood streaked with old yellow wallpaper glue wasn't adding much to my decor.

Here's what it looks like at the moment. shhh...the sink still isn't hooked up yet.

Eddie did all of the work himself, except for a little help on my part installing the new floor and the toilet. The space was just too small for two people to be in there working together, plus he didn't want me doing too much heavy lifting or being exposed to all the dust & fumes while I'm pregnant. He had to take a long break, like several months, off from house projects to study for his PE exam, but he passed. Yeah!

Our final cost came in around $900. (That includes the cost of the door, which we do have, it's just not up yet.) I think that's a lot, but then again, I'm really cheap. I guess any time you can spend under $1,000 for an entirely new bathroom it's a good deal.

Most of the expenses you can't really see. Eddie basically had to rebuild the entire wall behind the sink because the studs weren't properly spaced to support anything & he insulated the crawl space behind that wall, added an electrical outlet, redid some of the plumbing for the toilet & sink...it all ads up. The only surfaces we didn't need to replace were the window and the ceiling.

So my job was to find affordable ways to make it look pretty. This little corner showcases some of my best deals. The pedestal sink was $30 on Craigslist. The mirror was $49 at the Pottery Barn outlet. (That's $200 off retail because it was missing one washer. We were easily able to find a replacement at Lowes for about $2.) And the towels I bought for $5 each last year when Pottery Barn had a free monogramming/free shipping sale after Christmas.

Everybody gave me a hard time about taking the bead board all the way to the ceiling, but we didn't really have much of a choice because behind the original paneling every wall was a different material. Plaster, cinder block, you name it. If we'd tried to frame out drywall against the cinder block, we would have needed to relocate the plumbing for the toilet and that's not something within hubby's skill set, so it would have gotten really expensive really fast. Plus, I had seen Gina do it, so I knew it would look nice. Eddie's not thrilled that the bead board is just attached to the cinder block with liquid nails on the wall behind the toilet. He calls shortcuts like that "putting lipstick on a pig." I call it good enough.

I'll be so happy when our lower level is finally finished! We've been in this house for almost 3 years and we only use about half of our square footage because we completely avoid the downstairs. With baby #3 on the way, I really think we can use the extra space!

Excuse Me While I Get My Geek On (but stick around because there's icecream involved)

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:28:00 +0000

So...there's a new attraction that just opened recently about 20 minutes from our house.

It's called the Turkey Hill Experience. (Turkey Hill is a company in our area that sells ice cream, iced tea, lemonade, and such.) The Experience is like a hands-on science museum for kids that takes them through the process of making ice cream. Coincidentally, today is also National Ice Cream Cone Day. True story.

Um...Say what? There's a science-based children's museum down the road from my house that is focused solely on the process of making ice cream. And my kids are young enough to get in for free? And they give us free ice cream while we're there? Yes.

For some reason, I've heard some negative reviews about this place from other parents, mostly that it was too expensive & kind of boring. I guess if you have 3 or 4 older children, admission would get expensive at $12/ person. But my kids were both 4 & under, so I only had to pay for myself. We went with my friend Chrissy & her little boy, Jack, and they both had a good time as well. I would not say it was boring at all.

Before we went, I had my kids watch the video here, which was over their heads, but they seemed to like anyway.

Once we got there, I liked that it was ok for the kids to touch everything.

We each got a free scoop of our choice of flavors. The little ones got vanilla, but Nick, Chrissy & I got a graham cracker, chocolate, marshmallow s'mores-ish flavor named after the Phillies baseball team.

As a former science teacher of gifted children, I was geeking out just a little bit (ok, a lot) over the way that science was incorporated into almost every corner.

Even the ball pit was used to model homogenization

Although, that would be my one critique: I think there was a slight disconnect between the educational concepts and the age-appropriateness of the attractions. For example, the little ones LOVED the ball bit but couldn't care less about the homogenization concept it represented. Kids who are old enough to understand that concept (I'm thinking 3rd or 4th grade and up) are too big for this ball pit.

Same thing about the slide that was, if I remember correctly, supposed to represent the machinery used to process & package the ice cream.

But whatever. We still had a great time, even if my kids can't grasp the higher level science concepts yet.

(Yes, I'm 6 months pregnant and wearing a shirt that says "bumpalicious." You are still required to take this review seriously :)

They do seem to understand that ice cream is made from milk and milk comes from cows.

We also got to design our own icecream flavor, its packaging, and create & star in our own tv commercial in something they call the Create Your Own | The Turkey Hill Experience. (Click on the link and scroll to the bottom to watch our commercial.) It would have been awesome to be able to taste our own creation if they'd had a Coldstone-style set-up instead of the ready-made cart, but, hey, I'm not going to complain about free ice cream.

Overall, as a mom, I really liked it. I would take my kids back again, probably before Nick turns 5 so he can still get in for free. I like anything that shows kids where their food comes from and anything that gets kids interested in science. Although Chrissy and I both said afterwards that, while all of the exhibits were beautiful & well-done, we wished there would have been a few more. We went through pretty quickly, so I'm sure older children would be able to do everything in 40 minutes or less.

As a teacher, I think it would be a great place for a third grade field trip. Any younger won't understand the science, and older will be too big for the attractions. I'd say that's kind of limiting your market. I also think they could easily add more math & science concepts like the idea of physical & chemical changes, pints to gallons, etc.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars for kids ages 9 and under.

On a related note, I spent all morning trying to order a copy of this book. I got it in college & used it in my classroom (so much that it fell apart) when we would talk about liquids changing to solids & make our own ice cream using this ball.

The book is out of print now & Amazon wanted almost $40 for it. I was able to find it for $6 on a religious gifts site (??) here.

So there, next time we go to the Turkey Hill Experience, I'll be prepared with our bedtime story.

Little background about me, I'm slightly obsessed with finding children's books that connect to our experiences. We're going to an apple orchard tomorrow to have our family photos done by a fabulous young photographer you might have seen around blogland before (YAY!!! Can't wait to share more with you afterward!) and there are no less than 6 books about apples on our living room shelf at the moment...you can't take the classroom out of the teacher, I guess.

Next Week's Meal Plan

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:12:00 +0000

I'm on a Crock Pot kick lately, thanks to the overwhelmingly popular Crock Pot Girls

I wrote out my meal plan for next week (which is way easier now thanks to Pinterest!) & thought I'd share it with you, in case you'd like to do it too since all the work is already done. :)

I found almost all of the dinner recipes there.

This week I'm using these recipes:

Toast Cups
(I've already made these once & they turned out really well!)

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Meat sauce

Apple Bacon BBQ Chicken

Crock pot apple sauce

Here Goes:

Week 1

Mostly Crock Pot Dinners

Week of:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Breakfast

Toast Cups

(bread, egg, bacon)

Cereal

Blueberry pancakes

(make extra & freeze)

Cereal

oatmeal

Pancakes

Oatmeal

Lunch

Grilled Cheese

Chicken nachos

Made from left-over soup, drained

PB & J

Broccoli & cheese baked potatoes

w/ left-over broccoli

FREE

PB & J or grilled cheese

Left-overs

Dinner

Crock Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Spaghetti w/ Crock pot meat sauce

Crock Pot Apple BBQ chicken

w/ sweet potato fries & broccoli

Baked ziti from left- over meat sauce

Pork chops & crock pot apple sauce

Left-overs

FREE

Snack

Carrots w/ ranch dressing

Raisins

Popcorn

Celery sticks w/ peanut butter and raisins

Pretzels

Carrots w/ ranch

Popcorn

When I'm writing a meal plan, I try to match up ingredients for the week as best I can without making it too boring. For instance, the bacon will be in the toast cups and the apple bbq chicken and the apples will be in the chicken and the apple sauce. I also try to be thoughtful about what I will probably have left-over in order to save money. That's why broccoli & cheese baked potatoes are for lunch the day after broccoli is our dinner vegetable. Then I'll probably have left-over potatoes so I'll use them the following week for something.

I wrote out a shopping list (which is in no particular order, sorry!) but I already have a lot of this stuff in my pantry, so you probably do too. I didn't include any of the dry spices or things like sugar in the meat sauce recipe because I know I will always have those on hand.

2 packs boneless skinless chicken breasts

2 lbs ground beef

Pork chops

Minced garlic

BBQ sauce

10 Apples

Bacon slices

Sweet potatoes

Russet potatoes

Frozen broccoli

Lemon juice

1 can corn

1 can black beans

1 can South West tomatoes

1 pack taco seasoning

1 can cream of chicken soup

4 cans tomato sauce

Shredded Cheddar cheese

Shredded mozzarella cheese

1 dozen eggs

Loaf of bread

Frozen spinach (I like to put this in my baked zitti)

1 box spaghetti

1 box zitti

2 cans tomato paste

1 onion

Cereal

Oatmeal

Bisquick

Tortilla chips

Sour cream

Milk

Cheese slices

Carrots

Celery

Ranch dressing

Raisins

Peanut butter

Jelly

Pretzels

popcorn

Blueberries

I'm trying to get a few weeks like this together w/ meal plans, shopping lists & recipes, using lots of crock pot meals so that I can make my life easier after the newest baby comes this winter.

Hope it makes your life a little easier too!

We Might Need an Ark

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:19:00 +0000

Yesterday was our first day of preschool, but it got overshadowed a bit.

Tropical Storm Lee hit us pretty hard in Central Pennsylvania yesterday! And it's still raining. The roads were flooding all day yesterday & it was getting pretty insane. People were being evacuated from their houses, some even by boat! The schools closed early, but a lot of the buses couldn't get the kids home because of all the road closures & a mudslide on the highway. Eddie's boss's son got stuck in his high school, they weren't letting the kids out or the parents in to come get them. The zoo even had to euthanize two bison because they were drowning and couldn't be moved in time. :(

They are saying this is the worst flooding around here since the 1970's.

Here are a few pictures that some of my local friends posted on Facebook.

And this is a picture I took of a yard down the street from us (This was at 10am, it only got worse.)

Our house and family are fine so far (fingers crossed) but it might be a while before things get back to normal around here. Eddie did go in to work today because the road he takes was clear, but the schools are closed and police are asking everyone to stay home if they can.

It's a Disney movie marathon day for me and the kids here today. I hope Nick gets to go back to preschool tomorrow. (Abby doesn't go on Fridays.)

Date Night and a Special Envelope

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:11:00 +0000

Friday was our 5 year wedding anniversary. Yay! (Everyone's been teasing Eddie this week because he looks about 15 in that picture. He was old enough to drink the champagne, promise.)

We decided to celebrate by going back to the same restaurant where we had our wedding reception. We also decided, at the suggestion of my wonderful mother-in-law (whose birthday is today, so Happy Birthday!) to open the envelope that told us the gender of the new baby.

The last time I was pregnant, we had the ultrasound tech write down the gender and we opened the envelope on Christmas morning. We had been debating about whether or not to be surprised this time, but we decided that this would be a fun way to find out too.

So Friday night we dropped the kids off with Eddie's parents and headed down to Baltimore's Pier 5 Hotel for dinner at Ruth's Chris.

We had to snap a photo on the back deck of my in-laws first, though, because that's where we take all special occasion pictures. We have a picture of the two of us getting ready to leave for the high school prom right in this spot. :)

We were worried there would be a lot of traffic because the Grad Prix race is in Baltimore this weekend, but we lucked out & the roads and the restaurant were practically empty because the race was on other side of the city. The restaurant staff was very sweet and opened the ballroom so I could snap a picture of the room where we had our reception. The room was twice this size on our big day because the dividers on the right were open.

Eddie made me wait until the end of dinner before we opened the envelope. AGH, the suspense! We ordered the calamari appetizer, salads, filet mignon, wine (for him, not me) and they gave us a complementary cheesecake dessert for our special day. :)

Then it was finally time to open the envelope!!! It's a...

GIRL!

I took a video of the envelope-opening process if you'd care to watch:

Peaches out the Wazoo

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:56:00 +0000

As I've said before, one of my very favorite things about living in Pennsylvania is the local farms and orchards. Right now we are starting to see corn, apples, and peaches.

TONS

And TONS

of big ol' peaches

(Hey, that's about the size of the baby in my belly)

Yesterday I took the kids to Brown's, my favorite local orchard, and bought a box of peach seconds. (Seconds are bruised or over-ripe fruit that they sell you at a large discount. They are great for canning.) Then I got home and saw that another orchard was having a great one-day sale on their seconds as well. My friend Korie kindly picked some up for our family while I was at my ultra sound appointment.

So now I have about 80 pounds of peaches (which I only paid $30 for, a big score considering that our grocery store is selling peaches for $2/lb this week. That's a $130 savings.) The catch is I have to process them immediately or they are going to go bad fast, being seconds and all.

So far I've got 8 half pints of peach butter finished that I made using this Crockpot recipe. For the rest of the day I'll be slaving away canning slices in syrup, jam, and maybe peach salsa. Any other peach canning recipes you'd care to share?

I'm also going to try my best to duplicate my Mommom's peach cake recipe, which I think is just her hot milk cake with peaches baked in and topped with cinnamon sugar. If it turns out I'll share the recipe.

This is my first year canning. It's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding and it does save a ton of money.

Homemade Tater Tots

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:58:00 +0000

I'm trying to get into freezer cooking. After all, that was my main argumemt for the purchase of our fancy pants new stainless steel refrigerator. I heard Tater Tots freeze well. Hence, I made some.

To be honest, these turned out really well, but I'm not sure I will be making them again.

They were a huge pain in the rear. It took me over an hour to get two dozen to the par-done freezer-ready state. I was hoping 6 potatoes would yield about 3 times this many so that I could have a freezer batch or two for the future. For size reference, these are on a regular dinner plate. I'd say I made each one about double the size of your average Tater Tot. As it is, this batch will be eaten tonight with the BBQ ribs that have been simmering away in the crock pot all day & homemade Rice Krispie Treats and probably some broccoli or something because, as you can tell, we're obviously super healthy around here.

I Googled about a dozen Tater Tot recipes and took the tips and techniques from a lot of them to create this recipe. It's most similar to this one from Food Network.

This is what I came up with out of my regular ol' pantry which does not stock fancy things like panco and coconut oil, which a lot of the other recipes called for:

6 russet potatoes, peeled & grated (that's the biggest pain)
3 tablespoons of flour, plus extra for coating
1 egg
salt
pepper
Old Bay seasoning

1. Peel and grate the potatoes. It will take you a hundred years and make a giant mess. It would be way easier to use left over baked or mashed potatoes.

2. Drain the potatoes really well. I used a strainer and then drained them again on paper towels.

3. Add flour, egg, and seasoning to taste.

4. Shape into tater tots and coat with some additional flour, seasoned if you want

5. Fry in a pan of oil (I used vegetable oil)

6. When each side is golden brown, remove from oil and drain on paper towels.

7. Let cool and freeze. The inside will not be completely cooked, unless you used pre-cooked potatoes of course.

(In all my Googling I learned that Ore Ida, the inventors of the actual Tater Tot, par-fry theirs and then they are frozen to be reheated by the consumer. Several other websites said their homemade ones actually improved in texture in the freezer.)

8. Freeze to be eaten later.

9. To finish: Take directly from freezer and bake at 425 until fork tender. (15-20 minutes, depending on your oven) Turn them after the first 8 or 9 minutes for even cooking. The time may need to be adjusted, depending upon how large or small you make them and whether or not you used pre-cooked potatoes.

My Little Piece of Paradise

noreply@blogger.com (stephaniegiese) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:16:00 +0000

Actually it's just outside of Paradise, PA in Lancaster. A 45 minute drive from my house...

AND

Sigh.

I like to make a trip to the PB outlets in Lancaster once a month or so. Because I can. The kids don't mind going along because the genius engineers behind the parking lot design (my husband's a roadway engineer so I have an affinity for these people) scattered several gated playgrounds in the midst of the parking area. One of them is directly outside of Pottery Barn.

The Rockvale outlets cover several blocks and there are only two or three playgrounds, so this is a big deal. All the better to bribe my children with.

And on the other side of the playground, just 200 yards or so from PB is a great place to stop for lunch. (Although we never eat there because Eddie's office is right on our way home, so we go bright and early when the outlets open and meet him for lunch on our drive home.)

But are the prices that good you ask? It depends.

Sometimes the furniture is only discounted 10-20% off retail, but usually you can find one or two deals like this:

A full size headboard marked down 88% to below a hundred bucks. As a matter of fact, that's the price we paid last year for Nick's Catalina bed, which is currently "on sale" on the website for 4 times that price. Ours was mega-discounted because it only came with the headboard & foot board, but my in-laws had extra rails, so it was no big deal.

They also had coffee tables on sale this week for $99, and all of the outdoor furniture, which is already discounted because of the end of the season, was an extra 25% off the lowest price.

I found a red corner seat on this trip, like you would find in a sectional sofa, although this one seemed to work fine standing alone, for below $100 too.

Last time I bought this exact mirror, which is selling for $249 right now, for our bathroom remodel. I paid $49. It was $200 off because it was missing one screw. A trip to Lowes and less than $5 fixed that quickly enough.

I wasn't in dire need of any new furniture, though. What I did snag at a pretty good deal were some Halloween costumes for the kids. They are from last year's collection, but ask me how much I care. P.S.How is it time to start thinking about Halloween costumes already. Can you believe September starts next week??

We're going to be the monkey and the mermaid. (That sounds like a weird fairy tale.) I hope Abby doesn't have a huge growth spurt in the next 10 weeks because hers fits perfectly for now.

Have you seen the regular prices of the Pottery Barn Kids costumes? The cheapest one on the website this year is $54, but they go up to $89. Then you have to pay shipping.

My monkey was $15 and my mermaid was a little bit more of a splurge at $25. PB Kids always has a great resale value on ebay & Craigslist, so if we choose to resell these costumes next year, I know I will get my money back & then some. Both of these costumes are listed on ebay right now for over $50 each. (I'm pretty sure the seller just hit up the same sale I did. Maybe I should consider doing some outlet shopping, then turning a quick profit on ebay.hmmm...)

Apparently there are only a few of these outlets scattered around the country, but it might just be worth it to grab a friend, rent a U Haul, and take a day trip to the closest one you can find. :)