Calvin is not sure what to think of the pool at Deanna’s apartment.
Kaitlyn and Megan are enjoying the pool as well.

Edited to add a fun action shot:

This morning I took the 3 youngest kids to the nearby community playground so the school aged children could work in relative peace.
Fun 1 on 3 time!

We think bacon is proof that God loves us.  I have made and enjoyed chocolate covered bacon, and I would totally try bacon ice cream.

We think that PETA should stand for People Eating Tasty Animals.

I think this is funny:

And this is hilarious:

I make bacon roses for my husband, and we both think this site is awesome.

We like meat.

But we don’t always eat meat.  That is largely because it tends to be expensive, especially when you are feeding a lot of hearty eaters.  We have found that there are many healthy, hearty meals that don’t break the bank and don’t require meat.  Sometimes you can just skip the meat in a regular recipe if there are enough other ingredients to distract from its absence.  We are not vegetarians, but some of our meals are.

Before we start, let me issue a warning: don’t try to force a meat-loving husband to eat meatless meals.  He must be on board, or you are doomed to failure.  If your husband wants you to cut the food bill, this is a good way to do it.  If he looks at your like you’re crazy when you suggest eating some meatless meals, don’t even try it.  If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here is a sampling of our favorites:

Bean & cheese burritos – Add-ons like tomatoes, sour cream, salsa, etc. really make the meal.  To add texture and appeal, make your beans from scratch instead of using refried beans from a can, leaving some whole beans when you season & smush them.  Or add lentils cooked with Homemade Taco Seasoning as a sort of meat substitute.  It’s not meat and probably won’t fool anyone, but it’s another way to add more texture and appeal.

Lasagna and spaghetti are very good without meat.  Just don’t skimp on the sauce and seasonings, and use plenty of cheese in your lasagna.

Taco salad is another meal that works well without meat: just use ranch beans or season your own pinto/black beans with Homemade Taco Seasoning.  Top with Homemade Catalina salad dressing.

Bean & cheese enchiladas or “wet burritos” are another cheap meatless meal that everyone loves.  I use lots of my Easy Homemade Enchilada Sauce under, over and inside each enchilada to make them moist and flavorful.  If you use flour tortillas, there’s no need to soften in oil or sauce.  Just put a few tablespoons of seasoned beans, cheese and sauce in the middle, and roll up.  Crowd in a single layer on a pan lined with sauce (use a pan with sides at least 1″ high).  Top with more sauce and a sprinkle of cheese.  Bake about 25-30 minutes at 350, until heated through and lightly browned on top.

We also love quiche, and the egg/cheese combination is a less expensive source of protein than most meats.  Bacon, ham or sausage is nice but not necessary.  Garlic, carmelized onions and other veggies add lots of flavor, and this dinner goes well with a green salad. Just mix up 6 eggs, 2 cups of milk, 2 cups grated cheese (any kind you have on hand), and as many add-ins as you want.  Pour into an unbaked pie shell and bake until the center is set.  Of course we double or triple this.  :)

Moving away from meat is a fun excuse to experiment with new recipes.  We recently discovered and enjoyed Greek Fakes soup, and my husband wants me to make Indian Dahl lentils again.  We tried Black Bean Burgers and decided that the recipe was promising but needed a lot of tweaking.

What meatless recipes have you tried and enjoyed?

Link up with any one of the 4 Moms and your link will appear on all 4 of our blogs!

See what meatless meals are cooking in the other Moms’ kitchens:

• Smockity Frocks
• Raising Olives (currently posting once/month)
• The Common Room 

About 4 Moms, including a complete list of all past topics

Just in case you’re wondering, the fact that I didn’t make time to write a post of my own has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to let Deanna answer some questions here.  Well, maybe just a little.  OK, I admit it: her email to me containing her answers to the two questions below totally made the decision for me.

Good books to read to the 4 and under crowd that aren’t too annoying for mom to read?

 Ami said, I have six kids. When I had 2 kids I was good at it (school/read aloud/housecleaning/meals). When I had 4 kids I was capable. Now I am decidedly not.   

I love my relationship with the Lord and truly glory in my weakness. I am so grateful that I am not in a performance based relationship with him  But, here, in this flesh, on this earth, I have to get things done. And Jesus is not down here holding a crying one year old while I get dinner made  And I don’t remember how to educate or make meals anymore. So my question is, How do I do it? How do you redeem your days? What about when you forget how you used to function?

I find myself in the same boat, and I also wonder about the whys and wherefores of the change.  How did I go from reading whole series aloud, to reading so little that finishing a chapter book is cause for celebration?  Who am I, and where did the old Kim go?

I used to create a meal plan every week without fail, and now I can’t seem to do it two weeks in a row.  We did 6 subjects in school every day, and my house was generally clean.  I read entire series of books aloud to my children.  And I had 4, 5, or 6 little ones, with no help.  What happened?

I think it really does get harder in some ways because as our children get older we are pulled in different directions.  It’s harder to find a book that will appeal to everyone at once, and it’s harder to find the time to sit down and read – especially if what you are reading is not universally engrossing.

With 20 years of experience and several helpers, it’s easy enough to put off planning and just wing it when it comes to meals – even though planning would save time and money.

There are enough of us to clean up after the little ones, so they don’t have to learn to clean up after themselves.

And I’m not the 20-something I used to be.  A sleepless baby can put me out of commission for most of the day.

How did I used to do it?  How can I do it now?   I can’t by my own strength, but I never could.  Just like the old days, I do my best and ask for grace and peace about the things left undone.  Or I don’t do my best, and ask forgiveness and help to do better tomorrow.

I ask my husband again about priorities so that we can be on the same page.  I am blessed to have a husband who cares about lightening my burden, so he offers suggestions, pitches in to help, and rallies the troops.  Maybe your husband will do this if he knows enough about your struggles?

From Tanya: We have a family of 10. And my laundry pile is huge! We have more clothes than we need but I am curious how much clothes, shoes, etc per person to keep. Do you have some sort of system for that? And do you get rid of clothing when there out grown or save it for a younger sibling?…at this point we are saving a lot but it doesn’t seem to get used by the next either because the seasons are different or their body sizes are different. Also getting the kids to help with chores etc is like pulling teeth any thoughts on that also?…thanks

I strongly suspect we have too many clothes, but we do work hard to stay right on top of the dirty laundry.  I hate when the washer goes out and it becomes an instant crisis because we were already operating on the cusp of disaster!

One thing that makes a big difference for us is to keep all the dirty laundry in one place, where I can see it easily.  If it’s out of sight, I forget about it entirely.  If it’s divided into a separate hamper for each bedroom or each person, we can be 12 loads behind before we know it!  When it’s all in one place right under my nose, “behind on laundry” means we have 3 or 4 loads to do.

Another thing that helps is not allowing the little ones to have free access to their clothes.  Anyone young enough to enjoy a good game of dress-up is young enough to require supervision.  When the 4yo needs fresh clothes, she has to ask first and have somebody watch her get them out of the drawer – so we know she isn’t emptying her drawers onto the floor searching for her very pair of underpants.

I pass clothes directly from one child to the next whenever possible, because the “out of sight, out of mind” principle works here too.  If we pack it up to save it, there’s an excellent chance we will forget about it until it’s no use to anyone.  If we don’t have a very near-term use for an article of clothing, we donate it and plan to buy again later from a thrift store.

How do you organize kids clothing? Anything you especially keep or don’t keep? 

Our clothes right now consist of 3 cubbies for each child, plus hanging space in the closet.  The cubbies hold:

1. Tops
2. Underclothes & pjs
3. Bottoms: pants, shorts

Some of us have a few more cubbies as the system has evolved, but that is basically how it works.

When it comes to hand-me-downs, I usually only keep what I expect to use within 2 years.  That means I am keeping none of our 4yo daughter’s clothes because we don’t have another little girl up-and-coming.  We try not to keep anything too worn or stained, of course, which means nearly all of the boys’ clothes get pitched faster than they get passed.  I keep just a few newborn outfits because they tend to receive them as gifts and use relatively few.

I also keep very few heavy coats or other winter apparel because they take so much space to store and we use them so rarely – sometimes we go the entire winter without needing more than a jacket, and most of my Texas-born children don’t even know what a snowsuit is.  I don’t own anything heavier than a lightweight denim jacket myself.  I just layer it with a sweater on the really “cold” days.

Ideas for healthy yet inexpensive snacks? I’ve got a boy who is 4 years old and could eat me out of house and home.

Most of our snacks are real food: anything that works for lunch works as a snack, too, and it probably has more staying power than traditional snack foods.  I also lean heavily on milk as an add-on.  It’s a good balance of protein, fat and carbs.  Peanut butter is another versatile source of protein.  Anything with protein and fat will tend to keep kids satisfied for longer.

• Animal crackers and peanut butter
• Apples and peanut butter
• Banana bread with peanut butter
• Any appealing leftovers I’m eager to get rid of
• Banana roll-ups: spread peanut butter on a tortilla and wrap around a banana.  If we happen to have extra hot dogs buns, we do this and call it a banana dog.
• Cake or muffins made of leftover oatmeal or other hot cereal.  Serve with a big glass of milk.
• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich – heavy on the peanut butter (we keep tortillas on hand instead of bread, so ours are pbj roll-ups)
• Carrot sticks and ranch dressing
• Tortilla chips and salsa – the only chips we do in our house with any sort of regularity.  We buy these in a big box from Costco, very cheap and much better for you than potato chips.  Maybe it’s weird outside of Texas, but my little ones beg for salsa.
• Peanut butter and banana smoothies

How would you answer these questions?  See what questions the other moms are answering today:

• Smockity Frocks
• Raising Olives (currently posting once/month)
• The Common Room 

About 4 Moms, including a complete list of all past topics

Have you ever mugged a baby?  Have you mugged anyone at all?  Leave a link to your own pics in the comments, or send me your pics and I’ll try to share them for you in a future post!

Friends, I’ve been bad.  I knew weeks ahead of time, but I’ve been too lazy to blog and tell you about the HUGE ebook sale going on this week.

See?

I knew ahead of time because the 4 Moms book is part of the bundle.  If you already bought your copy of our book, you’ll have digital rights to an extra that you can give as a gift when you buy this bundle!

This week only, you can get any or all of the 97 ebooks in this Ultimate Homemaking Bundle for just $29.97, plus $140 in free products!  No fair jumping to the bottom to see the freebies!

Prepare to be overwhelmed.  Here is a complete list of the books included.  Remember, you don’t have to take them all unless you want them all.  You can choose just what you will use yourself – but your links are only good for a limited time, so do download anything you think you might want in the future.  At 30 cents per book, you can’t go wrong!

But wait! There’s more!

But if you’re like me, you jumped ahead to see what else you could get for free.  Right?  Everything below is included free when you buy your ebooks.

A FREE Two-Month Membership to Fit2B Studio, where their wholesome workouts for the whole family are tummy safe and particularly target Diastasis Recti (split abs). ($19.98 value. No shipping restrictions.)

A $15 store credit to TruKid. With products like their aware-winning sun care, they are dedicated to providing all natural skin and hair care for kids, babies, and now pets. ($15.00 value. Standard shipping applies. International shipping available.)

Your choice of incredible natural products like sea salt and clay for FREE. Choose from the Redmond Trading Earthpaste Bundle ($24.90 value) or the Facial Mud Bundle ($26.90 value). (Standard shipping applies. Continental US only.)

Your choice of a FREE heirloom sourdough starter or FREE yogurt starter from Cultures for Health, the leading supplier of starter cultures and supplies for making cultured and fermented foods ($12.95 value. US & CAN addresses only. Standard shipping applies.)

Your choice of: a FREE 3-Month Subscription (for new accounts) or 30% off a One Year Subscription. Plan to Eat is an online menu planner that uses your recipes, scheduled for the days you want them. ($15.00 value. No shipping restrictions.)

A FREE Culinary Herbs Assorted Seed Pack Check just in time for spring planting from www.wheatgrasskits.com, a living whole foods company. ($11.95 value. Standard shipping applies to all US states and territories- no international shipping for seeds.)

Get $10 off Union28′s original “my husband rocks” tee. Their marriage apparel lets you celebrate your spouse in style. ($10.00 value.Standard shipping rates apply. International shipping available, but free shipping only available within USA.)

A $10 store credit plus 1 FREE lip balm from Bee All Natural. Their whole body products nourish and heal, and are made using only the highest quality, food grade, organic ingredients. ($13.49 value.Standard shipping applies. International shipping available.)

A FREE 2 oz. bottle of your choice of liquid herbal formula from TriLight Health. They specialize in fast acting, great tasting natural herbal remedies. ($12.95 value or more. Standard shipping applies, within the USA only.)

Your choice of 3 FREE ePlanners OR a 3-Month FREE Membership toListPlanIt, whose mobile lists will help to organize your life. ($15.00 value. No shipping restrictions.)

What’s your favorite part of the deal?  I love the mission and designs of Union 28!  Wouldn’t their shirts make a fun wedding or anniversary gift?

If you believe in evolution, you probably don’t have an answer.  But take heart.  After all, you’ve got thumbs.  That makes you special, right?