joining in the christmas wishing blogging

Wishing all our family and friends the merriest of Christmases.

New Look

The new look is courtesy of Benson. He loves, loves, loves dinosaurs. He has asked Santa repeatedly for a big T-Rex. Thanks Megan for the help!

a little thanks

I just wanted to thank all of you who are answering endless questions on our behalf. You are all so sweet to be willing to sacrifice your time to help us out. I also wanted to say that the further we go down this path the more we feel like we really want to help these children in need. Ben told me yesterday about a guy at work who has been doing foster care for a few years now. His coworker told him that they had never really had problems with the kids they took in except for one 7 year old girl, and that they had to lock all their cabinets while she was there. I asked what that meant, was she stealing or what and Ben said that she would take the food out of the cupboards and hide it under her bed. She had come from homes where there was no food and was constantly afraid that one day the food would be gone. I just started crying after he told me that... It breaks my heart that a 7 year old has to develop survival skills like that. I know that our home is a place of safety and love and fun and I really hope to be able to help some kids who have need of a place like ours.

the best thing i've learned this week

Putting the kids to bed at 8 pm is genius. This may be obvious advice to some of you out there but Ben and I stumbled across this by accident this week and I'll tell you what, it is amazing what fun we have in the two hours before bedtime. There's time for games, hobbies, working out, uninterrupted conversation... It's like we are actually married again, not just two people raising children in the same building. Not that things were that bad before, it's just that now it feels like date night every night! If you haven't tried this yet you really should. It's awesome.

have this for dinner

Suz's Sweet and Sour Chicken

chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces (just use however much you will eat)
1 beaten egg
approximately 1 Cup corn starch
cooking oil

Beat the egg in one bowl and put the corn starch in another. Dip chicken in egg, then in corn starch, pressing to adhere. Fry in oil until golden brown and place in glass baking dish.

Sauce: Suz doubles this and so do I.
3/4 C sugar
4 TB ketchup
1/2 C vinegar (I just used plain white distilled)
1 TB soy sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Pour sauce over chicken in baking dish and bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees. I serve with brown rice, but if you are a wimp you could use white. Steamed broccoli is a good side with this.

this is rather anticlimactic but...

Benson's eye seems to have recovered miraculously. Apparently a sucker punch from a four year old is less tragic than it actually seems. He only has a little purple this morning and a few broken blood vessels. It doesn't even hold a candle to Tanner's. I was so looking forward to posting pictures of the battle scar. Maybe next time.

in other news..

Benson has his first black eye. Stay tuned for more on this (with photos) tomorrow.

dear suz,

Your recipe for sweet and sour chicken rocks our world. Thank you for sharing.

Sincerely,
The Tracy Tummies

here's your christmas card!

Has anyone seen that Seinfeld? haha CLASSIC! Anyway this is the photo that we are hoping to send out with our christmas cards. Sorry to ruin the surprise if they actually make it into the card but I thought I'd post the photo in case they don't make it (which they really might not... we are having issues) because they are too cute! Merry Christmas everyone! And Benson says, "Mewy Frismas!"

all I want for christmas are my two front teeth

and, Banks, you are getting them for sure. He can also clap and crawl like an inchworm. I just thought you should all know.

humble abode

Notice the fully landscaped backyard. At least that's what they call the rocks here.


Well we are moving... again. This makes 7 moves in less than 5 years. That is pretty good! lol Anyway we are excited to move to our new place across town. Benson already painted his own room a lovely shade of blue, and we will move in next week to enjoy it all. If anyone (MEGAN!:) has any good boy room decorating tips lemme know.

imagination

explorer benson

catching snowflakes

weedwhacker man

I was going through my photos this morning to decide what to post about when I realized I have lots of random "Benson imagination" photos. He is really starting to come up with some funny ideas for play time. He LOVES to be an explorer (with the headlamp). I don't have a photo for this but yesterday he helped me dig up my tulips and the whole time he talked in a pirate voice and said "arg, Matey!" while we searched for the "treasure." And one of my all time favorite things he does is use the (NEVER used for toilets:)) plunger as a weedwhacker all over the house. He makes the sound and everything.

dinosaur eggs

Last night I made the first batch of Christmas cookies for this year. Whilst I wast busily engaged a little certain sneaky someone grabbed the carton of eggs off the counter and hid under the table. The sad thing is that it took us a good 5-6 minutes to realize that Benson was under that table waiting for his dinosaur eggs to hatch. It made me freak out a little (as he was jumping over the nest) but we couldn't stop laughing. And amazingly none were broken!