living the freeman life

The new year is upon us and this is when I usually think about what I want to make as my resolution. I can't even remember what last year's resolution was, but I like the idea of a resolution. I like the challenge. I like the freedom of giving it up. (Ha.) There are a few things I want to do differently this year...we are in a new house, our boys are growing up fast, and I feel like there are parts of our life that could be simplified. Therefore, come January 1st, I have decided to TRY (that's the operative word, right?) to:

1) Blog at least once a week and post pics...this is to mainly help me remember what's going on my kids' lives...it is hard to keep up with it all! Maybe Sunday will be my day to do so since it is the least hectic...

2) Find ways to simplify our lives...not just MY life, but our life as a family. This may mean 1) saying "no" to something when we normally would say "yes", 2) decluttering so as to make it easier to keep our house a little more organized (notice I didn't say "clean", but rather "organized"..there's a difference!), 3) menu planning and sticking with it, 4) budgeting, and sticking with it, or 5) not "overdoing it" every day, but rather finding small, simple ways to gradually simplify our lives. I tend to go overboard and think that I have to do it ALL, perfectly, from the very beginning...which means if/when I fail, I tend to give up very quickly because I realize how high my standards are. It is hard to create new habits (or break old ones), so I need to realize that small, simple goals are best.

...I was going to add a third, but I think #2 qualifies for at least 3-4, so I'm gonna stop right there. :)

I love that resolutions give us a chance to start "anew", although I realize that we can do this at any time, not just on January 1st. I can't wait to see what the new year brings! :) Have a Happy New Year!

Flying a jet!

Trying on funny hats! He decided to spend his birthday money on "Chester" the cheetah, who's in his arms!

Adam helping me make the hummus!

I had a little helper in the kitchen this morning as I was making some roasted garlic hummus.  Hummus has been a wonderful staple in our fridge, but I hated spending $5 every time I wanted to get an 8 oz container of it.  I figured since it was made out of chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans), it couldn't be that expensive to make.  So, I looked up a recipe on Food.com and have finally found a "go to" recipe that is easy, inexpensive, and super delicious.  It's a nice recipe to use as a base, and then add in your favorite mix-ins!  You can do this in a blender, but a food processor actually works the best.  Enjoy!

Roasted Garlic Hummus

To roast the garlic, you'll need:

1 head of garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Peel the garlic head, leaving just one layer of the peel (to hold all the cloves together).  Cut the 1/4" to 1/2" off of the garlic head, exposing the individual cloves of the garlic.  Place on a 12" square of aluminum foil, and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Wrap foil totally around garlic head.  Place in shallow baking pan (like a pie pan), just in case it leaks while it bakes.  Bake for 45 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to come to room temperature.  Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves into a small bowl and save for later.

To a food processor, add:

2 cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), rinsed and drained
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
Bowl of roasted garlic cloves
2 tablespoons of tahini (ground sesame seeds, found at World Market)
1/2 cup warm water
Salt and pepper to taste

Puree for 1 minute, or until completely smooth.  Serve at room temperature with pita chips, vegetables, or use it as a spread on a sandwich instead of mayo.

Possible add-ins:

Crumbled feta cheese
Chopped basil (or other herbs)
Finely diced kalamata olives
Sundried tomatoes
Diced caramelized onions
Diced roasted red pepper
Chipotle Tabasco sauce


What would you add in?

Grins!

At Home Depot, hanging out in a bucket!

Here is the baby of the family, and (unless a miracle happens) he will always be the baby of the family.  Adam is a fun, spunky boy who copies almost everything Caleb does. His vocabulary has taken off exponentially in the last 2 months. He speaks pretty articulately, so it isn't a problem understanding him. He loves to eat, but especially loves yogurt, grapes, cheese, and juice. He's into the I-have-to-whine-so-they'll-listen-to-me stage, which we are trying to work on.  He has kept his baby blue eyes-- it would be a lot easier to discipline him if he weren't so cute!  He loves to play with play-doh, race cars, our Thomas the Train table, sing songs from the Christian radio (yeah...Mary Had a Little Lamb never was popular in our car...it was always Third Day, Casting Crowns, and Matthew West that he wanted to listen to.  In fact, whenever he gets into the car, he asks to listen to "Your Love" by Brandon Heath.

All boy- no problem with mud!

He loves baths, is starting to potty train (in that, when he is about into the bathtub, we'll sit him on the potty and sometimes he'll go), and talks very sweetly to our cats. He is a funny little kid who is learning to share really well, and enjoys preschool.  Up until the last 2 weeks, he has always cried when I dropped him off at preschool, but recently, he has started to just walk right into his class, wave bye-bye and not look back.  He loves to swim- the times that we've gone to a public pool he has loved jumping in and kicking his legs. He adores his big brother and usually wakes him up in the morning by saying "Hey, Caleb!".

He liked fingerpainting inside of a plastic bag.

This picture above still cracks me up.  He will have no problem with getting dirty from head to toe, but the one day that I set the boys up outside and say, "Okay- you can get as dirty as you want with these homemade finger paints and we'll wash off later", Adam would not put his fingers in the paint.  When I did it for him, he screamed in consternation.  So, per a Pinterest pic I saw, I put the fingerpaints inside of a ziploc bag, sealed it, taped it with packing tape to the table, and let him have his fun.  He had a great time swirling the colors together but not getting a single drop on him.  So funny!

Having boys has taught me a lot about life.  I thought by now, (if I'd had girls), I'd be playing dolls, baking in Easy Bake Ovens, and accessorizing (catch that reference, Dad?) Barbie dolls.  However, most days, we deal with trucks, dirt, sand, water, cars, blocks, and trains. It's more fun than I had ever imagined! 

Reading a book while waiting on our meal at Sonic!

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen!  Cute as a button with his glasses on. It's a rare thing to actually see his glasses on his face as he either loses them or they break. We will get them fixed before he starts kindergarten next Friday! He's reading on a 2nd grade level, not by anything we've done really (we don't read to him 3 hours a day or anything...just usually a book at night), but he has spent some time on starfall.com which I think has helped him greatly. It teaches reading phonetically which was a great way for him to learn. I am not good at teaching and I have a lot of difficulty explaining things in my head in terms that Caleb/Adam might understand (which is my main reason for not homeschooling my kids...they would get a much better education at a school from a trained and talented teacher!). 

Right now, Caleb is REALLY into animals.  He loves going to the Nature Center and checking out all of the animals there. He loves to learn about them- which is why we subscribed him to Zoobooks, a monthly kid magazine that arrives with tons of fun info on a certain animal.  So far, owls, snakes (his favorite!) and deer have been the magazine's animals of choice.He thought about being a veterinarian, and then after accompanying me to the vet's office with one of our cats and watching her take their temperature, he quickly changed his mind. *wink* We had to start limiting how many stuffed animals he took to bed iwth him, as it was nearing 20!  He now has 5 at night (which can be taken away, one by one, if he disobeys), and 2 at nap time.  And yes, 95% of the time, he still takes a 2 - 2.5 hour nap every day!

At preschool, holding a baby possum. :)

He is going to be starting kindergarten next Friday, August 17th. He got a postcard from his teacher which made him excited.  He told me the other day that he was a little nervous about kindergarten because "he didn't want to leave me alone for that long". :)  Eric is off next Wednesday which is "Meet the Teacher Day", so he and I are taking Caleb to meet his teacher then to breakfast at The Local Joint. He also wants to ride the bus home from school, but the verdict is still out on that too. :)

Enjoying some supper and smiling for the camera!

Caleb the other day was lamenting the fact that we have to wait until March to go to Disneyworld.  I told him that it was now August, and we had seven months to wait. He said, "How do KNOW that it is August?". I replied "Caleb, how do you THINK I know it is August?".  He answered, "Because you're brilliant." 

He has so many funny sayings (and doings, for that matter), so I hope to use this blog as a place to record them. :)

I started this blog back in 2008 to document life with Caleb, who was about 6 months old at the time. (Curious?  Check out the very first post here)  I thought I would change both the look of this blog (the jumbled look of the template reflects how jumbled our life can be sometimes!), and the topics.  Yes, a lot of the posts will be about the kids, but sometimes, I've wanted to post about a recipe (which I do on my recipe blog here) or talk about our travels as a couple (like Eric and I did last year on our trip to Italy), so this is going to be a multipurpose blog. :)  Our family has changed a lot since I started blogging...we've moved twice, Caleb started preschool, we've had another child, we've lost a cat, and we've gained a cat.  Both kids are growing up faster than I can keep up with.  As much as I would love to have a routine, I don't.  Each day is different than the last.  As much as I like to plan, I realized that trying to plan out my days just isn't practical for me with kids.  Example: I used to say, "Ok.  I'm getting up at 8am (this was pre-kids...can you tell?), walking for 30 minutes, meal planning for the week, going to the grocery store (after I've clipped my coupons), putting away groceries and prepping stuff for the meals for the week, keeping the house clean and decluttered, laundry folded, until Eric gets home at 5pm, and then we'll eat, watch a movie, and go to bed."  Once kids came along, I tried to keep up that plan. I would get more and more frustrated about how much stuff I was NOT achieving.  Eric would come home to a sink full of dishes, dishwasher NOT unloaded, laundry still in the hamper- waiting to be sorted and washed, and yet, he'd never complain.  I do confess that there has been several times that he has meekly said, "Um, if you get a chance today, could you do a load of whites?  Because, um, I'm wearing my last pair of underwear." To which I reply, "Ok, honey, but you help me sort the socks when you get home."

My life, right now, revolves around the kids.  Not so much in the "making sure they are always perfectly happy" way, but between preschool, playing with them, and trying to bring them up in the way God has prompted me to, life just isn't about keeping the house perfectly spotless or meals perfectly planned. I've recently discovered a way I could balance doing housework and playing with the kids. If I neglect one of them (meaning, either the house or the kids), the other one begs "take care of ME!". About two days a week, I take a morning and I set a timer for 30 minutes. During that 30 minutes, I tell the kids that I am going to be working around the house, and that they are now responsible for their own fun. When my timer goes off, I stop/finish what I'm doing and set it again for 30 minutes and play with the kids.  I alternate back and forth for a couple hours and it helps me get even just a little bit of housework done, and it also shows the kids that there will be an end to my housework. :)  It's worked great so far! 

*looks back at blog*  

Wow...what a long, rambling post...can you tell I don't talk to many adults during the day? :) Now to update you on the kids...but that is another post.
 

So, here it is, almost a year later (but not quite, so I won't feel quite as guilty), and I'm just now blogging again.  Journaling about ANYTHING has never been my strong point. (I guess I should clarify that this is Emily, not Eric, writing this blog, although maybe he'll "guest post" one day?).  I finally bought a journal called "One Line A Day: A Five Year Memory Book" that allows you to write one or two sentences for the day, which I thought would be less overwhelming than staring at a composition book that just begged to be filled with words.  What is hard about journaling/documenting our family life is that it can get...repetitive.  As in, "Oh, today we went to the park...again.  And then we went to Sonic...again, and Caleb got a corn dog...like he always does, and Adam screamed that he wanted Sprite instead of lemonade...as usual."  Now, journaling privately in a book is one thing, but putting it out for the world to see in a BLOG, well, that's another story altogether.  Now we have people judging whether they think your life is as interesting as YOU think it is, or, judging your thoughts on certain issues, judging your kids based on their behavior, judging your parenting based on your reaction to their behavior, etc.  All of this has prevented me from putting some of our family's adventures with having two boys out there for the world to see.  But then, I decided to change my perspective.  No, I can't make somebody NOT judge me, or my kids, but I can let them into our life a little.  It may not be the most news-worthy life, but it is our life.  So, here is our life.  Hope you enjoy the ride along with us!