Taco Soup.

Made this for dinner tonight, found on Our Best Bites (they blog about such yummy looking food - this was the first recipe I tried from them but my-oh-my was it delicious). I made very minor changes that I don't believe affected the taste at all. This is definitely going in our monthly rotation!

Taco Soup
Recipe from Our Best Bites

1 lb. extra lean ground beef (93% lean or or leaner)
1 onion, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 1.25-oz. packet taco seasoning (about 1/4 c.)
3 c. water, divided
2 28-oz. cans diced tomatoes
1 15-oz. can tomato sauce
2 15-oz. cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can corn, drained

Toppings: Pico de Gallo, light sour cream, shredded cheese, crushed tortilla chips, tortilla strips, guacamole, etc.

Heat a large soup pot over medium. When ready, brown the ground beef with the onion and garlic. When almost brown, add the taco seasoning and 1 c. water. Add the remaining ingredients, including the remaining 2 c. water, bring to a medium boil, then, cover and reduce heat. Simmer for at least 15 minutes. Serve with desired toppings. Makes 10 12-oz. servings.

Yum!!!

12 on 12th.

I found this idea from one of my favorite bloggers, Marta Writes that she adapted from here. I like Marta's idea better, because I am not going to commit to taking 12 pictures in a day (not to say I haven't taken 12 pictures on any given day, but I don't always take pictures every day), but I can commit to writing down 12 things about a day once a month.

So here are my 12 things for the 12th of January:

1. Tiny, proud steps, with his chest pushed out and a look of total glee on his face
2. 1 day shipping from Amazon and a $10 off coupon
3. Creating snazzy presents for family & friends
4. Hobby Lobby....they really should never have built one nearly walking distance from my house
5. Burritos for dinner -yummmmm
6. Not freaking out over the little things
7. Looking through old pictures (I have a copy of my mom's birth announcement - so cool!)
8. Organizing. And re-organizing. And organizing one more time to get it just right.
9. Challenging myself to try something new
10. Dancing penguins - a favorite of Ben's (gotta get a copy of Happy Feet!)
11. Deciding I'm not going to read for awhile, and being okay with it
12. Playing Zuma Blitz - slightly addicted

Update on my mom.

I've debated with myself for a few days now, whether or not to share with the world how my mom has been doing. I go back and forth... I argue that it's nobody's business and then I argue back that she's touched a lot of lives, and people want to know how she's doing. I won't post intimate, gritty details, because even in the final moments of her life, she is entitled to her dignity (which cancer is determined to strip from her). This is also my form of a journal, and it would be unfair to my future self to strike these feelings from the record.

I know some of you must be curious, and I want you to know that it's okay to ask me how she's doing. It's not a subject that I feel we need to tiptoe around. Maybe some of my family members would disagree, but for me it's okay. So if you want to ask - please do. I don't have an awful lot of experience with loss or tragedy, but my heart always goes out to those going through it and I always feel so helpless to help.

So. It all happened quite quickly. She was great at Ben's birthday and a little more tired, a little more run down the next weekend for Christmas. Still had her spunk, but some of her medicines weren't working as effectively and she was feeling it. Two days after Christmas, her doctor decided to admit her and try to figure out what was wrong. They never were (as far as I know anyway) able to pinpoint exactly why her body was reacting the way it was. She's quite low on platelet's (those are the parts of the blood that help coagulate your blood) and no amount of transfusions seemed to help. Last Tuesday, the 4th, she was sent home. She's receiving hospice care and is relatively pain free. Because of the amount of drugs she's taking, she mostly sleeps.

It's hard. But you take it day by day and every day I make peace with it. I cry a lot, which helps. It helps to get the sorrow out and then dry my face and make peace with it again. I also have a very active little boy who keeps me on my toes and keeps me laughing. Oh yeah and Nick helps too. HA HA No, seriously, he's been a tremendous support. I know it can't be easy on him, either, because he's known my mom since he was like 15. That's almost half his life.

So that's the update. We just take it day by day...

Clean.

One of my goals this year is to keep my house more orderly. That being said, I'm also adopting the attitude that it's totally okay if my house is a wreck. I follow I Heart Organizing (because I do - I'm obsessed with organization...especially for others ha ha) and I've pretty much stolen her cleaning check list. I created my own list in Excel that looks nearly identical to hers, but changed up slightly to fit our families needs (I added cleaning the litter box and deleted cleaning the stairs since we don't have any). I bought some laminating pages from Hobby Lobby, printed out my list, sandwiched it between the laminating pages, stuck a magnet strip on the back and hung it on my fridge.

Nick was looking at my list and saying things like putting an asterisk next to some things like vacuuming because it doesn't necessarily have to be done every day. I'm like, pfft. The clean police aren't going to come knocking on my door if I don't check off every single item on my "daily" section. While I do want to strive towards having a cleaner abode, I'm not going to stress out about it. Heavens knows that I don't want to be so busy keeping my house clean that I forget to enjoy the reason I'm home - Ben.

He's decided he doesn't mind the vacuum cleaner at all. He likes to chase after it, play with the cord and watch me vacuum. So I get to do that while he's up, and I don't need Nick to keep an eye on him while I do it, which is a bonus. Today he was staring at Sadie (who was outside, barking at squirrels) so I cleaned the microwave. While he naps, I'll clean our shower (ugh.... I hate cleaning the bathroom). He's a little helpful with putting toys away because he thinks it's a game, but he stops playing after a few things and wanders off. As he gets older, he'll be more help.

...But if I don't make my bed or sweep the kitchen floor today.... BFD. Life's for living, not for cleaning (but it does make me happy when my kitchen counters are tidy).

2011!

Well the new year is upon us! We invited the kids over to stay New Years Eve and I really did enjoy having them. I planned a few things I saw on the Dating Diva's blog - starting at 9:00, we did one task an hour: first we filled out a year in review of 2010 to be looked at again at the end of 2011. At 10:00 we opened our lucky pennies. At 11:00 we filled out 4 goals for the upcoming year (my favorite: Emma wanted to eat more pancakes). At midnight (which Emma nearly made it to - she decided she'd had enough and went to bed at about 11:45ish), we drank sparkling cider and popped confetti poppers.

For days now, I've had a "draft" blog going of my reflections for 2010. So many wonderful things happened in our family, mostly centering around Ben but...there's a super large cloud that's shadowing our 2010 and it's carrying in to 2011. I want to hope that 2011 is going to be a super fantastic year for us, but in harsh reality, I know it's going to be a hard year. I hope that with grace, dignity and a touch of humor, we can make the best of what we have. So many things to look forward to - Nick graduating college and hopefully putting that hard earned degree to use via a bigger paycheck, Ben will being talking more and learning to walk, more and more teeth will come in, visiting with family near and far, and I'll continue to turn our house into a home.

I have never before made "resolutions" at the start of the year. I've always said that I'm a work in progress, and I see no reason to use the beginning of a new year as an excuse to suddenly start doing something different. This year is no real exception, but I do have some goals outlined for myself that I want to make sure I accomplish through out this year and really future years.

Specifically, I want to become more organized and focused on keeping my house in order. This includes cleaning, budgeting my husbands money, meal planning and living in harmony with one another (okay, I snickered at the last one). I also want to make sure I spend time working on my relationship with my husband - we had some super generous friends and family over the holidays and I want to put their thoughtful gift cards to use. Hopefully we can remember to take time to have at least one date night a month, were the kiddo gets left behind and we get to be "Nick & Sarah" and not "mama and papa". I'm hoping that with my determination to get our budget more streamlined, that we're able to tuck some money away in savings and use some of that money for an actual vacation. I don't care where we go, but I hope we get to take one this year. Other than going out of town for a work related trip or our quick over night trip to California for Connor's baseball tournament, Nick & I haven't been on vacation in nearly 2 years (we went to visit family in Florida right before I got pregnant).

I'm also making more of an effort to drink more water during the day. I realized that I drank 2 cups of coffee in the morning and a soda with lunch and dinner. That was it. So I'm trying to remember to have a glass or two of water in there as well. Along with that goal on the healthier side, I hope I also remember to exercise a bit more. When the weather is warmer, we were pretty good about going for a walk 4 or 5 nights a week but since it got cold - all I do is chase Ben around the house (which is QUITE a work out in itself).

So that's it. That's what I'm going to be focused on for 2011 - which really isn't so different than what I've been doing...I have more tools now to help me with my endeavors and I think I've streamlined some processes to be more successful.

On a different but sort of related note: for those of you that are following my mom's progress - she's still in the hospital. At this point, there's no end date in sight. She's still having incredible pain in her abdomen which apparently has the doctor baffled, as the cause hasn't really been determined or fixed. She'll be having a bone marrow biopsy and another catscan on Monday. Thank you all so much for your words of comfort and your prayers.

Much love to you all,

Sarah