Homemade Chili

*This recipe can be halved for a smaller group or family, or if you don't want leftovers.

Chili

4 lbs. ground beef
2-3 packages McCormick's Original Chili Seasoning (depending on how spicy you like it)
2-3 cans mild chili beans, drain juice off the top (I use 2 for at home because of Hubby's gout; 3 if I'm taking it out for other people)
2 large cans of petite diced tomatoes
1 large can of tomato sauce

Brown the ground beef. Stir in all the other ingredients. DO NOT follow the McCormick's package directions. Simmer for 15 minutes or so.

Eat and enjoy with Fritos, or cheese, or Fritos and cheese. Or just plain old Zesta crackers crushed on top. However you like it.

If you want to make it ahead of time and put it in a crock pot, you can! There are a couple of options:

1. If you're going to a potluck or something like that where you'll be eating it right away, prepare as directed, and put it in the crock pot for a little while before you go so the crock pot has time to warm up.

2. Brown the ground beef, or pull out some you prepared ahead of time (I cooked mine the night before). Place it in the crock pot and mix all your other ingredients directly with your meat in the crock pot. Add some water if you will be simmering it all day (I took mine to the quilting day so it did). I added somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup of water.

If you've read my recipes before you know I usually tweak them or leave something out. This one I don't. It's because it's mine. :)

This post is linked to Crock Pot Wednesday at Dining with Debbie.

Whimsy

We have a themed tree. It's theme is "Whimsical."

From Webster's:
theme: a specific and distinctive quality, characteristic, or concern

whimsical: resulting from or characterized by whim or caprice, especially: lightly fanciful; subject to erratic behavior or unpredictable change

I think that fits our tree to a tee.


spontaneous 1 : proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external constraint 2 : arising from a momentary impulse

spontaneity 1 : the quality or state of being spontaneous 2 : voluntary or undetermined action or movement

We had finished the decorating, and then when Hubby was at work last week I remembered that I had finally found and purchased ting. I had to ask the lady at Michael's what it was and where to find it in the store. Mari had it in her tree last year and I thought it looked cool.

Plus we have a cat and don't do icicles. We don't want him to eat them and die or anything. Sort of wouldn't add to the holiday spirit.

So ting was a good bling-y option.

Hubby doesn't usually come home and notice things. We have to play the What's Different In This Room? or What Do You Notice That's Different About Me? game. Oddly enough, he noticed the ting almost immediately, without playing the game. His comment — "The tree is sprouting."

sprout: to grow, spring up, or come forth as or as if a sprout


It's probably most easily noticed at the top.

Does your tree have a theme?

This post is linked to Deck the Halls at Thoughts From Over The Rainbow.

Menu Plan Monday — December 7

Last week wasn't so good for sticking to the menu plan. It was busy, Hubby was out of town, I didn't have the pantry well stocked following Thanksgiving, and well, it was busy. A really good menu plan with a well stocked pantry would have been very helpful. Hindsight is always better though. I suppose the best news is that we did scrounge around and find things to eat without eating out, except for the planned birthday on Thursday and pizza on Saturday night. But since I never went to Steak and Shake with the kids (my own personal treat) while Hubby was out of town (even too busy for that), I figure pizza isn't so bad.

Monday — Soup. I have some in the pantry to make!

Tuesday — Spaghetti. This is a nice, quick, easy meal, and I had a request from one of the kids. Can't beat that!

Wednesday — Baked Potato Bar. Another quick and easy meal, kind to the wallet, and my kids all love it. We have church on Wednesday nights, so quick is always a good option for this night of the week.

Thursday — Beef and Noodles. I never made it last week, and it's good and cold here, so comfort food is at the top of my list.

Friday — There will be leftovers from Thursday!

Saturday — I'd love to find a good chicken and dumplings recipe to try. Anybody have one? I've made this before with canned soup and canned refrigerated biscuits and it's good, but I'd love to go homemade.

Sunday — Eat out since we ate in all week!

This post is linked to Menu Plan Monday hosted by Laura, The Organizing Junkie.

From Jericho to Gezer — the Land of the Olderites?

In our defense, we encourage our children to refer to people as older rather than old. And I can't think of any time that Hubby and I have ever used the word geezer, even in jest. Ever.

************

Sparky reads to Caboose from the Bible every night when he goes to bed. The other night she was reading from Joshua 16:1-4 "The allotment for Joseph began at the Jordan of Jericho, east of the waters of Jericho, and went up from there through the desert into the hill country of Bethel. It went on from Bethel (that is, Luz), crossed over to the territory of the Arkites in Ataroth, descended westward to the territory of the Japhletites as far as the region of Lower Beth Horon and on to Gezer, ending at the sea. So Manasseh and Ephraim, the descendants of Joseph, received their inheritance."

Last night out of the clear blue, Caboose tells Buddy, "There was a town named Gezer in the Bible."

Buddy says, "I bet that's where all the old people lived."

Caboose says, "Yeah, I bet that's where all the old people moved."

Buddy says, "Yeah, all the old geezers. I bet that's how old people got to be called old geezers, because the Bible is from a long time ago."

A few minutes later out of the blue, Buddy says, "I bet that's where Methuselah lived."

We've now been informed by Sparky that they learned it from Zach and Cody on one of the Suite Lifes on Disney Channel. They just had something this week on the msn homepage that Zach and Cody taught boys bad behavior. I guess I have some verbal proof now.

And two boys will be heading to Respect 101. Just as soon as we can get done giggling about it.

Happy Sweet 16 x Two

I have a multitude of mixed emotions about this day. I can't even begin to put them into words.

Hubby and the girls had their last Bible study for this session tonight. They took birthday cake for a snack. Since we didn't know if they'd come home with any for the boys, Hubby thought it would be a good idea to get some cupcakes for the house. He thought this was funny:

He told the girls they were for them and their two friends who are coming over tomorrow night to sleep over. I added that they'd even get party favors since the Elmos are plastic rings. He let them believe it for about ten minutes before he spilled the beans.

You know, when we used to go to Wal-Mart when the girls were about two, Hubby would push them in the stroller while I shopped. He always took them over and they would look at toys (never asking for a thing!) and they usually ended up playing with the Tickle Me Elmo. It was their favorite thing to look at, other than the real fish, and they never had one — a Tickle Me Elmo, that is. I don't know if anyone else in the family realized the irony of these cupcakes.

***********

Last year after the girls' birth stories I promised I'd follow up soon with their follow up. It's been nearly a year and I haven't done it. One of my faults is that if I don't do something right away, and it's not especially important, I'm not going to do it. Well, I'm going to remedy that now.

Also, if you haven't read their birth stories you might have a little trouble following this post, but you can go back and read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. It's a little long, but it is a miraculous story.

I was two days from taking the girls home from the hospital without monitors. At that point they would have been off their breathing medication for one full week, and if they'd had no apnea spells then they would be free to go home without the monitors. I'd been telling the nurses for about five days that I would hear Chatty snort every once in a while. Since she was so tiny, it was obviously a very tiny sound. They never heard it and there was nothing else they saw to identify anything.

On this particular day two days prior to rooming in and taking them home, I went to the hospital to feed and visit them. While I was doing the required two minute hand scrubbing, I could see three gowned, gloved, and masked people working around Chatty's bed. That was the longest two minutes of my life. I got in there and they told me they were preparing to take her up to the PICU and quarantine her. She had developed RSV, which at the time was a very new virus, and she was having serious apnea and heart rate drops.

The snorting had been an early sign of the RSV, but since she was showing no other symptoms it would have been nearly impossible for them to have known. She was immediately so congested that she was having difficulty breathing, so she would just stop, causing the apnea, which in turn caused the heart rate drops. That's why she had to go to the PICU. She had to be quarantined because of the RSV. I found out from infectious disease that the virus can live on a dead surface for six hours. That's scary.

They put one of the little tents over Chatty's head for oxygen and Ribavirin. At the time it was a brand new treatment for RSV. Most of the time patients would receive it for three days. She had it for five and was still testing positive. At that point, even though I'd taken six showers a day between visiting the girls, I passed the virus to Sparky. They moved her up to the Pediatric floor to a room and moved Chatty out of the PICU to share the room with her (since she was better although not well). Chatty got three more days of the treatment and Sparky got three days, and they both tested negative. The best thing was that neither one had to be reventilated.

At this point things started passing a little funny in Chatty's diapers, and to make a really long story short, the doctors said that she tested positive for Rotovirus. They also qualified that with the statement that you can get a lot of false positives when you have RSV. When the girls went home, the diapers stayed weird, we sent a few to the pediatrician, and finally after a month I told him that when she only gained an ounce in a week that something was terribly wrong. He finally agreed.

The pediatrician asked about her coloring (which was yellowish). I told him that her coloring had always been different and I'd even commented on it in the NICU. The doctors and nurses always said that even twins can have different complexions. The pediatrician asked if she'd had her bilirubin checked. I told him the last time was when it started going down after her mid-December heart surgery. Then he said she was a little yellow in the whites of her eyes and she appeared jaundiced. Here are a couple of pictures of her about this time, one of her with her sister so you can see a comparison.


We went through a multitude of horrible tests with her over the next two weeks, and the ultrasound techs at the hospital couldn't even find her gall bladder (later at Children's they did and said it was small). We were referred to Arkansas Children's Hospital to see a specialist and a surgeon. I found out after we got there that they expected to see a patient that had biliary atresia (where the bile ducts constrict), which is non-correctable and would require a liver transplant.

One of the first things that was done after we got checked in and met the doctor was an ultrasound. The technician was so excited that not only did he call in two passing doctors, but he told me everything he was finding on the screen, so I knew when I walked out of there what to expect. He found the gall bladder, and then what excited him the most was that he found a cyst in her single bile duct. The reason that excited him was because it was correctable.

Chatty had surgery the next morning, the doctors had to do a lot of cutting and pasting because of the amount of damage that had been done, including leaving out the single duct and her gall bladder. The surgery was about four and a half hours, and at the time she weighed about six and a half pounds. She was four and a half months old; adjusted age due to the premature birth was one and half months.

About five days later they had to go back in during the middle of the night. They weren't sure what was wrong but she was getting worse. It turned out to be peritonitis. They cleaned her abdomen out and closed it back up. We were there a full two weeks. My aunt kept Sparky the entire time three hours north. My mom and stepdad had to make a milk run because I was pumping. It was insane.

The most disturbing thing was one of Chatty's iv's that she had. Because she was so small and her veins were tiny, she would blow them after a day or so. They'd exhausted every possible place and finally the surgeon put one in her neck. Holding your baby and feeding her while she has an iv in her neck that you don't want to make move is something that is difficult to even try to put into words.

Two weeks later some of Chatty's labs were elevated, but with medication over the next year to help the bile drain, everything started working normally. She has not had any residual effects from the cyst or the surgery.

She has, on the other hand, had four eye surgeries. Sheesh!

Here's Chatty just three months after those earlier pictures. The transformation is amazing!

Here are pictures of the girls when they were two years old. Chatty's is actually on her second birthday. Sparky was always on the move, so her pictures were all a little blurry. I picked a different one that shows her in what is now one of her favorite colors (green) in one of her favorite items of clothing (pajamas). You could always find her with a book in her hand or close by back then. She's always had such nice posture, even at two!


Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Sheep Babies

When the girls were born nearly 16 years ago after only 27 weeks in the womb, my aunt gave me a teeny, tiny gift at Christmas to go along with my teeny, tiny twin girls.

She gave me two Snowbabies figurines, each of which had two babies. They are hand-painted pewter.


This summer when we went to Bronner's, among the thousands of ornaments they carried they had Snowbabies. I decided my new ornament(s!) for this year would be Snowbabies in honor of my kids.

I got this one to represent the girls. They are supposed to be enjoying a spa day. I'm not so sure if Sparky would truly enjoy a spa day, but I loved the sweet relationship shared between these two.

This ornament represents both of the boys. It is only one of the Snowbabies, but it is holding a red ball ornament in one hand and a blue ball ornament in the other. Buddy's favorite color is red, and Caboose's favorite color is blue.

When we were decorating the tree the other night, Caboose saw me putting these ornaments up and started laughing. He started telling everyone else, "Look at the sheep babies."

I suppose if you didn't know what their proper name was that you might describe them that way.

This post is linked to Show and Tell Friday hosted by Cindy at My Romantic Home.

Blog Tour: Squeezing Good Out Of Bad by James N. Watkins

"A book that will make you laugh, think, and start looking at
those sour places
of life in a whole
new way.
I really enjoyed
reading it."

Martha Bolton, writer for
Jeff Allen, Bob Hope,
Phyllis Diller, Mark Lowry

Publisher: XarisCom
ISBN: 978-0-578-01006-9
Retail: $12.96
Paperback
http://www.jameswatkins.com/squeezing.htm






James N. Watkins is the author of sixteen books and over two thousand articles. He is the acquisition editor for Wesleyan Publishing House, an editorial advisor for ACW Press, instructor at Taylor University and a sought-after conference speaker. He’s won Campus Life’s Book of the Year award and various other awards for writing and editing. He’s married to Lois. They have two children and four grandchildren. His family is the lemonade in his life.


About the Book:

Sour circumstances left you feeling down? Unemployment, foreclosures, divorce, bankruptcy and cancer don't even begin to peel the skin off all the bad news in our world today. At a time in history when the evening news contains more bad than good, people wonder if sweeter days will ever come. In steps James (Jim) Watkins. With a fresh perspective on life, love and the pursuit of happiness, Watkins serves readers a refreshing cup of encouragement and hope.

Written from his own experiences with cancer, unemployment and other life-puckering crises, Jim prompts readers to look at the cup of suffering with eyes focused on the true thirst quencher—Jesus Christ. Readers will be pleasantly surprised at the balance of readability and deep wisdom offered within the pages of Squeezing Good Out Of Bad. With Scripture references, humor-filled lists, and a creative manuscript, Watkins brings the bitterness of hard times and blends it with the sweetness of God's presence. He's been there. His transparency is as refreshing as, you guessed it, a tall, cool glass of lemonade.

Blog Tour Interview:

1. You've been in the literary world for a while, give us a quick recap of how you got started to where you are today.

By second grade, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I felt the suspension of disbelief was stretched too thin when the real-live puppet Pinocchio became a real live boy. So I rewrote the ending having the wooden puppet die a painful, prolonged death of Dutch elm disease. (At that point, I'm sure my parents and teachers weren't sure if I'd become a writer or a life-long patient at a psychiatric hospital.) I later went on to become the editor of my high school paper, worked at a Christian publishing house as an editor during college, and then dabbled in writing while holding down a real job. Since 1988 I've been writing and speaking full-time.

2. In Squeezing Good Out Of Bad you give many insightful tips on how to turn around sour circumstances. Share a practical way we can be encouraged during tough times.

My "top ten list" of chapter titles 10-4 provide practical steps for dealing with lemons, but the real secrets are found in chapters 3-1. (Yes, like a true top ten list, the chapters are numbered backward.) Romans 8:28 promises that that God is working all things out for our good to accomplish His purpose in our lives. But we have to read on to verse 29 to find that purpose: "to be conformed to the image of His Son."

3. No life is perfect. Can you give us an example of how you got through a challenging situation and were able to use these principles to see the good in it?

I think it's so important that we take our faith seriously, but I certainly don't want to take my situation or myself too seriously. So I create a mental "top ten" list of what good can come about in this situation. For instance, last year I had radiation for cancer and it totally depleted me physically and mentally. My family dubbed it "radiation retardation." Because of that, I was fired from a wonderful part-time job because I just couldn't do it. So, "Top Ten Great Things about Losing My Job": 10. I'll be paying less taxes next year. 9. I've got twenty hours a week of free time. 8. . . .

Our family is going through something right now that is far worse than cancer, and I can't see a single good thing that can come out of it. So, at those times, you just keep hanging on—with white knuckles—to the fact that God loves you and the Romans 8:28 is still in effect.

4. What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Spare time? What's that? I'm a firm believer in "redeeming the time" so I try to keep busy doing things that matter for the Kingdom. But after my little brain is worn out—usually around 7 pm—nothing beats a session of "Freecell."

5. What's the last book you read and why?

Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, the only real reading for pleasure is on airline flights. The King book is research for a book I'm proposing as we approach the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

6. What do you hope readers will gain by reading your book?

I wrote the first draft nine years ago, and even though I have a great agent, we just couldn't find a publisher. That was before cancer, family crisis, unemployment. . . . So it's a much more comforting, honest book. And it forced me to not be so flippant and casual about the serious issues people are dealing with. Henri Nouwen talks about "wounded healers." I think, because of the lemons that have piled up in my life, I can more compassionately offer comfort to those buried under a pile of lemons.

Blog Tour Giveaway:

The blog host with the most comments will have the opportunity to send in one commentor's name for the grand prize giveaway (there are multiple hosts via Kathy Carlton Willis Communications). Here's what they'll win:

First prize: Jim will stop by your house with fresh-baked lemon cake and hot lemon tea. (Disclaimer: Offer available only to residents of Corn Borer, Indiana. Alternate prize includes a copy of Sqeezing Good Out Of Bad, mixes for lemon tea, lemon cake, lemonade and assorted lemon candies. Not available where taxed or licensed. Winner responsible for safe and proper use of products.)

If Jim's disclaimer isn't enough humor for you, read on:

When life gives you lemons . . .

10. Don't confuse them with hand grenades (Identify the problem)

9. Check the delivery slip (Determine if it's your problem)

8. Sell them on eBay (Profit from the problem)

7. Paint smiley faces on them (Laugh at the problem)

6. Join a citrus support group (Share your problem)

5. Use as an all-natural, organic astringent (Grow from the problem)

4. Don't shoot the delivery driver (Forgive the problem-maker)

3. Graft to a lime tree for a refreshing, low-calorie soft drink (Take the problem to a higher level)

2. Grow your own orchard (Live a fruitful life despite—or because of—the problem)

1. Give off a refreshing fragrance (Live a lemon-fresh life)

NOTE: I received a complimentary copy of Squeezing Good Out Of Bad via Kathy Carlton Willis Communications, gifted to all participants in this blog tour.