I made a full on dinner last night!

Man, that’s hard work and should be reserved for a weekend!  It was super good though and I want to start keeping track of my recipes here a little more and share the love!

Southern Baked Yellow Squash – click for the link – very yummy, I made it exactly as written but I did not put the butter on top with the bread crumbs, saved a few calories maybe!

Marinated Baked Pork Chops – I’m not sure why they are called marinated, cause they aren’t!  I guess you could, but probably not necessary.  I tripled all the sauce ingredients (except the oil, and next time I will probably omit altogether) and it was really yummy!  My chops were done at probably 40 minutes, it just depends on how big your chops are.

The last part of the meal was just mashed potatoes, no recipe just boiled then mashed taters, drained and add butter, milk, and sour cream to your liking.

Way to go John!

John had a couple breakthroughs this week.

Breakthrough #1 – completed Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons.  He can read!  Seriously even a month ago if you asked him to read something other than his reading lesson he would tear up and say he couldn’t (but yet he could read a whole page of a story in the reading lesson).  Makes complete sense, right?  Not!  Anyhow, now that he officially finished the reading lesson book, he says he can read and will even pick up a book himself and read it!  Yay, progress!  Below are a few photos of his last reading lesson (from that book anyways).

  

Breakthrough #2 – he can really ride his bike!  So, remember he got a real bike (two wheeler no training wheels for his birthday) to ride instead of the balance bike?  Well, he could ride it but needed help getting started (the bike was a little too tall perhaps).  Anyhow, asking him to ride that new bike caused tears every time!  Well, yesterday we had some lovely cool (cold, really) weather and went outside, Luke got out the horrid bike and said lets ride this, John teared up, and I said just ride it for a while I’ll give you a dollar.  So, Luke helped him get it started a few times and then John just went off and did it on his own!  Yay!  He even told me today that Paul now has two bikes, the tricycle and the balance bike!  He loves the two wheeler bike now!  If only we could get Ruthanne riding a bike…

The only other good photo of the week:

Some fun photos

So, I got to buy myself a new camera with some birthday $$ (one of those fancy schmancy dslr ones, and yes I had to buy used in order to afford one, I don’t get THAT much for my birthday!). Anyhow, its been fun taking photos instantaneously, I’ve missed so much of my kids’ lives with my other cameras!

Anyhow, I’m not good yet and mostly just use the automatic mode, when I get adventurous I get bad pictures, but I’ll keep trying and learning! But, I did get a chance to use it while visiting Matt & Jaime and company for Talon’s baby blessing. Here are a few of the photos I took.

Baby Talon, its hard work being blessed!

Ruthanne loved holding baby Talon! Amazingly, he was happy with her and a little picky and grumpy with me just minutes before.

Goofy Hunter, I think this was my best photo of the day, and then he got all girly on me!

Corbin, the biggest brother.

All the grandkids with the last name Wilson (sorry you couldn’t be here Bentleys).

The many faces of Dane and his cupcake.

And just a few more random photos:

Oh, yes, I didn’t really edit these at all, thinking Matt or Jaime might want to download some and do their own edits. Oh, and I can get anybody a bigger photo if they want. And, I want to go back and look at the all 7 kids photos, maybe there was a better one?