Misc.

Christian has been working on cooking beans for a while now. He has been trying different beans and experimenting with cooking times and soaking times. I picked up a bean pot from the mexican market the other day for him. We are also getting the girls used to eating beans more. Previously, they have only eaten it in burrito form or as a dip with chips! We figure that since it is in our food storage, we better know how to cook it and the kids better get used to eating it. Besides, they are really good for you!

Right now, I'm addicted to cooking outdoors still. Last weekend's bbq just made us want more. This weekend, we threw a chicken on the grill. So we had a El Pollo Loco style dinner with the beans, chicken and tortillas! So good...no wonder I can't seem to lose any weight.

Unfortunately, it's getting pretty hot out already so I don't know how much longer we will find cooking over a flaming fire pit enjoyable.

Over the weekend, we went to a birthday party for our best friend out of town. There was a lot of stop and go traffic. So, of course, Emily (our official up-chuck queen) lost it just as we got down the off-ramp and were five minutes from our destination. I need to invest in one of those accu-pressure bracelets for her. I actually went to look for them before our drive but was only able to find adult sizes.

She had a shrimp fest for her party...probably not what you want to eat after being car sick but kids are resilient and it's not like shrimp is her favorite food anyway. We were happy that she tried some of the different foods.

I also finally ran out of my store bought laundry detergent. I have been wanting to experiment with making my own laundry detergent for a while now but was unable to find all the ingredients. I finally found them but since I already had a huge Costco sized box of detergent open, I just put my supplies aside and used what I already had. But since that is finally used up, I got to work with mixing my own up. I found a lot of variations on the ratio of ingredients on the internet and decided to go with what seemed to be the most common.

The result of my first load of laundry is very encouraging. I don't know if it is our imagination or wishful thinking, but we think that our laundry is actually a little cleaner! Plus it is cheap to make and better for our septic system! I need to do a few more loads to be sure, but so far so good.