Ok, we’re having another contest here at the Thrap family blog!!! And as our last winner Kate Wheeler can attest to, we really give out real prizes! So, here’s the contest. I have made soup. I have used my cell phone to take a picture of the soup. I will show you this picture and the first person to post here the correct list of ingredients in the soup will win a prize! Josh and I are ineligible because we ate the soup, and I will tell you all that the broth is simply water and chicken flavor bouillion cubes. Good Luck!
Archive for February, 2007
Ok, I know it is sometimes considered tabu to talk about money, so I’m not going to give any numbers or anything, but I’m so happy I have to share about this. When money is tight there is more tension in the home. I think that is probably true for everyone. Well, while we have been managing to get by okay, we have also acquired a lot of debt here and there. Moving expenses (we have after all moved 10 times in the last 8 years!), car trouble, children, you know, life! Anyway, we are now actively trying to eliminate our debt and start saving for the future. We want to travel and retire someday and support our children’s future endeavors etc. Of course there are some things that will take considerable time to get paid off like our mortgage, student loans, and our van. But I am thrilled to say that with the help of our tax return and part of Josh’s bonus from work we have successfully paid off our computer and the larger of our two credit cards! For those of you who may not know, Josh has started taking classes towards his MBA (in Management I believe) and so his student loan payments should soon go into deferral. Then we can start putting the monthly payments that we would’ve been making on the computer, large credit card and student loans onto the smaller credit card and get it paid off ASAP! Then when we have to start paying off the student loans again we will have the money to do so in our monthly budget and things won’t be so tight! Already there has been some relief in the home. And hopefully we’ll be able to take our trip to Russia next year without any financial stress! YAY!!!
So last week was not an awesome week for me as far as eating and exercise go. It wasn’t horrendous or anything, but not awesome. Anywhoo, Josh and his brother Jason have struck up a deal for babysitting in order to get “date” time with their spouses. We watch our neice overnight one weekend and then they watch our kids overninght one weekend. (I know, it hardly seems like a fair deal, but hey, I’m not complaining!!!) So we had Charley two weekends ago and this past weekend was their first time taking all our kids. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little nervous about it. But they have said the kids were fine so…okay. Besides, I think they plan to have even more kids than we have so it’s good practice for them. :wow: So Josh took me out for dinner. We went to the Machine Shed in Des Moines because we’d eaten there once before and I’d seen what looked like fabulous desserts but we hadn’t gotten dessert when we were there before so it was our intention to get a fabulous dessert to share. We had a fine meal and our server was very accomodating (Josh was a little high maintenance 
) but by the time we got to the dessert portion of the meal I was STUFFED (even though I’d only eaten half of my burger and about 1/3 of my fries)! So as we looked over the dessert menu we decided that instead of a dessert we’d order a cinnamon roll to have for breakfast in the morning on our way up to Ames where we were meeting my family to work on some projects (believe me, it’s a whole other post!) until our apologetic waiter explained (where the menu did not :rolleye:) that they only sold cinnamon rolls in the morning. BUMMER! So once again we went away from the Machine Shed without any dessert. :( So that was Friday night. Now, skip ahead to this afternoon. Josh had a meeting in Des Moines and usually he eats lunch afterwards with some co-workers, but today he surprised me by coming home for lunch. AND!!!!!!!! He brought me some cinnamon rolls! What a sweetie! Of course he didn’t know that I was back on my “diet” but luckily I had eaten very few calories so far and I DID exercise this morning, so I got to have a cinnamon roll for lunch! YAY! :D And I must say, it was very very good. As I explained to Josh, if I were to imagine the perfect cinnamon roll…ah…it would be nothing like this, but my imagination might be wrong! This tasted like Big Old German Grandma in an Apron with a Rolling Pin Baking up a Storm in a Quaint Cottage Kitchen to Feed the Whole Family a Hearty Country Breakfast…Mmmm
Apparently yesterday was my good friend Candace’s birthday and I did not know this, so I did nothing to congratulate her. So, it’s late but…HAPPY BIRTHDAY “Can-Dance!!!!!!” Hope it was a FABULOUS day for you!!!
Yesterday was Grandpa’s memorial service. Before the service, the family all gathered at Gilead (my grandparents’ home in North Liberty, Ia) and returned Grandpa’s ashes to the earth where Grandma’s were spread almost exactly 8 years ago. Here’s the handsome group.
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Last night, I cooked! I had a dinner made from scratch all ready before Josh made it home from work! I made vegetable soup. And what’s even more amazing is that all the children ate it! (Ok, Cameron didn’t really eat it. But he’d just snacked on a huge apple so I don’t think he was terribly hungry.) The last few nights in a row dinner time has been pretty frustrating to Josh because he asks the kids what they want to eat and then he fixes like 7 different things and they don’t eat it. I saw that our potatoes were getting a bit shriveled and sprouting growth and we have a huge bag of dehydrated diced carrotts that have been sitting in the cupboard for months cause I don’t have a clue what to do with them and we have two bags of celery in the fridge because we all love celery, but we never eat it because no one wants to bother washing and cutting it so I washed them and chopped up the leaves (which I usually just throw away!) and put the leaves in the soup and left the stalks in the fridge ready for snacking. Elise helped me find a third of an onion in a sour cream container in the fridge which was the only onion left in the house so we threw that in, and added some frozen peas which the kids don’t like but Josh loves. All of this I added to a pot of boiling boullion and when it was done the kids couldn’t even taste the peas so although they fussed originally, they ate them all! And there was enough left over for me to eat today and probably tomorrow too! And after eating it myself I decided that it is a good base for even more vegetables to be added so I may throw in some green beans, cabbage or corn. My mom puts beets in her Beef Vegetable soup and they turn the soup pink but you can’t taste them so it’s good soup, but I never buy beets and wouldn’t have a clue what to do with them, besides, I don’t need anything else in the house that stains!!! Just this morning Elena got ahold of a piece of chocolate (I have no idea where she found it!) and so I unknowingly picked her up to take her out to the van so we could go exercise and she got chocolate all over my good white shirt! I assume I’ll be able to get the stain out, but it’s still so frustrating! It’s a very good thing that I wasn’t planning on running any other errands after exercising today or I really would have been mad. Anyway, I made dinner, yay me, and now I’m doing laundry.Â
So tonight we were on our way home from a lovely evening in Des Moines with a few of our siblings and their families, driving East on I-80, and Josh and I were having a conversation about his class requirements for his grad program–his advisor is trying to help him CLEP out of as many classes as possible and he was just telling me about her plan to try to get his MicroEconomics with Dabeet from MCC to count towards meeting his economics requirement (!!! LOL Yay Dabeet!) when I realized that the vehicle trying to pass us in the left lane was laying on their horn. My first thought was “Great! Josh must be swerving into their lane or maybe there is something wrong with our van that they’re trying to tell us…,” but just then as they cleared past us I realized that the dark gray Honda Element had a bared bottom hanging out the rear passenger-side window! Now, I have been mooned before, but never on the road, and certainly not in sub-zero temperatures! That was a brave bottom! Or stupid. Perhaps drunk? Honestly, if you’re going to moon someone on the interstate and honk till they notice you, why not just leave the window up and press against it from the inside? Thankfully, most of my children were asleep. Unluckily, Elise was the only one not sleeping and she was on that side of the car so it is possible that she was exposed to the exposure, but she didn’t say anything and she was asleep very soon after, so I’m hoping she didn’t see it.Â