Susan at By Grace tagged me for this 8 Questions meme. She asked 8 questions, I answered them. Then I ask 8 new questions, and tag 8 other bloggers to answer my questions. Here are Susan’s questions:

1. What is your favorite main dish to eat or to cook?
That is a really hard question, for some reason. I LOVE to cook, and love most of the things I cook. Probably my favorite main dish is chicken artichoke casserole. It is soooo good. It helps that my entire family loves it too – we almost never have any left over.

2. What was your favorite pet, anytime in your life?
I don’t really have one that’s a favorite. My dad wasn’t big on pets so we really didn’t have a lot. My brother and I both had a 10-gallon aquarium when we were in junior and high school, and we took frequent trips to the aquarium store in town. It was really fun to see what kinds of fish we could raise (or not). He seemed to be able to keep fish that I couldn’t keep alive and vice versa. When Samuel was pretty small, Stephen we bought him an aquarium, but don’t really have room for it now where it won’t get knocked over.

3. Do you have any unreasonable fears?
Yes, tornadoes. I am terrified of them. When we moved to Indiana that year, I joked that God moved us there to get me over my fear of them. It didn’t work. We get fewer tornadoes through here than we did in Indiana, but I still get nervous when I hear we’re under a tornado watch or warning.

4. What do you love most about your spouse?
Do I have to pick just one? ;O) He desires above all things to please God, and he’s not afraid to be different just because he’s a Christian. On the flip side, he’s not hypocritical and in-your-face about it either.

5. Are you more of a leader or a follower?
Depends on the situation. Most of the time I’m happy to be a follower, but it seems like lately I’m ending up the leader more and more.

6. What is your favorite book of the Bible?
That’s a tie between Psalms and Hebrews. I love Psalms because they’re so comforting. Hebrews is a favorite because I love the contrast between the Old Testament sacrifices and Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. It gets me excited almost every time I read it. So now that I think about it, Hebrews probably wins out over Psalms, but not by a lot. :O)

7. Is there a hobby or skill you’d like to learn but have never done it, for whatever reason?
Two things come to mind. Smocking and playing the guitar. I’d love to learn to smock, but don’t know of any classes local enough to attend. As for playing the guitar – I’m a big chicken. We have a guitar, but I don’t have the patience to let my fingers callous to play without pain. If I weren’t a pianist, it might not be as much an issue. But right now, I really don’t want to have a couple weeks of painful playing at the piano while I wait for my fingers to adjust to the guitar. It sounds lame, but it’s the truth. ;O)

8. What is your decorating style?
Um, what decorating style? I guess I don’t really have one. Our house is small, and most of the living room is done in wood panelling. I like lighter colored decorations to try and keep the room from seeming smaller than it actually is. I LOVE pictures of my family, and collect silver colored picture frames, so they are everywhere. On the walls, on the mantel, on shelves. There are 22 pictures that I can see just from my computer desk. What better decorations than pictures of the ones I love the most??

Here are my 8 questions:

1. What is your favorite hot beverage? Coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate? Something else?

2. What is your favorite season of the year?

3. How old were you when you accepted Christ?

4. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?

5. Are you a morning person or a night owl?

6. Do you have a life verse, or one that is really special to you?

7. If you had a couple hours to do anything you wanted, what would you do?

8. Do you have someone in your life who has been a Spiritual mentor for you?

I tag these 8 people, if you don’t mind participating. Leave me a comment and let me know if you play along!

Karen, Tammy, Tori, Lori, Kristi, Mrs. U, Erin, and Marla

Dipping spices – recipe layered in the jar just to see how it would look. I’m thinking of giving jars of this as gifts this year, but would put the ingredients in a different order to make the layers prettier. We had breadsticks and dipping spices with salads last week and they were delicious!

This week is especially crazy so even though these are the meals that were originally planned at the beginning of the month, they’ve been moved around a bit. I don’t mind cooking from scratch on a busy night, but would prefer to have a quick meal planned for those days.

Sunday: tacos

Monday: potato soup

Tuesday: goulash

Wednesday: chicken parmesan

Thursday: stroganoff and ww pasta

Friday: pizza night

Saturday: grilled chicken, tossed salads, and maybe breadsticks and dipping spices

The meals without veggies listed we’ll just decide then which veggie to eat from the freezer.

Breakfasts are eggs, scones, oatmeal, biscuits, grits, and pancakes.

Lunches are sandwiches, wraps, macaroni and cheese, tuna salad, leftovers, etc. for the kids and lots of salads for Stephen and I.

Snacks are cheese, baby carrots, nuts, fresh fruit, smoothies, etc.

You can read more menu plans over at Orgjunkie.com.

I’ve been playing around with some WordPress plugins. I added a plugin that allows the blog to be viewed easier from a mobile device. I don’t blog often from my PocketPC, but thought the added functionality would be nice.

There’s now a link at the very bottom of the page for you to switch views – from desktop view to mobile or the other way around. The mobile view is very basic but that was the intent.

Everything looks ok on my end, but if you don’t mind, would you let me know if it looks fine to you? Thanks.

My parents were here this week and we all really enjoyed it. The boys especially enjoyed being able to play outside more than usual even though it was pretty hot.

Playing in the sandbox

Playing Sorry with Grammy when it got too hot outside

Helping Daddy replace the screen on the door

Poppy’s girl

Mom and Dad left this morning. The boys took it pretty hard and have already asked when we can go to Grammy and Poppy’s house next. Anna also really enjoyed having them here – she is quite the Grandpa’s girl.

My little Anna is one today. It seems like she was just born yesterday.

We had her birthday party last night. It wasn’t anything huge – just our family and the grandparents – but it was fun.

She loved her cake (strawberry cake with buttercream and chocolate buttercream icing).

She even shared it with Caleb.

Happy Birthday, my sweet girl!!

Anna’s dolly turned out a lot better than I expected her to turn out. It was the Mae doll from Bit of Whimsy dolls.

For the most part, the pattern was really easy to follow. I stuffed her arms and legs too full though, so had a hard time sewing her together at the end. But to do a second doll would be pretty easy (and fun).

It was my first attempt at a rag doll, and I’m thrilled with the results. Isn’t she cute?

We went apple picking today. It was our first field trip of the year and we really enjoyed it. A good friend of mine and her little girl came with us, and it was a lot of fun. It was just over 90 today but it was absolutely gorgeous.

Samuel really enjoyed watching a tractor that was working a couple rows away from where we were picking.

Sam watching the tractor again

The boys really enjoyed just seeing the men work.

Hi, pig!

Tomorrow’s project is to start making that 20 pounds of apples into applesauce. It is going to smell REALLY good in here!

(playing around with sandwiches – the boys loved these)

There’s a bunch of chicken meals this week because we have a ton of chicken in the freezer. We were able to get a bigger freezer last week (for only $20!) and we’re working on filling it with other meats. Anyone local know of a good butcher/meat market where we can get some good beef?

Here’s our menu as I planned it at the beginning of the month. I will be making some changes as we go along though. . . my insulin resistance symptoms are starting to appear again so it looks like it’s time for me to cut out the extra carbs that I’ve been eating.

Sunday: cream cheese chicken

Monday: sesame chicken, brown rice

Tuesday: tacos

Wednesday: chicken pot pie

Thursday: baked ham

Friday: pizza night

Saturday: bbq chicken

The meals without veggies listed we’ll just decide then which veggie to eat from the freezer.

Breakfasts are eggs, scones, oatmeal, biscuits, grits, and pancakes.

Lunches are sandwiches, wraps, macaroni and cheese, tuna salad, leftovers, etc.

Snacks are cheese, baby carrots, nuts, fresh fruit, smoothies, etc.

You can read more menu plans over at Orgjunkie.com.

Samuel needed new pajama pants, so we went looking in my fabric stash for fabric. He picked this lizard print. It’s so loud and silly, but the boys love it. My favorite part is that the fabric cost barely over $1, and there was enough for two pairs of pajama pants.

This year our boys will be getting quilts for Christmas. I’ll be following the Road to Spring Quilt-a-long instructions.

The hardest part so far was picking out the fabric. The boys share a room, so I wanted the two quilts to coordinate, but not match exactly. Instead of picking out 20 different fabrics, I chose 13 so that some of the fabric can be used in both quilts.

Samuel loves green, so I picked greens and blues for his quilt.

Caleb still hasn’t shown much of a preference yet. I saw the red, white, and blue star fabrics and loved how they look together. Then at the next store, I found the green and cream star fabrics too.

The neutral fabric I’ll be using is just a plain unbleached muslin that I already had in my stash. The backing is also muslin from that same shopping trip. Now I just need to find a binding fabric, but that will be from my stash as well. A scrappy binding would be fun. . .

Hopefully these will look as good completed as they do in my mind!