A family of 4

We are back from our trip for Thanksgiving.  We went up to one of my brothers' homes, which is about half way between us and my parent's place.  All my siblings except for one were there and only one sister-in-law wasn't able to come.  My parents were both there as well as my Grandpa.

I have actually been really looking forward to being together again.  I saw everyone at my Grandma's funeral, but I was ready for us to be together to have some fun.  But I was also dreading it a little bit, just because I thought it would be hard to see Grandpa there without Grandma.

But it was actually ok.  I thought about Grandma a lot, but didn't have a lot of time to spend missing her.  We ate a lot, played a lot of games, the girls got to ride the four wheelers, and just generally enjoyed being together.  We played 9 holes of Frisbee golf, and that was actually a lot of fun.  It was the first time I've ever played and I think we'll be doing it again! 

I, of course, forgot to take pictures.  I'm really bad about that.  So no pictures to show all the fun we had.  You'll have to take my word for it! 

My parents took Baby Girls #3 & 4 back home with them for two weeks.  #3 could have cared less.  She kept telling us, "See you in two weeks!"  I'm sure she'll be ready to come home, but she was so excited to be able to go to Grammy and Pappy's for a while without the older sisters.  #4 wasn't quite as sure about it, but I have no doubt that she'll love the time she spends there too.

It's only been about a day that we haven't had them, but I do miss them a little.  I'm not going to lie--the quiet and the fact that the older two are almost completely self-sufficient has been really nice.  Hubby and I are looking forward to getting to do some things with #1 and #2 that we normally couldn't with the younger girls.  But our family just isn't complete with only four of us.

We'll go back to my brother's house in two weeks and switch out the girls.  Then the older two get to go to the grandparents and we'll have the younger two here.  I'm not so sure I'm looking forward to going back to having just two little ones, but oh well.  It won't be forever!

In the meantime, the older girls are going to help me decorate for Christmas, we're going to go get a tree this weekend, going to a movie and Hubby and I are going on a date.  And that is just this week--we'll have to see what next week holds!

Homemade Crackers--Are They Worth It?

I spent all of yesterday afternoon baking.  And by all afternoon I mean that I started when lunch was over and cleaned up, around one, and had to leave the last pan in the oven as we were walking out the door for church last night at 5:45. 

I wasn't planning on baking.  In fact, I was looking forward to an afternoon with not much to do.  But when we started getting lunch stuff out the girls informed me that there was no more bread in the house.  Which reminded me that I didn't buy much bread last time we were at the store because I had planned on making my own.  So I figured since we had no plans to go anywhere and I had nothing pressing to do, I would bake a couple loaves of bread.

However, once I started thinking about baking I remembered that I had two recipes that I wanted to try for home-made cheez-its and homemade goldfish.  The cheez-its I had already made and we all liked, even Hubby.  Again, I figured I had the time and the ingredients, let's get it all done at once.

I started with the bread.  I've made my own bread before, but I tried a new recipe that didn't involve having to let the dough rise twice before baking.  You make it and let it rise in the loaf pans for about 30 minutes and pop them in the oven.  I like this much better than the two-three hours it was taking with my other recipe.  After I get the dough in the loaf pan I realize that I also need dough for the pizza rolls I am making for dinner on Friday night.  I read somewhere that you can freeze this dough and use it the day of and it still works great.  I figured, why not?  Get it all done now and not have to worry about it on Friday.

Looks good right? And made with whole wheat flour!  Who gets Mother of the Year now?

 Then I get to work on the crackers.  Now, these don't necessarily take that much effort.  They are just time consuming because I have a tiny oven that only holds one baking pan at a time.  Seriously--why are there no homes with full sized ovens anymore?  I could have done 4 pans at once in a full size!  So all told with the crackers I have 10 pans that need to be baked. 

In the middle of this project I start to really question if this is worth my time or not.  I have one friend who I know would tell me that they make cheez-its in a box for a reason.  I have another who would applaud every effort I make to make everything we eat homemade.  I'm somewhere in the middle.  I'm a math person so I decided to figure out actual costs for these crackers.  Just for the cheez-its it ended up that if I were to make these twice a month I would save about $8. 

Part of the cheez-its.  They don't look all that appealing, but they're actually really good.

 My immediate reaction was that there was no way this was worth $8!  But then I remembered that $8 would buy a bag of chicken that would probably get us through two meals.  Or if we were having tacos, which we do about once a week, that $8 would cover the entire meal for us.  Once I realized that I felt pretty proud of myself and decided that the time spent was worth it. 

Until 4 little minions came through and devoured about half of the cheez-its in one snack time.  I'm not kidding--they ate almost half in one fail swoop.  The pride I had in myself quickly diminished into faint annoyance.

Now, I do have to admit, the goldfish (which taste nothing like goldfish, by the way) made a lot more and will last longer.  They also took FOREVER to get them all in and out of the oven.  The blog I read for this recipe actually had the Mom making her own little fish cookie cutter out of a soda can and punching out a million tiny fish.  There is no way!

Triangles are as fancy as I was willing to get!

So my final decision?  Bread is worth making.  The total cost per loaf is way less than a $1 and I know exactly what is in it.  And not really that time consuming.  Homemade crackers on the other hand?  I'm going with friend A and saying, "Those things come in a box for a reason!"