The Wheels Are Spinning!!

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Thursday, September 29, 2011 7:12 PM

     So busy day around these parts.  Hubby is on duty so no break from the kiddos in sight until some time on Friday.  We made it through are day safely, and with only minor potty train accidents.  That screams victory at our house.  Dinner was left overs because Daddy was on the ship, so no reason for me to cook myself a meal.  The kids still really do not eat enough for me to justify cooking a meal with no other adults at the house.

    Then my friends tells me I should market one of my skills.  She may be right on with that thought.  So my brain is spinning 90 miles an hour with questions.

  1. What would I call my business?
  2. Is that name already taken on the web?
  3. Would people really want to buy that from me?
  4. How would I start it off?
  5. Do I build a client list first, or start on the product?
  6. When is a realistic goal to launch my product?
  7. Will my husband think I am insane?
  8. Will this benefit my family in the long run?
  9. Why did I never think of this my self?
  10. Then just a general AHHHHHH??? As I sit here pondering all of the above.
I am a total "A" personality.  I love to make list, and I have notebooks all over my house.  The good news is with the hubby on duty I can stay up making list about this pending venture, and not feel guilty.  I tend to feel guilty when I don't make some time every night for the hubby.  I think that having spouse time every night is important.  Ecspecially when the military makes sure he has duty every four days.    

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My little Ken man

Posted by jablocker , , Wednesday, September 28, 2011 10:19 PM

Kenaniah is in to everything and going everywhere.  Always full of smiles and having a good time with anything he does.  He does like to voice his opinion on the matter of him being the center of attention.  Not very much for crying unless he wants something, and no one around him will get it for him.  He loves his big brother who is always helping him get something, or just leaving something out so that Ken can grab it.  

     He is ten and a half months old now.  He has two teeth and he will stand up by himself.  He does try to walk when you hold his hands, but has no intention of trying to take steps by himself.  His favorite game right now is peek-a-boo.  He just can not get enough of his big brother playing with him.  Blankets are excellent toys at the moment. 

     I am anxious to see what kind of things the two boys will get into as they grow.  For right now Korvin is my kind hearted big brother that will give Ken anything to make him stop crying.  Ken is still a puzzle to me, but always full of smiles.  This little guy smiles the majority of the time.


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The Funk

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , 7:26 AM

     I have been in a total funk for 2 days now.  There is no real reason, but grumpy me is  here.  Today I plan to leave the house and hope that makes it better.  Who knows but something has to give. I have recently revamped my entire schedule.  I do not think that is the reason for the funk to have invaded, but I am looking for ideas to snap out of it.

     I have been taking my vitamins, getting up early making the hubby breakfast, and doing a short morning devotional each day.  Now as for exercising at home it depends.  If the boys wake up early it usually gets thrown out the window.  Some days they sleep in, but I have been known to just crawl back in bed and read instead of working out.  I started the entirely new schedule so that I could get more me time into the day.   This just leaves me puzzled as to where the funk came from.

     So as I do have about 5 blog post in draft at the moment none of the are finished.  I am going to set a new goal to ensure there is a new post available on Tuesdays and Thursdays for sure.  All other post I get out will be a bonus for us all.  I hope all of you are doing well out there in the blogosphere, and I will see you all tomorrow with a new post.

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Pesto

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , Sunday, September 25, 2011 8:11 PM

Garden pickings
     Well here is a picture of all the things that the garden had to offer last night. We had basil, rosemary, savory, tomatoes, jalapenos, and birds eye peppers.  Basil is overly abundant right now but I know it will not be in the coming months.  So I made a batch of pesto to put in the refrigerator for later. First I pulled all the leaves off of the stems.  I let them soak in a sink of cool salt water for about 30 minutes.  This gets all the bugs and dirt off of the leaves.

Freshly washed basil
     After it is done soaking I placed it in a colander, and let it drip dry.  While it was drying I peeled four entire cloves of garlic.  The garlic peeling probably took about 45 minutes. That meant that there was plenty of time for the basil to dry off a bit.

     Now I went about putting all of the garlic in my food processor. I also put in a dash of white wine. Next, I piled basil leaves in to the top, and put the lid on only to add more basil until the shoot was full too.  I turned the food processor on and let it begin breaking everything down.  Once most of the leaves were down into the bowl I commenced adding in the olive oil.  I opened it to scrape the sides down one time, and then blended it for a few more seconds. 
pesto in the ice tray

Now I wanted to save the pesto for a later date so I decided on freezing it.  I did not want to freezer the entire batch together so I divded it in to and ice cube tray.  Most trays will hold about two tablespoonfuls in each section.  This way it will know how much pesto I am grabbing out of the freezer at a time. 

After it was completely frozen I popped the cubes into a ziploc bag, and squeezed the air out. As a note pesto typically has pine nuts in it, bution was out and they are expensive.  I also have a difficult time finding them at the local stores. 

Now if only my tomatoes produced as well as my jalapenos I would be set.  As for right now I have way more peppers than tomatoes.  I will make as much salsa as I can with the tomatoes that I have.  I guess I will have to try making pepper jelly for the first time with all these extra peppers.







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Chocolate covered peanut butter balls!!

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Saturday, September 24, 2011 10:16 PM



Well we started off this morning making our oatmeal peanut butter balls.  Korvin helped by dumping ingredients in to the mixer for me. I will post the recipe at the bottom do not worry. Then we moved our work station over to the island to start making the balls.



When I turned around to get a sheet of wax paper some one took a taste.  The product was approved before we even got to our experimental chocolate coating.

Sneaking a taste
All mixed up







After we got all the balls made we placed them into the refrigerator so the balls would firm up.  Fast forward several hours, and the boys finally got put down to bed.  At around this point I started preparing the chocolate for melting.  My beautiful white chocolate chips were starting to melt.... Mom moment my oldest comes out to say he needs to potty.  I assign my husband to potty assist because chocolate is tricky stuff some times.  Sure enough there is a parental assist needed because my youngest needs a number 2 change.  (My husband does not do number 2's unless it is a dire emergency.  That however is a totally different post.)

To make a long story short my white chocolate burned to a lovely brown color.  Parenting moment over I start over with the half bag of  milk chocolate that I have left.  It must not be my night because I have trouble getting it to melt smoothly.  I did eventually get it melted, and begin coating my oatmeal PB balls in chocolate.
The chocolate
Note how nice they look with the chocolate pooling around the bottoms.  Now imagine them all neatly sitting on the cookie sheet being transferred to the refrigerator so that the chocolate will cool faster.
MMMM pooling chocolate


Disaster strikes!! That is right folks got them all the way to the refrigerator and dropped the pan.  Chocolate was everywhere.  So I scooped them all up and dumped them onto the cookie sheet.

Disaster zone

They were laid back out neatly and sent to the refrigerator.  They do taste good as samples were in order after I cleaned all the chocolate out of the refrigerator.



Oatmeal Peanut Butter Balls:

3 cups oats
2 cups raw peanut butter
1 cup local honey
3/4 cup flax seed meal
1/2 cup unsalted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup craisans

Mix all the ingredients together.  Then roll into cookie size balls. Store in the refrigerator between wax paper sheets in a sealed container.

For the chocolate I just melted down Toll House chocolate chips.




On a fun note I picked a huge load of stuff from our garden so next I will be making some pesto in the near future to freeze up for the winter months.  Look for that soon.







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Cooking experiment

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 11:33 AM

I love to experiment in my kitchen with everything. I will take a new recipe and twist around to make a new dish. I take my old recipes and twist them around for a new taste. Today I am going to attempt the latter. I am going to take my classic oatmeal peanut butter balls and coat them in white chocolate. I will post the recipe for ever one tonight if it works out to my liking. Really what could go wrong with peanut butter and chocolate. Well I am off to experiment with my two year old in tow. I hope you all have a great day with the weekend blog hops.

2 comments

Blog Hopping

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , Friday, September 23, 2011 10:54 PM

Well I spent what time I got to myself today out on the blog hopping circuit. There are some awesome blogs out there. Hoping to find a few more blog friends out there in the world wide web. I hope everyone else had a good day. The two hops I saw with badge links are posted on my blog hop page.

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Weekend Blog Hop

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , 6:37 AM

2 comments

Love conquers all!

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Thursday, September 22, 2011 9:50 PM


     I fully believe that God, and love for my kids got us to the end of the day.

     We started our morning with diaper leak on my Ken man.  Later Korvin, my potty trainer had a poop disaster. I will simply leave it at the description of muddy foot prints around my kitchen.  We made it past dinner.  Then not 30 minutes after they are tucked in bed both boys fill their pants.


     So after multiple loads of laundry, and general clean up the day is ending.  We all survived, and I did not lose my mind.  I am certain God kept my on the right path today.  The love for my children only made the clean up process a little better.  Korvin dearly loves depositing things in the washing machine which helps too.





















Now off to a little adult time before bed! Going to start fresh in the morning, and see what the day brings.

3 comments

Poop happens

Posted by jablocker , , 3:34 PM

     This is the story that led me to create blogs for both of the boys. As we begin the story know that Kenaniah is in the middle of his morning nap.

     Korvin and I are in the kitchen discussing the peanut butter sandwich that he says he needs.  So I make the peanut butter sandwich while we are discussing the cat playing by the back door.  I ask him if he needs to go potty before he sits down. (We are in the middle of potty training.)  He says no and climbs into his chair.  I let him know that I will be right back, and that I am going to the potty.

     Seriously i make it to the bathroom, and sit down.  Then I hear "MOM HELP POTTY!!"  I rush out of the bathroom as fast as possible imagining the mess he could be making.  He is standing in the kitchen doorway as I round the corner from the bathroom.  He takes one step around the piano and I can see the problem.  Poop is everywhere!!! I pick him up and put him in the bath tub for safe keeping.  Then I head back to the kitchen to do some damage control so that the dogs do not spread the mess. 

     Had the incident been with mud this would be the best swiffer wet jet commercial ever.  So the kitchen floor got cleaned, laundry got started, and Korvin got a shower.  Next thing on the list is to make it until daddy get home in one piece.  Oh and somewhere in there we have to make dinner.  For right now it is mommy time as the minions are sleeping.

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Ahhh Moment

Posted by jablocker , Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , Wednesday, September 21, 2011 9:58 PM

My husband has duty so he is gone for about 36-40 hours.  He will then come home exhausted because he rarely sleeps on duty.  Korvin is potty training, and Kenaniah is cutting a tooth.  Really could use some adult conversation right about now. 

I wonder some days where I got the idea that homeschooling might be for us.  I feel confident that I will make a good teacher.  The thing that bothers me is will I be able to maintain the house, direct school, and still make time for myself?

I just started putting time for myself back on the list of things I need to do.  Kenaniah is just now 10 months old, and playing by him self a bit more.  Korvin is turning out to be an awesome big brother. In fact so much so that it is making bed time a circus at our house.  The boys share a room so if Kenaniah starts crying at bed time Korvin gets up and gives him a toy.  If that does not work he reads him books.  All the while I just want them to both lay down and SLEEP!! Korvin likes to have the light on as he has recently started waking with bad dreams in the middle of the night.  Kenaniah seems to prefer the room to be pitch black, cold, and quiet so he can go to sleep.  Just another never ending battle right there.

Now the good news for the blog.  It turns out I have bouts of insomnia when the hubby is on duty.  So I will have plenty of time to write stuff, and keep it up to date.  The bad news is that the next day I might not be so up in the SUPER MOM rankings.  One day at a time! We have been dealing with duty days for months, and I still get very little sleep on duty nights.  That leaves me to wonder how I will survive an entire deployment with kids. That however is an entirely different blog post.

I hope everyone out there in the blog world is doing well.



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