Chicken Curry

I tried a new recipe tonight of chicken curry with apples. I found the recipes at Linday's blog
It was really good and not too hard to make as it was my first time making curry. We ate ours over brown rice, served with salad and bread.

Chicken Curry

Makes 6-8 servings

This recipe extends for several meals at our home! It is very freezable as well! Serve a smaller portion, balanced with vegis and rice and/or naan and it will stretch quite a bit!

2-4 Chicken thighs, cut into chunks (depending on how much meat you would like!)
2 Tbsp whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp curry powder
4 Tbsp ginger, fresh and finely chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, fresh and finely chopped (start with four and add more as needed)
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 green apple, chopped
3 Tbsp curry powder
6 or more Tbsp whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp sea salt (lower this amount to 1-2 tsp if you are using canned chicken broth)
1 Tbsp rapadura or other natural sweetener
2 1/2 cups (or approx. 1 1/2 -15 oz cans) chicken broth
2 1/2 cans (14 oz) coconut milk

Combine chicken, 2 Tbsp of flour & 1 Tbsp of curry powder in a Ziploc or bowl to coat. Fry lightly in oil (preferably coconut oil) in a frying pan for just a few minutes until cooked. Set aside.

Combine fresh garlic, ginger, onion, apple, curry powder, flour, sweetener and salt in frying pan. Allow to fry under medium heat to mold the ingredients together (around 10 minutes), until onions are transparent, heated completely through. Add liquids - chicken broth & coconut milk, and stir frequently until heated through and thickened. Add more flour to thicken as needed. Add breaded chicken.

*note: I cut the recipe in half. I still used the same amount of chicken, but I did half of everything else and it still made alot. I just didn't have enough curry powder or coconut milk. I added ginger, salt and honey to taste. I also added sliced zucchini 5 minutes before serving. Very good! Thanks Lindsay!

My Sister's Wedding

Here is a pic of me dressed up as a bridesmaid.

Aren't we a cute family? I am so blessed!

Sharla and me before the wedding. She was quite the beaming bride.

Nate and Sharla, the happy couple

We spent Saturday in Olympia this past weekend for my sister's wedding. I have had a awful head cold this past week and have been so run down that we weren't able to make it the rehearsal the night before. We just drove up the day of and it was a very pretty wedding.
My sister and I have similar tastes without even knowing it, at least I didn't. She wore the exact same wedding dress that I did. Not intentionally though. She simply tried it on and loved it and soon realized(not sure when she realized it), that it was the same dress that I wore! How funny, except she added a lovely plum accent ribbon around the waist. And the bridesmaid's dresses were black just like at my wedding(but with a ribbon added as well.) So, yeah, it was a nice wedding and they were blessed with good weather for an outdoor reception. It has been so wonderful to see God work in my sister's life and finally bring a loving husband into her life. They seem very happy together.

It's Been Awhile

Where have I been this past month, almost month and a half? I don't know. Maintaining life as best I can. I get so exhausted when I'm pregnant. I have been blessed, I know, in that I don't get sick. But being pregnant takes so much energy that I feel like I just barely get done the basics everyday. I know that if I wasn't pregnant my house would be cleaner, more organized, and I would be exercising regularly. But I'm pregnant and lack the desire and energy to get extras done. It is for a time I know. I look forward to when my energy returns.

We've also been a little busy just with summer and all. We had another trip to the beach and celebrated Elijah's 2nd birthday.

Elijah turned 2 on August 19th! So for 6 weeks I have two two year olds! Moses will be 3 on the 28th!

Hmm, what else? My older sister is getting married! So I drove to Oly last weekend a week ago by myself with the boys for her bridal shower. Here is a picture of me and her. I look tired of course, but she was glowing and looked like a bride-to-be!

I spent the day up there and then drove back that night! Wow, I was tired, but managed. ANd the wedding is this weekend and we're all going up this Friday and staying to Saturday night or Sunday morning. I am a bridesmaid and the colors are black and plum. I wonder if she liked the idea of black from my wedding. I should ask her. Anyways, so I really didn't want to buy a dress that I woudn't wear again for a while anyway, so I am actually borrowing a dress from a friend. The funny thing is it's a dress from the choir of the college I went to! But it looks really nice. I will post pictures after the wedding.


oh yeah, how could I forget? Ryan and I celebrated our 4th anniversary on September 4th.

Our wedding day


Our anniversary

4 years go by too fast

We had a friend babysit for us and we went out to the most amazing Thai restaurant called Typhoon! I love thai and have eaten at my fair share of restaurants and I have to say that I think this is the best. They are top rated if you look it up online. ANd they use really high quality ingredients and no msg. ANyways, oh yeah our anniversary--haha! Yeah, it was really special. Ryan bought me 2 dozen roses(he said it was a better deal that way), and it was really funny when he handed them to me because Moses was so enthralled by the large bouquet that he said, "thank you daddy for getting them for mommy!" It was cute. We had an enjoyable evening together by ourselves and it was just nice to get away from the everyday stuff and just enjoy being together.


I haven't been to the doctor yet. I'm starting my 14th week today. I will go to the doctor on the 16th for a consultation to discuss the possibility of my having a VBAC with them. They didn't say no outright to me know that I have had 2 previous c-sections which is encouraging. I am just hoping that they let me try! I have been really emotional about the birth of this next one actually. I have been doing a lot of reading to educate myself about vbacs and the whole birthing process. I never read any books before and I wisht that I had. I feel so different now that I have read so much. We even considered the idea of a homebirth for awhile but have decided to be at the hospital just in case. The percentage of rupturing is actually so small, but there is still that chance. ANyways, it's so hard, i just want to have a natural birth and not have another c-section.

Well, hopefully I'll stay a little more up to date from now on, we'll see!

About the Dishwashing Post

Just a minor detail: I realized the other day when I paid the bill that it was actually the power bill and not the water bill that we saved money on. Just FYI. I don't know if it affected the water bill or not. We pay water every other month and we've not got that bill yet.

I'm Impressed

So this is interesting. I was reading on Lindsay's blog last month about hand washing versus using the dishwasher. And you would think that because you're doing something by hand that you have to be saving money somehow right? Well, I decided to stop hand washing our dishes and strictly use the dishwasher, except for big items or things that really needed to be hand washed.(why would I hand wash when I have a dishwasher in the first place? Because I thought I was conserving energy. It turns out that I wasn't), except for big items or things that really needed to be hand washed. So, we just got our water bill today and in the past month our water bill went down by $22! Like I said, I'm impressed. We don't have the greatest dishwasher in the world, I still have to maybe rinse a glass or two that didn't get fully clean, but it's not too bad.

Week 7

Why does being pregnant have to be so much of not fun stuff? I have no energy, this month I have had no motivation to go walking like I was doing. I'm happy if I just get the boys outside for a half hour to play. My desire for salads and eating healthy is about zip compared to what it used to be. I have not thrown up, but just an occasional queezy moments. Certain foods sound awful to me, and things I used to eat and love, I really can't stand right now, like avocados--weird. I made a big green salad tonight and added alot of veggies, even thought I didn't want to eat it I thought if I just made it and put it on the table and try and force myself to eat it, I'll eat it. But I just could not eat it. I managed to just eat some plain romain lettuce leaves after my dinner which was a bit encouraging. It's all I can do to try and make food for the rest of the family and force myself to eat it too. And my brain is half gone. I'm so forgetful and just can't seem to keep up with what I used to do. I feel like I'm trudging through my day. I can't wait until I get more energy sometime in the coming months. With Moses I didn't feel good until I was about 20 weeks along!! Elijah, I don't quite remember. Oh yes, my baby is about the size of a small blueberry according to babycenter.com.

Camping Trip July 2008

We had a great camping trip this past weekend. Like most vacations however, it was a bit tiring, and it's taking a few days to recover! It's a lot of work going camping with two little guys, but definitely worth it! The strangest thing for me was actually being the parents, and being the one to take my children camping. Does that make sense? When you're a kid you don't have all the responsibility, and there is always mom or dad to look to for help. But this trip was a whole new experience since it's the first time I've camped since being married. It's a strange reality to have arrived at this place in life: I just had to sit and marvel at the fact that I have children now and my husband and I are the ones taking them camping and creating new memories for our family. So here are some of those memories!

Moses was excited, along with Elijah, to go camping!

We were packed and ready for our trip on Sunday morning. It's a tight squeeze taking a family of four camping in a small 4 dour car. Our plan was to go to church with our car packed and leave right after.

We were quite packed in!

It's amazing how much stuff we took camping with us! Most of which we really needed and did use.

Our campsite: You can see me by the fire on the left and our table is kind of messy. We arrived a bit later then we expected because we stopped to pick blueberries at a u-pick farm along the way! So we were hurriedly trying to set up camp and get dinner going because the boys were hungry. I made chicken in the slow cooker the day before and refrigerated it. We reheated it over the fire with BBQ sauce(wrapped in foil ), and then we had homemade pasta salad and baked beans (heated up on our camping stove).

Some good friends let us borrow their tent which was a great blessing.

Papa and Elijah. I didn't get Elijah to smile in this shot, but he really was having a great time!

Our first morning eating breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage


We had a beautiful gorgeous day on Monday!


We hung out with some good friends over at the beach and the guys had a great time digging a moat around a big mound of sand. Do you see a resemblance in the background?


Janine and I enjoyed visiting and taking pictures of our boys having fun in the sand!

The Boys had a lot of fun!

Elijah sitting on Moses' lap in a little chair by our campfire

Beach Campfire

Our last morning hair, and there!
Moses sleeping so soundly, but I had to wake him yup so we could pack up our stuff. The boys slept great by the way, considering it was really cold and a whole new sleeping experience.

It was a joy to experience camping with our boys and be together as a family.