Sweet & Sour

As I was running out the door to get to church early for praise team rehearsal, this cute little girl was chilling on her stool, eating the fresh-baked chocolate chip muffins I made for breakfast, and just generally looking adorable.

We had a great morning of Sunday school, and a great worship service today. Our pastor is still out on sabbatical, so Dr. Jim Henry preached for the second week in a row. And he’s an incredible preacher. He is the former pastor of Orlando First Baptist Church, and our former interim pastor back in 2013/2014, before Pastor Ronny came. He preached a great sermon today about “desert experiences,” and what we can learn when we’re wandering the wilderness of life. It was really good. Plus, our Sunday school teacher Sean, made the public announcement today that he feels called to full-time ministry, and is going to start taking online seminary classes. It was just a big morning!After church, Emmie and Ryan walked back and forth like this about 10 times, while we all chatted a bit, then Emmie was just dying to go see the stained glass window with the water!

We had lunch with our friends Ashlee and Louis at Zaxby’s, and had a really nice time together.

I got Emerson down for her nap relatively easy today, and then I got dinner in the Crock-Pot. A few weeks back, I asked for easy recipes, and I got quite a few from you guys! Tonight we made my friend Lisel’s recipe for Crock-Pot Sweet & Sour Meatballs. You literally just dump in these ingredients, plus I added ½ a can of water, and some diced onion. I did it on high for about 4 hours, and it was perfect.

The boys are helping at Bo’s church camp this week, so they went to leader training for most of the afternoon. After getting the food in the Crock-Pot, I laid down to take a nap myself. Normally, I’m just not very good at naps, and today I was only slightly better. I stayed in bed for about two hours, but I woke up approximately 48 times…. Oh well, I did still feel better when I woke up.Daddy was having some cookies when Emmie and I woke up, so he shared some with is. I was about to take her outside for a quick photo shoot in this adorable turquoise dress, but it started raining. So an indoor picture with yellow slippers is what we got instead! 😂

She was calling Gammy!

The three of us loaded up to head to Meg & Bo’s church to pick up the boys, and we got to visit with the triplets for a bit! This is Ellie, and she was actually the only one I took a photo of while we were there. She had just woken up, and she was so surprised at the world! But my goodness is she adorable or what?!

We had some more snacks at home, ½ a muffin and we shared two of these new cherry plum fruits. They’re so good!

And then we read lots of books. Gabe played with Emmie while I got the rest of dinner ready, by just cooking some white rice and trimming and steaming some fresh broccoli.

And y’all, these meatballs turned out so yummy! I loved the pineapple tid bits in them. The kids all picked the pineapples out, but that was my favorite part. They did however clean their plates aside from that, so I think this was definitely a win! I also made way more than was necessary, so we have enough for Jeff and I to have it for lunch twice this week, plus another container that I put in the freezer, for the three of us to have next month once the boys go back to their mom’s house.

Emmie wanted to “help cook it!” So she helped stir the butter into the rice, but she just had to use her own spoon.

We got everything cleaned up after dinner, and Emmie into her PJs. She asked for a brownie, so I let her have half of one. And she was just being so cute and silly, sitting on her stool, and wearing her sunglasses. Then she was pretending that her garden cart was the vacuum cleaner!

She absolutely loves this new cup Grammy and Papa got for her birthday. She’s always wanting her “sun cuppy.”

She wanted to read Peter Pan first, and then decided she wanted to read Coco too, so I read both, but I skipped every other page of Coco, to shorten it up a bit. And she was none the wiser! (I know we’ll get to a point she’ll be too smart for that, but it works great for now, haha!)

Jeff had gone over to his parents house around 5:30, to help them install a new washer & dryer set they purchased, after their 17-year-old washer finally bit the dust yesterday! We had dinner and did bedtime without him, but he got back right around 8pm. Him and the boys have been working on laundry, and they cleaned the living room, while I cleaned the kitchen. I think we’re mostly caught up on chores for the day now, so of course we’re going to watch the season finale episode of “Stranger Things” season three. I thought we had two left, but we just realized this is the last one! Super excited to see how this season ends!