(NOT) Homemade Sour Cream Enchiladas

3/4 C. Sour Cream [about 1/3 of a 1lb container]
1 10.5 oz can Cream of Chicken
small can chopped green chilies
Shredded Cheddar [ I used a cheddar Monterrey Jack combo]
frozen chicken Taqitoes [I used El Monterrey brand]

Mix the soup and sour cream. Add green chilies to your heat preference.

Put the Taquitoes into a glass oven proof dish in one layer. Spread the sour cream sauce on top and then top generously with shredded cheese.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

HAWAIIAN FALLS GIVEAWAY

This is a announcement from http://www.northtexaskids.com

Giveaway: I Wanna' Make A Splash!

It's summertime in Texas, which means I'm one HOT mama (literally!) and I could use a great way to cool off … without breaking the bank. My fingers are crossed (oh, the toes, too) that I can snag the North Texas Kids Splashfest fun pack for the whole family.

This awesome giveaway includes four passes to Splashfest, a water-filled family expo at Hawaiian Falls in The Colony, and a rockin' cabana! Best part(s), well in addition to the total greatness that is free stuff? Radio Disney, 20 family-friendly vendors and Sci-Tech Discovery Center (hello, poolside science for the kiddos? Sweet!) will all be there.Event Details:
North Texas Kids Splashfest
benefiting Sci-Tech Discovery Center?Hawaiian Falls in The Colony
Saturday, July 18
11 am-4 pm
discounted admission tickets available at www.northtexaskids.com

While I'd love to win the golden ticket, I'm a sucker for dishing details—especially when other mamas can benefit. So, here goes. If you, too, would like a chance to soak in the sun, fun and latest in parenting support courtesy of North Texas Kids magazine, simply copy this entry (including headline and the above link to the pub) and repost it on your own mama blog, then shoot the magazine an e-mail at  HYPERLINK "mailto:info@northtexaskids.com"info@northtexaskids.com to let them know you're participating (be sure to include a link to your post). 

Next Thursday, a winner will be drawn from the "inbox" and notified via e-mail … it's that easy!

Good luck ladies, may the "hottest" mama win. ;)

Thanks for your help!

Minette Riordan

Publisher

North Texas Kids magazine

Advances in Robotics

I read a blog today about this
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/04/08/japan's-child-robot-learns-to-walk/>
it is abotu a robot learning.

I thought it was interesting :-)

Easy Enchiladas (with home made sauce)

Easy enchilada sauce

2 Tablespoon Oil
2 Tablespoon all purpose flour
2 Tablespoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
2 cups water

heat oil in large 2 quart sauce pan. Stir in flour and chili powder.
Cook for one minute. add remaining ingredients. bring to a boil and
simmer for 10 minutes.

Easy enchilada's : preheat oven to 350 F

ingredients of your choice : shredded Mexican blend, or cheddar, or
Monterey jack; grilled onions (YUMMY!), grilled bell peppers, olives,
cooked meat of your choice...

Prepare corn tortilla's by softening them. The traditional way is to
fry them in hot oil for a couple of seconds. heating them in the
microwave will also soften them but the taste is slightly different.

place a small amount of sauce on the bottom of the pan before placing
the enchiladas.

insert the ingredients of your choice and then roll. Place in a 9x13
(or smaller pans separating out each family members choices). place
in the pans seam side down. Cover with enchilada sauce and sprinkle
with cheese. heat in the oven for 20 minutes for just until the
cheese is melted and bubbly.

DID you KNOW that MAGICAL things HAPPEN every DAY?

I want to do a blog highlight!  

I am a part of a group that was started by the founder of the website Magical Childhood.  I am really blessed to be a part of her group.  She is the infamous author of the article:  What Should a 4 Year Old Know?  This article has been sited all over the web by people who believe that children will LEARN so stop forcing flashcards down their throat.  She has a lot to offer,  she is a mom of 5, she has wonderful ideas.  Her main website is A Magical Childhood and it offers up articles on so many helpful things, like how to make homemade ooblek to ideas for art and other wonderful crafts.  

She has started a blog to go along with the Magical Childhood site, and although it just started I know that there will be a lot of great and 'cool' things that will be coming through there.  I definitely suggest that you add this one to your feed reader.   The Magical Childhood Blog   will be one of your favorite reads, I promise.

Find her website here:  A Magical Childhood

Find the New Magical child Blog here:  A Magical Childhood Blog

Find her Home school Blog here:  Magic and Mayhem

Find a wonderful yahoo group of AP Mama's here.

EDIT:  Alicia kindly let me know that she had 4 children and 1 husband, not 5 children as previously mentioned.  

Too much time (and Beer) on their hands

I watched this youtube video today.  I thought it was hilarious.  I am glad I am not theone that had to clean up after them... 

If anyone that reads this can translate this to english I would be interested in know what the text says (just not interested enough to transcribe and input into a translation matrix LOL)

Books for learning

I use google feed reader every day. I subscribe to all kinds of feeds
from Mommy blogs to Frugal/money saver blogs, to home school and
Montessori.

Today on the blog Montessori for Everyone, She wrote about the books
she thought essential in an Elementary classroom (or home school
bookshelf).

I recommend going and reading her blog today I might just be about to
spend a lot of money on books lol.

<http://www.blog.montessoriforeveryone.com/recommended-elementary.html>

April
--
Turn off the TV and read a book. It is called thinking outside the 'box'.

Shoe throwing: The new insult

I was minding my own business browsing through my emails in GMAIL and up popped this news piece in the news feed.

Protester Throws Shoe at China's Premier 

It only reminded me of this:

Iraqi journalist hurls shoes at Bush

and then I wondered, with all the shoe throwing going on, is there a lot of left wing elitist gits walking around limping because they only have one shoe on?  I mean come on, I don't like you so I am going to throw my shoe at you??  Therefore making my chances of running away (or rather GETTING away by running) unsuccessful.

Is this one of those times where you award an 'I'm Stoopid' sign?

You might think that by calling some imaginary people 'left wing elitist gits' that I am a right wing moral upstanding citizen.

You would be wrong.  I believe in making fun  equal representation of  all political idiots.

Rice pudding is my nemesis

So every month or so, instead of SAVING leftover rice to eat, I decide I just have to make some rice pudding.   Well I call it rice pudding, but growing up it was just called sweet rice.   So whatever you want to call it be my guest.   You take leftover rice and you dump a bunch of milk over it in a pan and you cook it for like 20 minutes at a simmer and sometime in there you add some sugar and spices of your choice.   I like cinnamon and nutmeg.   You simmer away and at about the 12-14 minute mark slowly stir in 2 beaten eggs.   (See the addition of eggs makes it pudding because pudding has eggs.   AND  if it didnt have eggs it would just me some milky sweet rice mixture that was just thrown together but because there is eggs you totally meant to make this gloppy mess)

But hell on wheels I just can't figure out why I make this stuff.   Imean I make it, set it on the counter to cool, have a very small portion of it usually consisting of me walking by about 10 times and jabbing my finger into it and tasting it...  then 24 hours later I come along and throw the stuff away because really I don't like it and no one else here will eat it.

So why do I make it? I don't have a clue.   I mean why does a man not ask for directions and why do Jehovah Witnesses ask you if you know jesus when obviously you are alive and they believe Jesus is the cause of all that so why do they go around asking unless they aren't sure in which case why are they asking me since I totally don't know.

So if you hear me say I plan on making rice pudding please remind me that I don't like it.

SENSA weightloss my my ass

So I have been using Sensa for about a month (in a day or so).   I weighed myself this morning and I weighed 211.5 and I was like woohoo, I am using this powdered white stuff that they say is 'just smells' to make my brain say "you're full, you fatty" but really is probably amphetamines in disguise because whoever heard of smells in white powder form?

So I am brushing my teeth (at 12pm because when you home school you can totally sleep in and then do school after lunch)  thinking about 211.5 and I think, "I wonder if I weigh again if it will be the same?   Cause I mean I haven't been dieting or anything and I didn't zero the scale out so I bet it was a mistake."    Well who is always right?   WHO?   Me that's who.   I shouldn't argue with myself.   I zero'd the scale out and the new weight is

217.5

I wish I could say I was happy about that number but I have that body dismorphic disorder where you look in the mirror and your eyes see a big flabby fat ass.   The number is lower than
the starting number and I HAVEN'T done anything to lose weight other than sprinkle white powder on most of the food that I eat.    OK so I am a little happy and a little pissed off because really free weight loss products should kick ass.

Ok so almost 10 pounds in a month (226 - 217.5 = 8.5) 8.5 pounds is no laughing matter for a month.

Congratulations to me.

Mommy dating / Girl dates

I was invited to go grocery shopping with Woman I met on freecycle.
This happened last week. I went shopping and afterwards she asked me
over to her house. Her husband (no kids) was out of town and I felt
really naughty for going.. I mean frozen food in the trunk, my hubby
at home with the kids.

But I did. I went to her house. I drank apple cider from a packet
and she drank something... not sure she mentioned it wasn't tea so
that it wouldn't keep her up all night.

We got there about TEN and I Left a little after midnight. I felt
exhilarated! I felt like I had been on a date.

Then today I read this article and realized, I felt that way because
pretty much it WAS a date.

<http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2008/11/06/the_perils_of_mommy_dating/>

It was a meeting of two people in a public place to initiate
friendship and find out if you can stand each other. That is what
dating is right?

So I went on a girl date.

I am so proud of me for making a friend. We have been emailing a
little about gardens and compost. Just what close friends talk about
right [GRIN]!

Sensa media todo's and an update

I wanted to mention some recent articles that have been written on Sensa.

The first one is on the Daily Candy. I was checking the site out
after Amanda sent me the link and the Daily Candy seems like a hip fun
place. I like pages that have good articles and arrange them in such
an easy way to navigate.

The Daily Candy featured 2 articles about Sensa on January 7, 2009.
The links are below:
<http://www.dailycandy.com/new_york/article/40986/Sensationally+Thin>
<http://www.dailycandy.com/new_york/article/40987/Sprinkle+Your+Way+to+Slim>

The two articles are good at distilling the main ideas about Sensa. I
like the Sensationally Thin one because it is all simply technical :-)

Today, Sensa is featured on the homepage on HSN and MSN. The links are below:
<http://www.hsn.com/todays-special_xh.aspx?cm_re=billboard*SENSA_DietProgramTS_BB_and_Launch*background>
http://www.msn.com/ (Shopping Section on homepage)

This is a link to buy Sensa from HSN and there is also some reading
material on there about it. It is on Today's Special (1/26/2009) for
74.95 for a 2-month starter kit. If you visit the Daily Candy article
you can click through to a sale for 31 percent off on a 3 month
starter kit - the better deal.

I am on my 3rd week on Sensa. I feel ok, I am not constipated (more
of the opposite but not quite), my energy levels are good, and I am
losing weight... a little bit but still losing.

I want an electric treadmill but I don't want to pay $1000 or more. I
asked on freecycle but no luck. <sigh>

HS activities and posterity

For activities with the kids: I joined 2 groups. One 'free' group.
The kind you find on yahoo and etc. They do park days and started a
coop this year that I didnt join in on because it was happening while
I was busy when it started and they were fairly disorganized at that
point. They are pretty nice so I do hope to continue doing park days
with them and hopefully in the future maybe it might become something
more that 'those homeschool kids'.

The second is a pay to join group. They are organized (roberts rules
of order lol) and have a coop on fridays. I didnt join their coop
this term because the classes offered didnt quite fit into a workable
schedule. But they do have open lego play and pokemon league during
the coop day so I am welcome to bring the kids any time for that. I
plan on it and everyone is really nice.. maybe more crunchy than me
but maybe just the vocal ones lol. I think that this is one that
could turn into something that is a keeper too. The age range in
this coop is avg to younger than my kids so it is potentially a group
that we can grow with.

I went to a face to face meet with the above group a couple of weeks
ago (by myself) and it was nice to sit with a group of women drinking
tea and talking in coherant sentences, and not have to worry about the
kids. My kids are good kids by the way, or at least I think so, but
still being somewhere where the only person you have to worry about is
yourself is GREAT. I guess those meetings will be my version of Risa's
Thursday night yoga classes :-P

I think I will post this letter to my blog as well because I think it
is the kind of thing that will be interesting to look back on and see
hey I am doing so much better now than I was then.

April

Sensa

I weighed in this morning.

Oh you want to know?

220.5

I actually forgot to weigh in last week. so it has been 13 days since
my last weight check. 226.5 - 220.5 = 6

6 lbs in 13 days is almost half a pound a day. I am a cynic though
and think that it could be normal weight fluctuation.

To-do: take tape measure measurements. I will post these as a
separate post when I do them.

So that is the boring stuff.

How have I been doing with Sensa?

Sometimes I forget to use the sensa. I don't think it is very often.
for example, if we say 4 meals and 2 snacks a day, and I am forgetting
once every 2 days or so for a miss factor of 1 in 12 or 8 percent.
Not bad I think.

What kind of changes have I made in my routine because of Sensa?

using Sensa makes me think about what I eat / put in my mouth. How
can it not when everything must be sprinkled. In a controlled trial
of this product, I would think that there would need to be 3 groups.
The Sensa group, a group taught mindful eating, and a group that
didn't have a class on mindful eating. I expect that some of Sensa's
success has to do with being mindful of what you are eating along with
any science to the tastants.

I don't think I care. If it works then I am grateful.

SO TRUE!!

The following is really true.  There is a culture of rudeness and one-up-ness.  Rarely do you find a group that you trully can feel like being open and totally yourself without being judged.  I recommend you subscribe to the following blog.  It is such a fun read and the pictures are wonderful.  You can get a link to where she sells her Little Travelers videos on her blog. The videos are taken with the perspective of her children in mind and are truly cool to watch.

excerpt from Angelina Hart's Little travelers blog.  It can be found here.  The original blog article HERE.

My point here is that in our country we do not have a common mothering culture.  We rarely tend to parent similar to other mothers around us and therefor don't seem to have a common connection to other mothers.  It is a rare instance when I can share a smile and a gesture with a mother at a park that says, "I know how you feel."  Sometimes I will look to a mother with a tantruming toddler wanting to just smile at her in a way that says, "I've been there."  but rarely will that woman look at me for fear that she is being judged.  I think it has much to do with our societies focus on competitiveness that drives much of this.  If my children aren't in the middle of a tantrum and yours are that must mean that I'm winning at being a parent and you are losing.  There really is not a sense of common ground in most cases.  Within our own small groups sometimes that spirit of 'in it together' does emerge, but I'm talking about with strangers in the park or the grocery store.

Spelling Activity

I made a stamping spelling activity for Judy.  It is a set of alphabet stamps I got at Hobby Lobby on clearance.  A recycled Fruit Roll up box, a stamp pad and note cards.

Here is how it is supposed to work:

This is how the finished product is supposed to look:

I learned a trick for gleaning everyday spelling words from a mom I met on AP_Homeschoolers.  Susan would (still might)  take words which her children didn't know.  When her children read out loud, she made a note of words they didn't know or stumbled on, and she would create ther weekly spelling list from those words.  

I select a poem in the morning and while D and J are working on their first work, I read it to them.  Then When Davy is working on Voyages in English, I have Judy read the poem back to me.  I have been collecting words from that and will give her a small list to stamp tomorrow.

The poems this week have been really fun.  The first poem was The Adventures of Isabel  by Odgen Nash, and Jimmy Jet and His TV Set  by Shel Silverstein.

I have a Nutter. No I am not British, I just have a good
friend. Who is. British. Davy is my nutter, my crazy kid,
my boy who likes to think up impossible scenarios and then ask you
about them.

Davy: "How do you lick something that can't be licked?"

Me: I just looked at him.

Davy: "Like your tongue!"

Then he laughed madly and ran away. I am not sure what to think of
that. Is he French kissing himself? Is he just wanting to taste
something new and different? HAHA He is 9. and a half.

He is so silly and funny sometimes. I really love him a lot :-) I
worry that he is too exuberant for groups though. He is the reason I
home school. Judy is the reason I became 'AP'.

Together both my children have taught me a different way of living and
handling life. isn't that what growing up is all about?

Sensa, doing its job however that is

I started using Sensa and wanted to touch base with how I perceive it
to be working. My educational background is social/psyche so I will
probably also be analyzing myself too.

I didn't think that an over the counter product would have that big of
a non-amphetamine effect. I understand the concept, the Tastants(R)
are inhaled both through your mouth as you are chewing and through
your nose on the way in. They chemically interact somehow with the
center of the brain responsible for fullness and satiety. The above is
my take, please comment if you know different or if I said it in a
wrong way.

So I have been using this powder. There is sweet/salty. You use the
powder for what the food mostly is, salty on Pizza, sweet on a candy
bar. Salty on a Payday maybe and sweet on corn.

The thing I wonder the most, is about the psychology of mindful
eating. I used to belong to a yahoo group a couple of years ago
called no-diet. There are also books that address this topic [mindful
eating]. Does this powder work or does it make me THINK about
everything I put into my body? One of the things about successful
'diets' or eating plans usually is that you track everything that goes
into your body.

I am not counting calories. I am not tracking carbs, fat, or sugar.
I don't know if I am losing weight either because I haven't weighed
since I did the first 'before the diet' weigh-in. The thing that I am
doing now that is different than before Sensa is: 1) I stopped
drinking soda (approx 5 cans a week) and 2) I am actively thinking
about what I eat by having to remember to sprinkle the powder.

I am not eating as much. The materials for Sensa mentioned that it
wouldn't work right away, but that I would see results and to keep
using the powder. I think I am seeing results already. I am
thrilled. I have always been a foody. I like the taste of food and
hate to leave food on my plate. Yet since I started Sensa I have been
mindful of eating, and trying to stop and say to myself "Do I want
more?". I have surprised myself when I have chosen to stop eating, and
not felt like I was still hungry.

I think it's working and I am excited. Now if only they could come up
with a powder to make me WANT to exercise.

I weighed in.   I know I promised  a Sensa blog two days ago, but things are just  not happening like I thought they would. I weighed in Tuesday and I am 226.  I will weigh in once a week and blog once a week about how the diet is going and what I think about Sensa.

Good luck to the others out there who are starting a weight loss Journey this month.

Happy New Year!

We have one more 'Christmas/New Years' celebration and then 2009 will officially be real for me :-)

We leave for Waco early in the morning and return home Sunday.  There will be lots of food, family and fun.

Ok - Some resolutions for 2009

Change my eating habits.  I don't want to commit to a diet that will or will not fail,  but small changes like whole foods, and no soda.

Add in exercise to my routine.  I read an article that designated a mile at 20 minutes on avg, or 2000 steps on a pedometer.

Blog  twice a week.  Once for Sensa, once for my life.

Meet/make some friends.  I am lonely.

Finish unpacking and set up the house in a more decorated style.

Become more Frugal.

yell less

play more

smile more

Thanks for Reading and here is hoping that you have a prosperous 2009