Paul's back!

Thank goodness, Paul is home!  It has been an insanely busy week.  I owe you all some pictures, then I can tell you more of what we've been up to.

March 10 picture of the day.  Carter's spending his second day home from school, so we cancelled our plans and spent an extra long time in our pajamas.

March 11, Carter went back to school, we and he have decided he's swimming well enough to discontinue taking lessons and he's decided not to continue with gymnastics, so we talked and decided that he and I would cook more together.  His first almost solo-Macaroni & Cheese from a box.  We decifered direction on the back together, he measured the water, I put it on the stove, we determined which knob we needed for the element we had the water on, set the timer for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, then I drained the boiling hot water and he measured and mixed in the butter, packet of cheese, and milk.  He and Henri then devoured it! (the picture is actually from the 12th, but I'm missing an 11th picture, so there you go)

March 12th, Etienne was up from Portland, so the boys all got their hair cut.... before and after pictures...

This morning's picture is courtesy of Paul.  So yesterday at swimming I saw online that Paul had lost his semi-final game and stopped checking.  Well, turns out they played yet another game and came away from the 2011 US Club Nationals with a Bronze :)  So proud of all his hard work.

This medal is huge! It's probably 3-4 inches in diameter.

So we finally got Carter healthy.  Saturday mom helped me take the 3 kids to swimming, then we stopped by home, dropped off some stuff at the consignment store, then headed up to mom's for a boy hair cutting party.  Then home to spruce up the house and work on some chores.  I cleaned the fish tank, worked out, made 10 pans of chicken & cheese enchiladas and went to get Paul at the airport.

Some of you have asked about my dinner swapping. I have started a second group (if you are local and want to get in on it, let me know!) One group is 8 people, but I try to make about 10 meals in case we have another person join, I can always use the extra meal to give to my mom when she's got my kids or a new mom with a baby.

For April I did chicken & cheese enchiladas.  So, I bought 2 whole chickens and decided they would be the base for my next meal exchange menu.  Here's how it broke down, pretty much everything was on sale.

2 whole chickens at 79 cents a pound (generally 3.5 pounds): $5.53
4 large (28 oz) cans of enchilada sauce: $4/2 so total of $8
Huge pack (73oz bag-80 tortillas) of corn tortillas: $3.00
Shredded cheese 2-2 pound bags @ 6.69 a bag, 2-8 oz bags I got BOGO that worked out to $1.50 a bag, so total: $16.38

I made 10 pans of 4 servings (2 enchiladas per person, so 80 enchiladas) for about $33.  This will probably be responsible for 1/2 our main meals for April.

I'm so excited that I'm on the lookout for other deals to see what I can do for my smaller swap group (about 4-5 families).  By the way, I only knew the chicken was on sale.  I boiled them and de-boned them myself.  The rest I just got extremely lucky because I usually do not shop at that store.