Carnitas

This is one of my family’s favorite crock pot meals.

Carnitas

1. slow cook pork roast (or boneless ribs) on low for 4-6 hours or however long it takes to

2. shred your meat (you could drain the fat at this point, but your carnita meat may be a little bit drier).

3. add taco seasoning packet (of if you don’t do the prepackaged stuff: combine onion powder, cumin, salt, pepper, chili powder to taste) and 1/4 cup of water. If your roast was big, you may want to add two packets and double the water.

4. slow cook 2 more hours. you may need to add more water

5.  we serve it burrito style in a large soft taco with refried beans, spanish rice, monterey jack cheese, sour cream and salsa.

Mmmm, mmm, good!

Inspiration for Parenting Littles

Our Ladies Bible Study (now called Ruby Tuesdays) is doing a series on mothering right now. My good friend Kathy Wilson taught about “Thoughtful Parenting for the Early” years last Tuesday. I will post the link as soon as the podcast becomes available.

In the meantime, you may want to go to the Metro Moms blog as they are doing a similar series right now. This post talks about the fact that first time, joyful obedience is possible by the grace of God. And today’s post  (called Rewards and Roleplay) gives some direction as to how to help your littles learn to obey right away, all the way, in a happy way. I love her rewards section in particular.

And if you’re like me and you no longer have littles, but are still working on first time, joyful obedience, there is still much that can be applied to the slightly older children as well. Come to think of it, I think there needs to be a teaching for moms called, “Obeying Right Away, All the Way, and In A Happy Way”.  I’m still working on that myself!

One More Memory

Be careful what you say. Just this weekend I said to my mother, “we haven’t been to the emergency room for a while, I have a feeling we are due for a visit.” The context for such a comment was my boys trying to use a skateboard ramp their friend (Jack’s other cousin, Evan) brought to the birthday party this past Saturday. The boys are into more traditional sports, not skateboarding so much, but we ended up with just bruises and scratches.

It seemed like for a couple of years every few months someone was getting stapled, glued, or stitched. It’s been over a year, I think, since we went to the emergency room, so I knew we were due.  Well, yesterday while diving into the end zone (playing football in the backyard with his brothers), my son Caleb broke his collar bone. It was very painful. I felt so sorry for him. He is doing well now.  My challenge is keeping his brothers far enough away from him to not re-injure the poor kid. This is harder than you  may think!

Making Memories

 My brother Jimmy’s family and ours went to the Baltimore Aquarium on Monday. We had a great time. Here the kids are waiting to see the dolphin show. (left to right: Jack, Izzy, Maggie, Charli, Caleb, Joshua).

Here’s Maggie showing Charli the turtles. Charlie loves fish and turtles. It was so cute to watch how excited she was seeing various sea creatures at the aquarium.

Izzy and Jack in the Australian section of the aquarium. The cousins loooooove each other in our family. It is such a blessing to see how my big guys are so sweet with the little ones.

 We had a wonderful time celebrating my nephew, Jack’s birthday.  This is the vader cake he very specifically requested.

Our Townhouse and Twins

Here’s a fascinating little bit of information about our old townhouse. The original owners of the townhouse had twins. When they moved out, they rented the house to a family who had twins. We bought the house, and of course, we have twins. Briana lived with us for a year or so when we lived in that townhouse. She now has twins. And believe it or not, Josh (the famous blogger Danielle’s husband) stayed at our house for about two weeks while we lived in that townhouse and we all know that they are now expecting twins. Crazy, huh? I feel excited for the young couple who now lives there. Hope they want twins.

 Any fun stories about a house you’ve lived in?

a name is a name is a name?

I thought I’d pass on a fascinating little tidbit of information about myself here on the blog. Here it is:   My name includes every vowel but one. L-a-u-r-i-e.   Well. That’s all I’ve got these days. By the way, can you think of any other names boast this distinction? 

Also, my husband’s name is the initial consonant of the months from July to November. Jason: July, August, September, October, November.

Anything cool about your name?