Hey All

Hi,
I know it's been a long time. As usual. Most everyone should be used to this by now, right? Anyhoo, just thought I'd write a few things. So last week was Thanksgiving. Jimmy and I made Julia come out to visit. She cleans my microwave and it really needed it. But while she was here, she made Pumpkin Bowknots with Cream Cheese Frosting, Cinnamon Rolls, Cream of Zucchini soup, and a cake made with cream cheese, sour cream and evaporated milk. She did my dishes and played with my kids. I made pie crust for the canned pie filling. We had a great time. We got to watch Harry Potter 5 and part 1 of Harry Potter 7. I think she had fun at the Grandpa and Grandma Stevens house on Thanksgiving Day. There were 27 people there for dinner. It was very crowded, but not too many food accidents. Just some spilled juice. Over all it was fun. Jimmy only got Thursday off and had to go back to work Friday morning at 3am! It was crazy. Costco opened at 8:30am. I noticed that there were way too many stores open on Thanksgiving day. I just don't think that's fair. Thanksgiving is going to turn into nothing soon and then the next to go would be Christmas. Come on, people CAN plan. They don't have to go out to buy stuff for one day. Like they won't be able to get whatever it is the next day. I remember just a couple years ago you couldn't find an open grocery store on Thanksgiving. Now most of them are open till 4. Oh well. Poor people.
So I've been watching a couple of kids since the beginning of school. The main reason for babysitting them was to help pay for our 8 passenger $20,000 van we bought in August. So far we've needed that money for other stuff. UG! We refinanced our house so now we don't have to pay as much as before. I don't understand how money just goes. No matter what there's always something else. Oh, we bought food storage back in March and have been using that for our basics like rice, potatoes, noodles, oats, flour, beans. I've gotten used to cooking up beans and wheat berries to make various recipes, I grind wheat every morning to make pancakes. This past year we found out that Vanessa is allergic to Cows milk and Soybeans. EVERYTHING has soybeans in it and if it doesn't then it has milk. So I've narrowed our food down to cooked milk foods and very little soybeans. Bread has it. I haven't learned how to make bread yet, but when I do, that will be one less thing without soybeans. I'm pretty sure all the girls have it. I've cut out drinking milk and their skin rash settled down A LOT! I know Soy hurts their bottoms because Christy gets rashes whenever she eats anything with soy in it. So for her I have to be careful. Once she's potty trained then she can have more soy stuff. Of course that's bad, but I'm not dedicated enough to make pure foods for us. I rely too much on processed things. Potato chips are OK though! I'll put some pics up now. Have a good Christmas!