Twenty Four days into 2012

Wow, can't believe it is the end of January already! Time sure flies by when you have 800 things going on around you! Of course we still have all of Daniel's things going on, but there are TONS of other things going on too, and who knows where that will lead us! At the end of December I had all these grand hopes and thoughts of what was going to happen in 2012. Well day 24, and we are already off on some of the items on the list! A few glitches have been thrown in the mix, like the strong suggestion from his PM & R doctor to do serial casting on Daniel's ankles before June rolls around. This way if the casting doesn't work well enough he will be able to get the botox (if needed) in June along with the rest of the areas. Casts? Really? It could be worse, but I remember when we did it a couple years ago and he was sooo heavy! And that was BEFORE he weighed 50+ lbs!

I am proud to say that we have kept on track with eating more "homemade" dinners.  We use to eat out A LOT, just because of the schedules, timing issues and plus obviously just the ease of it.  Well one of our goals is to start eating better, making meals, packing lunches and just saving money for the future.  

I use to have this addiction to buying those little Betty Crocker type cookbooks that are at the check out in the grocery stores.  It was really getting bad!  That was a few years ago, but I still have them all.  Over 100 different ones...I'm not kidding. I even have them numbered so I know what book to grab and get the recipe from. We pick a new recipe out of the books (Lonnie tends to stick with the same themed meals) to give us more variety, and plan a couple weeks at a time, go grocery shopping and have everything set ready to go.

 These are the ones for this week. I'm not a good cook by any means, I have a hard time boiling water sometimes. :)

 But so far, Lonnie & Daniel haven't gotten sick from anything.  Any leftovers we are using for Lonnie's lunch the next day.  Because Daniel can only eat pureed foods we are able to take most of what we eat and blend it up, or chop it fine enough so he can eat it.  Sunday was this Chicken Chili Dumplings (dumplings were my favorite!) Monday was Stuffed Peppers (above), and tonight is something Lonnie picked - Ham, pineapple pie thingy.  I'm not too sure about it but I figure if I am making Lonnie expand his tastes, that I better play along too! 

And of course, Daniel helps out too while I am cooking.  Here he is sorting his planets.  He is learning to scoop his planets onto a spoon and more them to another measuring cup.  As you can tell from the perplexed look on his face, he is working hard trying to figure out why the heck they keep rolling off the spoon!