Crescent Ham Bundles

A friend made these for us after F was born and they were so yummy the kids ask for them on a regular basis! The same friend had made us a variation with chicken after G was born. I've also made them with a turkey and gravy mixture inside, so this would be a great way to use some Thanksgiving leftovers! Basically, mix something up and wrap it in a crescent roll and it will almost always be yummy! You can also freeze these for later, so often if crescent rolls are on sale I'll buy a bunch and make up a few batches of bundles (or packets, as my kids call them) and freeze some.

CRESCENT HAM BUNDLES -- makes 12
2 -- 8 oz. packages diced ham (or 3 cups cooked chicken or turkey)
1 -- 8 oz. tub chive and onion cream cheese (or cheddar cheese, or both mixed)
5-6 T. melted butter
3 T. milk
1/2-3/4 t. salt
1/4-1/2 t. pepper
3 tubes (8 oz. each) crescent rolls
1 c. crushed croutons OR seasoned bread crumbs (I used the latter)

In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, half the butter, milk, salt and pepper until smooth. Stir in the ham. On a greased work surface, unroll crescent roll dough into 12 rectangles (4 per tube; each rectangle contains two crescent triangles). Press dough perforations together. Spoon a little less than 1/2 c. ham mixture into center of each rectangle. Bring short ends together and pinch to seal. Take each remaining end and fold upwards towards other seam; press to seal. Pull the dough slightly along both ends to really seal the bundles as well as you can.

Brush each bundle with butter, then sprinkle crumbs on top, pressing crumbs down slightly so they stick. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 20-25 minutes at 350, OR freeze bundles on a cookie sheet first, then wrap individually in foil for later use. Thaw before baking.

**I've found you can skip the butter to cut down on some fat because the crumbs will often stick to the bundles pretty well without it. You can even go without the crumbs altogether and just bake them as is.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Things I'm thankful for:

My wonderful husband
Our 4 beautiful girls
Ted's job that allows me to stay home with said girls
Our extended family and friends
The home God has provided for us
The freedom we have to worship God freely and proclaim His name
That gas prices have gone down! :-)

Obviously this isn't an exhaustive list, but it's a great start! It's great to count our blessings, not just at Thanksgiving, but all throughout the year. What are you thankful for?

Sock Rings

Do you hate sorting and pairing up socks? It's not so much that I hate it, but it just takes time, which is a precious commodity for me. While growing up, it was a precious commodity for my mother as well. She had 4 kids, too, and didn't have time to sit around finding matches for hundreds of socks. So as long as I can remember, I've used sock rings.After you wear your socks, you put both socks together and push them through a sock ring. Throw them into the washer and dryer (sock rings are safe to launder) and then back into the drawer, still paired up! They are sold in many colors, so each person in your family can have a different color, making sorting laundry that much easier! Some worry that they would leave a dirty ring, but I've used them for almost 30 years and have never had a problem!

Sockpro sock rings are made of rubber and come in 5 colors. They offer free shipping if you order 3 or more packs, their best value. This is the type I use now, and they seem to hold up well so far.

Sock Locks are made of plastic. They have 7 colors and are cheaper, but you also have to pay shipping. This is the type I used growing up. The plastic teeth eventually break off, leaving just the ring, but they still work for a LONG time.

As far as I know, sock rings can only be bought online. Christmas gift idea, maybe? I'm telling you, I love these things!

Mapping McDonald's

When we do road trips, we like to stop at McDonald's along the way because they have playlands so the kids can burn off some energy from all that sitting in the car (what we affectionately call "car butt")!

I discovered a nice resource a few years ago for mapping out which McDonald's have playlands along our route. Go here and click on McDonald's Trip Planner. Type in your addresses and hit submit. They will give you directions that you can print out (like MapQuest), but look between the map and the directions. There's a box that says "Show me the McDonald's along the way" and then I change the drop down box to within 0.25 miles because I want easy-on/easy-off locations. It comes up with a list of McDonald's locations along your route and you can see on the menu which ones have playlands. I mark them on our map so that I always know how much further to the next playland.

Doing Him Good

Awhile back, Shari pointed me towards the blog Girl Talk where women were sharing ideas of how to do your husband good:
"She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life." Proverbs 31:12

Because of the busy-ness of life with young children, this is an area that us moms can sometimes forget about, being intentional to bless our husbands. This is something I've been thinking more about lately, especially after seeing the moving Fireproof. As much as our homes and our children are screaming for our attention, our marriages need it, too.

A couple weeks ago we were talking in our Bible study about showing love in our speech and in our actions. We may love our husbands, and even feel loving feelings about them all day long, but if we aren't taking the time to tell them and to show it, will our husbands see that love?

One of the things I try to do to show love to my husband is to make our home a sanctuary for him. I want him to enjoy coming home, so from when my first was a baby, I started I try to make his arrival a fanfare. I yell, "Yeah! Daddy's home!" and we all go running to the door to hug and welcome him home. This always brings a smile to his face, especially after a long day at work. It shows that we love and value his presence.

I also asked him awhile back, "what are 2 things I can do to make you feel more relaxed when you come home?" It can feel overwhelming when you have a to-do list a mile long, but narrowing it down to 2 specific things that your husband would appreciate makes things more manageable. With 4 kids ages 5 and under, housework isn't my top priority. Thankfully, my husband is full of grace in this area! However, there are a couple things that make him feel better, like an empty sink. Personally, I hate doing dishes, so I let them pile in the sink throughout the day. But when I know he is on his way home, I try to take a few minutes to load the dishwasher. (Often it needs to be unloaded first, so the loading doesn't always quite get done, but I do try!)

And most importantly, make sure you are praying for your husband. Every so often, ask him what you can be praying for specifically.

Now I'm the first to admit that I don't do these things every day, but I try to, and when I do, I know it makes a difference to him. I love my husband, and I want to do him good, and not harm, all the days of his life.

Better than Free Toothpaste!

This week CVS has Colgate Total toothpaste Buy One, Get One Free. They are $2.79. Print off two coupons for $1.50 off, and get two tubes of toothpaste for better than free!

*In my experience, CVS didn't give overage, so buy a little something extra to absorb the extra .21.

Too Many Blogs?

It's true that blogging begets blogging. Once you start reading blogs, you find more blogs and subscribe or bookmark them to read later. Some bloggers post once a year, once a month, once a week, once a day, or even more often! I am subscribed to 35 blogs, and they all post at a different frequency. Once you are following several blogs, things can get out of hand quickly!

At first, I tried bookmarking all the blogs I was following and tried to check them every so often, but sometimes there would be nothing new and sometimes there was a lot to catch up on! This was very time consuming because I had to physically click on each blog to see if something new had been posted.

Then, some of my blogging friends offered subscription via email (with FeedBurner or FeedBlitz). This worked pretty well for the ones who offered it, because I would get an email each time they updated their blog, so I was able to take those off my bookmark list. It helped, but not everyone offered this option. Plus, sometimes my email would play tricks and people's blog posts would get buried in my inbox, or I'd get the update much later than they had posted it.

Now I keep tabs on my blogs with Google Reader. It's like a separate email box for your blogs, and it makes it easier to organize them. It has REALLY simplified things for me. (Again, thanks to Ted for helping me set it up!)

Once you have set up your iGoogle page, add a gadget for a reader. When you click on this gadget, it will open up a new window with your Google Reader. On the left side, you'll see a green bar that says "Add Subscription" and "Discover". If you know the exact web address of the blog you want to subscribe to (like http://momforhim.blogspot.com), just enter it into the box and you're done! If you don't know the exact address, you can click "Discover" then on the "Browse" tab. Scroll down to where you can search and browse based on keywords. You can subscribe to any blog that is public. (You'll still have to manually check the ones that are private.) This is called an RSS feed, and is what the little orange box is for on my right sidebar. After you have set things up, if you see a blog you want to subscribe to, you can click on the orange button and it will add it to your Reader.

Now when you open up your Google Reader, the blogs with updated posts will be in bold. As you scroll through them, they will be marked as read and won't be bold anymore. However, if there's a post you want to read, but don't have time for, or one that you want to save for later, you can mark it as unread on the bottom of the post and that will leave it in bold. Another option is to star the item and then it will be kept in a special box. Ted uses this option a lot, but I'm not particularly fond of it, because "out of sight, out of mind" means I'll forget about it if it's not in bold!

Another benefit is that the Google Reader is updated throughout the day, so you rarely miss anything, whereas an email subscription usually only goes out once a day. I hope this helps you with your blog management! It sure has helped me!