good morning!

I'll be honest with you. I don't always feel sunshine-y in the morning. Especially when I've been working really hard for THREE WHOLE DAYS, and the meany-a$$ scale didn't budge. I know, three days is a long time. But, I walked anyway this morning:)


It's lovely out there today! Still a bit chilly, but the brilliant blue of the sky, my favorite color!


The buds! It's really coming, the warm weather! And that old climbing tree, oh dear, almost cried when I saw that...kids, stop growing up so fast!

Anyway. Today is the first day this week I don't have any small children, but Lydia will be coming this afternoon to spend the night. So today, I need to get some things done, fun things, like picking out some paint for the foyer and downstairs hallway. Anne was here yesterday and the day before, and she's a sweetie pie. She loves me. She likes to sit with me and sing songs (I sing Itsy Bitsy Spider and use a big black hair clip for the spider, she loves it.). She follows me around and asks lots of questions, and always wants to go outside. It's not difficult, but it is nearly impossible to do anything else when you're watching her, mostly because hey, she's not my child, and I have to watch her very diligently, does that make sense? So I thought of this: SO many people have commented to me through the years, "I only have..........kids, and THEY drive me crazy, how do you do it?"...or some variation of this...they have one child, or two, or four....and maybe they don't drive them crazy, maybe the mom just can't seem to keep up, or get anything done, or whatever. So just for the record, having only one or two small children here during the day: it's all relative, you can't get much done with small children in the house.

So today seems like a real day off! I have to get lots of schooling stuff done while we can concentrate...when the small children are here, the homeschool kids spend lots of time in their rooms doing work. But when the small children aren't here, I can actually work with them more, but, alas, it seems...like a day off:)

Ah well, things do do...I am going to make a meal plan for the next five days, and and and. But oh, last night, I made the yummiest dinner! We have so much ham still, I wanted to make something using it. So I decided on quiche...here's what I did:
9x13 glass pan, put some butter in it, about third stick, cut up, and a scoop of bacon grease (we save it when we cook bacon, in a mason jar in the 'fridge). Put pan in oven while it preheats, until fat melts and coats pan. I sprinkled in some almond flour, and some coconut flour, and put the pan back in the oven. I microwaved a bag of frozen broccoli florets for three minutes, then cubed up lots of ham. 9 eggs whipped up with one cup of half and half, a cup of shredded cheddar....
Remove glass baking dish from oven, add ham and broccoli, the pour egg mixture over top, and sprinkle with more cheddar cheese, salt, and pepper, and into the 375 oven...it took about 40 minutes, but keep an eye on it. It was SO GOOD. Seriously flavorful. So easy, nutritious, and quick.

Anyway...the girls are up, and we have things to do...