This weekend, Russ, Connor and I (well, Aiden, too, but he played his DS most of the day), took a class offered by the National Weather Service.

SKYWARN is a program run by NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  through it’s National Weather Service (NWS) that brings Ham Radio volunteers (amateur radio operators, firemen, EMT, emergency responders, etc.) from all over the United States to act as storm spotters. These are different from storm chasers that you’re used to hearing about. The goal for a spotter is not to get into the line of the tornado or bad weather event to get the best photo/video to be shown on Weather Channel or online, but instead Storm Spotters are there to help the National Weather Service get “ground truth” on weather events happening in their area.

Ground Trust is basically what is actually happening on the ground in a location, and it’s something the National Weather Service can’t see on RADAR. They can’t see that a funnel is forming – they can only see  rotation in the clouds that may lead to a funnel or eventual tornado, and they might see a debris ball on the RADAR after the tornado has already begun to do damage. But Storm Spotters can see Wall Clouds – those formations at the bottom of a Super Cell that breed funnels/tornadoes and are not visible on RADAR,  can tell the rotation, can give the NWS additional information that then allows the NWS to give more specific information when they issue weather alerts and talk to the media about what’s going on, which in turn gives YOU better information from your local media outlets.

While we are not licensed Ham Radio operators, yet, we are working our way towards that, and wanted to take advantage of the program now, while it was available to us. We spent the day with CBS-11 meteorologists who gave us great behind the scenes info on how weather events play out for them and what it looks like there, with National Weather Service folks based here in the DFW area, as well as local Ham Radio operators who work with the NWS to put groups of amateur radio operators together for information during the storms.

We learned about RADAR, how to interpret RADAR and its various filters and algorithms, learned about Super Cells and what makes them tick and how to use that information to better serve us in the field about where to be safely, the best information to give the local NET reporting to the NWS, and more. They also took us behind the scenes at the National Weather Service office in Ft. Worth and what it looks like for them during a severe weather event and during training for those particular events.

Funny thing about our local weather. We had 40 tornado events in the 46 county area that this field office covers. 21 of them happened on the weekend of April 23/24. And the bulk of them were done by June. It was a more active spring for us (twice the normal events), but once the drought hit in late May/June, the numbers went down to 0 or 1 for the rest of the year.

One of the most interesting/scary bits of information we learned was how the Joplin tornado from earlier last year went from a suspected rotation in the clouds to an EF4 tornado – in 4 minutes. The NWS just couldn’t see what was happening below the Wall Cloud, and couldn’t get real confirmation of the tornado until the debris ball began showing up on screen. The tornado warnings were already sent out because they knew the conditions were ripe and they could see that it was happening, but within that 4 minute block, the tornado grew that quickly. One of the things that the report mentioned afterwards from interviews with people in the area was that they just don’t ‘listen’ to the warning reports any longer unless it’s from someone they trust (friend, family, etc.), NOT the NWS as it’s first line of warning. That was really sad to hear.

And do you know the difference between a funnel cloud and a tornado? The funnel cloud never touches the ground. Once a funnel cloud has touched the ground, and is still attached to the wall cloud above, it’s a tornado. Just a fun fact for you to take to your next office party

SUNDAY

• Breakfast – Daddy Breakfast – cheese and egg fritatta, sausage, hashbrowns
• Lunch – snacky lunch -
• Supper – Roasted Garlic Alfredo pasta

MONDAY

• Breakfast –  oatmeal
• Lunch – Leftover pasta, peaches
• Supper – Baked tilapia, green beans, quinoa

TUESDAY

• Breakfast – Nutella & Banana smoothies, toast with honey, peaches  (just subbed  Nutella for the peanut butter and chocolate powder)
• Lunch – leftovers (yay – the last of ‘em!)
• Supper – Chick Fil A – DH’s celebratory meal of choice for a job well done

WEDNESDAY

• Breakfast – Smoothies & Toast
• Lunch –  Sandwiches, fruit, veg
• Dinner – Fieldtrip

THURSDAY 

• Breakfast – pancakes, maple syrup & bananas
• Lunch – sandwiches, peaches
• Supper -

FRIDAY

• Breakfast – Smoothies & Toast
• Lunch – Sandwiches, hummus & veg
• Dinner – Friday Boys’ Night Out Chinese Buffet that we’ve been promising them forever (I stayed home and snacked – gotta love having hummus in the fridge!)

SATURDAY 

• Breakfast – McDonalds on the way to Skywarn Training because it was SOOO early
• Lunch – Tacos & Tamales
• Dinner – hot dogs and sausages, ice cream for dessert

This week was a hard week – we ate out more than usual because we had plans that kept us away from home during meal times, and they weren’t situations where packing a meal would be easy on us during the meal. Thankfully, savings in groceries the last few months had a little extra in the food budget for it not to be a hardship on our pocket book – but I can say I’m tired of eating out!

See more on our meal planning HERE

For other meal planning tips and lists, check out Organized Junkie here!

(and a shout out to Jacque Larsen & Kaye Winiecki for their digital products)

Dad has been a HAM radio operator for many  years ( KM5K ), though not active now. He helped us set up our Morse code key switch rig – so that we could practice giving and receiving Morse code on our way to our ham radio licenses. It’s Connor’s big science project for the year. Our Tae Kwon Do Grand Master is also a HAM radio operator and drew the plans for us for a dual rig, that we modified to be single for our space  (he also took the radio Dad had given us that had been in storage many years and cleaned it up for us and tested it out to make sure it still works, and is mentoring us through this). We still need to mount these parts onto a piece of plywood to make them sturdier and easier to move from the table to its storage area, but that’s easy-peasy for me to do this weekend.

Testing out the buzzer

testing the switch

The final rig

This is a 9v battery attached to a doorbell buzzer, attached to a  hacksaw blade that is sitting on a ‘ledge (or a Lego piece) to make it spring, attached to a drawer nob connected by a screw, and a screw is mounted into the wood base, connected back to the battery. When the circuit is closed between the two screws, you get  a buzz. So you now have a key rig to practice Morse Code. We made this for about  $15. We already had the wood scraps on hand, and the Home Depot Electric Department manager gave us the wire for free when we told him that it was Connor’s science project for this semester – he was pretty impressed with the project.

Tuning in the HAM Radio

Once we got the rig set up and began working through our first group of letters, it was time to get the radio set up and tuned up. Dad taught us how to work through the bands, listening for other CW (morse code operators), and how to find where they are located. We’ll have a map available to begin marking our contacts (just listening in now until we get our licenses). We’ll probably set this up more permanently in our office so that we can have a full space to write, code and have our microphone available, and mount the map to the wall.

Aiden finally got to have his own 1:1 time with Dad later in the afternoon to go out and show off his sling shot skills:

See what I can do?

Some advice

WOW! That really worked, Grandpa!

These are moments I treasure watching the boys with their grandparents, learning from them, making memories with them, and seeing all of our parents showering the boys with unconditional love and watching the boys radiate in that love. It’s a wonderful gift from God that we can still have these kinds of moments.

The Backwards Meal Plan – Week 2 – this is a series of meal planning that I’m posting backwards – what we actually ate during the week as opposed to what I had planned. Gives me a more realistic view of what we’re actually eating, gives me a lot of accountability to keep it real, and hopefully gives you some ideas of what to have next week for your family.

SUNDAY

• Breakfast – Late McDonald’s breakfast at the request of Daddy – we had an off weekend, he’s fighting a bad cold, he wanted his comfort food. (and yes, we’re trying hard to eat cleaner and healthier, but sometimes we fail miserably!!)
• Lunch – late breakfast, so we snacked on stuff in fridge/pantry
• Supper – Breakfast for dinner – Daddy breakfast, cheese frittata,  hash brown, sausage

MONDAY:

• Breakfast – PB&J smoothies, whole grain toast
• Lunch – sandwiches, apples, carrots
• Supper – Turkey tacos and spinach/fontina quesadillas and applesauce

TUESDAY

• Breakfast – apple and cinnamon oatmeal, tea
• Lunch – late lunch of burgers and chips and all the fixings for all of us
• Supper  -  snack

WEDNESDAY

• Breakfast – apple cinnamon oatmeal – extra apples, tea
• Lunch – out (ran long with appointment and hadn’t packed a lunch), but it did involve guacamole and pico de gallo!
• Supper – Pasta with a turkey/spaghetti sauce, homemade garlic bread (and sauce did feature a few added veg. snuck in – and no, dear, no peas).

THURSDAY

• Breakfast – Smoothies and breakfast cookies
• Lunch - veggie rollups (hummus, spinach, carrots, bits of the Christmas turkey, and whatever else is in the bin and needs to be used up), cheese
• Supper – Bourbon chicken (with last of turkey thrown in), rice, green beans, mandarin oranges

FRIDAY

• Breakfast – banana nut pancakes (made up a mess of ‘em to throw in the freezer),
• Lunch – leftovers
• Supper – Sandwiches, chips and Daddy treat of Steak & Shake shakes for boys’ night.

SATURDAY

• Breakfast – breakfast tacos
• Lunch – ate a late lunch out as we were running errands and exploring
• Supper – snacked

NEW FOOD THIS WEEK – Veggie Rollups. We hadn’t tried something like this before, and Connor and I both found we loved it, but Aiden wouldn’t touch it. He ate the veggies on their own with his own cheese rollups.

NEW FOOD NEXT WEEK – Kale powder. Yep – it’s weird, but I’m looking at all sorts of ways to add extra vitamins, minerals and fiber into our diet, and after making some baked kale chips this week, I want to dehydrate the leftovers, grind them into a powder, and use them like you would a protein powder – into smoothies, heavier sauce dishes and baked goods.

Hoping Week 3 brings us more variety and less leftover usage (I know the menfolk in the house are happy that the Christmas turkey is finally gone! but…oh…there’s still stock to be made! buwahahahahahaha). This week was spent with other projects and sickness with Russ, so we ate what was handy, used up everything I could use up, and cleaned out leftovers from the freezer.

See more on our meal planning HERE

For other meal planning tips and lists, check out Organized Junkie here!

click for credits

This is about my boys’ Friday Night Stay Up Nights with Daddy. Every Friday Night they get to stay up late, watch boy movies, boy cartoons, play boy stuff with Dad that mom never will, eat boy food, and just hang. Here they are finishing up a Mystery Science 3K movie while Dad builds a fire.

Click for credits

And just as a quick geeky connection:

We lived it this week, sort of.  I took the boys for their first eye exam last week. Neither have shown any reason to need to get their eyes checked earlier – no squinting, no issues reading, no light sensitivity. Little did we know…

Both boys loved seeing how ‘alien’ they looked with these:

Connor got an all-clear…

Aiden, however, was diagnosed with Amblyopia (not to be confused by strabismus which is the crossing of one or both eyes). It is basically a deficiency in how his eye focuses, and then how the brain reads those images that it gets back. It is typically referred to as ‘lazy eye’, but it is just an anomaly where his eye  has no physical reason why it cannot focus, it just doesn’t. The optometrist said he’s too old to expect good results (typically, an eye matures around the age of 8 or 9), but that we should patch him – just get a play patch from  the toy section. That’s all we got from her. Oh..and the fact that his eyeglass prescription would make him look like a cyclops, so be prepared. (yes, a slight bit of hyperbole there, but it is just about all we got from her). When I would ask questions, she wasn’t forthcoming with more than, it’s just him, he’ll learn to live with it.

He had to have his eyes dilated, which was an experience in itself. The boy does NOT like knowing pain is coming, and she started out saying, “I have to put these water drops in your eyes and it’s going to hurt.” Yep  - that was a smart move. She couldn’t have known that about him, but it’s not necessarily something you want to say to a little one to prepare them for what’s coming. It took both of us holding him down to get the drops in, and he was really mad at me the rest of the day.

We got an eyepatch for him from the pharmacy and had him wear it all weekend. By Sunday, I was ready to tackle this thing that was effecting my boy.  I read and read and researched, and just wasn’t happy with the information that was given to me by the optometrist, when I was reading that there was more hope online. So on Monday, I spent a couple of hours on the phone between insurance companies and trying to find a pediatric opthamologist, and we had an appointment on Wednesday!

He was happy to get to look like a pirate. We’d been looking at different patch options, and he really did just want to stay with a plain patch because the rest looked so baby-ish. No Spiderman, no Batman, but the  camo did intrigue him.

What a difference that appointment made!  Dr. Davis of Pediatric Opthamology was wonderful with him, didn’t ask a lot of questions, didn’t make him look at teeny tiny letters ad nauseum, had some fun photos for Aiden to focus on while he did the exam. At one point, he said, wow…the boy has a lot of  astigmatism. Turns out..it was wicked, all right. He has different variations of it in different areas of his eyes, making it really hard to find where the refractory points are to get a good indication of how bad the amblyopia really was and how to correct it. So Aiden had to be dilated again, but this time with a child’s prescription of medication, and the Dr. was quick as lightening.  After more exam, and letting Aiden take control of the machine to adjust the focus points, Dr. Davis pronounced that yes, he does have amblyopia, but it wasn’t the worst case he’s ever seen, and he could be corrected to 20/40 from his 20/100, and that just wearing proper glasses would be therapy enough, he felt. We’d come see him in three months to see if there was any improvement, and if there wasn’t much, we’d start patching therapy. If we wanted to go ahead and patch a bit each day, he wouldn’t tell us not to, but he really feels the glasses will be enough.

So we went right out to Lenscrafters to get his glasses – and tada! The first thing he said when he put them on, with a HUGE grin on his face – I CAN SEE!

(and as we told everyone – that’s not a bad haircut, that’s a decent haircut on a boy with a bazillion cowlicks that never lets his hair lay the same way twice).

Isn’t he just the cutest thing ever? He picked out these glasses, himself. You can’t even tell he has a strong prescription in one eye! I’m so grateful God gave us the opportunity to seek out a second opinion and find out how to help him better. We’re looking at patching for one hour each afternoon to give him a little eye exercise, but will wait til the exam in April to go forward with anything more once we find out how he’s progressed.

So – the moral of this story is nothing, really. Get a second opinion. Sure, we could have taken the boys in for eye exams earlier, and we might have caught this earlier and begun treatment earlier. But Dr. Davis said this may not have cropped up until the last year or two. Not being in a traditional classroom setting, we wouldn’t have seen him squinting to read the blackboard, and because he showed no other signs like not being able to read street signs when he was driving, he wasn’t tripping over things as if he had no depth perception, and he was doing fine in school, and reads really well, nor did he ever express to us that he was having problems seeing, there was nothing to signal that there was an issue.  And sure, I do wish we’d gone in earlier, in hindsight. But it wouldn’t have ‘cured’ him – it would have just given him a little more treatment time. For now, we rejoice that it wasn’t worse, thank God for the intervention and trust that treatment will improve Aiden’s eyesight, and never rely on a megamart optometrist, again, for something significant

Whitmor 6208-2417 Triple Mesh Sorter With Wheels, White

It’s really little things that make my life so much easier. When I was growing up, we had a linen closet at the end of the hallway with a flap door to throw in laundry, that then opened up for you to pull everything out, sort it, and deal with it. There were 2 laundry days at our house + a sheet/towel day, but it required the laundry to be done all in one day, or you were left with piles of clothes sitting in the hallway or having to put things back into the closet and pull them out again for another sort/load. It also left us with a ginormous pile of laundry to fold each laundry day – and it always ended up being done on the couch while watching television in the evening, which left at least one person sitting on the floor.

This laundry sorter in our bedroom has made my life SO much easier. We can sort through our laundry as we put it in (whites, casual clothes, work clothes), and I can do  a load per day and still keep up, rotating between each load and still doing a boy load day, a towel/sheet day, and as long as I keep my load per day going, I don’t get backed up.  (I hear my husband laughing hysterically in the background after reading that bit).

This isn’t the nicest thing to have in your bedroom as far as visuals (But, hey – it was free with my Swagbucks and Superpoints Amazon Gift Certificates!). I needed to replace the 2 bin one we’d been using for a while that just wasn’t working for us, and I needed to simplify again. It’s amazing how much work this one item keeps me from having to do each week, and keeps my schedule running just a little more smoothly.

What is a laundry secret you have to keep yourself organized and on task?

I wish I could take a pass on today’s post, honestly. Our week went from okay to ugh to worse, and by the end of the week, I was eating smashed avocados in tortillas and Connor was eyeing the reception table for our church’s opening REALLY hard.

I might want to play with a pretty little digital menu to use each week to show you all what we ate. That’s it…I might do that instead. I’m terribly embarrassed to say that on more than 1 lunch occasion this week my oldest ate ramen and my youngest had cheesy tacos. Just 2 occasions. Really, just 2. This was a very bad week for food at Casa “Yeah I wish My Life were really this good.”

So I’m taking a bye – considering I can’t even remember what we had for dinner on Wednesday. Last night we had sirloin steak – I do remember that because it was awful. It was some sirloin tip thin steaks that even though I only cooked it for about 3 min on each side on the cast iron grill…it was STILL tough and chewy and not worth eating, but we did. It was our new food this week, because we’ve never had it before, and because those brussel sprouts are still taunting me. These are the second generation brussel sprouts. The first ones went bad.

Though – I can tell you breakfast was italian bread toast smeared with peanut butter, topped with sliced bananas, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with ground flax seed. We had it almost every single day. And we had turkey paninis one time too many.  On at least one occasion I contemplated making granola. And we bought some hummus because it was on sale, cheap. The boys will be getting their fair share of spinach laced smoothies this coming week, I promise!

Can I say it was a bad week? It was. At least as far as food goes. We had some questionable meals just to get food on the table. But I did make one really good meal and I’ll share it here. It should’ve been the night we had the brussel sprouts. But I can’t face them, yet. They’re going to haunt me forever. Remember that guy from Better Off Dead with John Cusack who kept following him wanting his $2 for his paper route? That’s those brussel sprouts haunting me every time I stand in front of the counter. COOOOOK ME TODAY!

40 Cloves of Garlic Chicken (Thighs) & Roasted Garlic Quinoa

• 6-8 chicken thighs
• salt
• pepper
• 40 cloves of garlic
• oil

You’ll need an oven proof skillet and lid. I used my stainless steel deep frying pan and just covered it with aluminum foil in the end.

Preheat oven to 350

Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper on both sides

Brown in skillet

Toss in peeled garlic cloves

Cover, put in oven, bake for about 45 min

When done, use the garlic to crush onto toasted italian loaf slices  and top with a bit of salt – SO good!

It really is that easy, so good, and the leftover meat can be shredded and used for another meal down the road.

The quinoa is just as easy – prepare as per instructions here, and add some of those mushed up garlic cloves to it just before serving! Serve with a salad on the side.

To prepare:

After soaking, rinse quinoa thoroughly.

Place a 2:1 ratio of cooking liquid to quinoa in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then return to simmer and allow to cook for 15-20, just like rice. (you’ll see that the quinoa has unfurled in the pan, and you know it’s done)

After the cooking time is up, remove from heat, and fluff with a fork to serve.

Traditionally, I cook quinoa in a broth as opposed to just water.

How was your week with the new food diet?

We participate in:

click for credits

Christmas with my Dad and my Brother’s family and assorted other family/friends. It was great to get together with them, because we don’t do it nearly often enough.

click for credits

Thanks to the girls at Sweet Shoppe, I found a fun treat for the boys this Christmas Eve – a trip on the ‘Baldwin Express’ for Christmas Eve. They LOVED it.

click for credits

Our Christmas morning at home. We love having some of our own traditions to celebrate and waking up to our tree and love the things that we do together, but Christmas sure is lonely without getting to see our families. We love that we can switch out schedules and see each of them every other year.

The following layouts are for each of the boys to have their own accomplishment recorded. The board breaking day at our house was met with much trepidation, lots of courage wrangling, and some pretty proud boys when it was all done.

Click for credits

click for credits

click for credits

I’ll probably be scrapping again tonight as we have Boy Night Part II happening after last night’s butchered attempt (don’t worry – I’ll be blogging it LOL). I’m happy to get them another shot at making their weekend great with Daddy.

And instead of posting plan ahead menus that may or may not work out for us, I’ll be doing what we actually ate that week – as some accountability. It’ll help keep me in line with the effort to eat more whole foods, eat in more, and make better meals for my kids. I’ll still plan ahead, but the after is where it really counts – not what I plan, but what I actually do. So look for it each Monday as I let you know what we ate last week!

If you’re just getting started in Menu Planning, or trying to set better eating goals for your family – check out these posts from last year:

Meal Planning Day 1 –  Meal Guide & Recipe Cards

Meal Planning Day 2 – Meal Planning Session

Meal Planning Day 3 – Let’s Go Shopping

Meal Planning Day 4 – Hints, Resources & Fridge Art

Meal Planning Day 5 – You’re on  your own!

To get an idea of what I’ll be doing – here’s today’s menu

Breakfast: leftover Italian bread sliced thin, toasted, smeared in peanut butter, topped with sliced bananas, drizzled with local honey, and sprinkled with flax seed, along with leftover banana and chocolate milk.

Lunch: Hummus, homemade tortilla chips, sliced veggies  (this might change depending on how long the library visit is today)

Dinner – 40 Cloves of Garlic chicken thighs (adapted from Alton Brown), roasted garlic & herb quinoa, roasted brussel sprouts*,  applesauce

Another of our goals this year is to try 1 new food a week, whether it’s incorporating a new vegetable, or a new dish, just keeping ourselves open to new food, techniques and textures. This week it’s brussel sprouts which I’m terrified of. I’ve only had them as mushy bitter things, so I’m looking forward to trying these out (I think).