We took some suggestions from my sister Angie and our friend Anna and made some AMAZING homemade pizza tonight. Thanks to the suggestion from Angie, we skipped the hand mixing and kneading and went with a lazier method. We made the crust in the bread machine using this recipe which is one we modified from recipezaar. Here is our version:
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup bread flour
1 3/8 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon of onion powder
1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon of oregano
Place ingredients, in order listed, in bread pan fitted with kneading paddle. Select Dough/Pizza Dough cycle. When completed, deflate dough and use to make your favorite pizza.
Then we took Anna’s advice and made it a stuffed crust by rolling pieces of string cheese up in the crust. It turned out GREAT. Next time, I’m putting mushrooms on it!

I’ve mentioned it earlier, but in case you haven’t noticed, we are participating in Project 366, a cool daily photo project with our good friends over at Run With the Fishes. Some days, it’s really hard to get a good picture for the day and we just have to settle. Lately, though, we’ve been overrun with good photos. So, I threw some of the leftovers into an album on our archive so we could show them off. Click Here to see them. Enjoy!

(Bare with me … Going to the potty is a HOT topic around here.)
Unfortunately, poor little Andrew had to go home yesterday morning because he wasn’t quite well yet from his bought with … his bug. So yesterday afternoon, I decided to take advantage of the situation and get some much needed errands done. One of our stops was Hobby Lobby.
We looked at several items while there. Hannah’s favorite words were “I want to get that for my mommy.” (If I was to purchase everything she wanted for her mommy … Anna, you’d have a couple model cars and a lovely shadow box full of necessities for the avid duck hunter.) Noah, on the other hand, was “I want to buy that from Hannah Clause. It’s twenty-two dollars.” In other words, he’s working on his Christmas list for next year and making sure it all stays within SANTA’s budget.
After walking around for a while I noticed Noah performing the infamous “pee pee dance”. Off to the bathroom we went. When we arrived, Noah stopped dead in his tracts at the door.
NOAH: “Is this the girls bafroom?”
MOMMY: “Yes. Daddy’s not here and Mommy can’t go in the boys.”
NOAH (somewhat angry): “I NOT a girl. I want to go to the boys bafroom.”
MOMMY: “Mommy can’t go in the boys bathroom. You’d have to go all by yourself. Can you go potty all by yourself?”
Yes, he can.

It took about ten minutes. I almost went to find a big man to check on my little man. I could here Noah fussing “I not a girl … I a boy … I have to be a big boy cause I not a girl.” But I bit my lip, paced back and forth and waited. That was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do so far with my baby boy.

It’s been a while but I wanted to make note of this for future reference. So when Noah’s about to potty train his own kids (a long long long time from now), he can consider THIS his warning.
Noah’s been doing SO good with his potty training. Dare I say that we’re … done? Okay, so we had a slight … not setback but …. hmm. Noah’s been having “accidents” of the nasty kind. It’s frustrating because we KNOW he can do this. Things were perfect. We were accident free for a while and then all the sudden YUCK! Friday, I decided to start from the beginning … almost.
Introducing the Potty Chart.

Everyone knows Noah L-O-V-E-S trains. I made this chart for him and then took him to the local craft store to pick out his very own train stickers (and some cutting mats for my new toy … but that’s another story). The idea is simple. Keep the pants happy; get a sticker. When the track is full; get a prize! Hence “Stay on track, win a prize!”
Saturday was the first day. I don’t think he quite understood what was going on. He begged and begged for a sticker. He went to bed mad. Sunday … HE GOT ONE! There’s no stopping him now …. we hope. He so excited about his potty chart. He tells EVERYONE about it. He even told the maintenance guy today to “come and see!”
I so hope this works. Ten stickers this time … I’m thinking fifteen next time.
SIDE STORY: We’ve done away with the “night night pants”. No more pull-ups at night! It’s been hard for Noah to give them up. He wants to wear them so bad. We’ve had battles over it. I finally said “You can wear them but you have to put them on yourself and once they’re gone, THEY’RE GONE!” He’s been wearing underwear the past few nights. However, last night, he decided he was NOT wearing underwear. He was going to wear night night pants. He went to the basket to get them and … THEY’RE GONE! Instead of giving in and wearing underwear … the past two nights, Noah’s been “going commando”. Boys.

The other night, while I was sitting on the couch with a scared Noah at 3:00 am, I heard an odd scratching sound…coming from the ceiling! I knew it had to be a mouse. I got up and began throwing a rolled up sock at the noise –didn’t want to wake everyone–and that shut it up. Of course, Noah got a big kick out of this and wouldn’t stop giggling. Finally I told him there was a mouse up there. That was the wrong thing to say. Suddenly, he was very worried. Then I couldn’t get him to go back to sleep for a while. The next day, we went to Wal-Mart and found the mouse trap department. Wal-Mart patrons must have a lot of rats because they had a HUGE selection. Mouse traps, poisons, rat traps (literally the size of a paperback book!), and “humane” traps that caught the little buggers alive. The rat traps scared me, because in my mind, that scratching I heard kept getting louder and louder and the mouse I imagined got bigger and bigger. Anyway, we settled on the plain old ordinary traps and set one out in the attic with peanut butter on it. That very night, I heard a muffled snap and I could barely contain my glee. I got him. AND good. The next morning I carefully stuck my head up in the attic fearing a possum sized rat, but it was just a tiny little one about the size of this one. I joked it was Chris’ friend returning for another ride in her pants. Both kids just HAD to see the body as I triumphantly carried him to the trash in his plastic Wal-Mart bag casket. I kinda felt like a hero.

Big News! Christina is a Big Loser! I know what you’re thinking. How could I be so mean? But this time, it’s really true. She is a big loser. In fact, she’s such a big loser that her friends got together and decided that she is the biggest loser they know. I didn’t even get to vote on it. They did it all themselves. Not only that, they also felt so sorry for her that they gave her money! Lots of money! I guess they decided that she could use that money to be less of a loser or something. Who knows.
Truth be told, Chris’s Mom’s group had a Biggest Loser contest and she WON it! She got to take home 90 smackers and I couldn’t be more proud. She looks great and she feels good, too. She’s been eating very healthy and hitting the treadmill like a maniac! I can’t keep up with her. I better watch out or she’ll trade me in for a better looking hubby!