very easy yummy "homemade" pasta sauce

I created this recipe last night when I realized after I had meatballs baking in the oven and pasta done on the stove that I didn't have a jar of Hunts pasta sauce! I had a moment of being the drama queen my family knows well when I'm in the kitchen and then pulled myself together... Here's what happened:

1 large can whole tomatoes
1 small can tomato sauce
1 (14 oz maybe) can of italian style tomatoes in olive oil
2 cloves fresh garlic
1 whole onion

Put in blender- I quartered the onion, but put the garlic in whole- blend until smooth. If I had a food processor that would have worked better, it was a chunky sauce, but had a lot of flavor and all of my picky eaters ate it! One added bonus is that it made enough for 2 more meals so it's cheaper even than the cheapo hunts sauce and much much better. This would be fabo with garden tomatoes. I think next time I will try tomato paste rather than sauce and see if it's thicker.

Who knew I could make "homemade" sauce! :)

Halloween 2009

Here's a few halloween pictures. In case it's hard to see- Tyler's a football player, Sammie's candy corn, and Spencer's Spongebob for the 5th year running.

Tyler's b-day cake

Tyler's 4th birthday is tomorrow! Here's a picture of his cake.

We have a lot of plans for this b-day week for our little man. Tonight Meghan and James and Uncle Brian and Aunt Laura are coming over to celebrate, tomorrow morning is his kid party with 5 of his little friends, (Cars themed of course!) tomorrow night Nicole is coming with us to go out to Nick and Elaina's pizzeria (a fabo pizza place in Overland if you have a chance to go sometime) and then we'll do the family parties over thanksgiving. Thursday is my family and Saturday Thomas' family. Whew! What a fun filled week for him. I'm thinking as long as the stress of everything doesn't completely overwhelm me I'll be able to enjoy it. I'm thinking positive about it anyway.

Magic House 11-21-09

The kids' dentist offered a free trip to the Magic House for a customer appreciation day so we went last night! Here are some highlights! They had a great time. Thomas and I were ready to leave about an hour after we got there, but we hung in there until 8 pm. That was 2 hours of crazy kids and herding our own children like they were sheep. I'm proud of our stamina.

Spencer in action! Sammie looking sweet.

Pictures for Uncle Darrin

My brother said today that he doesn't want to see recipes, but wants to see pictures of my kids so here's your fix big brother! Love ya!

Crock Pot Wassail

Check out this recipe! I'm going to try it this year for Christmas.

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/11/crockpot-wassail-spiced-punch-recipe.html

YUM!

Spencer Progress Report

As some of you know Spencer has been going through some major issues lately. It's been a combination of some medication we tried to help increase his focus at school. He's been struggling academically for the last year and we thought this would help. Aparently Spencer has a simliar system to my dad and me though and he did not tolerate the meds at all. We've been dealing with a child that was so not like our normal Spencer that we were worried if we'd ever see him back again! However, now it's been about a month since he went off the medicine and he seems pretty much back to normal. He'll sit with us and cuddle, hug us and tell us he loves us, wants to spend time with us, and is hungry again. (there's my boy!)

He still clobbers his siblings on a semi regular basis, but I think this has more to do with being the oldest boy than his autism. I have an older brother and am married to an oldest son and let's just say the stories seem familiar. :)

What's upsetting to me is that on the medication Spencer was doing better in school- answering questions and holding his own in both the special education and the general education environments. The trade off is not worth it though.

A few of my favorite things

Here is a quick run down of my favorite websites. I check these at least once a week.

http://www.5dollardinners.com/

Every recipe is made for 5 dollars or under. Pretty cool!

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

This woman made something in her crock pot every day for a year! Yeah!

http://www.cakejournal.com/

I found this looking for Tyler's bday cake and was inspired by the creativity. Even though I am not a cake decorator except for the time 5 years ago I took a 6 week class and my pig cake still looked like a balloon with eyes... I wonder if I still have a picture of that...

http://orgjunkie.com/

Love love love this site!

http://allrecipes.com/

http://www.dealdetectives.com/

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

Because sadly I'm still an obsessed teenage girl at heart. *sigh*

http://www.moneysavingmom.com/

http://100daystochristmas.com/

I just like to see what I should be doing...

Well, I guess that's it. It seems like a lot to me on this little page, but maybe there will be things that are new to you! Post your favorites in the comment page

First Post

I've been inspired lately by my favorite blogs so I decided to start one about our family of 5. Welcome to our humble abode!