Pics of the Homestead and Thai Peanut Noodles

This is a view from the road. Both of our cars fit in the garage! We were excited about that

This is the first time entering the front door. You can see th stairs and the dining room in the background.

This is the kids on the stairs. You can see into the livingroom also.

This is the back yard from one side. This is probably about 1/3 of the yard.

This is a view of the back yard from the other side.

This is the Sky Fort that Daniel built in the backyard. All of the kids, and I mean All the kids in the neighborhood seam to really enjoy it.

Thia Peanut Noodles

1/2 cup Chicken Broth

3 Tbsp. Creamy Peanutbutter
1-2 tsp. Sriracha Chili Sauce ( the one in the tall squeeze bottle with the Rooster on the front )

1 1/2 Tbsp. Honey
3 Tbsp. Soy Sauce

1 1/2 Tbsp. Fresh Ginger ( I cut it into small enough pieces to press threw the garlic press. I read once that about an inch of ginger once peeled and grated is about a Tbsp.)
3 cloves of Garlic pressed

8 0z linguine noodles ( if they were whole wheat this would make a complete protein with the peanut butter!)

Just wisk all this in a sauce pan till it starts to bubble. Then pour over drained noodles. I doubled it and used the entire box of noodles for my fam. yummy yummy.

The recipe came from a Food Blog called Our Best Bites. They have lots of good recipes that are on the Olsen Family October menu. I will let you know if anymore turn out good. I did make there Pumpkin Crumble the other day, but it wasn't anything to write home about. The temp is supposed to drop here on Wed. so we will be having there Smokey Bean and Bacon soup Wed or Thurs. I will let you know how it goes.

On another note...... As many of you know I entered two of my hats in the County Fair a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, I did not come home with a ribbon! I know, can you believe it. I mean, the judges must be blind, or dumb or both. But for real..... I am thinking you just can't get the full experience of one of my hats when it is laying flat on a table. I also think I entered it under the wrong category. I chose needle work, cause there were lots of crocheted thing in that one, but they were mostly blankets and Klenex box covers,a dn pot holders. I think next year ( yes I will try again, every year until those old lady's accept me! ) I will enter in the clothing and wearable category. There were a few yarn hats and scarfs in that category and they all won at least a 3rd place ribbon. My hats were on a shelf with all the Misc. needle work stuff, so i'm wondering if they were able to figure out they were hats. They could have thought they were some newfangled teapot cosy or something. Who, knows..... but I am excited to try again next year.

Red blood cell production is going good. I am feeling a little better each day. Hopefully before mom and dad come to visit I will be feeling good enough to cook up some yummy dinners and go to the beach. Ok, got to get. Briceson has a stomach bug and just ralfed all over the couch and himself. I got it cleaned up, but now he is laying on a clean blanket on the floor watching WonderPets, waiting for the next eruption. When he was puking, EveyLynn asked " Briceson leaking?" The dynamic between two two year olds is so funny. How they understand and relate to each other. Cracks me up.

Im going to put a couple pics of the new house on here cause Daniel taught me how last night, and I'm feeling pretty cool about my new skill. I have some better ones, but I am hoping to get them all organized and put into Picasa album or something before i send them.

Love and miss you all,

Rox

So..... I'm not as cool as I thought cause I can not get the pics to go at the end of the message and for the life of me can not get them in the order I want. Stupid, Stupid Blogger.

P.S. This last paragraph should have been up by the recipe, but It drifted down here some how. I'm really bad at this Blog stuff.

Ok, so here are the noodles I made. They were very good the next day also but I had to add about a Tbs. of water to loosen them up. The cilantro and peanuts really make them awesom. Isaiah loved the cilantro, but Ali ate them just plane, cause well, she is a plane kind of girl. : ) I only added 1 tsp of the hotsauce, but when I make it for mom and dad I think a bit more will be in order.

I'm just to busy........

So I felt very guilty after getting moms reprimand about not blogging. I'm still wondering why she chose to send it v-a an email and not post it on the blog, maybe trying to save us the embarrassment or something.

BEGINNING OF EXCUSE:

I would LOVE to put up a great post all about our move, new house and really cool new play house, but I'm busy. With what you say??? Well I know the rest of you have super important things going on like School, Birthday Girls, Looking for new jobs, and new apartments, in new cites, and crazy stuff, but I'm super busy producing NEW, brand NEW, healthy red blood cells! And it is hard work! Now If you will all please flip threw the latest Awake that mom sent you, you will find a super neet article on a thing called Hemoglobin. I will give you all a min to pull it out of your stack of junk mail, which I'm sure you only put it there for safe keeping so you would know where to find it later. Ok, You with me??? Well, in this article you will learn that you need Hemoglobin to do some really fancy stuff like use the oxygen you take into your lungs to keep each and every cell and organ in your body alive! Pretty cool, ain't it. Well apparently my body has been having some trouble making this for a few ( 12 or so) months. That has left me well pretty much feeling like I was slowly dieing. This was made worse by the fact that I have 4 kids, just moved them all, along with there daddy, and small dog 14000 miles away, and that the stupid, I mean sweet Dr. at our last base insisted on draining me of any healthy cells i had left to run more tests! So, I am taking super doses of Iron as we speek, and feeling a tad bit better. Now, I just feel about the same tired you would if you were up for 25 straight hours because you had to take an unexpected airplane ride cause your little bit ( or Little Bit niece) had bad gas. Can I get an "Amen" Uncle B! Which is way less tired than I have been feeling for the past few weeks. BUT, the catch is it takes your body 128 days to turn over your blood supply. I have been taking the iron for about 30 days, so only 98 more to go, excpt my new smarter Dr said it would probably take me a little longer cause my Blood Iron level was 3 and it suld be around the 100 mark.

END OF LONG AND VERRY GOOD EXCUSE

So, I'm hoping that this is a good enough reason for not blogging in so long, but if not would one of you mind forging moms name so I can get out of trouble! Oh, please I know you have all done it plenty of times. Actual dads is much easier since he prints and all.

FUNNY STORY: Sometimes for a writing assignment Ali and Isaiah write letters to family and friends. Isaiah decided to write to PaPa. A few weeks later he got a response back. He was in shock. He read it and then said,"WOW! I didn't even know PaPa could write!" Ali said " Oh, Nonnie probably did it for him." HA!

Any who, so I am going to try and post more on here, but be patient with me, I'm fragile! I am going to have to sleep 12+ hours tonight to recover from the energy I have to spend spell checking this stupid post! Now I'm pretty sure non of you will have such a good excuse, but go a head and try.

Mom is already feeling sorry for me cause she could have passed this terrible anemia gene on to me, and she is just so sad and guilty over the whole thing. Although, It is more likely that Dad gave it to me, but don't tell her that. It works better for me this way. PSA for the day: Since we all probably got it from mom, I would suggest you all go to the Dr and request an Iron Pannel be done. If you been feeling "sickish and droopy" that is. If not, well than what is your genious reason for not blogging!!! Hu! Hu!

I love you all , and will try and get up some photos of our new house soon.

P.S. decided to save my energy stores and NOT do the spell check. Plus, its much funnier this way, don't you think.

CHARLI JO TURNS ONE YEAR OLD!!!

Well, it's been one really fast year! It seems just like yesterday that we were hovering around the hospital, the house, the mall and the phones, on standby while little miss CJ took her time about deciding when to arrive! .... and in the end, it was decided for her! I here her Mommy and Daddy are taking her back to that mall today to play on the same kiddie playground that she visited invitro about a year and a day ago! Wish we could ALL be there to share the fun with her! Congratulations Brannon and Milah on a job well done! -- love you all of you -- Nonnie. (P.S. - I'LL RELY ON MILAH TO POST A ONE YEAR PICTURE OF OUR FAMILY'S LITTLEST ONE!)

...one sleepy little family....

Well, EveyLynn June Bug, one day, when you're older, your mama will share with you the story of the night you managed to keep your parents, your grandparents, your mama's two sisters, and your mama's brother up all night long - in 5 different cities, and in three different states! (...and she should also tell you that we would do it again, in a heartbeat, without batting an eye, because you're our little June Bug, and we love every little bit of you!)

Your [groggy] Nonnie

LINDSEY & CODY - lookin' good!

Okay, I'm finally getting around to downloading and going through the pictures from Monkey's thesis show - there are some great pictures, but I thought for now I'd just post this one of Lindsey and Cody - 'cause I kind of like it! I sure wish Cody were coming with Lindsey next week so we could spend a little more time with him before the two of them head off for parts yet unknown!

R.I.P. Charlie the Hamster

Welcome back all! Well, our week began in tragedy. Our belove hamster, Charlie, passed away after two very long years! She was a good little hamster, living a quiet little life on the counter in the bathroom, where no one really enjoyed her presence and she stunk up the room. But she was happy. And the couple of times per week that the kids took a brief interest in her and stood long enough to pound on her cage and poke things in at her will be a lasting, loving memory for them both. Kam took her passing especially hard. You'd of thought that they were inseparable friends the way she sobbed over the news. Burial services were held on Monday evening, under a big cedar tree in the back yard. Kamryn and Owen officiated, and then placed flowers on the grave. Very sweet.

Kam insisted on calling everyone to share the news. Her conversation with her Nana had me fighting back tears (of laughter).

Kam: Know what Nana, Charlie died.

Nana: Oh Kamryn, I'm sorry you lost your hamster.

Kam: Oh no Nana, she's not lost, She's in a box down in a hole under the tree in the backyard. We didn't lose her, she just died because her heart stopped beeping.

I wanted to thank you all for your support. Two of my three siblings have already tried to pawn pets off on us to fill the void. So sweet! On a side note... our family will NEVER own a cat (nice try Lindz), but we may be welcoming a new member to the family soon, possibly a BEAUTIFUL Lab named Bear. (We're strongly considering it B!)

Anyhow, It's been nice catching up, hope everyone else has a chance to do the same! Love you all!

Is anyone still out there?

Good Morning my La Familia! Funny thing: we were in Austin a few months ago and we saw several of these big Gyms called LA Fitness. Well I was pretty sure because of my vast knowledge of grammar and all, that because there were no periods between the letters that it was a Mexican gym. You know like La Fitness. When Daniel's cousin Chris finally was able to stop laughing he informed me that it was LA like the city in California not La. Hum! I'm sure LOTS of people make that mistake! : ) Anyways, I was just checking to see if any of you were still out there. This poor blog is getting sad and lonely, so I thought I would put something on here. Lets, see. Well, I'm having coffee. And ummmmm, its good. And Alison is unloading the dishwasher, Isaiah is eating breakfast, Tweetel -Dee and Tweetel- Dumb are still in bed, and Daniel is still at work. He works nights and gets home around 9. Oh, we secured a house in Goldsboro! We are pretty excited about it. It is in a quiet little neighborhood with lots of trees and a huge yard. I think Daniel is more than a little excited to get to buy a riding lawn mower. This will be the 1st time on 11 years that we have lived off base. May take some getting use to, but I think we will be fine. I'm pretty sure the crime rate in Goldsboro is pretty mild considering it is smaller than Springdale, and it is the biggest town in a 50 mile radius. We are excited about renting, especially since it means we won't have to worry about selling a house when we move again. Wierd fact: Our new landlord is a 3 star General. The Highest Rank in any branch is a 4 star general, and there is only one of those in each branch. Daniel called him one day to inquire about the house, and he was as nice as can be. Then he emailed us some info about the house from his work email and we about fell over when we saw his rank. I'm hoping he will be a good land lord considering his High profile and position. Daniel has kept all of his civilian conversations on a Mr.---- level about the house, but we refer to him as " The General" in conversation. I have been keeping my eye on political and military news lately just to see if he I see him! : ) I will try and post a pic of the house at the end of this very long and boring message.

So, we haven't heard anything on the tests that EveyLynn had on Wednesday. FYI: they are testing her for Hirschsprund's Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, and a slew of other intestional stuff. They are thinking she isn't growing because a malabsorpution issue that could be caused by some of these digestive things. Her Dr. is on vacation for the next 3 weeks, but he said he would call as soon as he got the reports back. If I don't hear any thing by Monday I will assume he is having a really good vacation and has forgotten about us, so I will call his office.

Well, Daniel just got home, and the " Bobbsey Twins" are waking up, so I better get going. My house pretty much turns into a Cyclone from the time there feet hit the floor, so I need to go batten down the hatches and brace my self. I love you all and hope everyone can scrape together a few minutes to post on here more, me included! I miss you all something awful!

This is the Goldsboro House. the address is 204 hunters Creek, Goldsboro NC 27534. If you googel the address and then click on it you can do a street view of it.