What is Chislic?

I am from MN and lived there up until 3.5 yrs ago. We now live in SD, don't ask me why, I really do not remember how we ended up here. Any ways, the first time my husband ordered Chislic, I was so confused... it did not sound like something goo to eat. After he just about every last one, he talked me in to trying one. WOW, they were good. In the last couple days I had been looking up how it was made and what it was made from. I found there is no real direct answer for that. What is it: meat on a stick, any meat... really any meat. How is it made: Well either fried or grilled. Here is how we made them and what we might do differently next time. We used sirloin steak (next time: venison or goose). We did not marinate our because it was a last minute dish for us (next time: we will either use buttermilk, Italian dressing or a mixture of both) We heated a frying pan with a good layer of olive oil on med. heat. Once heated the cubed meat was add to the pan and cooked on all sides, during this we also had a pan heating in the oven at about 425. Once cooked on all side we popped it in the oven for about 5 mins. Then placed on to a towel to get the excess oil off and sprinkled with Lowery's season salt. They turned out great and I would have taken a picture, but they were gone before I thought of it. It is too clod out here to grill, so this was a great way to have steak.

Wordless Wednesday

Hailey meeting her new cousin

Hockey Saturday

On Saturday Watertown Mites had their annual Mite Fest. Both boys got to play two games each on Saturday. My mom, dad and sister came out to watch them.
Logan loves just skating around on the ice. He does not get the whole getting after the puck, instead is happy just skating around in circles and not stopping till he has to get off the ice.

Gabriel just loves to be out there skating, it is nice that they do not keep score at this age, so it is fun for them no matter how many times the puck goes in their goal. It was a fun busy day. On Sunday we traveled up to Morehead to meet my new nephew that was born last Monday. He is so cute and such a good baby.

The Snow Safety/Death Talk

We live in South Dakota and this year we have gotten a lot of snow. Once it is plowed it makes some pretty high hills. With high hills kids like to build tunnels in those hills. In a town not to far from us a group of kids did that. Once they were done they were enjoying themselves running over up the hill, down the hill and through the tunnel. After doing this for a while the tunnel structure weakened and collapsed on a girl. From the trauma of the collapse on her and her being buried in there for quite sometime, she did not make it out alive. My son had heard about this at school and last night came to me with many questions. His first was, where was an adult? I then had to explain how some children can play at the park with just kids around. Then there was, why did they not dig her out or go for help? I do not know the logistics to answer that question, but it did enable me to then teach him a very important lesson about going and getting an adult in the sign of trouble, even if you think you could get in trouble for something. I do not know if that was what happened, but she was under there for sometime. It also allowed me the time to explain that when your friends do something that you think could hurt some one of could be dangerous, so get an adult or leave the group and find some where else to play. I try to use as many examples as possible to teach him to be his own leader and not just follow others. I want him to make choices for himself and not be influenced by others. He ended to conversation by saying, wow, her mom and dad must be really sad, I sure would be. It made me cry and that was then end of it.

Running No Where...

Do you ever feel like you are running really fast and getting absolutely no where. Those are my feelings these days. I had a plan and I was eagerly attacking it. That plan now involves more tweaking and working out. I have goal set and I still want to make it there, I just need to find all the resources to make that happen. Down side, my husbands truck's fuel pump just went out. Up side, I started watching a little one for some extra income. My luck I am watching him to pay for the fuel pump.

Wordless Wednesday

21 Weeks

My baby is 21 weeks, I meant to post this last week she was 20 weeks, but that did not happen. Last week Malia had her first ear infection. Hailey never had one ear infection, Logan would get pink eye every time he had an ear infection(it was great having a visual indicator) and Gabriel had many until they took his tonsils and adenoids out, who knew that would help so much. Gabriel also had a real snoring problem and super bad breath all the time. I do not think Malia is completely over her cold/ear infection, but she is working on it:) Her favorite pass time lately is watching her brothers and sister play while she swings and watching her daddy play on the computer. She is so much fun with her talking and cooing. She loves to tell her daddy stories of our day and pull on his beard.

Snow Day

On Monday my oldest had a snow day. I won a prize from Coffee with the Mrs. and her 12 days of Christmas giveaway. It was at our door when we got back from Christmas and I stashed it away for a need that needed something new. Monday was one of those days, and the kids loved it. They could not go outside, they would have blown away. Here they are playing with the flying car track.

Today they had a two hour late start due to the cold weather. When I went out to start my car it was -31 degrees, that is just normal temp. They would not show the wind chill. My car did not like that and refused to start. I had to call my husband at work and he had to come home to bring Gabriel to school. Deep inside I was very happy I did not have to go outside and did not have to bring three little ones outside with me.

Name that Game...

My husband likes to play computer games. His game of choice right now is World of Warcraft. He has tried many, but there has been two that have gotten played the most. When he is at home this is where you will usually find him. My youngest daughter is starting to take after him. She loves to sit on his lap and watch the screen, then watch his hands. She even talks to the screen.

Sleepy Child

My second child is a very active little boy. He runs and runs and then just crashes. For the last two Thanksgivings he has not been able to eat dinner. In 2007, he fell asleep at the dinner table, yes, sitting at the table sound asleep. In 2008, he fell asleep as we were getting dinner on the table, we look over he was sound asleep on the couch. This year when his sister was first born he wanted to hold her all the time. Twice he fell asleep holding her, like this...




This is at my parents when he fell asleep watching TV with the dogs.
He was also my baby that hated the bottle, I I have had only one to actually like it. He had to go to daycare(his Nani's House) when he was little and she would get the bottle all ready for him and start feeding him, which he did not like, so he would just fall asleep and most days sleep them till I got back to the house. Now if he does not want to eat his meal, he falls asleep... I hope he does not do that when he starts school, hehe.

Word of the Year-2009

I like this idea much better then resolutions. I seen this idea at Tip Junkie. My word for the year is MOTIVATE. It means so much to me this year. I need it to reach my goals, my kids need it to keep them moving in the right direction and my husband needs it, so he does not get bored. I need to be physically motivated as my mom wants to run a 5K for her 50th birthday and I would like to run with her, along with my youngest sister and both my brothers. I need it mentally to keep me going, I tend to relax too much and nothing gets done, this will help me organize my life(there are many things included in this and I thing the list would be way too long). I also need motivation spiritually, I have always been a church goer, but in the past three years (since moving to a new city) I have not been to spiritual. I would like to get back to that. I have lots of words I could come up with, but I think this word includes lots of what I want to accomplish this year.

Our Christmas Pictures

Here are some of our Christmas Pictures. We had Santa come visit us Christmas eve.












Gabriel was all laughs the whole time...

Logan was very scared of Santa. He clung to my lap the whole time he was in the house and my brother tried to get him to sit on his lap and well you can see how well that worked.


Hailey was very excited to be getting a present and did not mind Santa at all.

Malia did not mind either. She snuggled right up into his beard.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2009... each year I hope to do better then the last. A few years ago, I did not and had to start from square one again, but from there I think the last two years ahve gotten better. I have less debt each year and hopefully next year will have none by the end. In the past two years we have also increased our family by three (two daughters and a cat). I talk about two years because the past two years have realy ran together and this is my fresh start to do something different then the past two years. Yes, I did have a great things happen the pst two years, but I am off to look for self contentment and really find who and/or what I want to be. I feel like I rush into thing too often and not really give the time to think about what it really means.