Changes

Hello Fall....it's time to enjoy the cool days or the even cooler nights; The leaves changing; Sipping on a cup of hot coffee on the way to take Cole to school; Wearing my favorite jackets and hats; Turning the heater on in the car in the morning; Cole's prize pumpkins and corn stalks on my front porch...

I love the cooking/baking/comfort food too also. I just took these out of the oven and topped them with this. Ella is currently dipping grahmn crackers and bananas in the extra glaze ;) I just took this off of the stove (but rather than empty the broth into a bowl with a colander over it, I dumped 1/4 of it down the drain before Ella asked "Mom...why are you dumping the broth". Thank goodness for 4 year olds that are smarter than their mom's! I am so used to dumping the food into the colander to keep and the liquid down the drain, it's my first time making broth- I wouldn't be me if I didn't do something wrong) I plan on making these tonight to go with the chicken and the broth.

Side note: I have also been wanting to share my new favorite quick meal: Earlier in the week, a trip to Wal Mart took much longer than I thought it would and realized it was dinner time. I picked up a rotisserie chicken (which are less expensive than a raw chicken the same size, it's not even a questions of which one to get!) and went to the freezer section to get a bag of corn. That's when I saw THESE. I'm not a fan of instant potatoes, but these looked different, so I thought we would try them. There were so easy and tasted homemade! We have tried all 4 kinds and the only one's that we didn't like were the cheese- too much artificial junk. The sweet potatoes are fab! Anyhow, the entire meal cost less than $10 and I used the leftover chicken carcass to make the broth today! Try them. Just don't buy them at Alberstons, they are almost $5, and at Wal Marty, they were less than $3.

I really wouldn't mind if it were Fall all year. Would it be strange if I kept my fall decor up all year round? ;)

*****

Now onto the B-I-G change...I received a phone call on Wednesday from a friend that Marty worked with at Tyson. He had worked very hard to track Marty down to offer him a job. He started telling me all about it and I was very intrigued since Marty's job hasn't been too secure lately. Then came the catch...the job is in Wyoming!

After meeting with his friend that night and a lot of discussing, the pro list out weighed the con he has accepted the job. He will be working 2 weeks on, then come home for one. It's a 6-7 hour drive, but the cost isn't too much more to fly home, so I'm sure he'll do that when the roads are bad.

It's going to take a lot of adjusting and be a challenge for everyone- especially him since he'll be working 80-120 a week. However, with anything else that changes in life, it will become "normal" for us. Our list of concerns is a mile high, but we felt that the risk of being laid off where he is now was higher than all of them. I worry about him working so hard and exhausting himself. I worry about the kids adjusting to him being gone. I worry about us being away from one another for 2 weeks at a time. But I'm really looking forward to the weeks that he'll be home, we'll be able to do things that we haven't been able to with a traditional schedule.

Today is his last day of work and we'll have 9 days to prepare and spend time together until he leaves. (of course he'll take one day to go fishing!)

The past couple of days have been a whirlwind and we hope that we made the right decision.

Wish us luck!

**It's taken me a few hours to write this and we've had a chance to try the brownies- they are to die for!! We added chocolate chips and used whole wheat flour (I was out of white) and they were like a thick peanut butter cookie (but they were so much easier than cookies!)