FFF- Strawberry Fluff Salad- Gluten Free

Steve's aunt made this salad for Thanksgiving one year and it was so delicious I just had to get the recipe.  And do you know what, it's about the easiest thing to make!  We had strawberries on sale so I decided it was high time for some Strawberry Fluff Salad.  And if you're one of those lucky Californians that has roadside stands open right now, this is a must for you!  And as long as you make sure your yogurt is gluten free, it's a gluten free dish, bonus!  So if you're looking for a yummy side, try this one out!

Ingredients: Strawberries, Cool Whip, Strawberry Yogurt, Vanilla Pudding (small box)

In a bowl place one cup of yogurt

And one (small) package of vanilla pudding

Mix together- it will be very thick

Add 16 ounces of cool whip and mix together until all combined

Add in cut up strawberries

 

Mix until the strawberries are all coated

And there you have it!  Yes, it is that easy and trust me, so delicious, it will not last long

I made this for dinner for my boys when I went out to the movies with my mother-in-law, so I had it for dessert :)

 

Strawberry Fluff Salad

1 cup strawberry yogurt

1 small pkg vanilla pudding

16 oz. cool whip

3 cups strawberries

 

Mix together the yogurt and pudding.  Add in cool whip and combine.  Add cut up strawberries and stir.  Enjoy!

 

Life With The Bussis'- 1.29.14

Well I thought we were going to have our first trip to the doctor for stitches or a broken bone, but they don't stitch up tongues, so we're good. :)  Yep, David has now learned how to climb up on the kitchen chairs:

(Yeah, he's quite proud of himself)

But both do not realize that a chair only goes so far and they can easily fall off of them, so David took a wrong step, fell off and we think he hit his chin on the chair coming down because there was blood on the seat, but regardless, Steve went to pick him up and he had a mouth full of blood.  Once I could stuff a rag in his mouth to absorb the blood we discovered he had bit his tongue and had a pretty nice size (and deep) gash on his tongue.  I called the doctor but they said they don't do stitches on tongues unless it's a flap on the end (you wanted to know that, right? :)).  So he just gets to eat lots of soft foods for the next couple days.  And do you know what that silly boy did as soon as I put him down after we got the bleeding stopped?  He went right back to that chair and climbed up on it!  No retention in a 15 month old I tell you!  So I spend a lot of my days trying to keep them off the chairs or at least keep them from falling off them, but it's no easy task I tell you:

 

 

And in addition to his tongue David has a few nice bumps on his head too:

Here's one of them :)

I honestly just want to put helmets on them all the time!  I think part of the problem is we're going a little nuts over here being stuck indoors.  Today was the 4th school day in a row canceled.  Not that my kids go to school but it tells you what kind of weather we have going on over here.  Steve put a yard stick into the snow on our back patio:

You can't see it very well but that stick is telling us that there is 25 inches of snow sitting on our patio!  And we've probably gotten at least another inch since we did that!  So that could be one of the reasons why my boys are climbing on everything :)

So I try to give them things to distract them.  I finally let them play with some of their puzzles, it distracted them for about 5 minutes.  Funny how when I actually let them play with something it's not as fun as when they're not supposed to play with it :)

Micah is such a loving brother- most of the time :)

 So I'm trying to get the twins to eat with utensils, ha ha ha!:)  Micah never wanted to eat with his hands, so he did a pretty good job early on with utensils.  And the twins are finally to the point where I can put their whole meal in front of them and they won't shove all of it into their mouth at once, causing them to choke.  So I will give them a plate with their meal on it and a fork or spoon and they will last a little while with it and then usually they dump all the food off of the plate onto their tray and place the plate on their head.  They definitely learned that from us, not! :)  And once one does it the other must follow suit.  But I keep trying. 

So last night I gave them a bowl and spoon for the first time.  They had baked mashed potatoes in the bowl so it was nice and thick and I thought would be a good thing to practice with.  Here are some pictures, you be the judge on how they did: 

That's how you use a spoon, right?

Now we're getting it

Not bad, face pretty clean yet

Done with the spoon

Still trying

Let's just forget the middle man and just bring those potatoes directly to my mouth

 

David did also eventually give up on the spoon and got it all over his mouth (and head and hair) as well.  I must have been laughing too hard to remember to take a picture of that :).  Needless to say, this is where they all ended up immediately following dinner:

 

Oh such silly boys.  They keep me hopping.  But they are very sweet too and just continue to learn new things all the time.  I'll leave you with what I think is an incredibly cute video of Micah singing and playing the piano, a boy after his mommy's heart!

Have a wonderful week!!!

Fun Food Friday- Split Pea Soup

It's still freezing over here (right now as I look out my window there's times all I can see is white swirling around, very glad I don't have anywhere to go), which means I'm still in a soup mood. :)  So this week I have for you Split Pea Soup.  Now I have to make a confession, for the first 22 years of my life I "hated" Split Pea Soup.  I thought it was the most disgusting soup there was.  My roommate in college would bring it frozen from home and I gave her such a hard time about what a disgusting thing that was that she was putting in our freezer.  And then one day when I was 22 I was out to dinner with my family at this place that did family style dinners and the soup that night was Split Pea Soup.  I voiced my disgust at the choice and then my dad asked me if I had ever in fact tried Split Pea Soup.  I thought about it and realized I actually had never even tried it, all my disgust for it was because of it's appearance :).  So he made me try it and what I discovered is despite the awful green look to the soup, it's absolutely delicious!  Now it's one of my favorite soups!  And the great thing is when I make a nice big pot of Split Pea Soup I get the whole thing to myself because my husband is like what I used to be, unwilling to even try it because of the looks. :)  So if you can get past the nasty green looks of this soup (yeah, not the greatest for a food blog where you take pictures of it but trust me, it tastes amazing), try this one out.  It's a great one to make after Christmas because it requires a ham bone and most people have ham at Christmas.  If you don't feel like making it right away, you can always freeze the ham bone until you're ready to use it.  And if you don't have a ham bone I think you can buy a ham hock or just throw some diced ham in at the end.  So if you're stuck in this horrible cold weather that doesn't seem to want to end, try warming up with some Split Pea Soup!

Ingredients: Dried Green Split Peas, Onion, Carrots, Ham Bone, Chicken Broth

(You can also put in celery but when I went to get my celery out of the refrigerator I realized I didn't have any in there :))

 

You need to rinse the peas so pour 2 cups into a strainer...

And rinse with water.  You want to move the peas around to make sure there's nothing in with the peas.

Pour the rinsed peas into a big pot...

And cover with 2 cups of water.  Let them soak for an hour

Then add your ham bone

2 cups of chicken broth and 2 more cups of water

Bring it to a boil

Then cover and let it simmer for an hour

 

Take out the ham bone

 

And cut the meat off the bone and dice into small pieces

Once the bone is out mash up the peas.  If the soup is a little thick (like mine is here) just add a little water.

Add the onions...

And carrots...

And the diced ham.  Let it cook for 20 more minutes.

Then just pour it in a bowl and go enjoy!

 

This soup freezes really well so it works great to put it in Dutch Tupperware (aka cool whip containers :))

Cover, label and put it in the freezer so that the next freezing cold day you can pull it out, heat in the microwave and enjoy a bowl of soup

Looks like I won't be getting the whole pot of soup to myself anymore :)

Split Pea Soup
2 cups dried split pea
4 cups water
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup onions, diced
1 cup carrots, diced
Ham Bone

Rinse the peas.  Pour into a large pot and cover with 2 cups of water.  Soak for 1 hour.  Add 2 cups of water and 2 cups of broth and the ham bone.  Bring to boil, turn down heat and simmer for 1 hour.  Remove the ham bone, cut the meat off the bone and dice.  Mash up the peas (if soup is too thick add some water).  Return the ham to the soup and add carrots and onions.  Heat for 20 more minutes.

Life With the Bussis'- 1.22.14

It has been a week of getting back into the swing of normal life after all the holidays and then my parents coming.  And I'm trying to cut out the twins' morning nap so that makes the morning pretty long.  But I have found if they take a morning nap they don't take as good of an afternoon nap, which is when Micah is napping, and I'd much prefer they all take a good long nap at the same time, so we'll see how it goes.  It's much easier the days that we have something in the morning. :)  The twins had their 15 month appointment this morning.  Here were their stats:
Jonathan- Ht: 31.5" (59%), Wt: 26lb 2.5oz (88%), HC: 47.5cm (67%)
David- Ht: 31.25" (51%), Wt: 24lb 7.5oz (71%), HC: 47.3cm (62%)
The doctor was very pleased with their growth and development, she said they are right where they should be which is awesome considering they were born premature.  She did say that they should start saying a few words over the next couple of month and if they aren't we should bring them in at 18 months just to make sure nothing else is going on, but she wasn't worried about it.  They do seem to be starting to mimic sounds more often.  I remember Micah at this age wasn't saying more than a couple of words either, and he talks just fine now. :)  So good report from the doctor.  And then of course they got to each have four shots and wonder why Mommy and Daddy would let that mean nurse do that to them :).  It's not fun, but I know it's for their own good.  And seriously, one minute later they were fine.  I am a little curious, the nurse we had today was a lady that goes to our church, so we'll see if they remember her and run away from her next time they see her. :)
Otherwise nothing too monumental happened this week.  Here's some random pictures for you:

Snuggle time after their naps.  As you can see they were still waking up :)

Micah loves his new rug

The boys love Mondays when Daddy gets to stay home and play with them

 After lunch on Monday we went over to church to play in the fellowship hall.  It's a great way to get some energy out during the cold winter months.

Jonathan prefers climbing on the chair to running around I guess :)

We spend a lot of time hanging out on the couch:

 

Last night Micah helped me make cookies and decided he had to also take pictures of it. 

Future food blogger? :)

 Here are the pictures he took:

 

He likes to get up close and personal :)

These boys crack me up, all the toys we have in our house and what do they all want to play with, the plastic bowl...

And then somehow it always ends this way :)  Oh, life with 3 boys

The twins seem to more and more like to play together.  Steve preached at his old church on Sunday night as part of a Classis exchange and when I went to pick the boys up from the nursery afterwards one of the ladies in there commented on how they just kind of followed each other around the whole time (except when Jonathan was going after his cousin's pacifier :)).  But it is so cute to watch them play together (which most of the time involved either chasing each other or tackling each other):

 

And finally, this past Sunday we had Sanctity of Life Sunday at our church.  I was playing for the service and when deciding what to play for the offertory I decided I wanted to play "Jesus Loves the Little Children" and "Onward Christian Soldiers"  I had this really cool but kind of eerie version of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and I felt it fit perfect because it's such a sad battle we're fighting against abortion.  So I thought I'd share my offertory with you.  I don't know that's I've ever been so moved while playing a piece before.  The only way I could figure out to play it on here was to make it into a video and it needed a picture, so sorry you have to stare at my children for the 3 minutes :).  And I know it's not perfect, if I kept trying till I got it perfect I'd still be trying :).  But it's a piece I played from my heart and wanted to share with you.  May we never give up the fight!