Blueberry picking!

For the past few years, I have really looked forward to going blueberry picking! This year we were a little bit unsure of how it would go since we had Micah with us. Micah did an absolutely fantastic job! He was such a good boy, and so content to sit and watch us from his stroller…as long as he had his pacifier, of course! He even had his first taste of blueberry while we were out there. He’s definitely not so much a fan of them. Not like his daddy! Tim could hardly wait to get back home to freshly baked blueberry waffles. The part that I love most about picking the blueberries is planning what to bake, and then baking things like blueberry coffeecake, blueberry pancakes, blueberry crisp, and blueberry bread. And Tim loves it. :) Here are a few pictures of Micah’s first blueberry picking experience.

Frugal Tip for the Day

Here’s a frugal tip I thought I’d share. One of my favorite frugal meals that we like to make is a fryer chicken. We usually get about a 4 lb. chicken, which runs about 89 cents/lb. at Walmart. (Sometimes there will be other stores, such as Food Lion, that has a sale on them for 69 cents/lb. ) They are so easy to make, and make a pretty good Sunday dinner, when paired with potatoes and a vegetable! After washing/pat drying the chicken, I will brush some olive oil all over the chicken, and then brush a Roaster Chicken Poultry Rub (from Food Network) on top. Then you just follow the cooking instructions for the chicken and then you have a delicious meal! Oh, and I forgot to mention, to make it even easier for clean up, I line the roasting pan with aluminum foil! TONS easier to clean!! After we finish our meal, I will take all the meat off…it’s easier to do when it’s still hot. Our leftovers will last us just about the rest of the week! Some of our favorite recipes we use the leftovers in include stir fry, chicken pot pie, chicken and dumplings, chicken wraps, quesadillas and salads, chicken tortilla soup, barbecued chicken pizza (AN ABSOLUTE FAVORITE!!!)…so many possibilities! So there it is! My frugal tip for the day. I just hope Tim doesn’t get tired of eating chicken anytime soon!

Michigan Adventure

Last week we returned from our yearly trip to Michigan—a time we thoroughly enjoyed with family and friends. Rather than drive the 20 hours up Mesick, MI, this year we were able to fly in to Traverse City. Yeah, we liked that a whole lot better. Micah traveled well on the plane, minus the times when the captain or flight attendants would come blaring across the pa system. He wasn’t so much a fan of that.

Micah enjoyed meeting his cousin Ethan and uncle Jeremy and seeing grandma and grandpa Ahtila again. Some of Kristen’s extended family were able to visit the Ahtila’s and got to meet Micah for the first time, too.

We enjoyed spending a few relaxing days with the family. We especially loved our trip to Lake Michigan and to Moomers to experience America’s best small town ice cream. (We both had a couple of scoops of Cookie Monster ice cream—smooth chocolate ice cream with chocolate chip cookie dough and Oreo cookie pieces. SOOOO good!)

On June 23^rd we headed down to Grand Traverse Bay to celebrate our second anniversary (see previous blog post).

Then we drove up to the UP. Tim’s sisters Rachel and Sarah got to meet Micah, and we got to meet our nephew Reagan.

We made a slide show of our Israel trip that we got to show in the Sunday evening service. Though we only had a few days, we had a great time hanging out with family and friends, playing games (like Apples and Apples and Rook), and seeing everyone again. Kristen even got a chance to bake some Cardamom sweet bread over at Rachel’s place one afternoon (while Tim played X-box :) ). We had such a great time.