I posted about these before but took better pictures so I thought I would repost with the new pictures. I didn’t have raisins or cranberries on hand so I left them out this time. Alex was happy but, they are really good with cranberry craisins if you choose to make them yourself.  Here’s the RECIPE

These are gluten, casein, egg, and nut free. We use the egg replacer option to make them egg free, but you can use eggs if you want.

I made this recipe a while back for Neil’s family but haven’t made it since. I don’t know why, it’s super super yummy. I didn’t have bell peppers on hand so I just made it with onions tonight. I cube the chicken after its cooked and serve it over rice. The kids like to eat the chicken with chopsticks. They love Pei Wei so this brings it home. This is a great recipe if you are gluten free or not and easy to prep earlier in the day and just pop in the oven. It’s great as left overs too, if you have any left over… Here’s the RECIPE

This is gluten, casein, egg, and nut free.

Made these bars today. I made a double batch and cooked it up in 3 pie plates, so it looks more like a cake. Frankly the texture is more cakey so if I were to do it again I would do it the same way. It would actually make a great layer cake. The frosting is TO DIE FOR. I ended up adding a little sea salt to the icing. Beware, don’t make the icing until you are ready to use it right away, it sets quickly. I omitted the nuts since Chase is allergic. Here’s the RECIPE

This recipe is gluten, casein, egg, & nut free (if you omit the nuts like we did).

These are our new favorite muffins. At first I thought that Pumpkin and Blueberries sounded weird but surprisingly they are very very tasty. Alex isn’t a big fan of blueberries so I made some for him that were free of blueberries. Chocolate chips would be a fun addition as well. Here is the RECIPE

These are Gluten, Casein, Egg, Nut Free.

We had a busy but fun Saturday, today. We started the morning off with soccer games. Chase and Alex played first. Chase actually made it out of the car this time, and we were just thrilled by that, but then right before the game started Chase said he wanted to play. The coach brought him in and let him kick off. He ran after the ball. Pretty quick the ball went out, and so he did a corner kick. He did better with the corner kick and was very excited then lost interest. The rest of the game he cheered Alex on and was happy but didn’t want to play anymore. We were thrilled that he got out there at all.

Alex did awesome too! He is so up and do he’s either frustrated or super excited. He scored 3 or 4 goals. All but one were in the other teams goal, but he was soooo excited you couldn’t say much! He kept doing victory dances, and at one point was doing the can opener on the field. We were dying. They switched sides at half time and he finally made a goal in the CORRECT goal, and everyone went wild. LOL!! They had a great game!!

We came home and fed the boys lunch and got the little guys down for a nap. Neil took Aiden to his game. They won and Aiden did great. Aiden even scored a goal!! He’s really really doing well this year. I was sad to miss the game, especially because he scored but there’s always next week.

Today was picture day. Neil got a the pictures above with his phone.

Alex and I did a bunch of baking today. Chase helped a little. Alex was a great help. He is soooo much better behaved when he has a specific task to do and gets more one on one attention. He and I had ALOT of fun. We baked pumpkin muffins, pumpkin berry muffins, chocolate chip breakfast cookies, and brown sugar pumpkin bars (we made them in a circle pan so its more like a cake), and we made Balsalmic Roasted Peppered Chicken for dinner. The boys think its like eating Pei Wei at home. Anyway it was a great day of baking….

The boys also played alot of Legos and some Wii today. I put a few pictures of the boys playing below. After Alex and Chase went to bed Aiden stayed up. Aiden, Neil and I played Legos for a while and I build Aiden a ship. I built one for Alex a while back, and Aiden specifically asked that I build him a ship. It only took me 2 hours… LOL!! Anyway enjoy all the pictures.

We had a busy but fun Saturday, today. We started the morning off with soccer games. Chase and Alex played first. Chase actually made it out of the car this time, and we were just thrilled by that, but then right before the game started Chase said he wanted to play. The coach brought him in and let him kick off. He ran after the ball. Pretty quick the ball went out, and so he did a corner kick. He did better with the corner kick and was very excited then lost interest. The rest of the game he cheered Alex on and was happy but didn’t want to play anymore. We were thrilled that he got out there at all.

Alex did awesome too! He is so up and do he’s either frustrated or super excited. He scored 3 or 4 goals. All but one were in the other teams goal, but he was soooo excited you couldn’t say much! He kept doing victory dances, and at one point was doing the can opener on the field. We were dying. They switched sides at half time and he finally made a goal in the CORRECT goal, and everyone went wild. LOL!! They had a great game!!

We came home and fed the boys lunch and got the little guys down for a nap. Neil took Aiden to his game. They won and Aiden did great. Aiden even scored a goal!! He’s really really doing well this year. I was sad to miss the game, especially because he scored but there’s always next week.

Today was picture day. Neil got a the pictures above with his phone.

Alex and I did a bunch of baking today. Chase helped a little. Alex was a great help. He is soooo much better behaved when he has a specific task to do and gets more one on one attention. He and I had ALOT of fun. We baked pumpkin muffins, pumpkin berry muffins, chocolate chip breakfast cookies, and brown sugar pumpkin bars (we made them in a circle pan so its more like a cake), and we made Balsalmic Roasted Peppered Chicken for dinner. The boys think its like eating Pei Wei at home. Anyway it was a great day of baking….

Chase and Alex are big cereal eaters. Aiden has never been big on breakfast. He will eat a granola bar if I make him which I do but that’s about it for breakfast. Gluten Free granola bars are stinkin’ expensive. Seriously a box of their favorite mock nutrigrain bars has 5 in the box and the box costs $6.25 and they are smaller than a Nutrigrain. If he eats 1 bar a day for the month I would spend over $36 on breakfast for just ONE of my kids. NUTS! Not to mention if Aiden is eating one then Alex wants one for a his snack at school. There are some less healthy alternatives, think rice krispy treats with dried fruit in them that are a little cheaper but that’s just candy with berries.

So what is the solution? Breakfast cookies!! LOL!! I love love love the Gluten Free Goddess website. She’s got amazing recipes and when I grow up I want to be her. So I decided to try her cookie recipe, and we ALL love it.

I added raisins and dried cranberries to mine, and a few gfcf mini chocolate chips. I made a double batch and use a little less than 1/4 cup per cookie. This made over 40 monstrous sized cookies. Next time I would make them half that size and just let the kids have 2 if they wanted, as 2 for breakfast alone was good. Or they could have 1 plus a banana even better, or one for a snack. She mentions in the recipe that they taste yummy reheated in the microwave and they definitely do, they get a great fresh out of the oven texture when reheated. I am getting ready to make another batch and will add better photos but the one below give you an idea. I took it with my cell.

Here is the RECIPE

Many of you have asked for my Pumpkin Pancake Recipe so without further ado…

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Amy’s GFCF Pumpkin Pancakes
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3 cups (380g) Cornstarch
½ tsp Salt
4 tbs sugar or 1/8 cup brown sugar (optional)
½ tsp Xantham gum
3 tbs baking powder
2 tbs. pumpkin pie spice (this is to taste, use more or less depending on what your family likes)

½ cup Oil
2 cups So Delicious Coconut Milk*
½ cup water
2 eggs (lightly beaten) or egg substitute
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
1 can pureed pumpkin (approx 16 oz)

*So Delicious coconut milk is thicker than most milk alternatives. If you use any other milk then you may want to omit or gradually add the water until your batter reaches the right consistency. You can find So Delicious in with all the refrigerated milk products. It is a drinkable milk not a canned coconut milk.

Combine all dry ingredients. Whisk together.
Combine all wet ingredients. Add wet to the dry.
Mixture should be thin but not soupy.

Makes approx. 32 pancakes using a ¼ cup scoop per pancake.

So it’s been a while. Life seems to be going really fast lately. Definitely need for it to slow down A LITTLE. So what’s new with us?

Neil and I have stepped down from leading our LifeGroup. We have felt for a while that we were supposed to be done but were waiting for a clear time to stop. We loooove our friends and love having them in our home for LifeGroup but we have felt like we were entering a season of rest in that area. Well it worked out great Tim and Christie called and said they were feeling called to start a group, weren’t sure all the logistics but that they had specific things in mind that it needed to be etc…  They were sad to leave. Neil and I talked and immediate had the same thoughts. We called them back. Anyway long story short, they are now leading the group. They are changing the format some and its really a fresh breath of air in the group, and us being able to just attend is personally what we needed!! We are really looking forward to this new season. Change can be scary and not always fun but in this case it’s GREAT!! :0)

The boys are doing well in school. Alex LOOOOVES Mrs. Lawrence. He is doing well coming home telling me all about the fun stuff they are doing with new songs to sing. Chase is doing well also. I went and volunteered in his class last Tuesday. I went to computer lab with them. The kindergartners are SO CUTE!! He did very well and was doing all the things his teacher said to do and was enjoying his time. Chase’s favorite color these days is YELLOW. All the coloring and activity pages are all done in yellow crayon or marker. It’s pretty cute. I need to save them as proof of his yellow period. Didn’t Van Gogh go through color “periods”? LOL!! Aiden is doing GREAT!! He is a smart guy!! His reading and spelling is great. He really retained from last year. His first spelling exam he only missed 1 of 15 and it was 1 of 3 challenge words. His second test he scored a 100!! I am so proud of him. His math is still great. He’s always been great at math. He really struggled with reading and spelling last year and worked hard to catch up and his work paid off and it “clicked”.

The boys have also all started soccer. They had their first games yesterday. Aiden did phenominal. I was very impressed by how much he got in there and did his thing. He almost got a goal many times, and did great as goalie too!! He is on a very young team alot of which have never played before. He’s a superstar though. Chase and Alex are on the same team. So far Chase plays a little at practice but he wanted nothing to do with the games. He told me he doesn’t like the whistles. Frankly it is intimidating for any kid to go out there with all the cheering parents and whistles. There are about 10+ fields out there in one location if you can imagine. Soooo we spent the game in the car. Neil said Alex didn’t want to play the first half but the second half he played great. He came back pumped to have played and very excited that we were so proud of him for trying soccer and playing. I am sure next game they won’t be able to keep him off the field.

Anyway that’s it for us right now. I will post some pics later in the week.

Tonight at dinner I made Zuppa Tuscona soup. It’s a knock off recipe of a soup the Olive Garden sells. I adapted it to be GF/CF so the boys can eat it. Aiden and Alex have been liking soups alot. So anyway I made it, we served the boys theirs. We drain most of the “soup” off of Chase’s leaving him with the meat and potatoes, etc…

Chase just sat there looking at it for a while or playing with it, with is spoon. He then looks up and watched Aiden eat some. He then asks Aiden “Aiden is it good? Do you like it? Do you like it?” Neil and I were surprised that he asked Aiden. Aiden responds and says “Yeah Chase, it’s really good.” Chase then says “Okay, I’ll try it” and proceeds to eat a few bites. Neil and I were shocked and super excited by the exchange. Chase ate about 4 bites and decided that was enough but did say he liked it.

So Neil and I were sooo excited because Chase really doesn’t ask alot of unscripted questions still. He does some but usually it’s something somoene has asked before or he doesn’t really want to know the answer to… or he asks the question so you will ask it back as a means of finding a way to tell you something. So for him to be unsure of something like a new food, to watch his brother eat it, and ask him if he likes it, then make a decision based on his answer to weather he would try it or not, was a a REALLY REALLY big deal!!! REALLY BIG!!! Even Aiden looked at us suprised by the exchange.

Most of you know Chasey is doing lots better, and making lots of social gains and progress. We still have a ways to go, but things like this may seem small to others but are HUGE victories. They say ALOT of what’s going on, and that we have even more hope, and more to look forward to.

So as a result I decided to take a look back and see where we were a year ago, or 18 months ago, just to see how far we’ve come. I am pleased to see what a difference there is between then and now. I was reading posts from March/April/May 08. So 16-18 months ago and the difference of where we were then, to where we are now is just remarkable. 18 months ago Chase was 4, and was hardly using 2 or 3 words together to get what he wanted and he had to be motivated to use those. He for the first time said he loved me, then Neil a month later, he for the first time at 4 came into a room and said “Mom” to get my attention instead of just shrieking for it. He said “Hi” to a stranger in walmart and mimiced a conversation asking the stranger “How you doing”… I was doing happy dances over him mimicing questions Alex asked, or trying to talk to people. HE WAS 4!!!! Those were things that were huge gains and sucesses for him then!!! Now here are 5, Chase is talking up a storm, singing, he tells me he loves me all the time, and tells me how much, he tells his brothers how much he loves them, he can spell his name, he has conversations with original language, is asking questions he came up with to get answers he really wants, he is doing AMAZING, making AWESOME progress!!! I am thrilled to think how much of a gap we will close in the next 18 months, how much progress Chase will make!!

Chase is such a smart boy. He is a fighter, and I fully feel he will overcome obstacles in front of him!! Look how much he has fought for already!!!! SO EXCITED FOR MY CHASEY!!!!

I made yummy yummy pumpkin berry muffins today. I didn’t add the berries to Alex’s as he is a blueberry hater. They turned out soooo soooo yummy. They are gluten, casein, soy, egg, & nut free. Seriously though they are coffee shop yummy!! So here’s the recipe and a picture. I used only wild blueberries.

Here is the Recipe