This week...

:: Levi received the "Fruit of the Spirit" award for Love!

:: Luke and Abby played in their first soccer game together

This was Abby's first soccer game EVER, so she was a little more nervous and saw a little less playing time than Luke, but they did great and tied 2-2.

:: My grandparents celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary!  Happy Anniversary!!!

:: We made these (but without the ice cream)

:: And we may have had some dance parties to this song :)

Happy Weekend everyone!

Bulgogi...

Our entire family loves Bulgogi!  I wanted to learn how to make it, so I asked Soyoung 's mom (a friend of Abby's from school) to teach me how. She graciously took me shopping at the Korean market that she shops at and then invited me over to her place to teach me all of the steps.

Below are my attempts to photograph the process of making Bulgogi!

First you must shop at the Korean Market and get the right kind of meat, soy sauce and sesame oil...

This is just thinly sliced beef with about 1/2 cup white wine poured over it.

While the meat was thawing, we made the marinade (actually she made it, and I just watched)

For 1000 grams of meat,  she used 1 onion, 1 apple and about 2 tablespoons of crushed garlic.  This was put in the blender until it was finely pureed 

This mixture then gets poured over the meat

Then you add 6 tablespoons of soy sauce, 6 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of sesame oil and mix with your hands until the meat is well coated

Then you slice a few green onions, a small purple onion and mushrooms up and proceed to fry it with the meat until it is thoroughly cooked.  Once the meat is cooked, you serve it with rice.  If you are Korean, you most likely have a fantastic rice cooker like this one that makes your rice sticky...

(but you can also just make some regular ol' rice on the stovetop)

Here is the final product with a few sesame seeds sprinkled on top! So yummy :)

Bulgogi Recipe

1000 grams of thinly sliced beef

1/2 cup white wine

1 onion chopped

1 apple chopped

2 T crushed garlic

6 T soy sauce

6 T sugar

2 T sesame oil

(We used a few green onions, 1 small purple onion roughly chopped and about 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms and cooked that with the meat-but I am sure you can use any vegetables you may like)

Put the meat in a big bowl and add 1/2 cup of white wine.  In a blender or a food processor, puree the onion, apple and garlic.  Pour over the meat and add the soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil.  Work the sauce into the meat with your hands. Fry the meat and any vegetables in a few tablespoons of olive oil until thoroughly cooked.  Serve with cooked rice.

Dirndls...

Ok, is this not the cutest little Dirndl you have ever seen?

This little sweetie comes to our church, and one Sunday she came wearing this!  She won Brad's heart that day :)

We have lived in Austria for 5 years now~ and this summer Brad finally convinced me to purchase a Dirndl (after much begging and pleading really) and he came home with some authentic Lederhosen.  We look legit right?

Room Updates...

I wouldn't say we did total room makeovers for the kiddos, but we did make some improvements over the past few weeks.  We moved the boys upstairs last year around this time- but we are just now getting around to making their rooms fit their personalities, likes and ages.

Luke is a bit of a mini Brad, and loves to travel and collect things along the way.  We wanted to update his room to showcase the things that he enjoys, and he also needed a bigger space to do his homework.  Brad purchased a counter top, just added some legs and a new desk was born!  For such a tiny room, I feel like we have maximized the space and most importantly, Luke likes it :)

Levi loves all things "Star Wars", so Brad found some panels (like wall paper)  with just about every Stars Wars character and put it up around his bed.  Talk about a happy little guy :)  His room is actually a hallway, so it takes some creativity to make the space work, but Brad did a great job lifting his bed off of the ground to make a place for his toys and still have room for his desk.

Our Abby girl loves lots of color and displaying her artwork and photos. Brad had painted a dolphin a few years ago, and most recently he painted some backgrounds to display some pictures of Memoo and Abby swimming with dolphins in Malta last year.  He is crazy creative and just free-handed them!  I know, I am lucky that he likes to do this sort of thing :)  She also loves the end result!

Hopefully we are done for awhile now :)

Fall arrives...

Fall finally arrived this week!  My favorite season :)

This weather makes me want to hang out in my kitchen and fill my belly with yummy treats, and then head outside to play!

Here is a yummy goulash recipe
Here is a delicious pumpkin sheet cake recipe (which can be turned into muffins too)
Here is a very cute veggie platter idea (found on Pinterest)
Here is a baked pumpkin doughnut recipe
Here is a recipe I want to try, Apple Crisp Pizza
Here are some fun fall ideas!

Happy Weekend!

Remembering...

This morning I hosted a breakfast at our place so a few of us moms could plan/talk about starting a moms group. It has been exciting to watch a "baby boom" occur at our young church! As I watched the babies playing on my kitchen floor, I remembered how sweet it was when my own babies were playing on my floor with their little buddies...

Now our kiddos have Facebook accounts, are trying out for soccer and writing sentences using their spelling words.  How fast time flies!  Unfortunately, is hard to remember that when you are sleep deprived and barely have enough time to shower, let alone put on make-up.  I remember how special "my" group of girls were in those first few weeks, months and years of parenting. They encouraged me, prayed for me, laughed with me, cried with me and gave me sound parenting advice!  My prayer for this new group of moms is that they too will feel a special bond with one another~ the sweet bond of motherhood.

This week...

Baking:: A few days this week felt like Fall!  This makes me want to bake.  Unfortunately my brand new oven is not working right, but I still managed to make some of these, Apple Crumb bars and I used this caramel recipe instead.

Cleaning:: With the kiddos back in school, I finally have the time and energy to vacuum under beds and couches and realize just how dirty my house is. Oh how i love a good purge though! We have also started a few projects in the kids' bedrooms.  I hope to share more on that next week...

Reading:: this sweet story of adoption over at Under the Sycamore

Making:: I have made two batches of this Taco soup in the last two weeks!  Everyone in our family loves it and I love that it is so easy to make!  Below is the recipe...

Taco Soup

1 lb. ground beef

1 can each black beans, red beans, and corn

1 package of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing

1 package of taco seasoning

1 can diced tomatoes

1 and 1/2 cups of water

Brown meat in a lg. pan. Add all ingredients. Bring to a boil. Simmer 45 minutes. Top with a dollop if sour cream or nacho chips.

(my mom sent me this recipe, but I am not sure where she got it from)

Happy Friday!  Hope you all have a lovely weekend :)

We loved London...

We really did love London!  Along with going to the Olympics, we did ALL of the normal touristy things!  Here are some of my favorite photos...

Olympic Fever...Part 2

Initially, we only had tickets to track and field events.  And we would have been ok with just going to those events...but some friends of ours who live in London, said that there might be some tickets available for the Women's Final soccer match!  Ok- you don't have to tell us twice :) We went for it, even though at the point at which we got the tickets, America was not yet in the finals- so we were pretty ecstatic that they beat Canada in the final seconds of the semi-finals!

The crowds were incredible!  I had never seen so many people at a sporting event.

These are our friends who helped us get the tickets, Amy and Barry!  (Thanks again!)

Not only did we get to see them win the match, but we also got to see the medals ceremony...which meant that we got to sing our National Anthem! :) It was crazy cool!!!