In the Kitchen

I have started cooking again...I know, my poor family. I used to think I was a good cook, now I just know better. I make 3 things really well, other than that, oh well...I put some of my favorite recipes on the blog earlier this year, but I wanted to add a few more to the list.

I made this the other night for dinner and Ryan really liked it. It is Rice-A-Roni with Chicken and Broccoli. I used a can of stewed tomatoes instead of fresh (I don't keep fresh tomatoes in the house, they disgust me) and I added a 1/4 of a cup of Sour creme, because honestly, what doesn't taste better with sour creme? The entire dish was so incredibly easy to make and was pretty good.

I can't remember if my Ziti recipe got posted...I got this from my mother-in-law. It is really good and easy, easy, easy.

1 box of ziti pasta

1 jar of spaghetti sauce

2 c. of heavy whipping creme (that is what makes it yummy)

chicken or sausage

Cook the pasta. Mix the sauce and creme together, add to pasta once it is cooked. Put in a casserole dish and top with mozzarella cheese and bake at 375* until the cheese melts.

Have I posted my easy cookie recipe? I got it from my mother-in-law too, it is the best.

1 box of cake mix (whatever you want)

1 stick melted butter

2 eggs

Mix together and add whatever else you want. My favorite is German chocolate cake mix, coconut, chopped walnuts or pecans, and milk chocolate chips. Yum-o. Cook at whatever temp the box says and it takes about 10 min per cookie sheet to cook. This is what I made with them for Madison's treat day at school.

I used a chocolate cake mix and peanut butter chips. I made little chalk boards using chocolate covered graham crackers and regular white icing and used the white icing to stand them up. M wanted to add sprinkles (because hey, sprinkles make life fun) and that was that. It was super easy and really cute. I got the idea from a parenting magazine, they did this with cupcakes, but cupcakes are too messy for school.

I have also been working really hard to get a decent food storage going for us. I finally learned how to coupon correctly and have saved soooo much money and gotten a lot more food. My food storage is starting to grow and I can actually cook because I have food in the house. It is fun and it definitely satisfies my incessant need to shop all the time.

Just us Girls

Every now and again Madison and I get to do something together, just the two of us. In Memphis over Christmas my mom, some of my sisters, Madison and I got to have a girls night out. The boys went to a basketball game and Allie's boyfriend watched Hunter sleep for us. It was so fun. I just could not get over how grown up Madison is....some times I look at her and realize that she is not a little girl anymore. I loved how she insisted on taking her purse with her to the restaurant. It makes sense, all the rest of us did! She just has such a personality, I swear her personality is going to kill one of us some day...I just don't know which one of us it will be.

So anyway, we chose to go to The Melting Pot for fondue because the guys don't really like it. They say it is "Chick food," they just don't like having to work for their food. I just like the cheese and chocolate. We had a great time, and definitely loved our food. Madison loved being such a grownup and cooking her own food and choosing all the fun sauces/dips they have. She was exhausted by the time we got home, but it was worth it. I love girls night out.

Kids

What do you write for K? I had a hard time with this one, but I thought a post on sibling love would be appropriate. Our kids love each other so much, which I am so grateful for, I just hope it never changes. Here are some of my favorite pictures of the two of them together. Madison will constantly run over to Hunter, look over at me and tell me to take a picture of them together. Her favorite thing to do is to go through the camera and look at all the pictures. She gets so excited and happy when she sees one of them together, especially if it's a video...I have to physically take the camera away from her or she would watch the video's over and over and over again.

Pictures clockwise from left to right: One of our many pictures taken to distract the kids and keep them happy; M clapping for H sitting up; M holding H's hand to try and make him happy; Mom, M & H at Trunk-or-treat; M & H sliding together at Thanksgiving Point; Dad, M & H on our hike at Kiroli Park in LA; Entire family at Thanksgiving point; M & H at Trunk-or-Treat; M swinging H and trying to do an "underdog" at Kiroli Park

Let's Play Ball

We love sports in our household....Ryan much more than I, of course, but I love going to games. I am not picky, I'll go to any sporting event and cheer on one of the teams. I LOVE trash talking, I suck at it, but enjoy it nonetheless. Las Vegas does not have a pro team. Of any sport. So we get behind UNLV basketball....it's all we have. Or we travel. We saw quite a few games on the road this year. It was a fun sports year for us.

Ryan got to go to ESPN Game Day in February for his birthday when Univ. of Memphis played Univ. of Tenn. (I have posted that a few times already, so no additional stories here folks....).

In March we got to go to a Jazz game, Ryan loves the Jazz. I still don't know if he loves the Jazz or Lakers more, but hey, I figure I shouldn't know everything about him, right? Anyway, we got to go with Parker and Jessica, that was so fun! We rarely get to do things with just the two of them so it was definitely a treat. The biggest treat was leaving my 3 month old baby with my Mother-in-law and hoping he would take a bottle for her. He did beautifully, thank goodness.

We went to 2 BYU football games in Provo, I LOVE BYU football games, that was probably my favorite thing to do in college. I am a little biased considering Ryan and I fell in love all due to the All Sports pass the students buy. (Hmmm, maybe I will post "our" story at some time....that will be a long one). Anyway, we always go to to the season opener (apparently I don't always have my camera at the ready, hence, no pictures to share) and we went to the BYU vs. UNM game when we drove up for the Kelly Clarkson/Reba McIntyre concert.

What? You want new stories to read? Well, let me tell you about our Christmas vacation. We went to Memphis for 2 weeks and in Memphis there are 2 things to do...Eat and go to basketball games (in the summer it is Redbirds season so the city goes baseball crazy and gets behind the AAA team for the St. Louis Cardinals). So, what did we do? We ate, really well, and went to 5 basketball games for me and 6 for Ryan. Considering that we watched almost every college football bowl game (there are 30-something) in between basketball games, I was completely "sported" out (yep, that is my new word). It was so fun though! The best part is that at the beginning of Univ. of Memphis basketball games the student section gets a copy of the newspaper and when the opposing team starters are introduced all of the students hold up papers and yell "You Suck" after each name is called. It entertained me to no end....I loved that tradition. The problem that arises for me is that when I see a crossword puzzle I cannot NOT do it. It is a sickness that I get from my daddy dearest. So Aunna and I challenged Allie and Brent to a "Race to the Finish." Every timeout, all of half time, and each break of any sort resulted in our heads together, and only a little cheating from both sides, trying to finish the puzzle first. Who won? My dear Aunna and Myself, of course...plus we cheated less, so the win was even that much more satisfying. Don't worry, I did watch the game, there was plenty of yelling at the players coming from me and only one text from Ryan telling me to put the dang paper away and watch the game (I was in the student section and he sat with my dad on club level...there was a ton of texting between us).

We even got to bring Madison to one of the Univ. of Memphis games. She loves going to basketball games, and did really well during it. She watched most of it and like to cheer the teams on, but her favorite part was the frozen yogurt Ryan shared with her. She is definitely her parent's child. We love ice cream in our family, NOT that Hunter gets any yet....He is still a little young and I am super anal when it comes to food for my kids.

Ryan and I got to go to the Memphis Grizzlies game when they played the Lakers. The sad thing for me was that there were as many fans there for the Lakers as the Grizz. Poor Grizzlies...They played great, I really thought they were going to win the game. The Lakers trailed the entire game and the last few minutes they showed up to play and ended up winning by just a few points in the end. At least it was a really good game.

I just can't resist

I am going out of order, but I have to add this to my favorite postings list....Amy, I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to share your story in hopes that it would bring as much joy to others as it did to me.

It is a short post, but check it out. Only a busy mom could get away with this. Now I am wondering if I could do something like this on purpose and get take-out without the guilt? I wonder how many times I can do it before Ryan would catch on??? Hmmm......

This is the problem I am having....I am super behind on blogging, but every time I log on to blog I end up reading about all of my wonderful friends fun postings and all my blogging time disappears. I do promise to get caught up soon, I just get distracted really, really easily.