Holiday Food

It’s a beautiful day today. We have had some snow and some very cold days the last few days. Today, the 50 degree weather feels like summer again! Ahhhhh. So, we took advantage of the nice weather to put the Christmas lights up. It was nice being outside and Courtney was having fun watching us.

We still haven’t gotten the tree up. Hopefully we will get to that soon. But it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I got in the baking mood the other day. I baked 3 different types of cookies. Problem is that Hubby only likes 1 type which is Chocolate Chip. So if I make other cookies I have to find people to give them to so I don’t eat all of them. We took the cookies over to our friends’ house that night for dinner.

But we are getting to that time of year! All the good food starts coming out! All the dishes you don’t make any other time of the year, you make now. That is one main reason I love the holidays. It is so not good for the waste line, but it sure does taste good!

I am hosting a wrapping and craft party every Sunday between now and Christmas. I stocked up on wrapping supplies when I found good deals. So, I invited all my friends to come over and wrap gifts or work on crafts they are trying to get done. It should be fun and motivate me to finish the last few craft projects I have hanging out there.

Other than that, things around here have been pretty quiet. My mom and I spent some time yesterday Christmas shopping. Other than that, we have spent the last 5 days staying inside and warm, and eating! It has been a nice little vacation from work.

Our Thanksgiving Day leftovers are almost gone. We have been eating them pretty regularly. We had some very yummy leftovers, I will be sad when they are no more.

Well, this is a short post for once, but we really haven’t been doing much. I hope all of you are also having a great start to the Holiday Season!

Happy Day after Thanksgiving!

Happy Day after Thanksgiving to everyone! We hope that whatever you did, you had a wonderful day and lots of yummy food! I know we did.

We prepped as much as possible on Wednesday. Hubby woke up at 3am to put the turkey breasts on the smoker. When we got up in the morning, we started the process for the day. We cleaned, moved furniture, set up tables, etc. Then we started cooking. We were preparing our dishes’. We made cheesy zucchini, dressing, roasted asparagus, and the turkey breasts. Our friend Glenn arrived about noon. He was frying a turkey. That process has to be done outside, so he was all bundled up, out frying a turkey for about an hour. It was in the mid-20’s!

Everyone was here by 2pm. Everyone brought several dishes. We had a delicious green bean dish someone brought; someone else brought mashed potatoes and gravy. My mom brought the sweet potatoes. There was so much food; you couldn’t fit everything on your plate! It took a few trips. Everyone seemed to be able to find something they enjoyed!

After dinner, we did some cleaning up, and starting the dishwasher. Thankfully I have lots of the glad containers. So, I pulled a bunch of them out and everyone loaded up whatever leftovers they wanted. It helped me to get rid of a lot of the food that there is no way Hubby and I could finish, and helped get rid of the accumulating containers I had!

Then we put the desserts out. Hubby and I didn’t make any desserts. Several people brought desserts. We had cookies, sweet potato and merange pie, pumpkin pie, apple cake, pecan pie, homemade whipped cream, apple pie, homemade vanilla bean ice cream… Everything was so delicious! We all had little bits of everything. Even Courtney had pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie and ice cream. And she loved it all.

People straggled out all evening, but our lasts guests left at 11pm. We left the kitchen a mess and went to bed, as we were exhausted. But it sure was a great day and the food was amazing! I look forward to doing it again next year!

Today we are waiting for the snow to start again. It’s going to be another cold day. Currently it’s 20 degrees out at 9am.

So, I guess kind of some big news is that I am going back to school. Not full time and with no real ambition of a degree in mind. But, I am planning to take a few marketing classes so I can figure out what I should be doing in my current position at work.

There are also several classes that I saw that interest me that have nothing to do with marketing. I may check into those as well.

Courtney goes to the Child Development Center at Pikes Peak Community College, Rampart Campus, which is where I will be taking classes. That means that we will get a discount on childcare as well. Of course we are in the midst of trying to decide if we want to leave her there or move her closer to home to somewhere that we are a little happier with the management staff. We need to look into it and soon. It’s going to be a tough decision!

Well, some of the leftovers in the fridge are calling me! I must go indulge again! Happy Black Friday!!!

She's growing up...

Courtney is a ‘big girl’ now. We had to buy her a new car seat. Her infant car seat was at the max! The straps would not go out any further, and putting her in her seat with a coat on, was not easy. I have been researching them for about a month now. Finally Hubby and I were together and had a chance to take her to Babies R Us to try car seats on. We finally found one we think will work. We even installed it in the parking lot. She is a little unsure of this sitting facing forward thing. I love that we can see her more now! She’s so cute to watch.

We put the car seat in the Jeep. This car seat doesn’t move back and forth as easy as the infant seat did. So, I may end up having to purchase another one for my car. That way we won’t have to worry about trying to move the big one back and forth all the time.

Grammy and Granddad were supposed to be here for Thanksgiving. But, 2 days before they were supposed to leave, Granddad was having chest pain and shortness of breath that landed him a trip to the hospital. He ended up having some blockages and having to have 2 stints put in. Needless to say, no airline travel for him for a while. We are going to miss having them at Thanksgiving, but we are so happy it wasn’t more serious! There’s always next year.

Hubby got home Thursday night from hopefully his last trip of the year. Friday we went in to work for only a few hours. Hubby had planned a ‘surprise evening’ for me. It started off with lunch at one of my favorite places. Then we went to the zoo for a few hours. I enjoyed leisurely walking around. The giraffes were hungry so they gladly ate our crackers. Just about most of the other animals were being active too, so it was fun to sit and watch them!

From there we went to the surprise. It was a bed and breakfast called the Cheyenne Canon Inn. http://www.cheyennecanoninn.com/ He got the Pamper Me package. We ended up in their small private cabin, which had a private deck and hot tub. After we got settled in our cabin, we put on our suits and sat in the hot tub for about an hour. After that we changed and headed back up to the main house, because they have a wine and h’our derves hour from 4-5pm. After a glass of wine in the great room, we went back down to our cabin where a fruit tray and cheese tray and sparkling cider awaited us. Just as we were finishing up that, our massage therapists arrived. We enjoyed an hour long massage side by side.

After they left, we got dressed up and went to dinner at the Craftwood Inn: http://www.craftwood.com/ They typically have wild game on their menu. For an appetizer, we had ostridge! But for dinner I had chicken. Hubby had duck. It was very tasty, and it was a very relaxing evening!

The next morning the chef was in, and so we had an amazing breakfast. She had made this banana bread pudding with a buttermilk sauce that was amazing. Alas, we finally came back home and back to reality. Nana had stayed at our house to take care of Courtney and the dogs.

Well, I need to go and fold laundry, while I watch the last race of the season. L At least there is only a 3 month break!!!

Remember: Rescue and recycle!

Time Flies when you are busy!

Gosh, it’s been a week since my last blog! Sorry about that! This was a busy week for us. We hosted our training classes in our office this week. That means we have to provide snack and sodas, etc. It just is a little extra work when it’s right in our office. It also means no jeans L. Thankfully I recently got new dress pants for work, so I was still somewhat comfortable. But, when there are classes, its long days for me and whoever is teaching the classes. It happened to be that Hubby was the only one available to teach. So, Courtney spent a lot of time at daycare and we spent a lot of time at work.

Monday the windshield company did come replace the windshield on John’s truck. Later that afternoon, he brought my car down to my office and we swapped. Very quick and easy.

Tuesday night was back to agility in our new building!! I was worried Bristol might be a little anxious in a new place. So, we went a few minutes early to let him get a little accustomed to it. He had NO issues. All the dogs did very well in the new place except several of them, including Bristol, felt the urge to jump out the dog walk! It’s about 4 & ½ feet off the ground. It made the trainer very nervous. She was telling the dogs to stop it, as they were scaring her! So, they listened and stopped jumping off in the middle.

Thursday we had our friend over for dinner. He has been in England most of this year for work. He was in a very serious accident over there recently and pretty much just told his work that he was coming home. The project he was working on was way overdue and an end date was no where in site. And after being in the accident, he decided home was where he wanted to be. It was great seeing him again. We saw him once over the summer when he was here for a weeks ‘vacation’ from his job. It’s kind of odd when you have to take a vacation to come back to see your house/car/etc.

Friday Hubby had to go up to the Academy to videotape John’s play. This was the real play that was supposed to happen last weekend. This way John’s mom who is back home in California, and John’s dad, who is stationed in Korea, can see his play. Hubby met with some of our other cadets for dinner prior to the play.

Saturday we mostly had a ‘down’ day. Hubby had to go meet with the 2 other owners at work, as it was the only time the 3 of them could get together to discuss things because of all the work and travel schedules. He didn’t come home until 12:30-1pm ‘ish. Courtney and I spent some quality time together. We spent a while outside which is where we were when Hubby came home. About 10 minutes before he arrived, Courtney and I were sitting out on the swing and she was yelling out into the air “Dad” and “Daddy”. I think she was trying to figure out where he was. She must have been in a real daddy mood because once he got home; she wanted nothing to do with me and everything to do with him.

When Courtney went down for her nap that afternoon, Hubby and I started doing some serious cleaning of the kitchen. We emptied out several cabinets and got rid of a lot of stuff. We ended up putting 4-5 boxes of stuff in the garage sale pile! And we haven’t gotten through all the cabinets yet! We still have about 5 to go.

Saturday night we had been invited to several things. Poor Hubby was so burnt out from all the traveling and teaching and being social that he just didn’t want to do anything but veg-out. We ended up watching a movie in the basement. I thing he wanted one last quiet night at home before the holidays really hit and things start to get crazy.

Today was another cleaning day. I have been doing tons of laundry, including all sheets and towels from every bedroom and bathroom. Hubby left for the airport about 12:30pm. Nana came up to pick up Courtney about that time to. I was going to a welcome home party for our friend who just got back from England. Nana said she would like to take care of Courtney and then after the party we can all have dinner to celebrate my dad’s birthday at their house. So, she took Courtney down to her house and I went to the party.

The party was fun; it’s always fun to get together with friends, especially when you have a really good reason to celebrate. There was lots of good food and lots of good friends.

Meanwhile, Nana and Grandpa were having too much fun with Courtney. Nana put a small sandbox in her backyard. Courtney apparently is going to be a sandbox kind of girl. She loves to play in it. She also made good use of the small elephant slide Nana has.

When I arrived she was taking her afternoon nap. Shortly after she got up she made it very apparent that she was starving. So Nana made her some spaghetti. She loves to eat spaghetti and she really ‘gets into’ it. She didn’t want to be fed on a fork or spoon, and she didn’t want to use the fork or spoon her self. She wanted to shove fist fulls in her mouth. She was so cute to watch, and she was slurping the noodles in just like always. I thought for sure her nose, cheeks and chin were going to be stained orange.

Later, for dessert we had pumpkin pie. She got her first taste. She loved it. But then, why wouldn’t you love pumpkin pie?! After dessert, we came home and I gave that very dirty little girl a bath. I washed all the spaghetti and pumpkin pie from her hair and all the sand from everywhere else. She was so tired she wouldn’t even let me read her a book. She just kept saying ‘nigh-nigh’ (for night night). I tried to sing her a song and she shook her head no. So, I put her down in her crib and she didn’t make a peep. She is now very soundly sleeping.

She is growing and changing so much. She can’t communicate with us very much other than the short words she knows. But if you tell her something it’s amazing how she understands. Yesterday I was loading her laundry into the washer and she came in. We have a front loading washer, so she walked up to me to see what I was doing. I gave her a sock and told her to put it in the washer. She did! So I gave her a shirt and told her to put that in too, and she did! So, she loaded the washer for me and shut the door when we were done! It’s amazing how much she understands!

She recently cut two molars on the top row of teeth and yesterday I felt point coming through on the bottom. Teething really isn’t fun. She gets really crabby when it gets really bad. That is how I found the two coming in on the bottom. She was really grouchy the other night, so I figured it had to do with teething. Once I found the two new ones coming in I gave her some Tylenol and a teething ring. She will gladly chew on the teething ring now a days. She was never interested in the past. But I am sure that cutting all those teeth is painful!

She says new words all the time too. Today she said Bristol for the first time. Except it comes out more like “Brithol”. Her newest words besides Bristol are: apple, yummy, UP (she says that one a lot), Nagnie (for Maggie), and Happy.

It’s just so much fun to watch her! I sometimes feel like I just can’t get enough!

Well, I too have had a long day, so some sound sleeping sounds really good to me too! I am going to close with the new slogan I have come up with: Rescue and Recycle. Two things I hope we all remember to do!

Pampered Chef show

Here we are in November! I can’t believe time has flown by so fast.

Thursday night we were expecting our out of town visitors late in the evening. Well, just after dinner I started suffering from them worst stomach flu I have ever had. I spent the night hiding upstairs. Hubby was in charge of getting them in and settled. I guess that this nasty stomach flu is going around. Even my cousin in Vermont suffered from it last weekend! So far Hubby has been able to stay away from it.

Anyway, our guests arrived safe and sound. Friday morning, they headed up to the Academy to assist with set painting and building. I stayed home from work and was miserable all day by myself. Hubby took Courtney to daycare and went to work.

Our guests came back briefly to change and head back up to the Academy. The dress rehearsal was that night, and that is the whole reason that Shelia and her son came to town. Well, they actually were coming to town to see the actual play, but they moved the dates of the play. Shelia had all ready bought the airline tickets and they were non-refundable. But the group at the Academy agreed to let them see the dress rehearsal.

Saturday was an early start for all of us as well. John, our cadet, Shelia’s son, had to get up early to go and cook at his squadron’s tailgate party. Hubby started his day by going to get a haircut. He was the first to leave the house and the first to discover that someone had thrown a flagstone at John’s windshield. The windshield didn’t break, but it was spider-cracked in a million different cracks. So, then we had to call the police, etc. They took a report and John took my car to the Academy.

Shelia is a Pampered Chef rep and we were having a Pampered Chef show that afternoon. I was feeling a whole lot better from my stomach bug, but I was pretty weak from not eating or drinking for 24 hours. Shelia and I spent the morning dealing with John’s truck.

After Hubby got home from his haircut and running a few other errands, he showered and then took Courtney to My Gym. It’s a gym that caters to kids starting at 6 months or so. Our friends take their kids there, so I wanted to check it out for Courtney. Since she is so into being upside-down and climbing, I thought it might be up her alley. She was supposed to go last weekend, but we ended up at the pediatrician’s with the double ear infection, so we rescheduled for this weekend. But due to time constraints, Hubby took her. He said it was so-so. Now I want to go check it out.

Anyway, Saturday afternoon our friends came over and we had our Pampered Chef show. I haven’t been to one or had one in so long. There are a ton of new things that I want!

That night we smoked a turkey breast and had a yummy dinner with all of us. And then Shelia and her boys went to a movie. I went to bed supper early, as I did the night before. I am still attempting to recover from this flu that wiped me out.

Sunday morning we spent quality time with Courtney. Hubby made a large breakfast for all of us. It was very yummy. Finally Shelia and her son Michael headed for the airport. John took them. After he saw them off, he came back here for a while. John and I had to trade cars for tomorrow also. The Academy won’t let his truck on base with the smashed windshield, so we kept the truck for him. Tomorrow, a windshield company is going to meet me at work and install his new windshield. Then at some point tomorrow, we will swap cars again. I feel bad that his windshield was smashed right in front of our house!

Well, I am still feeling a little wiped out. So, I am off to bed!