Saying Goodbye to Yet ANOTHER Honda!

OK, so I know you're all dying from shock because I am actually posting again. Because I've been out of the blog scene for quite some time, I have a ton to catch up on. This post will feel familiar to a post I did about 6 months ago when we said goodbye to my Honda Accord. Well, last November, we had to say goodbye to Jere's Accord as well. Most people would say we are just having a lot of bad luck, but both times have turned out to be blessings because in both cases, our insurance company paid for replacement cars that were newer, nicer and had much less mileage on them than our poor Accords.

This car we replaced with a 1996 Honda Odyssey that only has 100,000 miles on it (as opposed to our old 1992, two-door, that had over 200,000 miles on it.) So yes, I have finally entered the realm of mini-vans and quite frankly, I've enjoyed it quite a bit. Now when any of you come to visit, I no longer have to request that you squish in the back between the kids' carseats. And now if more than one of you come to visit at a time, I will be able to pick you all up in just one vehicle. Fabulous!

Ashlee's Art Blog

Ashlee has a blog where she can post her latest drawings. Check it out when you get a minute!
http://www.ashlee-raquel.blogspot.com/ OR click on the Ashlee's Art Blog link to the left.

A New Ashlee!

Ashlee got a really cute haircut about 3 weeks ago. On the way to the salon, she was in a bad mood and kept telling me that she didn't want to cut her hair, that she wanted long hair forever. I kept thinking it was going to be a bad experience and kept bracing myself for tears and chaos in general. When we got there, I found a picture of a short bob and showed it to her. I asked her if she liked it and she suddenly said, "Yep. I think I want that one." I handed her over to the hairdresser and waited patiently in the waiting area. Not long after, I got a child that I didn't even recognize! AND, Ashlee was very happy with it (phew!) So happy, that she spent quite some time in front of the mirror when we got home admiring what a pretty girl she was.

Some REALLY Good Recipes

OK, so I haven't posted in a really long time and I actually shouldn't be taking the time to post right now either, but I have found some recipes that are so easy to make and taste good, too. I love to make dinner in my crockpot, basically because it doesn't require me to stick around, so here are the recipes from Recipezaar that I think you should try:

Crock Pot Chicken with Black Beans and Cream Cheese
4-5 frozen chicken breasts
1 (15.5 oz.) can black beans, drained
1 (15 oz.) can corn, drained
1 (15 oz.) jar salsa, any kind
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese (or low-fat kind if you're trying to stick to your diet)

1. Put 4-5 frozen (yes, frozen) boneless chicken breasts into crock pot.
2. Add black beans, salsa and corn.
3. Cook on high for about 4-5 hours or until chicken is fully cooked.
4. Add 1 package of cream cheese (just throw it on top!) and let sit for about 30 minutes.
5. You can serve as individual breasts with a yummy sauce, or you can chop (or shred) the chicken up into little pieces and mix all together to be served as a chowder-type soup. SO GOOD!

Easy Crock Pot Lasagna
1 lb. ground beef (or substitute chicken or ground turkey here for a lower fat version)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (29 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste (or substitute the tomato sauce and paste for a 26 oz. jar of Prego)
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. salt
1 cup water
8 oz. lasagna noodles, uncooked
4 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 1/2 cups small curd cottage cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

1. Brown beef (or other meat) with onion and garlic until onion is softened. Drain off the fat.
2. Stir in jar of Prego OR tomato sauce and tomato paste, salt, and oregano. Also add the water. Mix well.
3. Spread one fourth of the meat sauce in an ungreased slow cooker. Arrange one third of the UNCOOKED noodles over the sauce.
4. Combine the cheeses.
5. Spoon one third of the cheese mixture over the noodles.
6. Repeat layers twice.
7. Top with remaining meat sauce.
8. Cover and cook on low 4-5 hours OR on high for 2.5 hours.

Give these a try and let me know what you think! Bon appetit!

Halloween Fun

Happy Halloween! This year, Nick went as Link from the Legend of Zelda game and Ashlee went as Princess Aurora (also known as Sleeping Beauty.)



Look closely at the one where Ashlee is with some of her classmates (top right). You might have to click on it to enlarge it a bit. It seems that the "princess" has decided to give the poor girl in orange some bunny ears for the photo. I never thought a kindergartener could be that obnoxious! I had to put this one up because it makes me laugh! Ashlee looks like a football player posing for a team photo!


Trick or treating was a lot of fun. We went over to Janie and Andrea's neighborhood and Ashlee was pleasantly surprised to her see her old friend Josie from preschool whom she hasn't seen for at least a year, probably longer. All the kids had fun running from house to house and getting LOTS of candy.



There is a guy in our neighborhood who goes all out for Halloween. He decorates his entire property including parking a skeleton-driven hearse on the street. The creepiest part was the weird creature riding behind the skeleton. It seriously freaked me out! It was pretty hard to see in the dark so by the time you get up close enough to the window to see what it really is, you're face to face with it and that's when you wet your pants with fright! Ashlee was scared so I had to pretend that I was perfectly OK with it, even though I wanted to scream like a banshee! What is a banshee, anyway?? Hope you all had a great Halloween!

The Big Day!

Ashlee came home from school at the beginning of October and announced that she had invited half of her Kindergarten class to her birthday party. I panicked a little bit, but then calmly reminded her that we were only having a family party at home this year because she had a big princess party with lots (ten, to be exact) of her friends last year. After seeing the disappointment on her face, I told her we should make a compromise--we would invite two friends and go to Chuck E. Cheese's. Thankfully, she was very happy with this arrangment.

On the day of her birthday, we ate out at Red Robin and the waiters sang her a happy birthday song and gave her free ice-cream. Good for both Ashlee and me! :)


At home, she opened more presents and finally got to blow the candles out on her My Little Pony cake.

I usually go all out making the cake, which is extremely time consuming. I wised-up this year by putting a Pony on the cake instead of trying to frost one with 3,000 different rainbow colors.


Queen for the day at Chuck E. Cheese and opening the number one present on her list -- Pinkie Pie's Balloon House! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!


Enjoying the day with Erin and Samantha. Here Nick is showing only a very small fraction of the tens of thousands of tickets he won doing a variety of games. Good job Nick!
Happy Birthday Ash!

The Tooth Fairy Cometh!

This tiny little tooth that had been loose for weeks finally made its debut the day before Ashlee's 6th birthday. She was pretty darned excited. So excited that early the next morning she woke me up to tell me that the Tooth Fairy had come in the night and left a whole dollar under her pillow! I said,"Wow! That's SO exciting! And today is your birthday, too!" She paused to think about that for a second and said,"I get to open presents today AND the Tooth Fairly left me a dollar!"