Christmas Pics

As usual, I had one difficult child.  Casen is super easy now and I cannot get Arya to take one single picture for me.  Maybe next year!

If you follow my blog regularly out all you've probably heard pretty often how proud I am of my husband.

Today, well, everyday, is another one of those days :)

If you've been praying for Caleb, thank you.  If you've been following his police journey at all and haven't heard, he passed his final board, (early, i have to throw that in there because i'm his wife :)) and is officially out on his own.  And we have this new addition in front of our house.

Soo proud of you, again, Caleb.  And so thankful to be your wife.<3 p="">

Cold Weather Recipes

Cold weather means lots of soup, stew, and chili dinners.  I'm always up to try something new.  I found a few recipes online and made them my own so i'm passing them on to you :)

Tortellini Tomato Soup:

Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil or butter
- 1/8 to 1/4 cup of minced onion (I used green onion because we have a small obsession, or i've used onion powder in the past.)
- 1 to 2 cloves of crushed garlic
- 4 cups of chicken broth
- 1 (14oz) can tomato puree (or crushed tomatoes if you like chunks.)
- 1 (9oz) package of tortellini (I use Bertolli 3 cheese)
- 8oz of fresh or frozen spinach
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup of heavy cream

Directions:
In soup pot, heat olive oil or butter over medium high heat.  Saute the onion and garlic, stirring often until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.  Add broth and tomatoes, turn heat up to high and bring to a boil.  Add the tortellini and cook according to package instructions.  When the tortellini is almost done add spinach.  When the spinach has wilted add the cream. Bring to low boil, serve, and enjoy!

It's a soup that you can make in less then 30 minutes and it tastes like it's been simmering all day!



Game Day Chili:

Ingredients:
- 2 lbs ground beef
- 1/2 onion chopped
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 2 (15 oz) beans of your choice drained
- 24 oz of tomato puree
- 1/2 to 1 bottle of beer

- 1 can (14oz) beef broth
- 1 can tomato paste
- 3 tablespoons chili powder
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 to 2 tsp ground red pepper
- 1 tsp paprika

Directions:

Cook first 3 ingredients in a Dutch oven over medium heat, stirring until meat crumbles and is no longer pink. Drain well.

Combine meat mixture, beans, and the rest of the ingredients in Dutch oven; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer uncovered 3 hours or until thickened. 

Trip North

This past week we traveled North to stay with Caleb's brother and family :)  It was a lot of fun and i'm really glad we were able to make plans work.  I didn't take a ton of pictures, as usual, but I think my favorite part was seeing the kids together.  It's a lot of fun now that they're all old enough to interact.
Thanks for having us Jonathan and Liz!

we stayed at a hotel along the way and the kids were loving it

why i love not living in new york

checking out the snow

Now onto Thanksgiving

Yes, there actually is a holiday between Halloween and Christmas.  Am I crazy or does it seem like everyone forgets that?

We did some quiet crafts while Caleb slept.  The kids each came up with their own list and helped with the writing.  Casen's list kills me.

Halloween 2014

Before I start the post on our Halloween I just wanted to say that I completely understand people's views on celebrating or not celebrating Halloween.  We choose to celebrate it.  No, we don't teach our kids to worship the devil and it's not a dark day for us.  Some of my favorite memories as a kid are bundling up with our extended family and walking the streets trick or treating no matter how cold we were.  I would like my kids to be able to have those same types of memories.  As it is our first Halloween in our home, we had fun decorating and carving pumpkins that set on our front steps.

We almost always start off  a holiday with a special breakfast so Caleb and Casen headed out yesterday morning to get some goodies.

We then ran to get Casen a costume...highly recommend waiting until the day of to get the costume, they're half price!  I have no pictures of him in his costume because he saved for later that night.  I did try to get one of Arya.  We used some of Casen's old scrubs since she's still pretty little.

Caleb ended up getting tickets through work for Marvel Universe Live.  The performance was on Halloween at 7 so trick or treating was out of the question.  We knew Casen would much rather go to Marvel, but I didn't want him to miss out on the candy and such that he'd been looking forward to.  So this year we set up a little scavenger hunt in our back yard and the kids got to hunt for candy instead of asking our neighbors for it :)  He loved it at easter and he loved it again for Halloween.  It may just become a new tradition for us.

we found these instead of eggs to keep the candy in :)

 Then Uncle Ty stopped by to head to Marvel with us!

Then it was off to Marvel.  We didn't get many pictures because it was so dark all of mine ended up looking like this

But it was really cool and Casen was already asking when we could go back as we were walking out the doors.