A little of this and a little of that

• A couple weekends ago, I organized a GNO (Girl's Night Out!) and we had it at my friends house, Erin, because her husband had to work that night and plus her house is bigger (I need a bigger house!). We played the salad bowl game (that's what my Mom calls it), but it's where you write nouns- people, place or thing- on 10 strips of paper and then fold them up and put them in the bowl. You divide into teams and then you take turns trying to get your team to guess what's on the strip of paper by describing the word, you have a minute and you see how many you can get in your turn. Kyle's cousin, Becky, had us play it at some family get together and I liked it. We had some adult words if you know what I mean that left us laughing. It was a great time. It actually ended up in a tie of all things. We ate yummy food (veggie tray, artichoke dip with bread, mini cheesecakes, brownies, bean dip with chips, chocolate covered donut holes, cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries and white punch) and then chatted about everything. We almost started to play Mad Gab, but then somehow we got distracted and talked the rest of the time. Most of us stayed until midnight! When I left at 7:15pm Kyle said, "see you at 11 or later" and I told him no way will I be that late. HA!

• We are getting closer to going to Disneyland. We can't wait!!! I kept getting an email of our itinerary from Costco Travel and it kept saying immediate payment. I had used my Costco credit card to pay for the deposit so I figured they would just charge that same credit card for the remainder amount when it was due. After the 2nd email I decided to call and check into it. Good thing I did. Our reservations were almost CANCELLED! Ahhh! Since it still showed up in the system I was fine and was able to pay for it. I don't remember seeing where it said I'd have to call back to pay in full. I told the lady it would be nice to just select what method of payment for when the full amount is due. She said I wasn't the first one that suggested that. Well, Costco...get on that then! All I can say is phew and we are still going. :) I'm making a little countdown with small Disney activities before we go. Lots of my friends are going this year so it's been fun to talk about it with them. Now just to get all of us healthy and stay healthy for the trip. 

New Food

I tried some new recipes last week from a food blog that my Mom told me about, Jamie Cooks it up. I chose these recipes because they looked good and were on her top recipes from 2012.

• I tried the Turkey Wonder (but I used a whole chicken instead of turkey because that's what I had). It was okay, the chicken was good, but the gravy you make from the sauce was a little too sweet for my taste. Kyle had it for leftovers the next day and said the gravy tasted better as leftovers. It was easy because you cooked the chicken/turkey in the crock pot and crock pot meals are nice because you put it in then let it cook away all day.
• I made the Butter Cream Chicken and that was delicious. The chicken was dipped in crushed Ritz crackers and the sauce was made up really quickly after the chicken was done cooking. It was a fast meal and I thought it tasted good. The gravy is similar to country gravy mixes (which we love too). 
• I also made Crispy Chicken with Creamy Italian Sauce and Bowtie Pasta. That's a mouthful to say! The chicken is dipped in crushed cornflakes! Crazy, but really good. The chicken was our favorite. The sauce was okay. I liked it, but no one else really did. We had lots of leftovers that no one ate, but me. :) The sauce was a little bland, not enough kick you could say. It reminded me of a recipe I have called Mama's Italian Chicken where you cook it in a crock pot and use Italian dressing mix. That is a much more flavorful sauce. But this new recipe uses the new cooking cream cheese. I've never used it before, only seen it in magazine, so it was kind of fun to try. 

I'll probably only make the Butter Cream Chicken again. I prepared Kyle before he came home telling him we are having something new. He likes our tried and true recipes (aka no major changes), but I'm glad he puts up with the new meals I make. Once I find good recipes we make them over and over. I think the key to being a good baker or cooker (is that a word?) is having good recipes. With Pinterest and food blogs everywhere it's been fun to try new things out.

Basketball Girl

Kate has started playing basketball through the YMCA. I was excited for her to do it because I loved basketball. She started crying when I first asked her if she wanted to play. She was scared, nervous, didn't know how to play and didn't want to be bad. Well, after telling her that's why we "practice" and get better at new things she agreed to let me sign her up. Her friend Alyssa was going to do it too so they are on the same team. Kate didn't want to do it if she didn't have Alyssa or someone that she knew on her team. But of course, now she loves it and has so much fun. And she's excited because they get treats and drinks after games. It's so expensive for things like this over here. I guess I should just be glad we are only having to pay for 1 kid right now, soon it probably will be more! I went to her practice with all the kids last night because Kyle had a work meeting. It was hilarious watching them practice and scrimmage. I need to help Kate with basketball lingo. At one point Kate had the ball passed to her and the coach said, "back out Kate" meaning throw the ball back out, but instead Kate backed up with the ball. Made me laugh, too cute. The coaches were great with them and so encouraging and they are only volunteer coaches! Preston and Lindsey were all over the place so I was glad it only lasted 45 minutes. She has practice once a week and games on Saturday, 6 games total. Should be fun!

Blog Book

I got my blog book printed...finally! Dee Ann had given me money for my present a couple years ago for my blog book. I had looked on Blurb.com, but it overwhelmed me. Then I saw my friend's book, Cindy, where she had used blog2print.com. I checked it out and it was super easy to make. All you have to do is enter in the dates and choose some settings. I wanted mine to look like my blog so it took more pages, you can do a condensed version to save money. A couple bad things about blog2print is that you can't edit it. I wanted to fix this one page where the blog post title was on the bottom one page and then the rest of the post was on another page. Didn't like that. And then there's only one line of text on the last page. I wish I could fix that too. Oh well. The kids have had fun looking through it and it's a good journal/photo book for our family. I'm glad I have done this blog because it has been a good way to document things in our life. We look back in this book and start reminiscing of things that we did or things that happened. Life goes fast. This book is only 2 years though...I need to make some more books!

Chelsea Welsey (nickname)

I took Chelsea in for her 6 month well child visit when she was 7 months old (a month late because of insurance reasons) and she weighed 18 lbs 7 oz, 27.5 inches long and she is by far my chubbiest baby. :) I love her chub. We work hard at keeping those rolls, haha! She is finally eating baby food. She started eating it before Christmas, thank goodness- she resisted it for a while, and now eats about 2 containers/jars of baby food each meal. Now we are sleep training her so she'll sleep through the night. She's doing good. We sure love her! Kate says all the time, "Isn't Chelsea so cute, Mom?" To which I reply, "yes, but your were so cute too!"

Christmas Break

The days after Christmas are kind of a let down. We look forward to Christmas all year and the excitement builds and then *boom* it's all done. Then after Christmas it's blah and kind of depressing. The tree and lights come down, toys and clothes need to be organized, kids need to be entertained to avoid fighting while on break from school and life returns to normal. We spent our time during the break having play dates, sleeping in, relaxing, playing with new toys, watching movies, some shopping, a little bit of cleaning and wishful thinking for snow. The snow didn't happen. Kyle and I did fit in a date night with our friends, Todd and Tawnya Valentine. We went to Les Miserables and PF Changs for dinner. It was a fun night. 

Kate and Callie playing Barbies

McKay was playing the iPad and Preston would just watch him play. I was in the other room and heard them giggling like little girls. It was cute. McKay and Kate are good friends at Church and school. We had a swap that day, Kate went to McKay and Callie's house then they came over to play. 

Kyle was making sure Chelsea could do the stand up trick like all the other kids have done. 

She thought it was pretty fun. My brother-in-law, Kevin, does this with all his kids and I remember him doing it with Kate when she was little. Now we do it with all our kids too. 

Lindsey got a makeover with Kate's new makeup from Christmas. I swore off play makeup for a while once I found it smeared all over the carpet upstairs. But obviously I gave in and she got more. Now Lindsey gets in on the fun and wants to put on the fake earring and makeup. I put mascara on her because I couldn't resist not putting it on her long lashes. 

Preston tears apart his lego cars and puts them back together again...over and over and over. 

Happy New Year!

We were so exciting on New Year's Eve. We were invited to some parties, but with young kids it's hard to stay out late, they get cranky. Plus, all our babysitters were at the Church dance. We ate some yummy appetizer food and chilled. I told Kate she could stay up until midnight, if she could. She was so excited. She outlasted Kyle even! Kyle went to bed around 11:30. He couldn't last the last half hour, I guess. So Kate and I stayed up and watched Taylor Swift perform on the New York countdown and then we watched the Seattle Space Needle fireworks at midnight (Kate wanted to since her teacher told her she watches it). Then, fireworks were going off outside so we watched them out her bedroom window before going to bed.

Happy New Year!!!! 2013!!!