Recipes!!!
I love to cook and bake and eat and collect and read recipes. Kinda weird, I know. And I love to share my favorites. So to make it easier, I've created another blog that I'm going to only list recipes. And maybe some cooking and baking tips along the way, we'll see how it progresses. So come check out my Cucina Pazza!!! http://mrscucinapazza.blogspot.com/

Mom, we don't eat the yellow snow, right?
Finally! Our area actually got snow! It was fun to have a snow day so the girls could play together all day and enjoy the snow together. And thankfully they have a daddy that is self-employed and works from home so he can play in it with them since their mommy does NOT like to play in the snow. I love to watch it fall, I'm just not so keen on being cold and wet. I'm really not so much an outdoorsy person, I'm more of an outdoors observer. :)

Here are a few pictures from our snow day....I also took some video of Ainsley on all fours licking the snow but I'm having some computer issues in editing it. So photos only for now.

So while they were out playing in the snow, I was making homemade bread for dinner. My patient, long-suffering mom has tried to teach me to enjoy making my own bread for years. FINALLY I gave in. :) Besides that fact that my Italian genes cause me to love and crave bread, I also love family pizza and movie night and am tired of paying for pizza delivery that's just "eh". So now when we have movie night, I make homemade pizza - YUM. Anyway, yesterday I was making Herbed Monkey Bread. This is just like the sweet cinnamon kind, but instead you dip the dough balls in a mixture olive oil, fresh garlic, basil, oregano and parsley. However, thought I had JUST returned from the grocery store I realized I was completely out of butter for the bread recipe. Argh. Thankfully, because I just made ice cream recently, I had some heavy cream. So, I poured cream in a plastic container with a tight lid, dumped in a few marbles, shook it for 10 minutes and voila! Butter!! I was feeling pretty domestic about this adventure, let me tell you! And by the way, the bread was SOOOOOO good! We had it with salad for dinner so we could eat lots of bread. And we did. As of lunch today the entire loaf (bundt pan size) is GONE. :) So on that note - a recipe anyone? This isn't the healthiest recipe in the world but if you have families that LOVE meat, this is a great one. My kids gobble this up and ask for more, Hayley had 3 helpings of it the other night. And Dan? I can pretty much get him to do ANYthing I ask if I tell him I'm making this recipe. :)

World's Best Meatloaf
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can water
1 1/2 pounds ground beef, lean
1/2 pound breakfast sausage (a tube, not links - pork or turkey – lowfat works great here)
1-1/4 cups corn flake crumbs
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1 egg
Mix soup with water; set aside. Gently mix all remaining ingredients together thoroughly; add 1 cup soup mixture. Shape into loaf in 9 x 13 pan. Bake uncovered at 350 for 1 hour. Drain fat from pan. Heat remaining soup mixture in microwave; pour over meatloaf. Bake 15 minutes more.

For those of you that are used to meatloaf with ketchup or tomato sauce - this is totally different and WAY better. (thanks mom for making this all these years!!!) Next time I'll share something a bit healthier - but hey, it's still winter and some good comfort food is nice on those cold days!

Randomness

A funny thing about Ainsley...she has 2 thumbs and 8 thingers. :)

Ainsley has been trying to spell words like crazy -
Butterfly = bdfl
Casserole = casrl
Rams = rams (wow!!!)

What is it about the weather "guessers" in the PNW? Snow today? Really? When it's sunny and 42 degrees? Huh.

We are working on planning our Disneyland trip next month. I am learning more about the ins and outs of meals and photos and rides and attractions than I ever thought I would possibly need to know. It hasn't been that long since we've been there (4-1/2 years!) but they add so many new things it's hard to keep up. The girls are so excited, though Ainsley has no clue what it is. She can really only compare it to the Puyallup Fair so she's in for a HUGE treat. I don't know that Hayley really remembers much of it, maybe bits and pieces. However she is SO excited to go on Space Mountain. I told her it's dark and fast and jerky and scary and she'll definitely scream and she might even cry....and her face lit up and her eyes got big and she said, "COOL!!!!!!!!" Obviously takes after her dad. :)

I don't have much more to say today. I have been busy with plans for our 1st Annual MOPS & POPS Valentine Banquet. It's going to be a fun date night - we have a caterer and a photographer and beautiful decor and a fun game and raffles and prizes.....can't wait!!! It's always crazy leading up to big events but I think it will be a really fun night - it's always nice to get the husbands involved in the MOPS ministry and meeting each other and possibly forming connections that you wouldn't have otherwise done. So this week is pretty single focused for me and then after Saturday I can breathe again, whew.

I might steal my friend Jaime's idea on her blog - she has been posting a recipe each week - for those of you that know me, you know I LOVE to cook and bake and am a collector of recipes and cookbooks (I just like to read food descriptions!). So maybe I'll try sharing some of my favorites here and there.

Loosely defined
Yesterday I was buckling Ainsley into her car seat and she started wiggling and fussing and grabbing her foot..."Moooom, wait!" "What's the matter with your foot honey?" "My SOCK is ARGUING inside my boot!!!!" (it was bunched up under her toes)
hee hee hee I had to ask her about 5 times if she was actually saying "arguing" - it was too funny! Although Dan informed that she says this all the time - I guess I've missed it.

Another funny this morning - I was scooping out frozen orange juice concentrate into a pitcher and Hayley squealed excitedly and said, "HOMEMADE orange juice!! Thanks Mom!!!" That was funny to me - I don't think she knows what fresh-squeezed orange juice is! :)

On another note, we made a successful trip to IKEA yesterday and got an Expedit unit with baskets for the playroom. What a huge difference in getting all their toys organized and in the confines of lovely wicker! Their toys are getting smaller and smaller, especially their Littlest Pet Shop paraphernalia - and they constantly set-up little villages all over the place. Now they don't have to try to stuff things back in their boxes, just dump them in the basket, slide it back into it's cubby and voila! I also did a little happy dance when we fit all the pieces for the marble maze in a basket - no more annoying box. Are you sensing I have issues with this? Physical clutter in my house causes mental clutter in my head. And I already have enough mental clutter, thank you very much. Anyway, I should post a picture of my lovely new storage unit and how much better it looks than the girls' little plastic desk that they no longer really use other than to pile things upon....maybe later today I'll take a photo.

Okay, here's the photo. This is the IKEA Expedit unit - it comes in different sizes too. And the baskets are called Branas, I think this is the biggest one. Very cool isn't it? I'm going to make some cool tags with the contents of each basket and laminate them and then tie them to the handles with twine. Ahhh, the joys of organization - makes me so happy!

Gotta post a picture....

I mean, with all the rambling I've been doing (thank you for your support Kimberly!!), I just had to add a picture. Tuesday, I finally took pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses in front of the Christmas tree (YES, I just took it down Tuesday night!) and love this one......though there are some funny ones GETTING to this point. :) But really, aren't they just darned adorable?

New Year's Resolutions
I mean, really who doesn't have them? Probably those that don't cave to peer pressure! :) I, on the other hand, always have given in to peer pressure. Which got me in lots of trouble as a teen. But that's another post entirely. So here they are:
1. Better to the environment: Changing all our household cleaning products, better at recycling, composting our food waste.
2. Better to ourselves: Eating more organic food, minimizing processed foods, eating only whole-wheat or whole-grain foods, less fats and sugars, more fruits and veggies, growing more things in the garden, back to a regular workout schedule, paying attention to the amount of food I eat.
3. Better to each other: More time with family playing, less time spent on crazy schedules, improved communication with each other.
4. Better to our friends: Inviting friends over on a regular basis (regardless of how the house looks, I mean, really, who cares?), more of ourselves investing in relationships, actually having playdates for the kids (I don't know why I'm so bad at that, it's just out of my nature or something).
5. Better at organizing: I really love to organize things, truly I do, and I'm pretty organized as it is, but there are definitely areas that can be improved, that would hopefully free up time to allow for #3 above. I have lots of project ideas that I can't wait to tackle!
Okay, so it probably sounds like I'm about to join a commune, but really I'm not. :) I have always been fairly conscious about what I put in my body through food, medicine and even chemicals and with the allergies in this house, we can afford to improve in that area. I just want to simplify life for our family, and though some of these things sound complicated, I really feel once we get in the routines it will make life a lot easier in many ways.
And I really want to get back to scrapbooking more!!! I miss the creative outlet immensely. I may need to schedule in the time to do it so it doesn't get left by the wayside. I miss it tons.
Wow, I think that's enough! Anyone else? I am bound and determined to stick to these things because I have little patience for those that complain about things in their life that they can change, especially myself. I shouldn't be whining about my clothes not fitting if I'm not making that choice to workout and eat healthier. Stop the insanity! :)))
Okay, enough is enough - next post will have photos of adorable children instead of my random thoughts!!!

Happy New Year!!!
Hope everyone had a great celebration of the incoming year. We let the girls stay up with us and Grandma & Papa until midnight to ring in the new year....though Ainsley ran away crying when we blew our noisemakers. Apparently she only likes loud noises when she is the one making them. :)
So, I think it's finally official....the Guay's are NOT sending out Christmas cards this year. And I think the idea of New Year's cards has left the to-do list. :( It seems kind of weird to not send out cards, we always send out tons of them. But since this year we were really focusing on fun family time and no stress, the cards were one project that just fell down on the list.
I think I need to put my New Year's Resolutions on here, so it keeps me accountable. I'll work on them and post soon.