What's for dinner?

LOADED Baked potato soup! And boy it turned out great! Slow cooker too.

Into the slow cooker
6 cups peeled diced potato
5 cups water
1 medium chopped onion
1 cup celery chopped
1/4 cup butter
2 tsp salt
1/2tsp pepper

Cook on high 2 hours then switch to low for 5-6.

1 hour prior to serving add:
12 oz can of evaporated milk
1tbsp cornstarch mixed with cold water
1tbsp dried parsley
1/4lb cooked crumbled bacon

Just prior to serving add 1/2c shredded cheddar
Stir until cheese melted. Serve. :) yummmm.......

Then put out the cheese on the table for those to add more :)
This turned out so delicious I had to share. It's really quite filling!

Get your game face on

For the past couple years, late August rolls around and I am wishing  I had a team...a fantasy football team that is!! Finally, this year, I can say I've got a team!!! Yay!!! So exciting.
No more watching my hubs team.
The best part? I'm I'm a league with him so this should be fun. Or completely depressing if I receive total domination. Who am I kidding, even if I lose, I'll love it :)

On the other end of things the girls are being their usual selves. Ellee is bouncing around like a wired kangaroo, Peyton is excitedly watching her with thrilled shrieks and squeals as well as clapping hands.

Peyton seemed to have come down with something earlier this week. She had a mild fever. Then she broke out in this rash and about the same time she broke out Ellee was not acting herself. Ellee came down with a fever of 102.3 the next day and we headed to the doctors. Just a virus and all are on the mend. Hopefully, we didn't contaminate too many people along the way :(


We've slowed down our crazy lifestyle and have been trying o keep things slow. We haven't traveled in a couple weekends nod ave been enjoying the time spent at home. It's nice to take it slow and just relax. Relax in my hubs vocabulary is hard it seems, it usually is code for fall asleep.

In the meantime we've updated our laundry room, had a patio put in and got a bike trailer to increase our activity level! I love going biking with the girls!!

On other notes, I've had bout 3 more run ins with my obnoxious kidney stones. They don't seem to have passed yet so I have to get a cat scan of my belly and ultrasound of my kidney. On top of that I have to follow up with my previous thyroid problem with a thyroid ultrasound as well as blood work, and for my arrhythmia, meet with my cardiologist for a follow up.I'm a walking array of medical randomness.

I'll keep you posted though, as long as I don't keep going MIA on my blog!

My oh my.

My oh my.
We've been busy. Can you expect anything less though? Were kind of that non stop little family. Sometimes it needs to slow down though.

We headed to Canada for the Fourth as my sisters were all home and to celebrate with family for Ellee's birthday.

In the meantime, my vacuum broke, the alternator on the car broke...again. We took it in stride. Then on Friday while in Canada I ended up so sick. I havent been that sick in a very long time. Dehydration? Maybe. Heat stroke? (we were at the beach the day before) maybe. Flu? Maybe. All seemed plausible. And then Saturday morning I woke up feeling pretty good. Then 4:00 rolls around and I am sooo sick. More sick then I was for the previous 24 hours period. I was heartbroken because my parents had put together a littler birthday party for ellee and I was missing it. Not to mention my grandmas were there and I wasn't spending time with them.

After about 4 hours in agony Matt mentioned maybe heading to Michigan and going to the ER. It didn't take long of the escalating pain in my back to make me see let's go. So we headed to port Huron at 830 at night. It was awful, I can only compare the pain to labor. And I was so nauseas. We went across the bridge and Matt pulls into the nexus lane. I was scared they'd pull us in, thankfully my pain was more then obvious and the security guards let us in and directed us to the hospital.
After several hours, as in we left at 230am, and many X-rays and cats later, I got some narcotics and the verdict of kidney stones :(. They are no fun. And if you ever had them and your male, you may actually slightly be able to emphasize with a woman in labor.  Slightly again I may add.

We got home and everything has been well since.

I am working this week and Matt is off work this week. It's a complete switch in rolls and he is getting a little taste of being super busy with two crazy monkeys. However, he did say he'd complete a project so my Landry room redo is happening as we speak :)

2 Unbelievable Years have gone by

 

I don't know how time went by so quickly. How my sweet little baby girl turned into a running, shrieking, ball of fire! Literally! 

Shes a firecracker. But oh how we love her. 

She's is so full of uncontainable personality. She is very independent and strong willed. She really does have a mind of her own. Her vocabulary has exploded and she talks incessantly about many things. Unfortunately, now with her rambling on sentences I miss most of what she's saying and ask her several times to use clear words and repeat. For example, the other day she stepped on something, unbeknownst to me. Such our conversation;

"fee. Boo boo. No no."

This was repeated several times till finally she hauled her foot up on the couch to show me her foot hurt and I was to fix it. At least SHE knows what she's talking about. 

Her food choices can be extremely limited and then entirely vast. It varies by hour :) one thing we have accomplished is getting her mouth opened for at least one bite for each taste of food on her plate. She has to try at least one bite, because who knows, maybe she'll actually finish it because this has happened many times.

When passing any of the Golden Arches she shouts fries incessantly. It sounds something like:

Wan fries? Yes! Yes! Fries! Fries! 

And when we pull up to the bank window she orders fries from the teller every time. And has been frequently been trying to order pop too. 

She thinks anything with a straw is pop. 

She loves animals. Like loves. Puppy! Puppy! And fish too. Shush! Shush!

She has an obsession with peeling things. She hauled the bananas off the corner the other day and peeled a whole bunch of them. Not for eating. But just for the pleasure of peeling....silly one.

She's insanely brilliant. Yea, yea. All moms think their kids are smart. But she is. She can count to 10 with mild assistance and recognize most letters of the alphabet upper and lower case. She does really well with problem solving. Because again. She's strong willed, if she wants something she's gonna figure out how to get. We find chairs pushed places to get things and she opens the dishwasher.

She pains so much attention to what were doing, especially when we don't realize it I'm sure she could get her own cereal in the morning. The positives of this is she knows what's garbage and can follow instructions to retrieve things and throw things out, or not obey because again, she's strong willed. 

Her qualities are overwhelming and her love as a sister is amazing. 

As is our love for her and and our amazement that God gave us such a blessing. 

 

The birthday week started off with a small group of friends celebrating with some exciting monster cookies and cupcakes. It ended with her not even wanting to go near her present from mama and papa. 

Weve been able to increase her liking to the new pink corvette. But its been turned off and unmoved in her playroom for over a week now. Its really warmed on her, she hops in now and again bringing a bear or stuffed animal or two with her. 

We fear if we turn it on and make it go she'll be scared to death..again.

I really cant believe shes 2. Its just crazy! 

6 Amazing months later

Our little sweet Pea is almost 7 months old. She was 6 months the end of May and we had some pictures taken to keep up with her growing cuteness. She is so sweet. Really. She gets shy every now and again when someone says hi to her. She'll smile so big and then turn her head, and then peek back around at them after a couple minutes. Oh she is such a dear. 

She has just started clapping which is awesome. I don't remember Ellee doing this so early but I think its because we are continually praising Ellee for her good deeds with "Yay!" and hand clapping. (Its included in our potty training.) Its so cute when she does it and shes thrilled to be doing it. She lets Ellee push her around often and will only cry occasionally when shes shoved over. Frequently I'll find her fallen (or pushed over) in extremely awkward positions. But she  frequently patiently waits till I notice her and save her. 

She loves her veggies. Minus peas. Can I blame her? She loves mixed vegetable baby food and of course like Ellee did, quite enjoys avocadoes. I learned a trick to make it easier and roll chunks of avocado in crushed cheerios and she can easily pick them up.  Nothing comes between P and her food. Once she sees the bright spoon she wants it, ASAP too. She gets testy almost immediately if your not quick enough. Shes not quite good with just picking things up with thumb and forefinger but were working on it. In the meantime big mushy chunks of food get picked up :)

Shes weighing in at 16 lbs. Her height is in the 16 percentile, her weight in the 28th and of course the noggin is in the 80th persentile. 

Our sweet Peyton. Its crazy how time has flown by.

Deal of the week

Who wouldn't mind a deal. Not to mention a deal without the need for coupons of any kind. Its the perfect kind of deal.

This week (till tomorrow) at Dominick's Lays Kettle chips are on BOGO. (buy one get one free)

They're also included in an instant savings deal of $5 off immediately when you buy 5 bags.

What does that mean for us? 

 It means a mini stockpile of chips. We love our salt and vinegar!!!

10 bags of chips for 7.76? Don't mind if I do. 

I am even considering going back today. but the expiration date on most of the bags is in August and we like our chips, but not that much. Not to mention my thighs would not thank me!

Trot trot to Boston

So we made our annual vacation to Boston.

The weather with slightly less then cooperative but the family and friend visits were awesome! :) 

 This was Peyton's first boating experience but not Ellee's However, it was her first tubing experience. She sat back and enjoyed it like a pro!!

 Ash and Breton checking out the tubers. :)

 Best buds. Really though. 9 days apart means buddies.

 Dudgeon boys doing what else.

 Sweet Danny boy.

 They both ended up passing out :)

 After church.

 Funniest thing. The ice cream truck was passing going quite fast and Ashley got super excited about seeing one. She ended up accidently flagging him down. He passed us and then backed up on the busy road to make sure he got us. Ellee wasn't complaining about Ashley's over excitement, and hey, neither was I :)

 Oh I just love them! I wanna squeeze their sweet cheeks right now!!!