Spring Break!

We love spring break around here.  Michael couldn't wait!  And, of course, it was not long enough for him :)  So we went to Denver at the beginning for a couple days and saw lots of family and went shotgun shooting (I did pretty good this time round--it was exciting).  Ellie even rode on a quad-she didn't like it.  Ellie loved watching her cousin Callen run around like crazy, and also had fun looking at her new cousin Tyler. 

On Tuesday we left for Salt Lake to stay with Grandma Elaine.  Ellie did great in the car.  I sat with her the last 4 hours and helped entertain and play.  Grandma loved spending so much time with Ellie everyday.  Ellie is usually very reserved with strangers, but Grandma was very persistent and Ellie seemed to warm up to her very quickly.  It was very cute to see.

Grass!
The weather was pretty lovely so we went outside.  Ellie had only sat on grass a couple times before and this time she decided that she didn't want to sit down.  She kept giving us faces like "do you really think I'm going sit on that!", then get bashful about it,  or "this is so totally disgusting!" to "this isn't so bad", back to "I hate this, its gross!"  It was really entertaining as you can see by her facial expressions.

Playing Grandma's organ was pretty fun.  She got to wear her really cute orange fluffy cotton skirt I just bought her.  It is usually too cold here in Laramie to wear it.  I loved seeing her cute legs.

We spent time with Aunt Amber and Uncle Briton.  Ellie always loves Briton.  She will just sit on his lap as he reads to her from a novel, just listening.  It's pretty cute.  On Saturday, Michael and his brother Chris went shooting and Ellie and I hung out all day with Amber and Briton.  I got to help Amber decorate a little bit and clean out the soon to be nursery.  Then Sunday we left around 11am, drove through a little snow and mostly rain until we got past Evanston area and then it was smooth sailing.  We think we hydroplaned a bit on the wet road.  It was a very strange feeling, not like ice, and not like road :)  So we are happy to be home.  The weather has been gorgeous!  It got up to 83* on my porch yesterday and today it is already 73*.  We like global warming around these parts.  Makes us wonder if we might actually have a spring?

Our Mission Impossible baby!  Didn't want to touch the grass!

Who knew!

Who knew raw meat could look so good?  These are meatballs all portioned out and ready to cook for my yummy Hearty Meatball Stew. 

I saw this recipe on TV and thought, YUM!  Even the mushrooms were good :)  It also works to throw in other veggies.  I used canned green beans in a pinch.  I've made 4X the meatballs ahead and frozen them.  It was great for a quick pasta with meatballs or, of course, this recipe.  Browning the meatballs takes a while tho with 50 meatballs.  I'm going to look into cooking them in the oven next time :)

I turned my meatballs about 3-4 times during browning and this is as round as they got :)

Hearty Meatball Stew

Giada De Laurentiis 

Ingredients

Meatballs:

• 1 slice white sandwich bread, torn into small pieces
• 8 ounces 20-percent-fat ground beef (about 8 ounces)
• 2 sweet mild Italian sausages, casings removed
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Hearty Meatball Stew:

• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, sliced (about 1 cup)
• 1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch strips
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound large white mushrooms, quartered
• One 8 to 10-ounce russet potato, peeled, halved lengthwise and sliced into 1/3-inch slices
• 4 ounces green beans, trimmed, cut into 1-inch-long pieces
• One 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
• 1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth

Directions

For the meatballs: Place the bread and 3 tablespoons water into a medium bowl. Mash to a paste with a spatula. Add the beef, sausage, egg, parsley, salt and pepper. Blend the mixture thoroughly with your hands or a flexible spatula. Form the mixture into 10 to 16 meatballs. Arrange the meatballs on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet until ready to use.

For the hearty meatball stew: Sprinkle the meatballs with the flour and turn to coat with any flour still on the foil. Heat a large heavy nonstick skillet over medium heat for 1 minute. Add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Drop the meatballs into the skillet, spaced apart. Cook until the bottoms are set and brown, about 2 minutes. Using a flexible thin spatula, turn each meatball onto an uncooked side and cook until the bottoms are set and brown, about 2 minutes longer. Turn and cook a third side, until set and brown, about another 2 minutes, so the meatballs are browned and set all over. Transfer the meatballs to a large plate.


Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in the same skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions, peppers, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper. Cook until soft, 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms and the remaining salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have softened, about 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, beans, tomatoes, red pepper flakes and broth. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover the pan and cook until the potatoes are tender and the meatballs are cooked through, about 20 minutes.

 Enjoy!

Smiles :)

Have a great day!

Bath Time With Dad!

Ellie is so stinkin cute in the tub.  It is a really happy time no matter the time of day.  She absolutely loves the time with Daddy.  So far he has taught her how to stand carefully on the side of the tub, how to carefully roll over in the water, and how to crawl safely.  I gave her her bath on Saturday and was very impressed with her abilities.  She has changed so much in the last 2 weeks it's amazing!  She crawls so fast, gets to standing so fast and can even get down safely pretty fast.  She no longer sports 10 bruises at a time on her head, and that I am so grateful for.  It was getting pretty sad looking.

What To Do?

So Ellie and I have been sick for the past 3 weeks.  The first bug wasn't so bad, but the second took the cake.  I almost took her to the doctor thinking maybe she had RSV, but by Monday she seemed a little better so I didn't.  I'm glad I didn't waste the time because she was better four days later.  I've taken a while longer to mend since, well, I don't always get to nap or fall asleep quickly.  I don't remember feeling this zapped since mono.  That was a joy.  But this morning I was able to get up and even make breakfast for Michael.  Ellie finally slept through the night since her illness.  Yeah!  She had a night waking habit before and so when she got sick for so long and couldn't breathe good, of course it came back with us wanting to comfort her.  Two nights of cold turkey while she cries for an hour or more generally does it, and now she naps better too.  We just hate going through the cold turkey phase.  I'm sure our neighbor hates it too!  These are just some pictures I took with my new camera of us goofing around while we were sick.  She absolutely loves Jenga blocks!

Oh, and Ellie loves to put things in her mouth and crawl around without holding onto them.  She thinks she's really something.  Here are some picks of her with her bath toy turtle.  With a water hole on its head, I think it's obvious why we don't let her use it in the bathtub.  She would drown :)  My favorite is the turtle picking her nose:)

Yeah.  I know.  The action shot of the turtle falling out of her mouth was such a lucky shot!  So cool.

20 Days

That's right.  We were gone from Dec. 9th to the 29th. We spent the first 14 days in Arizona with my family and then back to Colorado for another week.  It was full of ups and downs as most trips are, but overall was a lovely time with family and friends. (we forgot our camera ,duh, so a special thank you to Grandma Corinne and Aunt Courtney for the pic's!)

Arizona

So we drove to AZ in two days, staying at a La Quinta in Gallup, NM (where we slept heavenly--very nice beds). We made traditional stops at Dairy Queen in Raton and Dion's Pizza in Albuquerque.  Yum.  Ellie was pretty good, no really long bouts of crying.  We arrived in AZ on a Sunday and stayed with my sister Courtney and her family.  Of course it rained for the first 2 1/2 days straight (which I consider us lucky to have seen), so we weren't able to do outdoorsy things like tennis for a couple days.  We had great dinners each night with my parents over, which was really great to see them so often.  I also got to see my cousins a couple times and that is always fun.  We had a fun girls day at Leila's and watched The Help. Good movie.  All the guys took off on a great desert mountain biking trip for manly bonding :) We also had an Appetizer Night at Phil and Leila's.  I think it is becoming a tradition because we all like it so much.  So good to eat so many yummy little things!

Santa's Helper!

She just loved this hat!

And then we all got sick....  Ellie first, Michael second, and me not so much till Denver.  It was awful because Courtney's kids were really sick, and Ellie had never been sick until then.  Let's just say she was up almost all night with a fever, and tylenol made her crazy hyper!  I have never seen her like that.  She was just really energetic and constantly babbling for about 2 hours after she took the medicine.  It was sort of cute but freaky at the same time!  So it pretty much grounded us for a good 4 days at least.  Oh well.  I barely was able to squeeze in a visit to my friend Samantha's just before we left for Denver.  Oh and we got family pict's taken by my cousin Kristin that night before we left as well. We packed it in.

Ellie with handsome cousin Brett in their snowflake pj's.

Cousin Grant has about 50 little rubber duckies.  It was so fun to see her play with them.

 Colorado
Well, we left AZ and drove straight for Denver, trying for all in one day.  Michael drove most of the way.  We hit a big storm starting in Pueblo that continued to get worse the closer we got to Denver.  It was so snow packed you couldn't even see tire track lanes in the snow.  You just had to make it all up and work off of the reflectors and other cars in front.  It was wild and slow but eventually after 17 hours in the car we made it to Michael's parent's house.  Ellie was freaking out the last three hours thinking "why am I still in this car seat!" and crying pretty good.
All of Michael's siblings and their spouses were there, minus Matt who's on a mission in Mexico.  They all got to talk to Matt on Christmas so that was fun.  Ellie was super cute opening up her presents.  I didn't have to help too much as she loves paper!  Grandma Kathy got her one of those little tykes piano's--so as she was unwrapping it she kept hitting the keys which made her super curious and want to get at it some more.  She loves playing it, and I love to watch her play it!  All the boys got nerf guns and the wives got ammo.  Nicely played Santa :)  We all went to see the movie "We Bought A Zoo" and that was sooooo good.  Great actors and great story!  The little girl in it was sooo adorable.
And then we finally made it home after 20 days of fun and family!  It was good to get back to routine :)  Ellie loved being home too.  It was the first time I noticed a difference in her like that.  She loved seeing all her toys and familiar things.  Amazing.

Oh the wonder of toes!

Oh all the updating I do. I am so behind, but I'm catching up!  I was just released from my calling as the Stake Relief Society Secretary.  It was so fun and I will miss meeting with the ladies in the presidency every week.  However, I am happy to have more time to do the things I've been putting off for so long.  I am so excited to get things done and out of the closets.

So for Halloween (technically the Saturday before) we went to Boo at the Zoo with Grandpa and Grandma Huntington and Aunt Stephanie and her little boy Callen.  It was pretty fun.  They had booths sponsored by different businesses and organizations that handed out candy.  Ellie had a good time seeing a lot of animals for the first time!  Only downside was that the whole world was there and we had to park way far away.  Besides that it was pretty fun.  I do have issues though seeing some sad animals pinned up in really tiny enclosures.  It sort of breaks my heart. :(


For Halloween we went to our stake trunk or treat.  It was a mad house.  We were one of the few trunks to actually decorate our trunk.  It was funny to see some of the young kids reach in thinking that our monster was going to chomp their hand off.  Of course I encouraged this thought and told them to be really quick, or else....  hehehe :)

Auntie Ann and Uncle Keefe.  Scary child snatcher!

Oh my sweet pea :)

This picture is so cute!

Ellie with the Elliephants!  Funny face :)