Merry Christmas!

This year Gable wrote our Christmas letter. It's amazing what dogs can do without opposable thumbs. :) We were a little late getting it in the mail today but at least the letter was written and the pictures printed prior to Christmas. Hooray!   We hope you and your families all had a blessed holiday with those you love!  

Snowpocalypse 2012

Hello snow! We got 13 inches last night! Schools were all closed and lots of businesses too. Matt had the day off work and got stuck clearing out the driveway and walking Gable. I worked from home and made a batch of oatmeal raison cookies.

Gable was kinda funny about the snow. Shortly after it started coming down last night, he had a ball running circles in the backyard. But this morning he wasn't so fond of it since it was so deep! He didn't really even want to go out in it and when he did it was only to take care of business. He enjoyed his snow day mostly sleeping on the couch!

Gable's afternoon nap

Oatmeal Raison Cookies

Lots of snow!

Not so sure he wants to go out in the deep drifts

His new snowblower from last year wouldn't work, he used the old little one for some of the driveway but it wasn't powerful enough for all of it. Matt had to do a lot of shoveling too.

While he wasn't so sure about the back deck, he had fun out on his walk with Matt.

Deliciousness -- Mexican Rollups and Chocolate Chip Oreo Caramel Cookie Bars

I owe a special thank you to Matt for helping me making these delicious mexican roll-ups that I brought to work today. My contribution was coming up with an idea and going to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients. And then Matt did all the rest -- including arranging them on the platter.

And here's how he did it...

Combine
8oz cream cheese (we used the 1/3 less fat variety)
16 oz sour cream (also the reduced fat variety)
2 cups shredded cheese
1 packet taco seasoning
1/2 can of the small Rotel can of tomatoes and green chiles (drained)
2-4 tablespoons of Ortega taco sauce

Spread mixture on flour tortillas and wrap tightly. We used up a package of 8 and had extra mixture left. So either reduce the ingredients or purchase more tortillas. Also next time we might try spinach wraps. (But don't accidentatly get italian wraps - they are indeed gross!)

Let the wraps cool in the fridge for at least a couple hours before cuting them into small peices. Then you just need some salsa for dipping and your ready to go! But watch out - they go fast. I couldn't even grab a picture before people took a few.

Besides my contribution, my favorite plate at the food day was this delicious dessert - a Chocolate Chip Oreo Caramel Cookie bar.


From: Recipe Girl



This isn't the pic of the actual dessert but it's from the website where she found the recipe. And her recipe turned out exactly like the picture (I didn't know that could actually happen!) I've seen this on Pinterest and it looked good to me before but I had no idea how good it would actually be! And it didn't sound that hard to make. Pat down cookie dough in a 9x13 pan-- put down a layer of oreos --drizzle some caramel over that -- put down the top layer of cookie dough -- bake and enjoy! Fingers crossed that my attempt looks and tastes just as good!

Here's the recipe she used from Recipe Girl:

http://www.recipegirl.com/2012/08/20/oreo-and-caramel-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookie-bars/ 

  



Gable's being promoted - May 2012

Last night the official facebook announcement went out so I figure I'm finally safe sharing this here! Official due date is May 15th. Even though no one seems to really have their baby on their due date, we're probably ok assuming he or she will arrive sometime in May.

In case you don't want to do the math, a due date of May 15th means I'm 18 weeks pregnant. But the first thing I learned was that you really don't know you're pregnant until weeks 4-5. So this means we've known since the beginning of September. We waited to tell out parents after our 12 week appointment (end of October). And while it's been a hard secret to keep for so long - it was most defintiely harder for our family to keep it quiet. But thankfully we all made it :)  

I have so many posts I've been wanting to write that relate to the baby, so get ready! :)

Race for the Cure 2012

I've done Race for the Cure a couple times before, but this year's was definitely the most memorable one yet. It was back at the end of October but I realized I hadn't posted on it yet and the pics are just too funny to forget. This year Mom and Dad walked it with Jackie and I. And Jackie's friend Liz walked with us too. And it is thanks to Liz and her infectious passion for the race that this year was so memorable!

Can't wait for next year and some more wacky costumes!

Christmas Card Love/Hate Relationship

Hands down – my favorite Christmas tradition is receiving Christmas cards. Ever since I can remember Mom has gathered us up for a family picture, written a letter and then mailed that out to all our family and friends. And since she was always so good about it – we always received loads of Christmas cards in return. Even now I love going home and going through the basket of letters and pictures.

After Matt and I got married I decided we should start our own Christmas letter tradition. I couldn’t expect others to send me cards if we weren’t willing to put in the time time to send out our own. Our first Christmas we were still wrapping up our thank you notes from our wedding and everyone that we would have sent a Christmas card to was already receiving a thank you (which included a wedding pic) so there was no need to do an additional Christmas card. In 2010 we wrote our first official Christmas card – we posted it on the blog here. And when I saw "we" I mean, Matt wrote it and I mailed them out. Last year we did our second one, but we were a little late getting it sent out. And it appears I didn’t post it at all since I had a gap in posts from October to March.
We haven’t started writing this years but we most definitely have plenty to write about. My biggest concern though is the picture. We went a lot of cool places and did a lot of fun things, but I can’t find any pictures of Matt and I that I really love. This is where the HATE part of the relationship comes in. Not only is it stressful going through the hundreds (maybe thousands) of pictures I took this year to find no suitable ones for the card, but now I have to convince Matt that we need to take a Christmas picture. And if you know Matt, you know that he HATES pictures. Oh man – this is not going to be fun. Wish me luck!

A note for next year...

If you think you missed seeing Matt run by, you probably did.

Today was the Living History Farms 7 mile cross country run. It was Matt's first time running, and my first time watching. Before the race started Matt and I picked out a meeting spot - the law office in the old town. Very responsible of us. However, I wanted to watch him race too. So I found a spot not to far from the start line to watch the masses run by and hopefully get a glimpse of Matt. No luck.

Then I followed a bunch of other bystanders out into the woods to one of the creek crossings on the course. I got a good spot and was there plenty early because it was 10-15 minutes before the first runner came by. I continued to watch every runner go by and even cheered on random people. After awhile I started wondering where Matt was - but I hadn't seen any of the other girls I knew that were also running so I didn't worry about. More runners went by and then I saw some of the girls but no Matt. More runners. No Matt. Other friends I knew. No Matt. Finally I just decided I should head back to our designated spot.

On my walk back I got a call from a random Illinois number. It was Matt. He was done and worried about where I was at. Oops. He'd been done with the race for over a half hour. I had COMPLETELY missed him. I was so bummed. He ran it in 1:19. So fast! So next race when I start to get nervous that I missed him - I probably did and I should head to the finish line.


I was planning on posting a really fabulous running-through-the-mud picture of Matt but since I didn't get that shot, here's a pre-race pic.