My Boy's Favorite Meal....Right Now

On their birthday we have always let the kids pick whatever they want to have for dinner - restaurant, favorite meal Mom makes, whatever they want really. A few days ago it was my son's birthday. Now, we are foodies - we love food. I love cooking. I love using fresh ingredients, I love making new things, and I love experimenting with foods we've never had before. I am always in search of a new recipe that everyone will love. And my biggest fan? Logan. While Brandon has definitely given me accolades throughout the years, and really every day, Logan is by far my most vivacious fan. He never fails to let me know how delicious the food I make is, or how lucky he is for having a Mommy that is such a good cook. Honestly, I'm getting worried for his future wife...hope she will have some talent in the kitchen!

Anyway, for my Logan's birthday dinner he didn't want to go to a restaurant, he didn't want hot dogs, or macaroni, or any other kid-type food, he asked for my Tortellini Meatball Soup!

Now I must give credit where credit is due. I started with this recipe out of the March/April 2009 issue of Country Home, but of course I've tweaked it a bit.

I encourage you to try it. It really is delicious....and fast.

Tortellini Meatball Soup

Ingredients:
8 oz. sausage (I use Jimmy Dean's)
1/3 c. breadcrumbs
1 c. chopped Walla Walla Sweet onion
10 baby carrots, quartered lengthwise and sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 1/2 quarts of water
6 teaspoons of beef bouillon base (you could use bouillon cubes)
12 oz. refrigerated tri-color cheese tortellini
1 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
3-4 c. fresh baby spinach, chopped
5 Tbsp. chopped bottled roasted red pepper
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
Salt and Fresh ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. fresh basil, chopped
8 oz. grated Parmesan cheese

1. First make the meatballs my mixing the sausage and the breadcrumbs together. Shape into thirty-six to forty meatballs (they should be fairly small).

2. In a dutch oven heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add onion, carrots and garlic and cook for about 3 minutes or until tender.

3. Add water and bouillon and heat to boiling. Add raw meatballs, tortellini and Italian seasoning. Return to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 4 minutes.

4. Add spinach, red pepper and lemon juice. Simmer, uncovered, for about 3 minutes or more or until tortellini are done.

5. Season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in fresh basil. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Honestly, this soup is delicious. Paired with homemade beer bread (my sister's recipe is fantastic!), or fresh french bread you can't beat it. And it's even light enough to have in the summer!

Bloglovin

Was turned on to this new website tonight. I keep finding more and more blogs that I'd like to read now and then. This website will update you when a new blog post is up and help you follow the blogs you love!

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/3767883/wish-in-one-hand?claim=mh45n5qd7n7">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

My Baby Boy is 8!

8 years ago today I got up in the morning, took a shower, curled my hair, put my make-up on and headed to the hospital to have a baby. Yes, Logan was a planned C-section. And after the 72 hours I was in labor with Lilly I was more than happy to have it this way!

He was born at 1:35 pm, on June 1, 2004. He was 8 lbs. 3oz. and was 21 inches long. At first glance he was a happy, healthy little boy. We wheeled back to our room and introduced our new son to our family who was there waiting for us. Everyone got a chance to hold him as he was passed around the room. In what seemed like only a second after I got to hold him (last of course!), the nurse scooped him up. "He's turning blue! We have to take him!" and off he went. Brandon scurried along with the nurse to the NICU. Turns out he had swallowed a blood clot on his way out and it went into his lung. They had to put him on an IV, and he had to stay in the NICU under an oxygen hood.

This was not the experience I had thought I would have when we got in the car at 5am that morning. Lilly had a little trouble when she was born but she was back in the room within a few hours. Logan ended up having to stay in the NICU for 8 days. When they discharged me after 3 days, I was adamant that I would not leave the hospital without my baby. For a few days they had an extra bed on another vacant floor that they allowed us to stay in but on day 5 there was a baby explosion and they were handling overflow from the birthing floor in the room we were staying in. Again, I refused to leave. Even after my Doctor told me that I better get home and recover myself I couldn't bring myself to leave that hospital. That night I slept on the couch in the waiting area. Every waking moment that we could spend in the NICU (they do shift change twice a day) we did.

Finally, after 8 days in the NICU, he was able to come home. He was 7lbs 13 oz. when we left the hospital on June 9th (Daddy's birthday).

When we went to his first visit with HIS pediatrician he was 10lbs 1 oz. They thought the hospital made a mistake! But I watched them weigh him both times and it wasn't any wonder to me. That first 6 days of only IV feeding had taught him a lesson, he was never planning to go hungry again!

Over the following 8 years we have had a million laughs with our little boy. Here are some pictures from the first few years:

Logan has always been excited about his birthday parties. This year though, this year he's been planning his birthday party since January....who he wants to invite, what he wants to do, the cake he wants, the toys he wants. We finally decided on a water fight birthday party. He and the hubs have been working on an obstacle course and war zone out in the yard for over a week. He CAN'T wait. Yesterday, after a long evening of running the obstacle course he desperately needed a shower. I was downstairs doing some work on my laptop. There was  such a racket coming from upstairs I had to run up there to check it out. Through the shower curtain this is what I heard:



It was so hard not to laugh out loud while I was sitting there listening. He still doesn't know I've posted it on Facebook (or YouTube) and now on the blog so SSShhhhh! He will kill me!

Happy Birthday Logan! You are my FAVORITE son!

Menu Hiatus

So, I haven't been very good about maintaining my menu's. Seems something kept getting in the way: the kitchen being remodeled, four baseball games and a soccer game in 1 week, meeting and after meeting after meeting.

Don't get me wrong, we still ate (none of us are the type to skip a meal)....we just ate whatever we happened to have around and could put together quickly. In light of that I thought I'd list a few of our go-to dinners so that we don't have to eat out and waste money and we can maintain a more healthy diet.

• Spaghetti
• Stir Fry (with whatever meat & veggies we have around)
• Potstickers, Egg Rolls and Rice
• Sauce Marco Polo (a tuna dish so no thawing necessary)
• Make-your-own-pizzas
• Fettucine Alfredo (I always keep sauce packets on hand in case of emergency)
• Hot dogs
• Hamburgers
• Quesadillas
• Tacos

This is not an all inclusive list, but some pretty common standbys for us. Anyone have any other quick go-to meal ideas? I'd love to expand my collection. If you send me a recipe and I try it I will post it here with my thoughts. :)

P.S. We've been better at adhering to a menu starting this week. I will post it shortly.

Inappropriate but funny

This new phenomena of ecards is cracking me up. I know they are inappropriate, but they are hilarious - much like me and the hubs.

Here are a few of my recent favorites:

I just had to share.... :)

Why losing my eye was the best thing that ever happened to me...

My name is Jezebel. I am a 16 year old female Russian Blue mix cat. I was born to a family and was called Maritabelle until I was 3 years old. Then they moved and left me at the pound.

One spring day I was hidden in the back of this box I found myself in, attempting to escape my prison, when this college girl and her boyfriend came in and opened my cage. I was nervous and scared but I wanted to be held. At first she picked me up and laid me on my back in her arms which I do NOT like. But I arranged myself in my favorite position: head on the shoulder, belly against chest. They hemmed and hawed, she sweetly batted her eyes at her boyfriend which looked to me like, "Can we keep her?"

Next thing I know I'm getting put in a box, then in a car, and then in a new house. First we lived in a duplex in Bellingham with 5 guys and my new mommy but that was only for a couple of days. I say first because we moved; we moved A LOT. I loved my new family. They kept me inside and always had a clean litterbox for me. I got my crunchies and I also got scraps from whomever came over, got drunk and dropped food.

Over the next few years our lives were constantly changing. We moved. My Mom and Dad graduated from college. They got engaged. We moved. My Mom and Dad got married. We moved. My Mom had a baby. We moved. They got a dog. He panted ALL the time. I hissed at him and peed on my Mom's bed to show my discontent. I turned into an inside/outside cat. My Mom had another baby. The dog found a new home. We moved - to the home we still live in today - the longest we've lived in one spot since my Mom and Dad lived at the homes they grew up in.

This new place was set out in the woods. They kept me in for a while to make sure I knew this was my home but eventually they let me out. They got another dog. I peed on their bed again. Apparently they didn't remember that I don't particularly like dogs. They got another dog. They tried to introduce us but his gigantic head scared me and I scratched his eyeball. Then I peed on their bed again. I found myself looking at the door...a lot. No amount of scratching or crying seemed to do the trick. I finally came to the conclusion: I was now an outside cat.

It was ok because I liked being outside here. There was tons of space to explore, tons of birds to kill, tons of squirrels to gut and leave on the front porch. My house was on the bedroom deck. I made my way up and down the old fashioned way - I climbed. In the severe winter weather they would bring me in and lock me in the bathroom. I would've rathered they left me outside.

Over the years they have brought home a myriad of animals. I have outlived or outlasted 3 dogs, 5 cats, a rabbit, 14 chickens, 2 guinea pigs & 3 hermit crabs . Unfortunately, against my wishes, I currently share my home with 3 dogs, a rabbit, 17 chickens and 4 feral cats. The feral cats don't bother me. I quit leaving my deck long ago. It's gotten harder to climb up and down the posts, and frankly I just don't feel like it. I'd rather nap in the sunshine or cuddle in my bed.

About two months ago one of my kids came up to my deck to feed me and found my eye had been injured. I don't know how many days I spent with my eye hurt like this, but it didn't really seem to bother me or change my daily routine at all. Once the girl found me it won me a trip to the vet. The vet said the infection was so bad they couldn't do anything until it was under control. And so we went home, with pills and eye drops, for two weeks of treatment. I had to wear a cone (which made it hard for me to eat) and my eye itched so it really sucked. We went back to the vet after the two weeks but it hadn't healed enough. Back home we went with more pills and eye drops. Unexpectedly though, about a week into those treatments, I was rubbing my eye during a time they let me go without the cone, and something happened. There was something hanging out of my bad eye and it hurt! We had to rush back to the vet  to find out what was going to happen to me and there were two options on the table: 1) they could do surgery and sew my eye socket shut ($900+), or 2) they could send me to an opthamologist who could try to repair my eye ($2500+). See, I had accidentally scratched at my eye enough that my lens fell out and it was hanging down to my whiskers. My Dad had taken me in. I knew it couldn't be going well when he was texting something every time the Doctor spoke. And then, when the Doctor left the room Dad called my Mom at home. They talked for a while and then my Dad started to weep. RUH ROH! Fortunately for me my Dad asked for another option. "What will happen if we just brought her home and see how it goes? I mean what would happen if she was in the wild?" he asked the vet tech. She quickly scurried from the room. Not too many minutes later the Doc returned. He exchanged words with my Dad and before I knew it I was back in the cage, then back in the car, then back at home.

My kids were SO excited to see me. My Mom had already told them I wasn't going to be coming home from the vet that day. I am pretty old for a cat, and those options the Doc set forth were a little spendy for our family, especially when work was slow for my Dad. But I got to come home!

For the twenty or thirtieth time, my life suddenly changed. Because my eyesight is hindered so dramatically I can't go outside and play anymore. I have my own crunchy and water bowl that is refreshed daily with new food. I don't like the litter box anymore - I prefer to poop and pee in the tub. It gets cleaned right away and doesn't leave goobers on my feet. I get to sleep with my kids sometimes and I still get opportunities to lay in the sun (through the sliding glass door now, instead of on the deck.) Lately, I've been venturing downstairs to be a part of the family again. The dogs, even the ones who don't really like me, are actually being pretty good. The newest one leaves me alone for the most part and the little ugly one is scared to get in trouble so he keeps his distance. Right now I'm relaxing on the couch next to my Mom while she tells you some of my life story. Life is good.

Menu (kind of) #8 of 2012

So I had this great idea for this menu whereby everything on the menu would be very Pinteresting. Every meal, for two whole weeks, all recipes found on Pinterest that we had never tried before. Unfortunately, my kitchen floor is not cooperating with me.

As you may have read, we have been remodeling our kitchen since January. We were almost done, but the flooring was NEVER in stock. We ended up having to wait over 8 weeks for it to be in stock and then another 7-10 days for the delivery. By the time it reached us it was the end of March, Brandon was back to work and we had already committed ourselves to other activities on the weekends.

This weekend, after all the waiting, Brandon decided to tackle the kitchen floor. Except we had a soccer game, and a baseball game, we got invited to poker, and we had a concert to go to. So it took a while to get the floor down. And now, when he's ready to grout, the glue still isn't dry.

And so we are kitchen-less. We can't walk in the kitchen so we have limited access to all of our dishes and food (unless we climb along the counters). Since I didn't really prepare for it I didn't buy a bunch of hot dogs and hamburgers that we can grill. Our oven doesn't work (in the living room) because we can't plug it in anywhere. And so this is our menu this week:

• Subway sandwiches
• McDonald's
• Grilled Steak and microwave baked potatoes
• Albertson's Fried Chicken
• (Hopefully) something easy I can cook in a crockpot (if I can get to it)

And so my Pinteresting menu will have to wait until Sunday. The floor better not take any longer than that!