Designers Downtown Market

In two weeks I will be doing another market in downtown Raleigh. This is the same one I did in July and it went very well, so I decided to do it again. If you are in the Raleigh area then please come by and see us! There are lots of vendors and really neat things. Perfect Christmas shopping time!! Can you believe I just said that?! Christmas already? Well better to start early and find some cute unique gifts!

If you are interested in coming please just click on the link on the side and it will have directions and a list of all the vendors.

Last Week

Last week was a pretty busy one for us. The boys finished up with gymnastics camp. They loved it! I am trying to talk Andy into getting them a trampoline for Christmas, but he isn't going for it.


Andy also celebrated his big 3-0 birthday last week. For his birthday I actually cooked! I made Andy's favorite meal, chicken with bacon wrapped around it (I will put that recipe at the bottom). For dessert I made him apple crisp with the apples from the backyard. The boys were a little confused about how that was his birthday cake, but it had cooked apples and oatmeal in it, so they enjoyed it! The boys gave Andy season 2 of The Office and I got him some new jeans, because that is the only way he will get new clothes.

Friday afternoon I went to visit a friend from my MOPS group that had twins a few weeks ago. They are so cute! I had totally forgotten what it was like to have newborn twins. It is really amazing how someone can forget that, but I truly believe that if we didn't forget people would never have more children. I do have to admit I kind of miss mine being that size. They were so tiny and sweet. The rest of the weekend was super busy. Unfortunately last night carter came down with one of those strange fever viruses. He was up all night long. He still feels a little bad today and before nap Cale was starting to run a fever. Hopefully it will only last a couple days. I hate it when the kids are sick and weepy. It is so sad.


Here are boys making a car show. This weekend they are going to visit my parents and hopefully going to a real car show. They are obsessed with old cars!

• Recipe for Chicken with Bacon Wrapped Around it or Continental Chicken

6-8 chicken breasts

1 pack of bacon

1/4 c. flour

1 c. sour cream

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup

1 jar dried beef

Wrap the chicken with bacon. I like to use multiple pieces of bacon on each piece of chicken. Mix other ingredients. Line bottom of crock pot with dried beef. Put chicken in then pour mixture over chicken. Cover and cook on low 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. You can either serve this over rice or egg noodles, both are very yummy. You can also use frozen boneless/skinless chicken to make this recipe as well. Can you tell I like the easier the better! It also turns out very yummy even without the dried beef. Most of the time I am out of that ingredient. This is a favorite for everyone in our house, even the boys love this meal!

Funny things they say...

I thought that the 3's started off really horribly, but within the last 2 months they have made a terrific turn for the better. I love having 3 years now! They say the funniest stuff!!! Everyday they crack us up!

Here are a few of the best from the last couple of weeks.

We are sitting at the table eating lunch at the beach and Carter will not stop wiggling because he has to pee.
Me: Carter do you need to pee?
Carter: No
Me: Then stop wiggling--several times I asked him to stop then finally after I have started eating and not even looking at him...
Carter: Mommy I dancing, not wiggling just dancing
Me: Carter you hate to dance, go pee now
Carter: OK I go pee
Then he comes back and says: Mommy I dancing with my belly now

The other week at the beach
Me:Cale where is daddy? Why didn't he come to the beach?
Cale: Daddy didn't want to come with Mawmaw
--Andy didn't say or feel this way and my mom was in the room, so that made it really funny

Riding in the car the other night.
Carter: I happy, I going to sing Happy Birthday to Daddy
Me: Cale are you going to sing?
Cale: No I'm being bad right now
(he wasn't doing anything)

The other morning at breakfast--this is the best
Carter (randomly): I peepee and poopoo in the potty
Cale: So
Andy and I were on the couch and we died laughing!

I am sure I will have more to add later, but I wanted to write these down before I forgot and I know I will forget lots.

Yummy Crockpot Recipe

Well, as promised here is a yummy and easy recipe that I am making tonight! It is from my most favorite cookbook Fix it and Forget it. This cookbok is awesome if you like easy crockpot recipes. Here is the recipe that is cooking now and making my house smell so good!

Awfully Easy Ribs--I used a 3 lb package of country pork ribs and 1 bottle of Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. The meat will be so tender you can easily shred it like bbq.

At Harris Teeter I got this 3 lb pack of ribs for $8.64, you can get the smaller packs on sale this week for about $2, but I am going to use this for a couple meals. I will probably shred it and have BBQ sandwhiches tomorrow night for supper or maybe I will shred it and freeze it. Also the BBQ sauce I got on sale BOGO (buy one, get one free) a while back and I had a .50 coupon, which made it freeor very close to it!! I highly recommend Sweet Baby Rays.

Here is a picture. Notice the Reynolds Crokpot bag in there. Those are the BEST things ever!! The food turns out great and there is no cooked on mess to clean out of your crockpot. I got a TON of these at a Harris Teeter triple coupon several months ago for like .25 a box!

I have also made this same recipe using boneless, skinless chicken and with the chicken you do not even have to defrost! My crockpot instructions do say if you do this to add a little warm water, so that the pat doesn't crack from the heat change.

I also plan on stewing some apples that came from our apple tree to go with it. For that recipe I just kind of make it up as I go, but I will just core, slice and peel as many apples as will fill up my pot then add a little water (don't cover the apples in water maybe just 1/4 of the way up), some brown sugar, a little sugar and cinnamon. You can make the juice thicker by adding corn starch as well. Then you just let them cook on the stove until they are as soft as you want them to be. We like our apples really soft and these from the tree are harder apples like Golden Delicious and will need to stew about an hour. If you use the softer apples like McIntosh they need less time.

Enjoy, I know we will!

Birthday Celebration, Gymnastics

Last week was the boys first week of gymnastics camp. They had a great time! This morning when I dropped them off I said, "Bye have fun." and Carter said, "Bye Mommy have fun." My response was, I will! We are thinking about continuing classes throughout the year. It is just so great to see them doing something that they love.

This past weekend Andy's parents were in town to celebrate Andy's birthday.

The cone is suppose to be a birthday hat, that is what the boys were calling them.

The boys had a blast helping Andy open his presents.

Cale

Carter--I think he looks just like Andy in this picture.

What to do?

Ok, so Andy asked me the other day, "Why do you do this?" Andy is really against blogging. I don't know why because it doesn't affect him at all, but anyways. It did make me think. I do this so that our friends and family can see what's happening over here and because I am too lazy and cheap to journal, which I really need to start recording things the boys say because they have gotten to be pretty funny lately and it is kinda like an easy way to scrapbook. I thought that maybe I would add more substance to my blog. I am going to try and start posting any good deals (i.e. coupon sales or triple coupons) or neat things I see that would be helpful or crafty or yummy easy meals (which I don't cook that much but when I do and it is good easy and cheap I will post). I was going to pick out a day and say do it every week on that day, but who am I kidding that would never happen! So it will be once a week, but who knows what day. I am also going to try and write down the kids funny sayings of the week. This is more for me because like I said I don't want to buy journals and this is easier for me, but I hope that you find them as funny as we do.

Currently, I have the Crockpot 365 , which is great if you like to use your crockpot. I love my crockpot, but hate using it in the summer. So this winter I will post some great recipes that I love.

Another great site is Savvy Dollar. I love to coupon and this is the best site for finding the best deals. It use to be the Smartspending Yahoo group, but grew really large and so they started a forum.

Beach Trip #3--Surfside Beach

We just got back from our third and possibly last beach trip of the year. It was a fun week! The boys finally thought that it was fun to get in the waves and of course I forgot my camera!! Andy joined us on Wednesday night and he was able to bring it to me. We took this beach trip to Surfside Beach just south of Myrtle Beach. It was crazy crowded!! I have one picture of the beach scene, but that was not a good one to show just how crazy it was. The first day we were out there it was literally like that John Candy movie, "Summer Rental". The beach was so packed by the time we left at lunch time that there was nowhere for people to sit! It is amazing at how fast this beach has grown in the past 10 years.

The boys did a few firsts on this beach trip. We went to the Dixie Stampede on Friday night. I was really afraid it was going to be a bust, but it was great! The boys LOVED it!! In fact Cale loved it so much that he wouldn't even eat because he was afraid he would miss something in the show! Carter loved it too, but he did eat his yummy food. Carter fell asleep on the way there and stayed asleep until we woke him right before the show started. He must have been really tired because my kids have never stayed asleep while you moved them around.

My parents watched the boys last night so that Andy and I could have a date night, which we went to this cute and yummy place Lee's Inlet Kitchen. My parents took the boys to play putt putt for the first time at the Jungle Lake Golf and they loved it. I bought them a golf set at the beginning of the summer because unlike Andy I want my boys to be professional athletes/Olympians and I will do whatever it takes (just kidding but it would be pretty cool). Anyways, it looks like I picked the right sport because Cale got a HOLE IN ONE!!! How cool is that! He is only 3 years old! I have the next Tiger Woods!! Well probably not, but if Andy would work with him then maybe he could be. They start gymnastics camp tomorrow and I can't wait to see how that goes. We watched the men's gymnastics with them last night and they like it, but said the bar was too high for them and Cale said he needed a ladder to reach it. My next Olympic sport to push will be swimming next summer.

It is nice to be home and stay home for a while. Maybe this fall we will venture to the mountains or the beach again. For now we will be getting ready to head back to school. Only a few more weeks of summer left.