bubble up enchiladas

I’ve started TWO different posts trying to explain how crazy the last week has been (at least compared to normal) but I’m pretty much too exhausted to finishing writing it.

SOOO, instead of reviewing last week (which I am going to do, because it was one that I definitely want to document and remember) I wanted to share something that I made tonight and was SOOO yummy.

I mentioned before that I’ve recently discovered Pinterest – and I’m still going to share more about that later. I’ve gotten all kinds of fun new ideas from Pinterest, from crafts to clothing to cooking. I’ve tried out a few dishes and they’ve all been so good!

Tonight, I made Bubble Up Enchiladas… they were super simple and relatively healthy – a win-win!
It was DELICIOUS – thumbs up from all three members of my family. :) Here is where I got the recipe, but I’ll also post it below.

1 pound ground turkey
1 (10 ounce) can enchilada sauce
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 can reduced fat refrigerator biscuits
1 ¼ cups shredded low fat Mexican Cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown turkey and drain if needed. Mix in enchilada sauce and tomato sauce. Cut the refrigerated biscuits into fourths and stir them in the meat mixture. Pour into casserole dish and bake for 25 minutes. Take out of oven and sprinkle cheese on top. Bake an additional 10 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

I topped mine off with light sour cream and avocado. Yummy to my tummy!

blowing bubbles

low-key weekend

We’ve had a low-key weekend and it’s been so nice after several weekend of out-of-town and then having to drive to Arkadelphia 4 days a week.

We’ve spent most of the weekend with my whole family – Friday night we played Pit and yesterday we had brunch (Paula Deen cinnamons? yes, please!) and watched the first two Harry Potter movies (my mom wants to watch the first 7 before watching the final one) and then we had pizza for dinner and played Charades afterwards.

So far today we’ve just relaxed at home, which has been nice. :) I cleaned house like a madwoman on Friday so it’s nice to not have to worry about it too much today.

Right now both boys are napping and I’m trying to pull myself away from the computer (I recently became obsessed with Pinterest… which deserves it’s own post sometime soon!) and take a shower and make a grocery list. Our refrigerator is bare!

Christopher has gone to church with his Nana the last two Saturdays. Here is a picture from last week… modeling his new sunglasses we got in Branson a few weeks ago! (They’re still a little big.)

Random/4th of July

Summer is moving along so quickly! I’m not too upset about it though, because it has been SO HOT this summer and besides, I’m back in school for Summer II so my real “break” has been over for three weeks.

My Summer II classes are over halfway over. My morning class doesn’t meet at all next week, instead we are doing our work online. I’m excited to not have to leave so early and be gone all day.

I’m really looking forward to this fall. Well – not driving to HSU every day, but just the cooler weather, football, fall candles and decorations. It’s my favorite season of the year and I love everything about it. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it’s my last fall semester as an undergraduate student! I’ll be doing my student teaching in the Spring and graduate next May. That’s what I’m really looking forward to! (With the exception, of course, that it means that my baby will be almost three!)

This is the first weekend in several weeks that we have not had something big planned or had to go out of town, so I’m enjoying being able to relax at home. Tomorrow, we are going to my parents house to start watching the Harry Potter series from the beginning with my family. We’re taking snacks and will probably watch the first two movies. I’m trying to decide what to take for a snack?

Which reminds me – we had a 4th of July celebration at my mom’s house and I never posted the pictures from it – so I’ll share now.

Earlier that weekend we had hung out with a few other couples at Jeremiah and Kristy’s house, and Susan had brought this AMAZING cream cheese/bacon dip, which she got from Megan’s blog. It was DELISH. So, I made it to take to my mom’s for our family 4th of July party. I also made Red White and Blue strawberries, which Megan had also posted on her blog.  They were SO yummy, as well. (Side note about the strawberries: I didn’t have blue sprinkles at home, so I just used blue food coloring to make the sugar blue. I saw someone on Food Network do this one time to make pink sugar. You can use a few drop of liquid food coloring on regular white sugar to turn it whatever color you need. This saves money and time!)

(I made about 3 times this much, but this is what was left when I remembered to take a picture.)

 

It’s Friday, which means no school today. Stephen was sweet enough to let me sleep in this morning. Christopher is taking a nap right now, and I really should be cleaning the house!  I guess I’ll go do that… happy weekend, all!

I love…

 

…these beautiful blue eyes. <3

the end of an Era.

 

Yesterday, Stephen and I made our way down to Texarkana to see this:

I. Was. So. Sad.

I know it may seem silly – but Harry Potter has been a part of my life since I started reading series when I was the ninth grade.

I think that by the time I had started the books, there were already 3 of them out. My mom actually bought the books because she thought my brother would be interested in reading them, so they started them together.  While we were on a family vacation one time, mom was reading the second or third book out loud to Ty, and I was hooked. I actually finished reading that book while we were on the vacation, then I went back and read the first book or two that Mom and Ty had already read. And from then on, I bought the books on the day that they were released (at the midnight release for the last several books.)

I’m not sure if I watched the first movie in theaters, but I do know that I watched the second one and then all of those after it. I got several other people into the series as well, including friends and my high school boyfriend Grant, college boyfriend Ross, and then Stephen after we got married. I actually read all seven books OUT LOUD to Stephen during the first few months of our marriage. We went on a cruise for our honeymoon. I read Harry Potter in the car on the drive to Galveston, we read Harry Potter on our balcony on the boat, we read it in bed before we went to sleep. (Not joking here, people.) We finished the book we were on while we were on the ship… then we started the next book, because we had packed it, as well.  :)

Anyway – the movie was SO good and it did NOT disappoint. I’m so sad – it’s like the end of an era – I don’t have another Harry Potter book OR movie to look forward to EVER AGAIN. It feels weird. :(

Ft Worth, part 2

After we left the zoo, we went to the Ft Worth Stockyards, which I had never seen before. We ate at Riscky’s BBQ and then did a little shopping at the stockyards. We were there at the perfect time for a reenactment of the cattle making their way into the stockyards.

Christopher fell asleep in the truck for the 20ish minute ride from the Zoo to the Stockyards.

We did a little bit of shopping at the Stockyards. Funny story – we went in to a “general store” there and they had ice cream. Apparently Christopher saw a family with their ice cream and was eyeing it, because a sweet old lady walked up to me with a few dollars in her hand and said, “I want to buy him an ice cream!”  She went on to tell me that Christopher was “looking at their ice cream and licking his lips, so he must need some, too!” I tried to explain to her that he had already had an ice cream earlier that day, but she insisted that I take the money – so Christopher got his SECOND free ice cream cone of the day. (A sweet girl who worked at the Zoo gave Christopher his own cone there, as well, even though I was planning on sharing mine.)  We got him a strawberry ice cream cone and he loved it just as much as his vanilla one earlier that day.

After we left the stockyards, we took Christopher back to Jim & Cristin’s house a he took a much-needed nap. That evening, we had dinner at the house of friend of Stephen’s from school.

Saturday was a low-key day. Christopher was up around 8 or so (I think?) but he laid down for a nap at 11 – which is extremely early – then slept for 3 or 4 hours. He was still exhausted from his day before, I think. We then did a little shopping (Academy & a party store – for C’s 2nd birthday) and then ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

The weekend we were there was the last weekend of the NBA playoffs, so we got some fun new Mavs gear. :)

We left to head back home on Sunday morning. It was a fun trip and I’m glad we were able to make it!

Ft. Worth

A few weekends ago, we made a trip down to Ft Worth with my mother-in-law to visit Stephen’s brother and sister-in-law, Christopher’s Uncle Jim and Aunt Cristin.

Christopher was a great car rider and I was so proud of him for making the long 5hr+ trip. He has become a great trip-taker within just the last few months, and let me tell ya… I’m so thankful! The days of crying and screaming from the car seat were not fun.

That evening after we got there, we all met up with Stephen’s aunt, uncle, and cousins, the Snyder family. We ate at Joe T. Garcia’s, which was a really neat atmosphere and we had a lot of funning sitting on the patio talking and laughing and catching up!

On Friday morning, we went to the Ft Worth Zoo. This was Christopher’s first trip to the zoo, and I think that he really enjoyed it!  I was very impressed with the Ft Worth Zoo and I can definitely see us making several more trips there in the future! It was also nice for me because there is plenty of shade throughout the zoo, instead of the sun beaming down on top of us the whole time. (I can get overheated and sick very quickly.)

We saw all different kinds of animals at the zoo…

Christopher – telling us “how the monkey goes.”

This was a neat indoor area for the gorillas.

See the baby?

This white tiger was right up at the window looking at us!

This was a neat bird sanctuary. When I took this picture, I was standing outside of it, but  you can go in and feed the birds. I didn’t feel like getting pooped on, so we didn’t go in. Maybe some other time! There were HUNDREDS of birds in there!

Christopher got a free ice cream cone! He loved it!

He loved this area where you could put your hands in and feel different things. (Above) He also liked feeling different types of fur/skin and then finding out what it belonged to! (Below)

We had a great time at the zoo!

This post is getting long, so I am going to finish the rest of our trip in a separate post!

Busy

I am so ridiculously behind with blogging.

MAYBE one day (in a year or two) I’ll get caught up and then continue to keep up on a daily (or at least every-other-day) basis.

In the past week, we’ve been to Branson, (again! Third time this year. We’re making good use of our timeshare condo!) spent plenty of time in Nana’s pool, had a fun evening with friends, celebrated the 4th with both of our families, and on Tuesday – I started Summer II classes at Henderson, so I’ve been busy driving and doing schoolwork and then spending my free time with Little Man. (SO sad our month of June went by so quickly. We were busy but we also spent plenty of Quality Time on the couch watching Shrek.)

Hopefully this weekend I can find some time to sit down and write an update or two - I have a Mother’s Day post that I still haven’t completed, plus our trip to Ft Worth last month. I really want to post about them since this is my “journal” for our family. I need to worry less about having it perfectly written out and instead just document it. I love going back and reading them months (or years) later – so that’s all that matters!

I’ll try to be completely caught up with blogging in one week! That will make me feel better, at least, even if nobody else cares about it!

And because I hate posting without pics – here’s Christopher enjoying a free, hot & fresh donut from Krispy Kreme on our Branson trip last week! Yum.O.