Month: December 2012

2012 Review Extravaganza – January-March

Welcome to Week 1 of the Review Extravaganza 2012.  This week we will be recapping January, February and March.


Make sure you grab the button (just copy the code beneath the box) for your post.  Don’t forget to visit my wonderful co-hosts (just click on their names) Emmy-EmmyMom; Lourie-CA Girl; MiMi-Living in France; Mrs. Match-Date Girl Diaries; Janette-Johanson Journey.

Also- you can always visit the rules post to find out all the details and to see our wonderful sponsors and list of over $300 in prizes shown below.

Add your post to the Mr. Linky- then use the rafflecopter form to start collecting your points.  If you have any questions as to how any of the forms work please please leave a comment and I will help you out as soon as possible.

~Careful how you write it!

January~

~My Husband and I have been together for 2 1/2 years now!!

~We start off every January with a birthday… No, not Jesus’ birthday, that’s at the end of December… I’m referring to Tbug.  Poor girl, her birthday is just 8 days after Christmas.

~We got some BEAUTIFUL sunsets!!

~My {step}daughter said she wanted a phone…. She’s 9 (see above).

~I received some words of wisdom from my dad.

~I “helped” my husband cut wood.  Ok I did more than that but while I was taking photos I was less than helpful.  But I like to be warm so I put the camera away and actually helped.  No really, I did!

~And who doesn’t like to think?!?!

~Don’t believe me that Farm Kids are a different Breed?  Check this out and you may think differently…

~You know, after a bunch of the kiddo’s in my life didn’t know who John Wayne was, I found a paper I wrote in college and gave everyone a lesson on “The Duke”

February~

~ Hubby and I got excited about some Banana Bread!! But who wouldn’t?  Right?

~Sometimes you have to go sit in your old blue chair and ponder life….

~I stepped outside my comfort zone and felt a Breast Cancer Tumor on a Cadaver no less.

~Tbug loves to take over my kitchen and cook!

She’s Making Ande’s Mint Cookies

~February 12, 2012 – 2 years to the day after my husband proposed to me at 10:15am.

 ~We hauled Squirty down to Texas so that we’d get our baby in 2013.

~Our last set of baby lambs were born as we sold out of the sheep business later on in the year.

~I swear I have some of the weirdest dreams to boot!

~I told you the girl loves to cook!

Here she’s making Homemade BBQ Sauce

~And then one of the worst things happened this month (ok maybe that’s a bit over exaggerated but still!!!) I dropped my external hard drive and have lost or messed up over half of the photos… there were 40K on the hard drive too :(.  I’m still sick about it!

~Since being Chicken Farmers didn’t pan out, we’ve decided to try our hand at Bee Keeping…

~I had my first Blate with Stef from Too Much To Do So Little Time

Stef, Hubby, Me, Stef’s daughter, The Offspring

~And seriously… Anatomy & Physiology II has you doing weird things like dissecting cats or cow eyeballs or even cadavers.  It’s not a class for the faint of heart, that’s for sure!

~March

~We learned how I describe my writing style circa 2003.

 ~And I gave you my Camera History which has been outdated since I wrote this…

~We got some much needed quality puppy lovins!

~Now that we’re coming back around to cold dry weather, it’s so time to share my secret to soft hands, again!  Yes, that is in fact chap stick.

~And you have to love funny conversations with your spouse!

Me: What are you doing?
Hubby: I’m inspecting the back of my eye lids.  One of them is needing an alignment.  The other one has a bent   tie-rod and the horn is wired backwards.
M:  I think someone is a little sleep deprived.
H: Why are you tired?
M: No you’re the one talking about tie-rods and you don’t have tie-rods in your eyes.
H: But I do have rods.
M: You have cones too.
H: Yes, that was the problem.  The tie-rod hit a parking cone and everything went downhill from there.

~Attention Span, what’s that?!?!

~Seriously, you’ll never buy jarred Alfredo sauce again after this recipe!

~Tbug got her first membership into the AQHYA.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC18GMSRVR4]

~Tbug did a guest post about her Spring Break with us.

~I got into a minor fender bender on my way to class.  To say I was a little shook up when I got there would be an under statement.  I did find one small screw dent in my bumper where she hit me.

 ~Later that week I sliced the tip off my finger while making a cute hair flower.

~And I found a recipe for Hot Corn Dip that was dubbed (advert your eyes if this will offend you… I didn’t name it this, but I did laugh) Boner in a Bowl.

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p.s. if your post wasn’t ready to go for today, don’t fret.  You can link up January-March up until next Wednesday December 12th!!

p.s.s. Can’t wait to read everyone’s post!!


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Mac & Cheese Lasagna

Interested yet? This is something we make at our house quite often.  It has Mac & Cheese & hamburger & cheese and pasta sauce, I mean how can you go wrong?

Ingredients:
Mac & cheese & all the stuff needed to make it. (from scratch or out of a box, your choice)
Spaghetti Sauce (out of a jar or homemade, again, your choice)
Cheese
Hamburger

Start the water to boiling for your macaroni noodles. Once boiling, add the noodles.

In the meantime brown up your hamburger in another pan.  You can add your favorite seasonings or add-ons (such as onion, black olives, mushrooms, whatever suits your fancy!).  Then dump your spaghetti sauce in with the hamburger and let them simmer while your waiting on your Mac & Cheese to finish up.

I cheated, I used boxed mac & cheese, when you’re in a hurry, it was the fast way to handle it.  So stir in the powdered cheese mix and the butter.

Now dump the mac & cheese into the meat/sauce and mix.

Generally we add some cheese right into the mixture to make it cheesier.

Next top it with more cheese.  You can use whatever you’d like, we’ve used fiesta blend, we’ve used mozzarella, just whatever you prefer.  mmmm cheese. We wound up using 2 cups of shredded cheese. Use as much or as little as you desire.

Then place this in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.  And you’re good to go!

Mmmmm eat & enjoy!
Photobucket

Lambert’s – Home of the Throwed Rolls!

I learned at a young age that I would not be cut out to be a ball player.  Baseball, Basketball, Football, you name it, if balls were involved (wow that could sound dirty, so not meant to be though!) I was not good at it.  And catch, heck might as well just hit me or watch something fly by because I’m not so good at the catching part either.  What can I say, I’m talented like that.

There is a restaurant fairly close to home though, where if you want a roll, you better be able to catch, or be like me and send a bunch to the floor until someone else catches one for you!  It’s called, Lambert’s Cafe – Home of the Throwed rolls.

Located in beautiful Ozark, Missouri, it has made a name for itself!

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What he would miss…

You know, we all have our funny little quirks.  Those “ticks” that make us who we are and separate us from everyone else.

I got home from work the other day and hubby walked into the bedroom, looked at the bed and said, “Well, I know what you decided not to wear today.”  And it’s true.

First off, I’m not a morning person, no matter how hard I try to be, so getting up and getting dressed, well I have that down to an art.  I know exactly when I have to have whatever I’m doing done by so I can get to work on time.  hair, make-up, contacts in, teeth brushed, clothes on, shoes on, etc.

The one problem with all of that I have though is…
                        dun dun dun….

What am I going to wear that morning to work.

I walk into the closet, decide on one thing, then grab something else, realize they don’t match and instead of hanging them back up, I throw them on the bed and go after something else.  Some mornings it looks like my side of the closet just threw up on the bed.

When I come home that night, I generally put all my clothes away and they wait for the next day’s dressing adventure.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but I truly believe that is something that my wonderful husband would miss about me.

Oh and hey, go check out this post!  It might tell a little something about yours truly!  And if you are here from this post, please leave me a note and let me know!

p.s. Don’t forget about the Extravaganza that starts TOMORROW!!!!!!

Christmas Spirit

First off, I’d like to start this post by saying:

Happy Birthday Momma!

She hate’s having photos of herself so don’t tell I put this up K?

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Ever since my husband and I started dating, at Christmas time he’s mentioned to me we should go see the Living Christmas Tree at Ozark Christian College; and ever year we miss it because we don’t look for tickets soon enough.

Last week for some reason it popped into my head he’d like to go and so I jumped on line to see when the show was.  Low and behold it was Thursday of last week through Monday of this week.  Hawt Dawg just in the nick of time!

He got on line, we decided upon Monday night’s performance and away we went.

it’s grainy because it was iPhone quality without the flash.. sorry!

I’m not sure, but I’m sure the story line changes every year.  This particular one was “A Salute to Christmas”.

The show started at 7:30 so we ran by my parents house after work to help my mom put up her Christmas tree and then we jetted off to OCC.  We walked in at about 7:05 and there was 30 minutes of Pre-show entertainment.  It was hilarious.  We even learned how to make a Christmas dinner without dirtying up your kitchen, plus how to cook it on your drive to your relatives house :).  Yeah you had to be there to understand I think :).

The story took place during one of the World Wars, I believe II but they never really specified totally.  Anyway it was about trying to raise the moral of the soldiers who weren’t going to be home that year for Christmas.  It went multiple ways but ended up with teaching the story of Jesus.

And of course the whole Living Christmas Tree portion which was the real kicker to the story of Jesus and raising the “soldiers” moral.

And the whole theme of the night was Home or Going Home Again.  Wow, it was a fantastic performance.  Sadly I was really tired so by the end I was ready to go home, but it was a great show and so super glad we went!

Showboat Branson Belle

The other night I mentioned that we went to Branson, MO this weekend to take my mother-in-law on the Showboat Branson Belle.  A year ago I bought tickets to go through a United Way fundraiser at work and we absolutely LOVED it so this spring my parents went with us and then this last weekend my mother-in-law finally got to experience it.

I can’t even begin to tell you about the awesome weather.  We couldn’t have asked for a better weather experience!  Other than it was a bit overcast and extremely windy, the weather was perfect!  You had to wonder if it really was December 1st when the high topped out on Saturday at 72 degrees.

Now the Showboat Branson Belle is located on Table Rock lake.  Table Rock Lake has 800 miles of shoreline so it’s a good sized lake for a good sized paddle wheel ship that  that took 60 cases of bananas 9 seconds to slide the ship off the shoreline into the lake :).

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See what made the cut!

I go through spurts where I only write blog posts 5 days per week and then other times I write multiple per week.  I can’t explain it.  And I try to steer clear writing on weekends, because heck, we’re all out enjoying life I sure hope :).  I’ve been surprised by the blog posts that have been hitting weekly and monthly favorites lately, so I thought I would share what the November top 10 blog posts were.

1.  50 Reasons – I Love You
This one surprises me the most.  Like it has even hit the all time most read blog post.  I guess if people are trying to write their own lists they may be looking for inspiration and I’ll tell you, writing 50 reasons why you love someone (ie your husband) is difficult because you don’t want to sound petty but sometimes maybe those “petty” reasons make you fall that much more in love with your spouse…  And Hunny, Just remember I love you with all my heart.  Sappy I know, right?!

Photo by Taylor Orr

2. Shoot Away – Guest Post
I think it is kind of cool that a guest post that I had EmmyMom write for me back in May kind of fell into the archives and is now rebounding by leaps and bounds.  And this blog post really hits home… I mean as bloggers we’re documenting everything… then add the fact that she’s a fabulous photographer on top of that, and well… you might just be a bit jealous.  In this case, maybe this jealous we’re referring too is a good thing, might make you work harder to become better 🙂

3. Thanksgiving at the Shack
The Shack is a pretty cool place.  It’s my sister-in-law’s in-laws place.  I took a photo of the back of the Shack that night that I should have shared on that blog post that turned out reallllllly cool, in my opinion anyway so I guess maybe I should/could share that with you now.  Can ya handle it?

4.  A Week Long Birthday Celebration + TGI Friday’s (Springfield, MO)
Seriously, what better way to ring in your 30th birthday than with a fabulous week long birthday celebration and that’s just what my husband got.  He’s special enough; he deserves it!

5.  Great Use for Leftover Turkey – Mexican Cheese Soup
Not sure about you guys but I got tired of turkey eventually :).  Nah, turkey is good.  But this is a great soup whether you use chicken or turkey.  My momma got it at work a few years back and holy cow, I’m spoiled.  Sorry Tortilla soup but this soup kicks butt in my opinion of course :).

6. Make Your Blog Rock
I’m not blogging expert… boy how cool would it be to be one though!  I know enough about html to cause damage :)… But I took a minute to share things I’ve figured out because heck, we’re all in this together!  Hopefully you found some useful tips out of this!!

7.  Lazy Sunday Mornings {Cracker Barrel – Joplin, MO}
Sometimes those days are what the best memories are made of!  I honestly don’t know what more to say.  I think that statement says it all!

8.  For a Spanking Good Time
This is one of those that just floors me.  I’m a little worried possibly what people are googling to find this blog post.  For the record it was for the Diva Paddle Party Girls Night Out.  And where that sounds kind of bad too, it definitely is not.  It is by far something you could take your grandma or your preachers wife too!  Can’t take the Preacher because it’s a girls only party unless your preacher is a woman, then you’re good to go!

9.  If I Ran for President
If I ran for president I’d have my guts spilled all over the headlines… lol :).  No truthfully we all have different opinions and this was supposed to be a fun, light hearted post that has nothing really to do with actual politics.

10.  My weekend Recap & a Prayer Request
For everyone who prayed for my friend’s husband, I sincerely appreciate it!  He has had a bit of a rough recovery but by talking to her and reading facebook messages everyday is getting better.  I would like to keep asking for prayer requests for them as they wait for the results of the surgery as well as some other family matters that they are dealing with at this time.  And as I promised, I shared the soup recipe from this post, I still have yet to share the Mexican Lasagna recipe… I haven’t forgotten though!  I even came up with my own version of these cookies!!

And there you have it folks.  The top 10 popular blog posts for the month of November!  I still find it amazing as to what made the cut and what didn’t.  I’m almost ready to see what happens in the month of December!  I did notice in the Month of October that my 2011 Halloween post was one of the highly viewed posts on Halloween this year, you know, as opposed to my 2012 Halloween post.  I can’t explain the results sometimes.

Happy Monday!

Lone Star Steakhouse – Branson, MO

This weekend we took my Mother-in-law down to Branson to The Showboat Branson Belle and Silver Dollar City as well as a few other places.  Saturday night after we left Silver Dollar City where we saw the Christmas light show, it was time to find dinner.

When the restaurant that we wanted to eat at was closed for the evening we saw Lone Star just down the road and decided upon the steakhouse. (more…)