Sugar Cookies

Joe's grandma died a few months back, and at her funeral, they distributed copies of her famous sugar cookie recipe. So for Joe & his brother, Ken's, Valentine's packages, I made up a batch and sent part of them off to them. So I don't know what they will taste like 7-9 days from now, but they better like them! And then after I mailed a dozen to each of them, I still had a TON of dough left! I was going to just freeze the dough, but I thought I'd go ahead and make them up and take them to Joe's sister's Super Bowl party tomorrow. Then I was looking through the box of 101 cookie cutters that Joe got me for my birthday, and I found helmet & football cookie cutters!! How perfect!! So I thought I'd take a picture of them and see what you think. The funny part is that the laces on the footballs are pink... I had bought supplies to do Valentine's cookies so we ended up with pink laces! lol

Baby Tag

1- Where were you when you first found out you were pregnant? In the bathroom at my parent's house
2- Who was with you? no one
3- How did you find out that you were pregnant? A Home pregnancy test.
4- What was your first reaction to finding out you were pregnant? scared to death
5- Your Husbands reaction? no husband... but he was shocked
6- Who was the first person you told? Nikki
7-Did you plan to get pregnant? absolutely not
8-Was everybody happy for you? eh..... eventually
9- Did you go out and celebrate? wasn't exactly a moment to "celebrate"
10- Did you want to find out the sex? absolutely
11- What was the sex? beautiful baby boy
12-Did anyone throw you a baby shower? Yes.
13- If yes, who? My friend, Nikki.
14- Did you get any outfits at the baby shower that you just knew you weren't going to put on your baby? lol - yes
15- How much weight did you gain? 36 pounds
16- Did you loose all of the weight that you gained? all but about 3-5 pounds
17- Did you get a lot of stretch marks? nope :D
18- What did you crave the most? CELERY!!!
19- Did you crave anything crazy? nope
20- Who or what got on your nerves the most? nobody.... I had an amazing pregnancy. No crazy hormones or anything
21- Were you married at the time? nope
22- Did you have any complications during your pregnancy? not during pregnancy. During labor the nurse forgot to turn Tyler (he was facing the wrong way) and they almost had to do a C-section
23- Where were you when you went into labor? at my mom's.... I didn't think I was really in labor. My mom had to talk me into going into the hospital.
26- Did you go early or late? yup.... 17 days early
27- Who was in the room with you when you gave birth? my mom, Nikki, Steven, the doctor, and a few nurses
28- Was it video taped? NO WAY!
29- Did you have any drugs for the pain? You bet!!! Epidurals are AMAZING!
30-Did you go Natural or have a c-section? Natural
31- What was your first reaction after giving birth? lol - Tyler's head was alien shaped due to the vacuum extraction they had to use and I looked at Steven and said, "Please tell me that's not my baby." He was UGLY!!! His head went back to normal within an hour though. :)
32- How big was the baby(s)? 7 pounds 4 oz.... I think
33- Did your Husband cry? no
34- What did you name the baby(s)? Tyler Christopher Rule
35-Did the name have any significance to you? absolutely. Christopher is my cousin's (and also one of my best friends) name
36-Does the baby's name fit? oh yes
37- Did the baby(s) have any complications? nope.... perfectly healthy :)
38- How old is your baby today? no longer a baby.... 5 years and almost 2 months
39- When is the next one coming? feels like never
40- If you could would you do it all over again? absolutely.... I LOVE being pregnant!

Never thought I'd say this, but I HATE 5 day weekends in winter!!

Well, we were suppose to have a 3 day weekend (Monday being Martin Luther King Day) but then with the nasty wind chill, they canceled school Thursday and Friday. I have to tell you... I have never been so bored in my life!! Thursday Tyler and Jillian were sick, Friday Jillian was sick, and yesterday I was sick. I just want to go back to work! If it were the middle of summer, at least we could get out and do stuff! But no, it's the middle of January, it's FREEZING outside, so I'm suck inside with a 3 & 5 year old with NOTHING to do for FIVE WHOLE DAYS!!! Tomorrow is Monday.... my last day off. I honestly wish I could go back to work! I am so bored. I have cleaned, re-arranged, taken multiple showers just for something to do, read books, watched TV, baked..... I am bored stiff!!! I wish my family or friends lived closer. A 5 day weekend back in Missouri or up in Wyoming wouldn't be so bad... I have people I know that I could go do stuff with. But no.... I'm stuck here about to pull my hair out just wishing Joe were here to share my boredom with.

Revision to Almond Bark Pretzels.....

In the recipe I gave, I said to follow the melting directions on the back of the package..... don't. Unless you want to be staring at your microwave forever. Unless you have an ultra-powerful microwave, microwave the almond bark for about 3 minutes. Keep an eye on it though to make sure that it doesn't scald, but that should be about the right length of time. And the final product should look like the photo below.... enjoy! :)

Almond Bark pretzels

My mom makes these EVERY year for Christmas but I got so addicted to them that I now find myself making more and more batches of them way beyond Christmas. The greatest part is that they are SOOOO easy to make!!! So I thought I would share the recipe with you and laugh as you get addicted to them too. ;)

Ingredients: 1 package of vanilla flavored almond bark (photo below) & one 16 oz. bag of stick pretzels

• melt almond bark according to directions on back of package (be careful not to over cook it)
• stir in entire bag of pretzels making sure to get them all evenly coated
• drop by large spoonfuls onto wax paper (do this fairly quickly because the almond bark
  sets up fairly quickly)
• they will be set up and ready to eat in about 15-20 minutes or so..... ENJOY!!! :)

Finally some good to report.........

Well, Tyler has officially started to read and write! He can sound out and spell almost any fairly simple word I give him and he can read most 4-5 letter words without much trouble. And what makes it even cooler is that they don't actually start teaching them that until around the beginning of first grade! Which means that Tyler is about a year to a year and a half ahead of where most children his age are!! My kiddo is going to blow those teachers away when he goes in for his Kindergarten screening!!! :) :)

And then when I came home from visting my parents, my babysitters had a HUGE surprise for me...... they CLEANED my house!!! And I mean C L E A N E D!!! They scrubbed toilets, washed dishes, did my laundry, the whole 10 yards! They even went so far as to organize and sort through the kid's rooms to see what clothes they've outgrown and then they sorted out their toys and even put all our clothes away all nice and folded in our drawers!! I was amazed. They said that it took them almost 5 days to do it all. Yup, my house really was THAT messy! It was just so nice to come home to that. And now that it's all done, it'll be SOOOO much easier to keep it that way!! Wow.... what a blessing!