Maria's Baby Shower!

My sister in law Maria and brother Jason are due with their first baby on August 25th - we can't wait for little Julia to make her grand entrance into the world so we can all start spoiling her with tons and tons of love. Today we had the pleasure of giving the happy couple all kinds of cute baby stuff at Maria's baby shower - it was a fun day with great food, awesome cup cakes & plenty of oohs and ahhs over cute baby girl stuff!

Swimming Solo!

AJ did so great swimming at Grandma & Pop Pop's house this weekend! She has been kinda timid and pretty attached to Alex in the water...until now! She is a solo swimming machine - she loved kicking her legs and spinning in circles and keeping herself upright in her life vest & swim tube! She would kick her legs and got all the way from the steps to the shallow end rope all by herself! We think she is ready for the arm floats and hope to get to try them out soon! She is now little miss independent in the pool! Thank goodness I have another little baby on the way because my first baby is growing up too fast!

Happy 75th Judy!

Aunt Judy turned 75 on the 23rd and we all got to get together to celebrate on Saturday! The rain kept messing with us, but the kids had a blast playing in it! Happy Birthday "Joo Joo" (what AJ calls her) - here is to 75 more!!!

Easy & Awesome Chicken Marsala

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1/2 cup Marsala wine

flour, salt, pepper & oregano all mixed up to coat chicken

3 TBS butter

3 TBS olive oil

1 large package sliced mushrooms 

Before my chicken was totally thawed, I cut each piece in 1/2 to make 6 thinner slices of chicken.  Next, coat the chicken on both sides in the flour mixture while melting the butter into the olive oil over high heat in a pan.  Brown the chicken in the pan on both sides and then remove.  Cook the mushrooms in the drippings for about 5 minutes still on high heat and then add the wine and chicken back to the pan.  Reduce the sauce, cover and cook for about 5-10 minutes to make sure the chicken is done & serve!  

We had ours tonight with oven roasted potatoes & broccoli steamed in chicken broth. Awesome & easy dinner - I will definitely be making this again and again and again!  Sorry about the poor quality pics - I used my cell phone camera to take these!!

Pizza Night!

Tonight we had home made pizza for dinner - I LOVE Friday nights home with my 2 favorite people - we always eat something good & fun!!!

Pizza Lauren-

whole wheat dough ball cut in half

1 large block of park skim mozzarella

1 1/4 inch thick slice of deli pepperoni cut into chunky strips

1 can of Don Pepino pizza sauce (best one around)

2 big leaves of fresh basil cut into strips

grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese

Flour your rolling pin and surface and roll out each dough ball very thin (I roll ours into rectangles to fit our pans).  Lightly oil each pan and lay your dough on the pan and work it around to fit.  Top each with 1/2 the can of sauce, then sprinkle with basil, peperoni, mozzarella & Parmesan cheese.  Bake each in a preheated oven (450 degrees) for 10 minutes - slice & serve!!!

Chimichurri Sauce

Tonight we marinated our pork tenderloin in Chimichurri Sauce and it was SO good!

Chimichurri Sauce - 

1 cup fresh parsley (mine was home grown!!)

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 tsp grated red pepper flakes

Put it all together in your food processor and process - simple as that!  I marinated it in the fridge for about 2 hours and then grilled it on a medium to low heat for about 15 min each side! 

I am sure there are other things you can add, but this is the basic way - I had all the ingredients home and I was looking for a way to use up some of my parsley that has been growing like crazy!

 

Graduation Party & 21 Weeks

Here a a few pics from a family graduation party we were at this weekend at my cousin Scotty's house in Bridgewater!  A lot of the family was there - we all ate tons of yummy BBQ and had a good time seeing and chatting with everyone we don't get to see so much!  It was also cousin Stephen's birthday so we celebrated that too!  AJ loved getting to play with her cousins!

Pony Tail

After over 2 years of waiting, AJ FINALLY has enough hair to put back into a pony tail!  It looks adorable and we all just LOVE the way she say's pony tail!  

  

Cravings

Friday's cravings consisted of Funfetti cup cakes & potato salad (the kind my Aunt Margie makes) - I woke up Friday morning and decided these are the things I must eat today so off to the store AJ and I went!

The Funfetti cup cakes were so easy & fun to make with AJ and super yummy to eat!

For dinner we had london broil & corn on the cob to go with our potato salad (Aunt Margie gave me her recipe and it turned out SO SO good)!  

This is the only marinate I will use for london broil - it's made with ingredients I always have in the fridge/pantry and it tastes AMAZING!  I normally marinate it in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

1/3 cup olive oil

2 TBS ketchup

2 TBS soy sauce (reduced sodium)

2 TBS worcestershire  sauce

2 cloves of grated garlic

The trick to amazing london broil is grill on high heat for 5 minutes each side (only flip it once) and then take it off the grill and put in dish you are going to cut it on and cover with foil for 10 minutes before slicing it!  Just look at this meat!

TBZ

Instead of our normal play date and since the weather was so nice, Colleen, Juna and I decided to take the kids to the zoo!  What a great day we had - we did the train ride twice, saw all the animals, got to pet a bunny and guinea pig, feed the goats and even had a picnic lunch.  Thanks to Colleen, it wasn't just an ordinary brown bagged lunch - she brought us mac & potato salad, 2 kinds of chips, awesome mini key lime pies (she even brought whipped creme to put on top of them) & all the paper products to eat on/with!  Thanks to Colleen for making lunch extra special!!!