Monthly Archives: July 2008

I am always on the lookout for good recipes. Especially if they are fast and easy. So Friday I tried a new one called “Sausage, Potatoes, and Peppers”. You can find it here. Works great with deer sausage too. (By the way, if you like the way she shows pictures of each step of the cooking process, look at the left side bar where it says “Fun Stuff” and then “My Cooking Tutorials” and click the + sign and you will see more of these. They look so tasty I just might have to try another one!

But today I tried a Chicken Casserole recipe. Its just as well that I can’t remember where on the internet I found it because it was a dismal failure. It includes egg noodles, chicken, cream of mushroom soup, and shredded cheese. Sounds great right? Well somehow it wasn’t enough liquid to actually soften the noodles, instead, just browning them. Maybe the word “cooked egg noodles” was left off the ingredients list and you were supposed to cook them before, but I don’t know.

Also, I found a really good website for frugal housewife tips that I thought I would share. A friend of a friend linked to her and I thought the grocery shopping tips were really good and it has a printable grocery list and meal planning guide.

We headed to Austin for the 4th to see the our new sweet nephew.

We also took in the Austin fireworks show which was really good.

Then we headed to Romania for a week. Here is a couple of pictures of that. It was a really great trip!

Meet Lydia. She is wonderful. We have been friends for about 6 or so years now. She and Jon were our first “couple friends”. We loved living in the same city as them and getting to hang out all the time. We packed them up and painted their new house when they moved to Ft. Worth. Then we got to move a little closer to them for a little while and they helped. Then they helped us move to Houston. We are really good at moving each other’s stuff. We have had lots of fun adventures together, including vacations to Austin and camping. She is pregNENto (spoken with an italian accent) now, as she likes to call it, and is going to be such a great mommy to Caleb! I was looking at my comments and saw how faithful she is to comment on my blog and I just wanted to give a shout out to a great friend!!!! Love ya!

Well, this past Juneteenth we had our fourth anniversary. We didn’t actually see each other that day. We have a history of interesting anniversaries.

The first one was spent in a small minivan, me and the hub and four other guys. Driving from Waco to Pensacola. All day. With some Larry the Cable Guy CDs. Whoo hoo. We did manage a nice date and later ate the cake, or tried to, as most of the icing had fallen off.

The second was spent in Turkey. (above) Hub brought me home flowers. They had glitter on them. Turks put glitter on lots of things. We were going out for a date and I requested Burger King. Yes, fast food on an anniversary. I just wanted something familiar and that was the only American place in town. We also got to walk along the boardwalk and buy handmade jewelry for presents for our friends back home. I think we maybe played Dutch Blitz with mab and her hub when we got home. It was a fun day.

The third anniversary was in the process of moving here and we were staying at my parents. Jason’s Deli and a movie was the date. It was nice, a hectic time in life.

On the fourth anniversary we were in two different states. Arkansas and Tennessee. He sent me flowers to where I was. And we celebrated the next weekend by using a free certificate for a one night stay at an Omni hotel. It was a very nice room with a view of the waterfront and we ate the fanciest meal I have ever had. (above) And it was even worth the price. Maybe the best steak ever. Yummy potatoes and a complimentary dessert. I have a wonderful hub and it was a very fun anniversary. (And thanks to my friend Erin for the “Anniversary Box” she gave us as a wedding gift. It is a place to save change and money all year to use on the next anniversary date. It is a very good wedding gift idea! There is a picture spot on top to change out a picture of each year on the anniversary.)

Who knows, for our big fifth anniversary, maybe we will celebrate it up real big…you know, by going to youth camp or something.

Dave and Jess Ray music is now available on iTunes and Independentbands.com so if you are interested go there. (The link is to their site with links to those places.) And if you don’t know what I am talking about, scroll down a few posts and watch a video, then head over to their site and listen to some more songs, and then go buy their CD!