Soup Making

This is my version of Pioneer Woman's Tomato Soup. We made her recipe several weeks ago and I loved the sherry that she puts in it. I cooked the onions a lil bit more this time and added more butter, less sherry and we pureed everything together last time. I did it again this time but blended it longer, which I think worked better. Added a bit of garlic and hot sauce for a tiny kick. Only a smidge really. :)

But let me tell you I have been dreaming about this soup ever since I had the best tomato soup when we went to Alaska. I think this soup is so good and last time I made it I just ate it and ate it. Of course when I was making it again I was paying more attention to the ingredients and realized that it is probably not the healthiest thing to eat. Ha! But whatever I had turkey burgers for dinner again and so I can have yummy unhealthy tomorrow. These are my soup helpers. I drop, splish and splash tomato soup and they help clean it up! Its been awhile since they made an appearance on the blog. Poor puppers they are starved for time at the dog park and I can't wait to go this spring. I want to go outside too! SummerGirl is dying for sunny weather!

This package came today from Grace's Yia Yia. We love getting clothes and appreciate it so much! Such great garage sale finds, I don't know about you but I LOVE a bargain and have no qualms about getting in deep to find some good deals! Mostly sized 2T and bigger we can put these away for a little bit and have a stash saved up! Thanks so much Yia Yia.

I had to pull this one outfit and take a pic because I just love this cute top and shorts! (Don't mind the lil bag of half eaten Fritos)

Here is the pic I took for Daddy tonight. Daddy and I have an agreement, whenever he is out of town I send him pictures of his Pooks. I had to grab it real quick and shoot it off before I put her to bed, because I almost forgot!

Isn't she just the cutest?
Workout tonight consisted of no cardio. But I did 100 situps, a ton of leg lifts and squats and lunges till my legs burned. Also I grabbed the 10lb weight and did squats and worked my triceps and biceps and did like Thigh Master motions (but without the Thigh Master since I don't own one of those) I did that till my legs burned too.

My My What a Clever girl

So mommy was cleaning up dinner tonight and I heard the clanging of the fireplace tools and I look over and see our little girl had climbed up onto the fireplace hearth. At first I thought she had used the dog bed for a bit of a boost. That was not the case because I took her down and then a few mintues later I spied a baby climbing up all by herself with no help from any dog beds. To make matters worse then she stood up and was doing her clogging dance stomp with mommy standing right there. Silly baby.
Tonight I made turkey burgers for her and I and she ate half of a turkey burger. She liked it, although I thought for the first time cooking them, that they were a bit bland and I will add more seasonings next time.
I was going to do my Yoga DVD tonight and not obsess with the treadmills and its many numbers, however, the playstation has not been hooked back up from our snowboarding trip and I can't do Yoga upstairs. (2 reasons for this are, the TV is too high on the wall and there is not enough room to do the poses, and we have our story cd in the dvd player, that if I take it out I will lose our spot...I guess that is technically three reasons.)
So I decided instead to get on the treadmill and do a "lite" workout. Do you think that happened? Well no it didn't. Although I did walk more then normal because I did talk to both KSov and my dad while I was huffing and puffing. So maaaybee it was a little bit lighter, but I still did 3.30 miles.
And now I am finishing up my post for tonight watching American Idol and about to go take a shower.
Hows your week going?

Kick Your Heels, Stomp Your Feet!

So apparently this not viewing videos on blogspot is an ongoing problem and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I am considering some possible changes for sure if this continues.

KSov had a rough day of flying today. His first flight was orginally delayed 2 hours. Then when he arrived in his layover city there was a huge line of people waiting to reschedule their flights and his second flight was almost canceled but luckily he made it back east and called me at almost midnight his time. Poor guy I know he is beat.

Tonight I jumped on the treadmill again. Did a warm up and cool down and ran for a total of 3.6o miles. I did a few situps but I have to admit I fell off the situp bandwagon right before our snowboarding trip. But I am going to keep posting about working out so that you all can keep me on track. And if you don't read any work out updates shoot me a comment or something, saying, "Hey hows that going for you?" Ha ha then I will make sure I am sticking to it!

Ok its late I have to wrap this post UP! Night!

Weekend Updates

Check us out we finally have some new blinds in...one window. Ha ha we took our Home Depot Gift cards that we have been saving and finally went to Home Depot and bought some blinds. I actually thought KSov wasn't going to put them up till next weekend because we spent all Saturday getting the guest room cleaned out for Crystal to rent. But he didn't want to tack up the sheet again! Here is the other box we got for the front kitchen window. We were going to orginally do wood stained blinds. I thought that you could get the Faux ones but in a wood color, but they weren't not as inexpensive, so once I realized that then we chose the white ones. This way we can get more bang for our buck. We bought 2 windows worth. We also looked into to doing 2 side by side narrow blinds for the sliding glass door, because we both hate those vertical hanging blinds for doors. Besides 2 German Shepherds and a toddler are NOT good for those. But when we talked about it at Home Depot, the gal said that, it's probably not a good idea to do it like that because you would have to duck under the blinds even when they were pulled up all the way. Because it would be a min of about 72 inches. We realized that she was probably right especially for tall people like KSov. So we need to come up with another plan for the sliding glass door.

KSov is going to New York tomorrow. Seems like he was just gone and off he goes again. But its good training he gets to learn. Then next weekend KSov's sister Crystal will be moving into the bottom basement.

I have 2 new videos I was going to post tonight and if I can't get them to work then I have to email blogspot and see what the deal is. KSov seems to think its the site that is causing the problem.

My lil Helper

These pics I took on Friday night I think..after her bath. Thats her toothbrush, she loves hanging on to it and chewing it. Happy fresh clean baby.

Hmmm, now what do we have here??

I got those pj's 2 for 5.99 and they are 18months, with open footies and they can be closed footies too.

Most adorable ever!

Here is my helper baby today. We were cleaning up a lot today and I had the swiffer out. I came into the kitchen and there she was pushing it around.

This is a video of her cleaning. Let me know if you can't view it. I posted the other video on Thursday and whenever I have tried posting videos lately they don't show the image when they are finished uploading. So when I did the previous post I thought I would just put the video on anyway and see what happens. For me at least I was able to play the video. So if you can't view it, just let me know.

Finally Friday

Whooo Hooo its Friday tomorrow!!!! I worked out tonight and it was HARD. I aint gonna lie. I did not want to do it one bit. But I did and pushed through it. Ran for 35 minutes showered and now we are listening to our story tape.
Almost time for bed.
Night Night!

What a doll!

When Daddy sent me this pic on my phone yesterday my first thought was, oh my she sure does look like KSov! Then my second thought was, "I love her sweet face!" Look at that hair sticking up!

Even more Vacation Pics

I adore these 2 people right here... It was so precious, Daddy was rubbing her arm and her eyes just got heavier and heavier.

And soon she was FAST asleep, in her daddy's arms.

Hello adorable baby. She was sitting on my lap and watching a Sesame Street game. And look at those cute feet in the background! Yeah those are mine, I won't lie... :P

KSov and his sister, such a beautiful girl who refuses to take pictures, but they were on their way to go board.

Last week we were on vacation and sick and even though I had VERY good intentions to work out. I did not..at all. So today it was back to work, and tonight it was back to working out. I have to say that I started out on the treadmill and walked out for 10 mintues, and then I ran for 30 mintues. Then, the next thing I know it was over and I had gone for 3.13 miles. Then I walked for another 15 and burned a total of 500 calories. Hopefully by spring I will be able to do a 5k! Anyway, feeling good and was proud of myself for getting right back on track after vacation.

More Vacation Pics

This is typical Grace, snow in both hands and not bothered a bit by the coldness. "Hey get this mitten off me!"

"Mmm, delicous snow, finally I can eat this fresh clean snow."

Trying to hide from mommy, rubbing my eyes and my finger in my nose!

It looks like she is throwing a fit here, but really she wasn't. She was just squinting her eyes, while daddy was buttoning her up.

Yummy cheese stick wrapper! I love plastic, even though mommy is always taking it away from me!

"Ha ha Mommy your so funny and you should really let me keep this plastic."

Snowboarding and Sledding Pics...Part I

Here are a few pics we took sledding. There are more to come when my internet stops being patchy.

This was the hill we were snowboarding on. Hard to see anything, but one chair lift. Me right before we left to go snowboarding. Do I look tired?

My silly hubby, ready to go snowboarding, he was excited and ready to see what he remembered! Oh and by the way I was able to get up front wise! Not that fat this time!

Vacation or Leper Colony?

So here it is Friday afternoon and we are almost done with our vacation up here in the mountains. So I thought I should give and update since I am feeling up to it.

This vacation has not been the most exciting ever...but it has been good.

We came up late Monday night because we had so much to do. One of the things I had to do was try to squeeze to see the Dr. I am sure you all are probably thinking, "What they are sick again???" It seems those Sovereens are always sick. And believe me, it seems that way to me too!

I used to never get sick and then it seems like the last 2 1/2 years I am always sick. But anyways, I had had a cold I thought but then on Saturday before the Superbowl I was just dragging. I culdn't get enough energy to do the laundry or get things cleaned for our party, so we did the bare minimum before our party and rested. So then on Monday when I was supposed to be feeling good enough to run around and hustle to get things ready for our trip I was still dragging. So we went to the dr and got some antibiotics and some prescription Sudafed. Grandma came up as well and she had gone to the dr on Monday too and she had no voice. Then on Tuesday morning Crystal (KSov's sister) called her mom and she was sick with the flu. She had been vomiting all night long and felt terrible and apparently so had his cousin Michelle, whom we had all been around for the SuperBowl party. So we were the sick crew up here in the mountains because Richard Janeen's beau was feeling queasy too.

Luckily Grace has been feeling fine and KSov felt better most of the week. I have been sleeping poorly but did manage to go with KSov on Wednesday snowboarding before Grandma went back home.

I will try to get small video I had KSov take of me boarding up and a few pics. It was fun and I ended the afternoon with a perfect dismount off the lift, and yes I slowed the lift down everytime.

I still don't feel like normal, still coughing a little bit and feeling stuffy and sometimes a lil quesy myself. I brought up 3 boxes Kleenex and have been using thm left and right! I suppose its better being sick here than at work. But let me ask why is it that everytime I go on vacation lately I get sick or both KSov and myself get sick going or coming???

We are planning on taking Grace outside in the snow today. She loves the snow and I have a little boys snowsuit that I got for her that was only 5.99. So I will get some pics of her in the snow.

Oh I hear the lil Monkey Moo, better go get her, she had a great nap today!

Condo pics

Ok here are several pics of our condo we are staying at this week. Its pretty nice. I didn't get a pic of the stairs but they show up a lil bit in a video I took of Grace. Turns out she loves these stairs because a: they aren't as steep and b: she has access to them, unlike our stairs at home! Here is our bathroom upstairs.
This is the upstairs bedroom, behind those doors is a pull down full sized bed.

The other portion of our room with our tv and chair.

This is the downstairs bedroom which I thought was going to be a full as well..so that was a surprise.

The living room with another pull out bed, fireplace and flat screen.

The kitchen which had most everything we needed. In fact I can't think of anything we have wished we needed so far, cooking wise.

The dining table, already crowded with all of our gear. Laptops, toys, snowboards...

Oh and here are some fun pics of Grace. I gave her an oreo cookie last night which she ate about half of. Meaning one cookie side. I found the other side with the cream still on it on the floor. I think she dropped it cookie side up and couldn't see it to finish eating it! We found these chocolate milk straws that are specially made to suck milk through and they have chocolate beads. I think they are called Santa's straws. A box of them was only 99 cents, and the milk is not super chocolately. She liked that a lot. Well plus she thinks she is a big girl and loves drinking water ot of our cups and will push her bottle away from us and grunt for a drink of ours!

She also will come up and push on my legs when she wants me to move out of the way or she wants something. Another thing she is doing right now is coming up to me and lifting her arms up to be held. I love that!

She walks really good now and runs really good too. Especially loves running away from us! We will say, "Get her, get her, get her!" And off she goes.

She loves cheese. She loves string cheese and and cheesy scrambled salsa eggs. She never believes us when we offer her something good to eat. You would think it was poison. We have to coax her to take a bite and then finally once we get that yummy morsel of food in her mouth, then she believes us and wants more! She is such a good eater too. She loves peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches too.

The lastest development is that she wants to climb stuff. She has climbed up on her pink little car standing with both feet on the seat and luckily did not fall before daddy saved her. She tried to climb the fireplace and us too. Oh and when we grab her hands to remove her from a situation where she is doing something she shouldn't be then she lifts her feet up and refuses to walk!

She also loves her blankies right now and will sometimes carry them around and likes to put them over her face when she sleeps.

Here she is playing with the fireplace with sticky cookie hands laughing at mommy because mommy is telling her not to!

Good Food!

I took a some pics of our Superbowl Spread. Well of some it anyway. We ended up making Guy Fieri's Jambayala Sandwich. Here are a few pics of it in the making. Garlic, celery, green oinions...

Chopped chicken thighs...

All the ingrediants simmering together.....

Add a few Hoagi rolls...

Add some Havarti cheese and toast them up in the over...and WaaaLaa...yummy meaty sandwiches!

This was the baguette I cut up for Artichoke Dip. It was premade so I forgot to take pics and I didn't take any of our pizza dip either.

I also made homemade Aunt Helen Coons Carrot cake.....

With cream cheese frosting, a double batch...cuz you can never have too much!

Looks like the Saints won the Super Bowl, which is convient because that is who I was rooting for! It was a pretty good game for the parts that I actually did watch. Tomorrow we will be getting ready for our trip! I hope we all are feeling better, because I have been feeling pooey.