Thursday, December 9, 2010

My Favorite Soup

Kelly is looking for soup recipes, so I just HAD to share this one because it's amazing and SOOO easy. Enjoy!

Easy Vegetable Beef Soup

Brown 2-3 lbs ground meat.
Add 32 oz beef broth
15 oz can stewed tomatoes
29 oz can Veg-all
30 oz can hominy
15 oz can tomato sauce
1 16 oz bag frozen corn
1 16 oz bag frozen green beans
1 bag frozen cut okra
2 cups water
seasoned salt (to taste)
garlic powder (to taste)
onion powder (to taste)
Natures Seasoning (to taste)

Mix all the ingredients in a big stock pot and heat until boiling. Then just let it simmer as long as you'd like. The longer...the better! (I usually simmer for a couple of hours I guess)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Monday, November 15, 2010

Baby Sarahs

Every baby doll in our house is named Baby Sarah, except one...her name is "Girl". What can I say...my 2-year old is very original with her names. She cracks us up constantly!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Fullbar

So I still have plenty of baby-weight to lose (yes, I know she's almost 2 years old. That's the sad part) so I'm doing what I know works for me - Weight Watchers. This morning I'm trying a Fullbar to see if it really does what it says.


Now I'm usually hungry by 11:00 a.m. we'll see how long this 3-point bar keeps me full this morning. I ate it at 7:45 a.m. Has anyone else tried them?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Monday, August 2, 2010

Happy Birthday PawPaw

This weekend we had a little birthday celebration for my dad with a yummy dinner of Chicken Spaghetti and homemade chocolate cake. Mmmm! Alli sent her wishes to PawPaw via video earlier in the day :)

YouTube Video

Hope everyone has a great week! I am going to try my best to blog more, even if they are short entries.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday, June 20, 2010

T-Ball and Father's Day

So, instead of doing some things I should be doing right now, I decided I'd surprise my sister-in-law, Kathryn, and blog. We have had a busy, but fun weekend. Friday, I started off my weekend with the monthly baby scrapbook class that April hosts where I got a couple more baby layouts done for my girls' books...yes, you read that right...my 5-year old STILL does not have a scrapbook. (gasp) I am a bit of a slacker in that department.  I had really good intentions and took all the appropriate photos, but there is something about putting a scrapbook together with no guidance that just plain stresses me out.  So April's classes each month have been AWESOME because I can just go, copy the cute design she made up, and voila! Well, that is, if I would ever put the photos in their books.

Saturday morning started with Emily's first t-ball game of the season...it should have been the first game last weekend, but the games were rained out.  Her game was at 10 a.m. and I was literally drenched when we left...I am not kidding.  I sweat like a darn pig when it's that hot and there's no pool to cool off in!  I think they tied...not even sure if they keep score in Upward sports, but I was too busy trying to take good pictures to pay attention to the game going on.  I have gotten bad in that department.  I used to pay such close attention when Jarrod was playing in college too!  Speaking of Jarrod, he's coaching her team this season...he couldn't stay out of the coaching arena long ;)
Here's Em on base
Attempting to get the ball
I just love this pic of them...I might just frame it.

Emily was really hot too...as you can tell
She actually ran out to Jarrod during the middle of the game and announced to him that she had to go potty...I just laughed because I knew it was just because she was hot and tired and she didn't really have to go that bad.  He told her that if she held it until the end of the game, he would get her a surprise (the game was almost over for all of you feeling sorry for her)...so she held it...all the way until we got home.

Her surprise was that she got to go out in the boat and go fishing with us...she's quite the little fisher-girl ;)
(I actually do have some pics of her fishing, I am literally just too lazy right now to get out of this chair to put them on the computer...it's late, what can I say)

Sunday we had really good intentions to wake up and go to church, but we had a change of plans...we took Emily to see Toy Story 3 in 3D.  It was totally Jarrod's idea, which surprised me a little considering that it is Father's Day. We had fun and it was a cute movie.  Then we headed to Academy "The Category" as Em calls it to get Grandpa a fishing pole and some fishing line that was an "incredible deal".  I hope you can sense my sarcasm ;)  Whenever Jarrod gets into something, he gets a bit obsessive about the gear involved to support the hobby.  It's pretty funny.  After Academy, we headed to get Alli from Nana and Paw Paw's house and headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's to see Mee Maw Fee, who is in town for a couple of weeks from Oklahoma.  Then to finish the day off, I went to Wal Mart to get groceries from my e-mealz menu for the week.  Whew!  I sure hope I have clean clothes for tomorrow because we haven't done a thing that we needed to do this weekend...at least I haven't.

 I just have to finish by saying that my girls have the most amazing daddy in the world in Jarrod.  And I'm pretty lucky to have him forever as my husband and best friend!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

E-Mealz

So, if you frequently visit my blog in hopes that there just might be a new entry (and are regularly disappointed), you may have noticed that I added a new button to the right-hand side called E-Mealz.  I just joined this new program (after I convinced my friend, Randi to try it out first) where you pay $5 per month to get custom meal plans based on the diet you pick.  For example, I picked the Wal-Mart (because I shop there most) Points System menu for two (trying to get back on track with Weight Watchers) and the ladies that run this basically look at the Wal Mart ad for that week and they base their meal plan on items that may be on sale to save you $$.  I think it is only supposed to cost us $35-45 per week, so I am really excited to try it.  Of course, if you know you are going to be gone or in a big hurry, you can mix things up a bit.  I am super excited about saving $$ and eating at home more.  We are terrible about grabbing take-out because we are too lazy to cook in a rush to get dinner on the table.  I'm curious, what do y'all do to save money on meals?  Be sure to check out e-mealz and sign up!  I hope it will be great for our family!

SAVE TIME AND MONEY WITH E-MEALZ MEAL PLANS

Monday, June 14, 2010

MIA

It's not because I go completely blank when I open up blogger, even though my daughters give me enough material to write about for weeks.....And it's not that I have to have the perfect, quiet setting, with no other chores around the house and nobody else in the room....And it's sure not that I am so worried about having typos or sounding dumb that I haven't blogged in the longest time...It's just that it's been a busy couple of months for us.  You believe that, right?!?

Thought so.

So, never in a million years would I dream of all that's happened in the past two months in my family.  Let's start around mid-April.  My dad went on his annual trip to the Llano Crawfish Open with his buddies.  He was pulling weeds, some of which were tougher than others, and developed a terrible headache...fast forward to 3 weeks later and he has brain surgery.  He had a subdural hematoma (brain bleed) that was worsened by him taking the anti-platelet drug, Plavix (which makes you bleed and bleed and bleed).  So when we were told about his condition on April 23, surgery was the only option to remedy his condition and that was not an option for at least 7 days...then it turned into 14 days, thanks to his wonderful and very conservative neurosurgeon, Dr. Stuart Crutchfield.  He had surgery on May 7th and overall (minus a few speedbumps) has had an amazing recovery.  He had the best nurses ever in the Neuro ICU at Mother Frances Hospital, which just so happens to be my amazing mother-in-law's unit.  One of them decorated his head dressing with this since he's a huge Saints fan.
Now rewind to the week of my dad's surgery to May 4th.  Emily loves gymnastics and decided that she would use the arms of our couch and love-seat as makeshift parallel bars, so she pushed herself up with her arms and began swinging her legs from front to back...like she's been told MANY times not to do. So, the momentum of her legs flying back caused her to slam face-first into the living room floor.  After the bleeding, blood-curdling screams, tears, doctor visit and x-rays, we found out that our poor baby girl had broken her nose.  Here she is on the way to DirectCARE that evening:
Here's my poor sweet girl the day after it happened:
We had to wait about a week to see her ENT, Dr. Fulmer, since he needed the swelling to go down before he could really check it out, but he said it did need to be surgically re-set, so we did that on May 13.
OK, now rewind to May 12.  I get a call from a random number on my cell phone, that I totally screened that I wasn't able to answer in time, from a nice man that lives about a mile and a half from our house.  He informs me that he has our dogs, Colby & Katie, and that Katie has most likely been hit by a car.  You see, Colby is a digger and a bad influence.  Poor Katie was just the follower and ended up getting hurt.  The man said that although Colby was extremely skiddish around him, he would not leave Katie's side.  Each time he would walk away, Katie would cry and Colby would go back to her.  How sweet is that?!?!  Anyway, Jarrod went to get them, and I met him at our vet (who by the way is AMAZING for staying open late for us).  She, luckily, had no broken bones and was sent home to rest on pain pills, anti-inflammatories and some antibiotics (she had a nice road burn).  She was getting around pretty slow there for a few days, but she is back to her old self now. 

Whew!  I'm tired just thinking about all that.  The whole brain surgery thing made the others seem like a piece of cake though, so that's the positive part of God's timing in this situation.  During these past couple of months, there were a whole lot of GREAT things in the mix like Mother's Day, Madelyn's baby dedication, Jarrod's Master's graduation, Emily's dance recital, and plenty of other fun stuff too....but this entry is long enough for tonight.

A special thank you to my rockin' sister-in-law Rachel who came to our house at 6:45 in the morning so that I could go to the hospital every day before work and hung out with our girls the night we took the dogs to the vet.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Giveaway

OK, so I haven't blogged in about 2 months now, but I just had to share this great giveaway my sister-in-law is doing on her blog.  Check it out!

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Beef Stuffed Zucchini

I started doing Weight Watchers this past week so I am always looking for new recipes that are low in points.  I got this recipe from the Weight Watchers website and decided to try it tonight.  It turned out REALLY good so I thought I'd share!

Beef-Stuffed Zucchini
POINTS: 4
1 spray(s) cooking spray
4 medium zucchini, cut in half lengthwise
1 large egg(s), beaten
1/2 tsp table salt, divided
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
2 Tbsp seasoned bread crumbs, divided
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1 Tbsp parsley, Italian, minced
6 oz raw lean ground beef
1 tsp olive oil
1 Tbsp wine, red variety

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Coat a large baking pan with cooking spray.

Scoop out seeds from zucchini; chop and reserve flesh. Arrange zucchini halves, cut side-up, in prepared pan.

In a large mixing bowl, combine egg, 1/4 teaspoon salt, red pepper flakes, 1 tablespoon bread crumbs, 1 tablespoon cheese, parsley, beef and chopped zucchini flesh; mix well.

Fill each zucchini half with a heaping tablespoon of beef mixture; spread into an even layer. Sprinkle beef with remaining tablespoon of bread crumbs; drizzle with oil and wine.

Bake until beef is cooked through and zucchini is tender-crisp; about 30 minutes. Remove to a serving platter; garnish with remaining 1/4 teaspoon of salt and tablespoon of cheese. Yields 2 zucchini halves per serving.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

18 months old

I can hardly believe my sweet baby girl, Allison, is 18 months old!  She is such a lovable, happy, funny little girl...and she has the BEST big sister in the universe! Here are both my sweet girlies in the hospital after Alli was born.
 Alli had her 18-month check-up this week and she has stats similar to her sister when she was that age.  She weighs 23 lbs. and is 33.2 inches tall...well, thereabout...poor Christina had to measure her while she was flopping around.  She is in the 31% for her weight and 89% for height...so she's really tall and skinny.  She is such a happy girl and LOVES to eat, even though you can't tell! Here she is eating a cookie last week.

Her head circumference was off the chart, so she's got brains like her sissy too.  She has 12 teeth right now and has recently discovered ranch dressing...so she loves dipping everything in ranch, even her paci!  She is super friendly and says "Hiiii" to everyone she passes by in stores (in the same East Texas accent her mama has). She is an absolute joy to be around and can put a smile on our face instantly!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Photography

Last summer, after much research, I finally broke down and got a DSLR camera and I LOVE it!  There are so many settings that I have no idea about though, and my friend Jennifer was kind of in the same boat.  Jennifer luckily found a guy named Ron Ragan and he graciously spent some time with me, Jennifer and my sister-in-law Kathryn last weekend to show us some things about the settings on our cameras, photography in general and some techniques in Photoshop.  I know this is SO basic, but it's one of the things I wanted to learn how to do...so here's a baby picture of Alli that I got to practice on:

I had it printed to hang in a frame and matte that I bought when I was on maternity leave a while back...I know, how sad is that!  I had big plans to make a collage with cute scrapbook paper and newborn photos, but since I am a HUGE slacker in that department, that did not occur.  When I say huge slacker, I mean like BIG...like my 5 year old doesn't even have a baby scrapbook and I have had the supplies since she was a baby (gasp).  Tomorrow evening though, that shall change.  I am SUPER excited because I am going to make baby scrapbook layouts with Kathryn and Rachel...so maybe I can get Emily's first year done by the time she starts Kindergarten.  One thing I do know though, is where I will print my photos.  Motophoto on South Broadway prints high quality prints and has a highly trained staff to ensure proper color and quality of each and every print.  The BEST thing about Motophoto is that you can upload the photos online and pick them up in their drive-thru, which makes getting photos printed with kiddos SO much easier!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

My Little Belle Babe

Last Saturday, Emily attended the TJC Apache Belle Babes Clinic and they got to perform at the basketball game that evening.  She had SOOOO much fun dancing and hanging out with the big Belles, and I was very impressed with her performance!  She rocked it!!  Here are some pics from Saturday and a video of her performance.
My little Belle Babe
Camden Chilek (Jennifer's daughter) and Emily
Emily and one of the belles she really liked

Jacqueline and Emily with one of the belle girls
J and Em skipping and singing "Little Sally Walker"
Emily and her Belle.
The performance.


Here's the video of their performance!

Friday, February 5, 2010

Bitter Family Scrabble Night

On my way home from work today my sweet sister-in-law, Kathryn, texted me and we decided to go hang out at their house and order pizza...even though none of us needed the calories because everyone in the house over 5 years old is on a diet right now.  Oh well, we needed the fuel for the intense scrabble game.  Well, I didn't play because I would have been an embarrassment to my hubby who HAS to win at everything.

This little angel cheered on her mommy and daddy while they played.

Alli eating a baby carrot...this was the appetizer to try to make everyone feel a LITTLE better about the calories that were about to be consumed.
Emily is pretty much oblivious to anything or anyone else when her Uncle Luke is around.  They are so cute together!
Here's Alli with her pizza sauce mustache (yes, she did it all by herself)...we were dying laughing!
Em and Aunt Rachel (who hasn't updated her blog in almost a year...hint hint)
Rachel and the attack kisses
Grandma and sweet Madelyn
Emily posing as usual
Maddie just chilling in her swing
Mama and Madelyn
Playing peek-a-boo with her mommy
For those of you wondering about the game, Jarrod won both...of course.  It was a lot of fun...and we got to hang out with Madelyn which is always great!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Quick Weekend Getaway

This weekend, we decided to make a quick trip down to the ranch to hunt.  We thought it would be fun to take Emily since she likes to hunt with us now.  Even though it was about 28° in the mornings when we went out to hunt, she was such a trooper!  We got her some coveralls and had her bundled so warm.  We woke up about an hour later than we had planned on Saturday because my watch alarm didn't go off, so needless to say, we were late getting to our deer stands.  After the morning hunt, Jarrod wanted to go walk around, so Emmy and I went to the Llano Roadhouse Grill to have breakfast.
 
They have the BEST breakfast burritos in the world!  I seriously CRAVE these things!  The thing that stinks is, they are not open on Sundays when we are always leaving to head home.  Luckily we got to enjoy them this trip.  Emily ordered chocolate milk, and this is what she got!  It would have taken her 3 days to drink all that!
  
Emily hunted with Jarrod Saturday evening, and was with him when he killed a doe.  She did awesome when he shot and was SO excited about Daddy's deer!  Saturday evening after we hunted, Emily chose pizza for dinner.  We headed back into town and ate at Stonewall's Pizza, Wings & Things.  It was yummy and we definitely ate too much, but we had fun.  Here's a pic of Jarrod and Emily at dinner.  This girl LOVES her Daddy!
  
Sunday morning, Emily went hunting with me since she had gone with Jarrod both times on Saturday.  We had REALLY thick fog and couldn't even see the feeder, so Emily played on her Leapster (a must have if you are taking a 5-year old hunting) and we waited it out until about 8:30 a.m. with no luck.  We still couldn't see, so we headed in to pack and go home.
  
 
This little deer hunter was a TIRED girl...she racked out about an hour into the trip for a little while, but woke up later and was as chatty as ever! 
We had such a fun weekend with just our big girl.  And we are so thankful that we live close to family who's willing to keep Alli while we do fun things with Emily.  Alli stayed with Nana and PawPaw and had SO much fun!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Breast Cancer Awareness

Check out this awesome new video to show Trinity Mother Frances' support of Breast Cancer Awareness.  The best part is that the little girl in the close-up shot of the first sign is none other than Emily Bitter!  Check it out and share with all your friends!


Hope everyone has a great week!

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Help Haiti

My friend Jamie and her sweet family were live on CNN yesterday morning talking about the devastation in Haiti and they did so great!  Jamie and her husband Aaron have two Haitian children that they have adopted, one is home with them and they are waiting on their son, Amos, to come home now.  My heart sank for Jamie the other day when I heard what had happened.  Can you imagine how you would feel if one of your children were in a place that had just experienced a magnitude 7 earthquake?!?!  Oh my goodness I would be freaking out!  Jamie and Aaron are selling these t-shirts...

and 100% of the profit goes to support ministries in Haiti.  You can buy one here.   Now go buy one already, say a prayer for the people in Haiti, and thank God for the blessings in your life!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Rebellious Parents

I am sitting here tonight blogging one-handed because I am a rebellious parent.  I am holding this sweet angel while she goes completely to sleep and then I will put her in her crib...totally asleep.  (Gasp!)
 
I know, I know...the textbooks say to put your children to sleep in their beds totally awake and let them fall asleep on their own.  I just figure, why fix it if it's not broken, and this is one of my favorite parts of the day! My other favorite part is Emmy being my "snugglebug" at night.  See, we are rebellious parents with her too.  She falls asleep in bed with me almost every night and then Jarrod puts her in her own bed once she's asleep.  The funny thing is, both my children sleep great!  So this mommy is going to continue to break the rules as long as they will still let me snuggle with them!