October 20 and 21

Day 20.

I fully intended on scrapping and blogging but I didn't do either because we had some errands to run after I got home from work and then on the way home we decided to go and visit with Brian's parents for the evening.  We don't see them as much as we used to because of Brian being at the gym so much.  He has taken a little break from the gym so we are taking advantage of the extra time.  Brian's Mom decided after they ate dinner to take us to Diary Queen.  (we had already eaten dinner)  We drove to DQ and got our ice cream treats and then we went back to their house and stayed for a little while longer.  We ended up coming home around 9:00 p.m.  It was nice to have some quality time with his parents.

Day 21.

So tonight I am going to the State Fair with my sister to see the Blake Shelton concert.  He is one of my favorite country singers right now.  His personality on the interviews he does seems so layed back and he is funny.  He also very easy on the eyes too!  I will post pictures tomorrow of our little adventure.

Here's a picture of Blake Shelton (from the internet) just in case you don't know what he looks like.

October 19

Day 19.

I scheduled Gunther's surgery today.  He will be going under the knife in a couple weeks.  It will be nice to finally get this problem of his under control.  The only bad part is that I have to have him to the vet's office by 7:30 a.m.  That is going to be one early day for me!

I thought I'd share a picture today, this is what happens when I try to fold laundry at my house, the Chihuahua's think it's a bed to sleep in.

Tito is the brown dog looking at the camera and Peanut is the black dog facing away from the camera.  They are also known as my little prince and my little princess.  Have a good night ladies!

October 18

Day 18.

Nothing real exciting going on in my world today.  Just more catch up with house work I didn't get to on Saturday.

I noticed some you like to read, do any of you have an e-reader?  I think I want to get one and I am going to ask for one for my birthday.  I am still on the fence as to which one I want, it's between the Kindle and the Nook.  They both are very similar it is just a matter of deciding at this point which one I like better.  Trust me I will never give up on paper books entirely for a couple of silly reasons.  One, there are a couple of series that I will always want to keep in paper (the hard cover) and two, I like the smell of books.  Brian says I am weird for liking the smell of a new book.  Having said that, if you have one what's your opinion and if you don't have one, check the links out if you want and let me know your opinions.

October 16 and 17

Saturday, Day 16.

Karen - Hudson got the DJ Lance costume. He loved it so much he wanted to carry the bag out of the store. It was cute.

I started  my day pretty early, I woke up with Brian at 4:30 a.m. to get his lunch ready because he had to work and to make sure Gunther got his first feeding really early in the morning and to have his first insulin injection, yes I said insulin, I have a dog that is diabetic.  I did this because I would have to leave the house around 11:30 a.m. to take our little Gunther to a specialist in Mesa for a salvatory gland issue that he has been dealing with for a while.  I feel so sorry for him not only does he have to deal with diabetes but a very swollen gland on the side of his face.  

I don't know the roads in the east valley very well at all so I was a little apprehensive to drive to all this way from west valley.  Thank God for GPS! I am so gald that we invested in a Garmin.  Finding the vet's office was very easy.  Normally I am always running late but I actually got there early.  I didn't think I would be there very long but my 1:00 p.m. appointment turned into an all afternoon appointment.  Gunther and I saw the doctor and he wanted to do an ultra sound of the gland and have the surgeon take a look at the ultra sound and then for me to have a consultation with the surgeon about our options to treat Gunther.  They said that they could do it that day but I would need to come back around 3:30 p.m.  I wasn't about to drive home to have to turn around and come back.  So I decided to stay on that side of town and see if I could find a Barnes and Noble or some place where I hang out until I had to go back to see the surgeon.  I was lucky and found a Bookman's to go look around in.  I have never been to one before so it was a treat.  It was nice because they had a cafe in there and I found some old Scrapbook Etc. magazines and read those for a while.  You can only look at books and magazines for so long before your eyes get a little crossed eyed.  So I drove back to the vet's office.  I got there and told the girl at the reception desk that I knew I was really early but I didn't have anywhere else to go.  It was a long day being there and waiting.  Finally I got my consult with the surgeon (which was after 3:30 p.m.) because they were running late.  It was as expected, he needs surgery to remove the gland.  I will have to arrange to take a day off work so he can have his surgery. I have to say Gunther was a trooper, he did real good with all the poking and prodding they did.

I got home around 6:00 p.m.  Then I got a call from one of the cutest little boys I know.  Johnathan says to me "Nina how's Gunther and when are you coming over so we can go we can go get my Halloween costume?"  I told him that I needed to eat dinner and I would be over there.  He tells me to hurry up.  It made me laugh.  Well I ate my dinner and then went over to my parents house so I could go with my sister and Johnathan so he could get his Halloween costume.  For a while he kept saying he wanted to be Venom.  Then he saw the Ironman costume in an advertisement and decided that it what he wanted to be.  So we went to the Halloween store and he got his costume.  He was really excited to get it.  He kept asking if he could wear it and of course my sister had to tell he had to wait until Halloween.  We got him interested in a movie and put away the costume.

It was a long day but it had a nice ending, being with family.

Sunday, Day 17.

It was another early day for me, I woke up really early so I could clean the house.  Thankfully Brian mopped the floors for me so I didn't have to do that.  Then the boys did their usual Sunday by watching the Bears game and whatever other football games they wanted.  After the Bears game Brian and Heath played video games for while.  Me, I was upstairs watching TV for a while and before I knew it I was asleep on the couch.  I had a good nap.

We ended our day by eating dinner with Brian's parents.  We used to eat dinner at their house every Sunday and we haven't done it quite while.  It was really nice spending time with them.

I am going to make myself some scrappy goals this week because I haven't done it in while.  Here's my goal for the week: I want to get at two layouts of Hudson done and two layouts of Johnathan done.  This should not be too hard, I figure that I can get them done on the nights that Brian will be at the gym working out.

October 13, 14 and 15

Day 13, 14 and 15.

Wednesday.

I fully intended on blogging Wednesday when I got home from work but when I was leaving work I went to start my car and just heard a clicking sound!  Dead battery.  I called Brian and told him my car wouldn't start so he came to my work to give my car a jump and then he followed me to the gas station.  Of course I would need gas.  Thank goodness he was there because when I was done getting the gas, I tried to start my car it wouldn't turn over.  He had to give me another jump.  Then we went home and he had called his old work to tell them about this, because we bought the battery there last year, it was still under warranty so they pulled a new battery for us and he went to go get it and take in my bad battery.

I already had a headache because of my allergies and all of this just made it worse and I still had to cook dinner and feed the dogs.  By the time all that was finished all I wanted to do was to go to bed.  So that is what I did, I went to bed.

Thursday.

Not a whole to share about Thursday except that I was glad when I got to go home for the day.  It was just one of those days.  I was happy to be home with Brian.

I went to my parents house to visit and Johnathan was so excited about his new haircut.  The lady that cut his hair styled it.  It looked like a faux hawk.  She had it all coming forward in the front he looked very cute.  I wish I had a picture of him to share with you.

Friday.

Tonight we went with our nephew Hudson to shop for his Halloween costume.  He said he wants to be Mickey Mouse, but the Halloween store we went to didn't have Mickey Mouse costumes.  So he tried on these two costumes.

He was just so excited when he had on the DJ Lance costume it was really cute.  He didn't want to put the bag that the costume was in down.  It was very cute. 

Just because it's cute, here is a picture of Brian and Hudson that I took while we were at the Halloween store.

Every time Hudson sees his Uncle Brian he says Uncle Brian and gives him a big smile. It's very endearing to see the bond that is developing between those two.

October 12th

Day 12.

Karen asked how I made my fried potato's.  I actually bake them first (in the microwave).  Then I let them sit until they are cool enough that I can slice them.  Then I heat up a skillet and coat it with the spray oil (like Pam) and I salt and pepper my potato's and just make them a little brown.  They are very tasty this way. 

I thought I would give you some more facts about me.

1.  I am an Arizona native and have lived here my entire life.

2.  When I was about 13 my Dad told me to help him, my Mom and Brother with the yard work and I told him this (these were my exact words), "Yard work isn't in my contract" (of course add in the normal teenager attitude).  Usually talking like that to either of my parents would have gotten me grounded but that day all my Dad could do was laugh at me and told me ok.

3.  I didn't like cooking when I first got married and Brian did it all for the first few years.  I have slowly come around and now I do most of the cooking.

4.  I was 14 the first time I went to Disney Land.

5.  I was in Girl Scouts from 2nd grade to 5th grade.

October 10 & 11

Day 10 and 11.

I have to start off by saying I have been a slacker this weekend with my blogging. That is why I am combining yesterday and today. 

I have been trying to think of a recipe to share and the only thing I can really think of is a dish I made up on the fly one night a few months ago for dinner. I needed something sort of quick because Brian had to go to the gym and it couldn't be a heavy dinner so here is what I came up with.

Ingredients:

3 chicken breasts (I prefer boneless and skinless)

1 can of green enchilada sauce (the larger can)

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika

1/2 cup graded cheese

Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Get a skillet hot and add some olive oil to the skillet (or whatever kind of oil you use for cooking)

Season the chicken breasts with the seasonings listed above.

Then you are going to brown the chicken breasts on both sides don't cook completely through

Once browned pour the can of green enchilada sauce over the chicken and put cheese on top of your chicken breasts

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes (if your skillet is oven safe) If not you will need to put the chicken in a baking dish.

Presto the dish is finished. When you serve it make sure to put some of the sauce over the chicken. 

Trust me ladies this is a fabulous and easy dinner

You can make rice, beans or maybe fried potato's go with this for side dishes.  I really like the fried potato's because you can put the sauce over the potato's too.

I hope you try it sometime because you won't be disappointed.  I am sure most of you will need more chicken than I use because you have kids, but I am cooking for two and the larger can of enchilada sauce will be plenty for larger families.

This is late today because Brian and I spent the day with our nephew/godson Johnathan.  We took him the the park to feed the ducks and to play at the playground.  After that we came home and played Wii and watched Handy Manny.  Of course one of his favorite things to do is to play pretend so we were pretending to be robots.  He is a riot and I absolutely love spending time with him.  We wouldn't be good Godparents if we didn't give him a bunch of candy and soda! 

Let me tell you I am freakin exhausted! Between the sun and all the running around I did in our house.  I guess this is good training for us when we are finally blessed with a child.

Here's a picture a of me and Johnathan when we went to California.  Just thought I'd share so you can see what a cutie he is.