Good Milk Comes from Happy Cows

...and happy cows come from California. I've been thinking as I've been nursing Gracie this weekend that good milk comes from happy moms, and happy moms come from California! :) (I'm sure all you non-Cali moms produce good milk too....) Anyway, that's how it feels. It's been amazing to me how easy it is to forget. I love being here. It is so refreshing to wake up to blue skies and a palm tree right outside my window. It's so nice to have some moisture in the air. It's especially wonderful to dig my toes into the sand and let the waves wash over my feet, however cold the water is. I love California! It just feels so good to be here!

We have had a great week so far. On Wednesday, we went down to UCLA so Rob could interview with their MBA admissions people. (He did a great job, by the way). Then we stopped at Diddy Riese for some tasty ice cream sandwiches.There was horrific traffic headed back North, so we decided to take the coast route and got there just in time to experience a gorgeous sunset. I snapped some photos as we drove, they just don't do justice to the experience of being there, but here they are:I felt like the paparazzi driving through Malibu with my camera out the window snapping away. It was sort of fun! :)

We had a delightful Thanksgiving. It started with the boys putting the Christmas lights up on the house.

I am glad Rob didn't die...

Then we drove to Santa Barbara to Ellie and John's for dinner. My favorite part of the day was getting to walk on the beach with the family. This is one of my favorite traditions - going for a walk on the beach on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is just amazing to enjoy Mother Nature's beauty on the holidays. This was also Grace's first trip to the beach. Have no fear, it was a well-documented milestone:
It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without the turkey and it was fantastic! My cousin Terrell barbecued it on a spit. It was smoky and delicious. The whole dinner was fantastic and it was fun to visit with family that we don't get to see very often since we live so far away!

Gracie must be getting good milk, because she sure has had a happy mommy this week!

The Thrill of the Hunt

The Tanger Outlet Center in Park City used to run an ad that said "It's the thrill of the hunt...more than amazing deals...Tan-ger Out-let Cen-ter...It's the thrill of the hunt!" Rob and I have a little tradition wherein we shop on Black Friday. While we usually find some great deals, I think that Tanger has nailed it. Going out on Black Friday is for the thrill of the hunt. We did it again this year, but this time was in California, where people are apparently nuts for a deal (but thankfully not as nuts as they are in New York...). We headed to the Outlet Mall at 10:00 pm on Thursday. Holy cow, there were a lot of people. The night had an inauspicious beginning when we were ticketed for stopping for 1 minute in a fire lane - that lame-o cop! Then while we spent 15 minutes in Ralph Lauren our car battery died from the lights being left on (remember Mom, this is not the car that has lights that turn off automatically...). It was all up hill from there, and really how could it not be? There was a gigantic line at Banana Republic.

Although we waited in line for almost an hour to get in to Banana Republic, I appreciated them for it. It was nice to be able to shop without the crush of people and tourists assaulting my olfactory senses with their less than ideal hygiene. I am constantly amazed at the people who travel to our little ole Camarillo Outlets. After Banana Republic was finished at 2 am, we were tired and ready to go. Would you believe that the line to get into the Gap was even longer than the Banana line? Thankfully we met some BYU grads in line at Banana who were so kindly willing to jump our car. Even at 2 am there were hoardes (not exaggerating) of people coming in to the mall. There was even a little tiff over the parking spot that we weren't even completely out of while we were jumping the car. The whole experience was amazing to say the least.

The best part was that we went to the Gap tonight (Saturday) - yeah, they were fully stocked with all the same deals they had the other night, just without the insanity. I felt pretty good about that.

Recipe Sidebar

After I posted about all my fun cooking and freezing adventures, Andrea suggested that I share my recipes. So I am going to add some of my favorite recipes to my sidebar. I'm having fun with trying out freezer recipes, so I hope you will too! I love trying new recipes, so if you have any recipes to share, please let me know and I'll post them. Happy Cooking!

If you don't get me out soon, I'll GNAW my way out of here!

Grace likes to chew. On anything.

Adventures in Cooking

It's been way too long since I've posted, but life just got a little nuts. I'll tell you about it. We have recently started budgeting again and man, does it feel good to know where all the money is going. While we're not amazing at it yet, we're working on it. Right before we got married we listened to the audio book by Dave Ramsey called Total Money Makeover. I think it has changed our married life in ways we will never know. I highly suggest it to anyone interested in this sort of thing. I digress, so anyway, we've been budgeting again (we took a hiatus over the summer when things were crazy with Grace being born, we shouldn't have, but we did) and the area that we most often bust is food...what does that tell you about us? :) So with my new found hobby of couponing, I've decided to stick with the food budget tighter. With that and a little inspiration from Money Saving Mom last week I decided to start making freezer meals that are homemade, but that require little or no preparation besides warming in the oven. Little did I know that this is an exhausting venture, especially when you have a small child that will only nap when it's most inconvenient for you! Last week I made 4 lasagnes, 6 meals of winter white chili, and 6 meals of spaghetti. I was so proud! Then I finished off the week by cooking my first turkey and it wasn't so bad! Whoo-hoo! The last one I tried with my old roommate was a distaster (good story, ask sometime - this was the roommate who lit the kitchen on fire...). The worst part by far is the clean up. This is what my kitchen looked like when I was finished with the lasagne day:

It may not look so bad, I mean it's only a few loads of dishes, right? Wrong! You should see the countertops! It's embarassing! Needless to day, I'll be doing a repeat of my super scary Halloween mopping!

This week, I'm planning on adding to the frezer stock a few meals worth of homemade turkey noodle soup (from the turkey adventure on Saturday) and a couple of chicken pot pies. I think that will be it for me until the New Year, but I'm proud of doing that much. It really makes me feel good to do things like this and it's helping with the budgeting by buying things on sale and using them!

Gracie Loves Her Uncle Brian

Tonight we had dinner with our nieces and spouses and ishes (the ones who are related by marriage). Gracie loves her Uncle Brian.

Isn't he handsome? Ladies, good news - he is single!

Colleen and baby Kylee.

We Blew Through Iowa

As you probably know, Rob is in the process of applying to MBA schools. The University of Iowa really, really wants him to go there and offered to fly the whole family back to check it out in hopes of swaying our choice.

As we flew in we flew over a big thunderstorm. It was cool to watch the lightning bolts from the plane, but kind of scary as it reminded me of all good action-adventure movies where a plane goes down... It was awesome! The weather was nice when we got there on Wednesday evening, but the storm soon blew in on Thursday morning. It didn't last long, but we did see a tornado!
This tornado's name was Dorothy. It was a nice tornado and didn't cause too much ruckus. We left on Thursday night and got back late. It was a tornado of a trip, but really fun. Iowa City was really nice much like it's people. And after the storm was over we had beautiful fall weather. It is the quintessential college town. Who knows where we'll end up but, this one is definitely in the running!

Holding the Bottle

Grace has decided to start taking control. Here she is holding the bottle of her milk (mostly) all by herself!