Presents Galore!

Twas the night before Christmas... Logan wore the Santa hat for nearly two weeks straight including to bed, but I would only let him wear it to school on the last day before vacation.


Santa has been here!


"I got more Hot Wheels than I can count but my Hot Wheels over the door organizer still isn't full!"


Notice that Santa ate all his milk and cookies!


And one of my favorite gifts... cold hard cash!


Are there more Hot Wheels in there?


Future West Virginia Student!


Logan got a letter in the mail from Santa a few days before Christmas. In it Santa said that he saw the elves working on a very special gift for him. Logan is convinced that a set of golf clubs is the best gift he could have ever gotten!


It was a great day. Charles and I gave each other some very practical gifts like a blender (to replace the two identical ones we have that barely work), a frying pan (when I said to a man in the store that I was going to give it to my husband, he was convinced that I was going to hit him over the head!) and we all got stainless steel water bottles so no more plastic bottles allowed!

It's Snowing!!!!!!

Snow is a very rare thing here. The last time it snowed was Christmas Eve (yeah, perfect timing!) of 2003. It was very light and only lasted about an hour. We were out to eat when Dad and Nan were here. The cars were dusted and it was mostly gone by the time we got home. It was very exciting.

Well it has been snowing here since this afternoon, lightly but constant and we are expecting it to continue into the night! Now I am wondering about school tomorrow. This would be no big deal in most of the states but here it could be disastrous since the ground is wet and much of the area is expected to stay below freezing all night. Houston in general does not have resources to take care of snowy or icy roads.

Logan thinks this is the greatest thing ever!



When the bus pulled up the kids had all the windows down and stuck their arms and heads out when the bus stopped to let Logan off. They were very loud and having a great time!



Logan is collecting it off of my car and making ice balls to throw at Charles.



This is my car later in the evening. Crazy! Hard to believe it will be 75 this weekend!

THE NEXT MORNING - The snow on the ground was all gone, but on everything else it had all turned to ice. School is on time in our area but not in the areas I work in. We got 1" of snow and parts of Houston got 2.5"!! Traffic in Houston is a nightmare. Luckily I head the other way. But I have a light day and will probably start late just to avoid any sitting in traffic. They said we may do this all again next week!

Free Christmas Songs

Check out Amazon for a free daily Christmas song download through Christmas Day! I was able to download all five songs listed as of today to iTunes.

We Like To Move It!

This will make you smile!
(click the enlarge box to get the full effect.)

Soup Night!

I have been feeling like soup lately. It has gotten cooler and I need to free up some freezer space for Holiday stuff. This is my favorite soup recipe and I make enough to freeze some and have at a later time.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

6 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 (6 inch) corn tortillas, coarsely chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 onion, chopped
1 (29 ounce) can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 bay leaves
6 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
5 boneless chicken breast halves, cooked


In a large stock pot heat oil. Add tortillas, garlic, cilantro and onion. Saute for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and bring to a boil. Add cumin, chili powder, bay leaves and chicken stock. Return to a boil, reduce heat to medium and add salt and cayenne. Simmer for 30 minutes remove bay leaves and stir in chicken. Heat through and serve.


Now, I used to cut up everything and it took forever, especially shredding the chicken. But with the food processor I got this summer this soup was much faster to make. I cut up the tortillas with a knife and threw in the pot. I put the onion, garlic and a couple handfuls of cilantro in the processor and zap... Done! Started to cook those while I threw in a big bag of thawed homegrown tomatoes into the processor and zap...into the pot. Then cut the chicken breasts into quarters and into the processor zap... Done. It was that quick. And I am sure it will be yummy!

Charles is outside starting to build our new arbor/patio. It should be wonderful. Now if we can just figure a way to get rid of the masses of mosquitoes, I might acturally get out there to use it!