Insurance companies are a bitch

It was a bad bad phone conversastion that I may or may not go into later. Up until that conversation, winter here had been moving along amazingly well. I was making ginger bread men, my husband was stuck in a couple day long period of complete adoration for me and all the kids were healthy.....xmas seanon was looking damn fine. Then I got the call this afternoon from a collections agencies about a med bill that we were in the process of contesting with our insurance company. Now if we don't pay the whole thing off by the end, of the month its going " down on our permant record" Oh yeah. The collections company called Sean before they did me.....woops. So somtime after lunch I got the completely enraged Sean call. I tend to deal with these things in a much more mellow way though and after my intial panic I realize we'll survive and I keep on taking steps. So I kept making cookies, ginger bread men with coffee frosting ( pics later) and then I threw myself into making spicy Italian meatballs covered in homemade marinara which is currently sizzling in the oven and smelling so good. Sandia was complaining about her head hurting and I realized that out of nowhere she had a 101.8 degree temp. Oh what one phone call can do, I will of course keep blaming anything that goes wrong with our week/end on that call cause we were headed to a beautiful place family tempermantly speaking. oh whatever, I'll try to come back and post photos later. Wish us luck dealing with the medical mess Sean's insurance company has created for us. Love and hugs everyone.

thanksgiving, winter and beyond!

First of all, thanksgiving! Wow. I managed to not take a single picture once all the final cooking was done. Not a poic of our guests, our table or our fat bellies afterward. But here are plenty of pics of the pre cooked fun.

Apple pear pie

Pumpkin made from my own puree and pecan ( my fav)

Homemade cranberry sauce still steaming

the green beans and red pepper that would later be cooked with bacon and garlic. Yum

The prime rib roast. I made ( thanks to my dad) a garlic rosemary salt rub, and this year I added alittle red chile because I can't get enough. I have to say......double fantastically yummers.

The spuds ready to go in the oven. I purchased 3 or 4 packs of butter especially just for this dinner. Ha!

The old style sweet potatoes with the marsh on top.

This is the next day. We were finally almost done digesting from the night before and decided to go out and have some fun. Boo likes to help daddy.

They were attempting to eat my snow fort.

She thinks she's real funny

Our snow man

snow angels

that snow man spontaniously spawned another smaller version of itself. Kinda creepy

Ah Brother and sister, sledding and talking of something very serious I'm sure

Denali blue eye

Cousin Sara. The girls had a blast out sledding with their cousin Sara. We couldn't have asked for a better time unless there was hot cocoa and a flask involved.

Daddy got his work out. I can still hear Elsie yelling "AGAIN"

Then we got our xmas tree. We had to be patient and wait for Denali to get homw to decorate it.

After we did there was of course much dancing.

and hugging, this is a before the decorating tree shot but whatever you get the point.

Our little tree with my mostly handmade decorations. Looking at this I realize I have much more work to do making more.

Our stockings. Yay. Let the madness begin. This is such a crazy holiday. I was getting relly bitter about it before the kids came along and now I am happily back in the christmas spirit of love and insanity. My only wish Is that we could be closer to my side of the family. I miss you all so much. Love and hugs.

blue monday

Alright, Its been a crappy weekend. Today was not shaping up to be much better....but this is what I suggest. Hang with some princesses. Their always good for some smiles.

Make some ultimate comfort food. I wanted mashed potatoes and homemade chips. This goes back to my high school days, I was over at some chicks house who I didn't like but my friends all did. She brought out some leftover mashed potatoes and some crinkle chips. I don't ever talk to that girl anymore and I'm okay with not liking her now but man I will never forget some good buttery spuds and chips. This and the princesses really helped imrove my mood.

Then get out some paper sit on the floor with the girls and color. Forget about the dishes and the laundry and color.I'm not all better but alittle. It doesn't help that I have to go to work tonight and then start really planning for a thanksgiving dinner I don't really want to cook in the first place. I'm kinda crappy that way myself. If we're fighting around the holidays the first thing I want to do is throw the holidays out the window. I don't like portraying a happy face when I don't have one, but I think they call that selfish right?! So tomorrow the dinner planning. ugh. Hoping everyones day is better than mine.

my day yesterday or Lazy mama tartan

After dropping Denali off at school we had to start getting ready for some friends to come over. Soooo it was time for a bath. They usually play some variation of JAWS, with sharky attacking and reeking havoc on all sorts of helpless polly pocktes. We have alot of fun

After that we cleaned the house, kinda, and started cooking. This is my lazy mama apple tartan. Basically you slice up some apples and lay them in a heavily BUTTERED dish

And this is where the lazy and cheap come in. You take one of those .99 cent boxes of cake mix and add some honey and more cinnamon to it

Once the mix is ready just leave it alone in the bowl and move on. Take about 1 cup of sugar and about 1/2 cp of H2O and dissolve it over high heat. Don't stir it just swirl your pan. Keep swirling until it turns a beautiful amber color. Don't underestimate how long this part of it takes. You'll want to walk away but trust me....don't do it. Once it starts turning color it'll go in a flash.

Heres that color

Dump it all over your apples

Put the cake mix over that. There will be mix left over but just put it in the fridge. I made pumpkin muffins for breakfast for the girls with mine this morning. So put that in the oven pre heated at 350 and bake for about 35-45 min or you know until its done. I always use the toothpick trick. If it comes out clean its done.

But....in the mean time while its baking you might as well fry up some bacon. It is going to be brunch after all and everything really is better with bacon.

Heres The lazy tartan, Sure I bet all homemade is better but sometimes things just need to be quick and dirty right.

On a complete side note...heres my kitchen. I ripped all my upper cabinet doors off. I should have gone through and actually organized my stuff before snapping this pic but...we all know the chances of that happening ever are slim to none. Anyways, we ate bacon and apple cake and drank tea and coffee and let kids run around screaming and it was great. Today, cold, leftovers and the whole family at chuck-e-cheese for Denali's school night fundraiser. chuck-e-cheese = parental hell.