Thanksgiving trip to Illinois!

The kids and I took off on Friday after Thanksgiving and headed to Illinois.  Sadly, Matthew was really sick for the trip.  He had a high fever the night before the flight and we started him on antibiotics because we suspected his cold had turned into an ear infection.  Andrew had a bit of a cold too and we had a pretty rough flight to Illinois--I had my first experience changing a diaper on a plane and my first experience with a crying child during landing.  But, as I always say--once they shut those doors and you take off, you have no choice but to make it to the other side!

Once in Illinois, we had a wonderful time!  On Saturday, the extended family came over (we counted over 50 people) for the 15th Annual M.I.T. (Maggie's Institute of Tortellini).  We all get together Thanksgiving weekend to make our homemade tortellini that we use for Christmas Eve Dinner.  I look forward to this gathering all year.  It's the only time I get to see a lot of my 2nd cousins and my mom's cousins and it is just such a cherished family tradition.  Andrew was pretty excited to have so many cousins to hang out with--13 of his 14 cousins were there!

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Papa working to get Matthew to take a nap so that he's healthy for MIT:

We managed to silence about 30 people to get this little sleeper inside after his walk with Nina:

The food spread for MIT was amazing!  I got a lot of pictures around this table because I spent most of the day happily sampling:

While I was sneaking food, others were hard at work:

Farthest commuter award winner (again)--Katie and Steve here from Zurich!

More snacking...

Relaxing in the Living Room:

"Uncle DJ--Will you be my crane?"  ~Andrew

Post-MIT cousin party--15 of the 16 grandkids were there!

Andrew and Matthew Loved having all their cousins around!

Everyone but DJ's family left the night of MIT.  Here's the 3 remaining cousins the next morning:

After DJ and Dawn left for Baltimore, it was very quiet at my folk's house.  We still enjoyed ourselves and it was nice to get some one-on-one time with the parentals.  

I had to include this last picture.  I share a room with Matthew when we are at my folk's house and I got to see him sleep, which I never get to see at home.  Does it get any sweeter than this?  Butt in the air and his little feet crossed and arms tucked under?  He's like a well-trussed chicken! :)

Save Yourself From...

canned cranberry sauce this Thanksgiving!  Unless you love the lines around the texture-less cranberry sauce that makes that oh-so-appetizing sound as it slides out of the can, please try my treasured family recipe for cranberries this Thanksgiving.  It's not too late and they don't take long--I promise you will not regret the decision!

My Great-Grandma's Thanksgiving Cranberries 

Ingredients:
-2 large (or 4 small) packages cherry Jell-O
-1 to 1.5 cups sugar (my grandma used just over 1 cup)
-2 cups boiling water
-3 cups cold water
-1 lb cranberries
-2 oranges (including rind-no seeds)
-2 small (tuna-sized) cans of crushed pineapple
-1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:
1. Add 2 cups boiling water to sugar and jello and stir until dissolved.
2.  Add remaining water
3.  Grind cranberries in a food processor
4. Add orange (including rind), and Walnuts (unless you bought them already chopped fine) in a food processor.
5.  Add cranberry mixture and pineapple to Jell-O.
6.  Chill in the refrigerator overnight.

I already got my batch done for tomorrow!  Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving blog readers!

Another Recipe

Ingredients:
-1 wheel barrow
-1 small shovel
-Melting snow on the ground

Directions--throw the young one in the stroller with a blanket and a toy helicopter while the older one goes out on a mission to collect a sample of snow from everyone on the block.

No one added to the mess in the house or asked for a snack for 45 whole minutes...

One of Our Favorite Dinners

As a stay-at-home mom, I often feel like I spend 90% of my day prepping, cleaning, or planning for our next meal/snack.  So, it seems only fitting that I'd occasionally blog about recipes that are big hits.  Here's one that I haven't made in a while, but made for tonight and remembered how much we love it!  For added nutrition, I threw in mushrooms and it was a great addition.  I'm thinking some artichoke hearts in here would work great too.

Chicken and Sun-dried tomato Pasta

Ingredients:

-9 oz jar sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil

-1 lb boneless & skinless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips (we once made a vegetarian version of this and substituted portobello mushrooms--worked great)

-3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed

-3/4 cup cream (I probably do closer to a full cup)

-2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil

-1 lb penne pasta

-2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

Directions:

1.  Drain the sun-dried tomatoes, reserving the oil.  Thinly slice the sun-dried tomatoes.

2.  Fill a pot with salted water and get your noodles cooking.

3.  Heat a saute pan until very hot, add 1 tablespoon of the reserved oil and swirl it to coat the side of the pan.  Stir-fry the chicken in batches, adding more oil when necessary.  

4.  Return all the chicken to the pan and add the garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and cream.  Simmer gently for 4-5 minutes.

5.  Add the chicken mixture to the noodles, add the basil, and stir until mixed well.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve topped with the toasted pine nuts and freshly grated parmesan.

It's a super easy dinner to make and has great flavors!  Steps 1-4 can also be done a day ahead and then all you have to do is cook the noodles and mix it all together at dinner time.  

Fall Fun

We had a great trip to Arches National Park this weekend and I'll post pictures of that soon.  However, I think winter moved in for good while we were gone and I didn't want to miss my chance to post some fun fall pictures.

I headed outside with the boys after nap nearly every day last week to rake up the leaves.  It was beautiful and around 70 every day!

Here's our end-of-fall pictures:

Andrew decided that Matthew's hood was a food processor and he had to load it up to chop up leaves!

 As long as Andrew doesn't hurt him, Matthew doesn't seem to mind his shenanigans.

While Andrew helped me rake, Matthew realized he's big enough to explore the cozy coupe!

Matthew waited until we got a nice big pile to crawl on over and make a big mess.

There's been a ton more cozy reading and coffee time happening in our house because of the chill in the air:

Andrew and Matthew have started playing together so much more!  Here's them having fun being gated off so I could cook dinner one night:

I've found that putting Matthew in the walker when we're outside is a great way to keep him from eating gravel and other fun stuff he finds in the cracks of the sidewalk!  He loves cruising up and down the driveway and down the sidewalk.  He also is pretty obsessed with his cool big brother.

Haha--I wanted to capture 1 picture of Andrew helping me rake, but didn't realize how sad he looked in the picture I got!  Haha--I swear he was really loving helping me! :)

The temperature was 72 last Thursday and now we are looking at under 50 all week and single digits at night!  The ski resorts are opening tomorrow and it looks like fall may be done and winter here to stay!  

Boo!

Andrew was very excited to get to walk door to door to get candy.  He made it for a good 30-45 minutes.  We headed home and he had just as much fun answering the door to see trick-or-treaters at our house.  He'd answer the door and yell "TRICK OR TREAT!" at the kids before they had a chance to say anything.

Our Halloween:

Pumpkin Carving--something you get all excited to do with the kids and then spend the entire time telling them they can't touch anything because the knife is too sharp.  Hm.  We did try to get Andrew to help clean out the seeds, but he was not at all interested in touching the slime.

All ready to head out trick-or-treating!  Andrew as Bob the Builder and Matthew the spider.

We got a kick out of watching Matthew crawl in his costume.

Stopped for a second on the candy hunt for a picture to capture the beautiful mountains in the background of our neighborhood.  And yes, that's a Mormon church.  We do live in Utah, after all.