The best chicken parm ever.

As you probably could have guessed, Valentine's Day was pretty low key at our house. We made a yummy dinner and just hung out with the girls, and may or may not have been "sharing" Gracen's candy from her Valentine's party at school. :) Dinner was low key, and turned out even better than I imagines. It's been so long since I've posted a recipe, and you won't want to miss this one I promise.

There are a million different versions of chicken parm out there on the interwebs, but I try to keep mine as simple and tasty as possible. When I found this recipe, it definitely piqued my interest in the simple factor. Seriously 3 ingredients, and about 2 minutes to prep and then put in the oven.

Ingredients (ok i lied, 4 ingredients including the chicken):

• chicken
• 1/4 C parm cheese
• 1/2 C sour cream
• italian bread crumbs

Directions:

Put the chicken in a baking dish. Mix the parm cheese and sour cream in a bowl, and then spread over the chicken. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes and you're donezo! The Mr. said this was the best chicken he ever had, and was actually serious. Gracen ate ALL of it, and asked for more. Girlfriend has never, and I'm serious when I say never, eaten all of her chicken unless it was chicken nuggets, and even then she does it hesitantly. So you could say I was very pleasantly surprised with this dish. We made roasted asparagus to go with it, that Gracen picked out at the grocery store. Put it in the oven at the same time as the chicken, and we had an amazing dinner in 25 minutes. Everyone ate it, and liked if not loved it. I'm still sort of in disbelief.

Seriously make it this week. You won't regret it I promise.

Due Date

Today is a very bittersweet Valentine's Day. Today would have been my due date. Is it weird to remember your due date? Sometimes I don't know if I remember it so clearly because it's a holiday, or because it was my due date. It's incredibly hard to think that right now, right this very second, we would have been a family of five. That's so crazy! It all feels like it happened an eternity ago, not just a few short months. Sometimes it hurts to remember, but I want to remember. I don't want to go on living our lives like nothing happened, like that sweet little miracle meant nothing. But on the other hand, it's hard to make sure I'm not dwelling on it. Not asking why. God has a plan for all of us, and it's just hard to keep that in the forefront of my mind. I still feel a little pierce in my heart every time I hear of some one new that's expecting, or see a newborn baby at Mass each week. But really now that the girls are a little older, I think I'd feel that way regardless. I get incredibly teary eyed every time Gracen or Hadley mentions wanting another baby brother or sister. Which oddly enough happens quite frequently. Maybe they subconsciously remember us telling them? Parenthood is one tough business. This falls into the category of one topic that no parenting book out there can or does prepare you for.

I'm actually kind of glad my due date was on Valentine's Day. A day that's totally devoted to love. Reminding me of the overabundance of love I have in my life, an incredible husband, and two little blue-eyed blonde miracles I have been blessed with already. Only seems kind of appropriate.

A holiday recap (part one)

While I know it's almost Valentine's day, 2013 has been jam packed for us. So I haven'e quite been able to update as much as I'd like. So I'm just now getting around to post about the holidays.  #blogfail.

Thanksgiving came and went, and not very many photos were taken. We headed North to Des Moines, and enjoyed great food, great family and of course great shopping. Black Friday shopping is a long standing tradition in my family, and this year was no different. Well not entirely different. We started Thanksgiving night this year! I know we're those cray-cray people. And while I DO NOT AGREE with stores making their employees work on the holiday, I hypocritically joined in on the festivities. At 10pm at least, that's after all the feasts. That's how I'm justifying it anyways.

Standing in line at Target, wrapped all the way around the bulding. It was quite the experience.

December was another full month for us, thank goodness for pictures to remember it all. The girls were thoroughly spoiled, and we had lots of fun with friends and family.

 

The girls were so excited to help put up the Christmas tree and decorations. We had a ball dancing to Christmas music and looking at all our favorite ornaments we've collected over the years. We have a purple and silver theme, but we have a few special ornaments we've gotten as gifts over the years with sentimental value that we add. Eventually we'll have 2 trees up, one classically decorated and one with all our special ornaments :)

Gracen's Christmas program is one of my favorite parts of going to a Catholic School. She was an angel this year, and she practiced every day, all day for a couple weeks. It was so precious! Unfortunately, all the pics are blurry/bad lighting. Inside the Church just does not make for a good photo op. We do have it all on video, but I'll spare you :) Aunt Jaime got to come and watch this year, and then we had cookies and punch afterwards! At 11:30am.... right before lunch.... awesome idea...





















After her program Aunt Jaime and I took the girls down to crown center to play at Crayola land and to see Santa! We were all so excited, and were going to stop at Fritz's, where they deliver your food on a train, for lunch first. Hadley woke up with a cold, so we made sure to pack up on kleenex. When we sat down for lunch Gracen kept complaining that her ear hurt. Well we didn't know if it really did, or if she was just trying to get in on the sympathy that Hadley was receiving. Lunch was rough. They didn't want to eat hardly anything, and it was inching in on nap time. So since no one was feeling well, we ate what we could and headed down to Santa. The beauty of going on a week day is no line! We walked right in and Gracen hopped on his lap. Hadley was still very hesitant. Which is funny, becuase since about Halloween time she'd been prepping herself for this visit. She would tell us how she was ready to go see Santa and sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas. It didn't really help that she wasn't feeling well, So this is the best shot we got.

This year the girls asked Santa for flashlights. You read that right, flashlights. It made me laugh, and Santa found it quite humorous as well. He kept saying are you sure that's all? Yup just a flashlight please! Thanks! and then they hopped right down. Last year they asked for toothbrushes (and Santa/Uncle Adam happily obliged) so this is a step up. But still incredibly humble for a 3 and almost 5 year old :)

After we got home from crown center (and dealt with a meltdown from Gracen and her ear hurting) we got the girls down for naps. When they both woke up, they still weren't feeling well so I begrudgingly headed to the doctor. Luckily our doctor is open late on Mondays. And I say begrudgingly because I really dread going to the doctor without an appt. Usually it goes one of two ways - they either tell you you're over reacting and send you home (and still charge you and outrageous amount) and make you feel bad for dragging them out for nothing, or they tell you oh yes this is really bad and make you feel bad for waiting so long. This was in the latter category. We really went for Hadley who started to run a fever, and just had the doctor look at Gracen too since we were already there. Turns out Hadley had the croup and needed a steroid. Seriously the croup still exists? I keep thinking where's Anne of Green Gables when I need her?? Luckily she started to feel better almost right away. When the doc looked in Gracen's ear, that's when she said oh yea this is bad, she's got double ear infections - here comes the guilt trip. But luckily we got our prescription and headed home two hours later. I was just glad this was all happening a week before Christmas, so that we could hopefully all be healthy for when we would be traveling. Two days later we ended up back at the doctor with Hadley, her croup was better, but now she had ear infections as well! Quite an eventful Monday I'd say.

Stay tuned for part 2! And I must say I'm impressed if you made it this far :)