The Children's Place Sale

What's cookin' at the Ditto's Diner

I was thinking that I had put the soup ladle up for a few months but this afternoon it got quite chilly and I decided that soup and cornbread was for dinner. I actually am not a big soup eater so this means that the following recipe is really worth trying. The recipe was passed on to me by a friend but can't you claim a recipe after you have made it several times and altered it a bit?

Chicken Tortellini Soup

Saute: 1/4 c. onion and 1/2 c. celery in 2 T. water (I actually totally skipped this step)

Stir in: 2 c. milk
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken broth or 2 c. chicken broth
4 boneless chicken breasts, cooked and cut up
1/4 tsp. basil
1/8 tsp. pepper
garlic salt to taste

Heat above and add one package of frozen tortellini (or ravioli noodles are good too) and cook according to the package.

Optional additions: 1 shredded carrot, or steamed broccoli, or steamed zucchini, or corn

Bikin' at the Greenway

Friday night we decided to enjoy the good weather and go for a picnic at a park that runs along a local river with some friends of ours. The only trick is you can't park your car at the park--you get to walk or ride your bike. It was quite the chore loading up four bikes in our minivan. Luckily our friends brought their tandem stroller for Cooper. We had a fun evening together!

Our Easter Weekend

We took this shot after church on Easter Sunday. As you can tell the lighting wasn't that good -- my legs are actually much tanner in real life : )
Saturday we went to a fun Easter Egg Hunt hosted by the Kiwanis club. The kids had a good time. Alex was super lucky and won a HUGE Easter basket full of fun toys. The whole family ended up benefiting from his luck. Also, I am gathering that some people have shame that their kids gather up their Easter eggs into a plastic grocery bag. Our kids were just lucky that they weren't sportin' a Goodwill bag.
Alysee was a bit sad at the community hunt because parents were not allowed to help the kids collect their eggs. She was a bit intimidated by the mass number of strangers. Don't worry though, those huge tears inspired all her brothers to share their loot.Sunday afternoon we had a little hunt at our house. Coop loved the excitement of it all. We had a wonderful day at church. A woman sang a beautiful song called "I walked where Jesus walked." It was gorgeous and really touched my heart. We had widowed friend of ours, Helen Trimble over for dinner. We all chowed up the grilled tomato basil chicken, rice-a-roni, rolls, strawberries, broccoli, and strawberry shortcake for lunch. It was a wonderful day!

Spring Break Fun!

Alex and Tyler just finished a three day baseball camp with one of the local high school baseball teams. They had a great time and practiced a lot of fundamental baseball skills. Having two other friends there made it even more fun. I think this is the first Spring Break that we have stayed home.

This afternoon we are off to the park and the old fashion soda fountain to meet some friends. I don't think we have gone a day this week without having friends over. We've gone to storytime at the bookstore, played with friends from out-of-town, went to the library, and lots of jumping on the trampoline. Tomorrow the kids have the day planned with friends and then maybe we'll do a movie/pizza night. Saturday we'll probably hit a community Easter Egg hunt or two. Any fun plans for the rest of you?

What's in a name?

I've been meaning to share a little story for quite a while about Cooper. Even before Cooper was born we were calling him "Cooper the Pooper Scooper." Nice, I know. Several weeks ago I was at the church setting up for the Blue and Gold Banquet for the cub scouts. Cooper was crawling around on the gym floor. I was just about finished setting everything up when I glanced at Coop and noticed he was chewing on something. (side note: our other kids have all been pacifier babies and really haven't had the problem with putting everything in their mouths. Coop is a thumb sucker and seems to put everything in his mouth.) Anyway, I did the ol' finger sweep in his mouth and stuck to the end of my finger was a nice hard brown clump of something. I sniffed, like any good mom would do, and readied myself to vomit. IT WAS POOP! I ran him to the bathroom trying to wash off and disinfect the brown poop slobber. Then I noticed he was STILL chewing and ENJOYING another piece of poo. I ended up having to strip Coop down to his skivvies and take off my sweater which also now was soaking up poop slobber in order to rid ourselves from the horrendous smell. I think it was probably dog poop from someones shoe because it was so hard.

My thought on all of his is that Coop has lived up to his name. Shall we put in for a name change?

Inground Trampoline Finally Finished