Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Creamy Chicken Tacos/Emily's Birthday Dinner/Breaking Bad

Normally about once a week our friends, Grant and Emily, come over for dinner or we go to their apartment for dinner.  Em and I are Nashvegas BFFs! :)  We live about a mile apart so it is super easy and always lots of fun!  Last night they came to our place to eat and to celebrate Em's birthday!  She turned 26 on Sunday!  

Dinner was super delicious and super easy!  I found a recipe on Pinterest and wanted to try it out--Creamy Chicken Crockpot Tacos!

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
1 package taco seasoning
16 ounces salsa
1/2 cup brown minute rice
1 can drained black beans
8 ounces sour cream

Directions:
Place chicken breasts in the crockpot, sprinkle with taco seasoning and pour salsa on top. Cover and cook on high for 4-6 hours.  One hour before serving, shred chicken with two forks, add rice (uncooked), black beans, and sour cream.  Stir, cover for the last hour. 

That was it!! It took no time at all, the chicken shredded so easily, and it was fantastic!  Definitely going to be making this again--heck Curt could even make it for me :)  I served it with our new favorite salad--Southwest salad/slaw kit.  Once again, super easy and really delicious!

After dinner the boys cleaned up! Curt is actually really good about doing the dishes, yay! And then we enjoyed some ice cream!!  While we ate our ice cream we watched Breaking Bad.  It is our favorite show that we all watch together! Unfortunately it only has 5 episodes left in the entire show!  Bummer.  To finish the night we played some cards.  We are addicted to Hand and Foot (thank you Grandma and Grandpa for getting us hooked!).  The boys may have won last night but we will get them next time!

I'm not sure why some of the pics are out of order, hopefully next time I can figure that out :)

Shredding the chicken--literally took less than 5 minutes!  And I always use a crockpot liner.  Makes the clean up so much easier!!


I used light sour cream to make it a little healthier.

Now it just needs to cook for an hour. Yum!

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3--I really slaved over it if you can't tell ;)
Curt and Grant looking at phone stuff on the computer...they do this 24/7!!! Ahhh!! 
Em and I :)
Proof about the phone stuff!  Em and I don't even understand what half of the stuff is that they talk about!

And the finished product!  YUMMY!!  Mom-you really should make this :) No weird ingredients and really tasty!







Monday, August 26, 2013

A trip to see baby AMELIA!

This past weekend, we traveled to Springfield, IL to visit Beth (Curt's sister) and her husband Ryan, and their newest addition Amelia! I picked up Curt from his rotation Friday evening with the car loaded and a fresh tank of gas. We hit the road for our 6 hour drive to Springfield.  

Surprisingly we only stopped once! We arrived a little after 11 o'clock, saw baby Amelia, and held her for the first time!!! We visited Springfield about a month after she was born but she was in the NICU because she was born at 28 weeks.  At that time we were only allowed to touch her little hands (and I mean little).  It was so awesome and amazing to see how much she has grown and how God has protected her this entire time.  She truly is a  miracle!  She now weighs over 8 lbs!!! 

Saturday morning we woke up and Ryan, Curt, and I went and hit some golf balls, they attempted the batting cages, and we played some tennis.  After that we headed home to eat some lunch and then the whole gang (Curt's parents and grandma were also visiting!) headed to the park for a little walk and some ice cream!  The walk was so enjoyable, but it did start to get a little hot--and I was starting to smell really bad.  The fam was nice enough to tell me that they didn't smell me, but I don't think I believed them--I could smell myself!  We took showers, played some cards and then headed to dinner at a local pizza place!  The pizza was deep dish and super delicious!

Sunday morning we woke up, cuddled with Amelia for a while and then headed to lunch at a new local restaurant.  After we ate we went to Scheels (it is like a mix between Dick's and Bass Pro).  Curt was in heaven! This place was huge and like a little town inside--it even had a ferris wheel inside that you could ride!  We then headed back and had to load up to start our drive back home.  It was so much fun getting to hang with Curt's family.  We haven't seen them in a while and it was so great to visit and spend time together!

Amelia is the best little baby!  She just trooped around everywhere we went and of course slept a lot!  But she is soooo precious!  We miss her already and can't wait to travel to Springfield again so we can cuddle some more!  Love us some baby Amelia! 

Baby Amelia during our walk in the park--can't let sun get in her little eyes!



Of course Ryan and Curt couldn't just walk.  They had to play frisbee the entire way :)

Everybody eating our ice cream-minus Debbie for taking the pic! Thanks Debbie :)

This is my fav pic of the entire trip! This is how you have your surgeon dad trim your fingernails--of course
put on your surgeon gear to have a better look. I was honored to be his nurse to assist with the procedure!
The procedure was a success--Amelia slept thru the entire thing :)

Baby Amelia!!

And this is how we spent a lot of our trip--taking pictures of Amelia


Curt and I at the local pizza place



This was Amelia's first hat when she born! LOOK HOW TINY!!!!
Amelia now looks like a giant compared to that hat and she is still only 8 lbs!



O yeah and Curt also caught a giant fish during the weekend..ha! This was at Scheels--lots of photo ops :)