EASTER

We never pass up an opportunity to bake some goodies for holidays. Easter was no different. ^_^ Joley and I made a bunny cake.







Easter was all Joley could talk about for the past couple weeks. She asked all sorts of questions about the Easter bunny and the baskets he delivers. The night before Easter she decided she did NOT want the bunny coming into her room at night, because "that's scary". I guess as a kid I was too excited about the festivities to worry about how creepy it was... Santa coming into the house to leave gifts, the easter bunny leaving candy and baskets, the tooth fairy leaving money and stealing your teeth. I guess when you look at it that way, it is creepy. Leave it to my child to look at it this way. :P So the night before Easter she kept getting out of bed, asking all sorts of crazy questions about the easter bunny. Finally, she had this conversation with my husband:
Joley: Daddy, I want you to make the easter bunny dead.
Jeremiah: What?
Joley: I want you to make him dead.
Jeremiah: Joley, are you saying you want me to kill the easter bunny?
Joley: Yeah.

!!!! Geez. So I promised her that I would stay awake long enough to tell the easter bunny NOT to put the basket in her room, to leave it in the living room. Apparently that was enough reassurance, she went to sleep not long after. Easter morning she came into our room, bright and early, and we went to hunt down her easter basket. That bunny left them in the living room, near the fireplace, just like I told him to do! Good job, easter bunny!





Of course, we had to try out the bubbles!


We got all cleaned up before heading to my dad's house.






Caleb was with his dad for easter morning, but was coming with us to my dad's for easter lunch and an egg hunt, so we brought Caleb's basket over there. Like Joley, he loved all his easter stuff.





Forget the Star Wars Wii game, he was most excited about his new watch!


Caleb and Joley with their cousins, Joseph and Jeremiah. Caleb thought the boys were too cute, all dressed up in suits!


Caleb got a kite from grandma and pawpaw.


Ready to hunt eggs!


Pawpaw let the little ones get a head start...








I see it!!!


All done!


Caleb found the silver prize egg!




Inspecting their loot.


Family ♥


Typical.


Me and the kids with my dad.


Bubble time!

THREE CHEESE BAKED ZITI

This is a recipe I've tweaked to make a quick and easy meal. Of course you can use whatever spaghetti sauce you like, or make your own from scratch, or add onion, peppers, etc... whatever type of spaghetti sauce you like will work well with this recipe. I opt for the easy method, being a working mom and all... fast meals are my BFF!


Ingredients»
24oz spaghetti sauce (I use Bertolli; vidalia onion is my fav)
16oz (1 box) ziti noodles
1lb ground beef
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese, grated


Directions»
{1} Preheat oven to 400*F. Grease a baking dish.


{2} Brown the ground beef. I usually add a few spices.




{3} While the meat is browning, cook the pasta as directed.


{4} Drain the meat once its completely browned, if necessary. Add the spaghetti sauce, brown sugar, and ricotta cheese; mix. Continue to simmer on low to med-low heat.






{5} Once the pasta is done, drain. Add the cooked pasta to the meat sauce.


{6} Spread a layer of the sauce/pasta mixture into the bottom of the baking dish. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese ontop.


{7} Add the remaining sauce/pasta mixture ontop, and sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella cheese, cheddar cheese, and parmesan cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese is completely melted.




Voila! Easy meal and a great alternative to typical, boring spaghetti dinners. I like to serve with fresh steamed green beans and garlic bread. Yum!

SESAME CHICKEN

This is Jeremiah's favorite chinese food dish, so I found a recipe online and tweaked it a bit. I don't batter and fry the chicken, so I like to think its at least a tiny bit healthier. :)

Ingredients»
4-6 chicken boneless, skinless breasts
1/4 of a large yellow onion
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup water
2 tablespoons corn starch
2 tablespoons toasted seasame seeds

Directions»
{1} Cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces. Chop the onion.




{2} Cook the chicken and onion in a skillet until no longer pink in the center.


{3} Mix together honey, soy sauce, water, and corn starch. Whisk until no corn starch lumps appear.


{4} Pour sauce mixture into the skillet with the chicken.


{5} Sprinkle with sesame seeds, cover, and cook about 10 minutes until sauce thickens. Add more corn starch if sauce is too thin... add more water if sauce is too thick.


{6} Once sauce is thickened to your desired level, serve! I usually serve with rice and broccoli.


Voila! Easy meal made in less than 30 mins that the whole family enjoys, even my picky 7 year old! ^_^

FIGURING THINGS OUT

Ok I'm trying to figure this site out better. More than just posting my own entries. I think I've figured out how to "follow" other people's journals as well. Its much different than LJ, oy! I'm definitely missing LJ CUTS on this site. I promise not to spam everyone with a trillion pics again, like I did yesterday LOL! And that was only a portion of the pics I've taken of the past few months... I thought I was being conservative yesterday!

I stayed up entirely too late last night trying to revamp this journal. Once I figured out how to customize my layout, I went nuts trying to make it all pretty. Hopefully this will give me incentive to come back here and update fairly often. :)

LONG OVERDUE UPDATE

Who hit the fast-forward button? Has it really been 3 months since I last updated? Geez. I promise I had have good intentions of keeping this thing current. It’s more important now than ever because we're moving out of state pretty soon and, unfortunately, away from my family. So this will be a great tool to keep everyone in touch with what we're up to. :)

What's happened since I last updated? My photos remind me of the timeline of events, haha. This is going to be one helluva entry. But it’s better than me spamming ya’ll with a million entries for each separate event, right? ;)

We had an ice storm in January. Ice/snow is always exciting for us here in midwest Georgia, because we don't see it often!


My backyard






Valentine's day was great in the Brooks house. We surprised the kids with little treat bags... candy, stickers, a card, and a stuffed animal. They love little surprises!





Jeremiah and I got a date night for Valentine's. I would have been happy with an evening alone with him, but he made it even better by surprising me with a BEAUTIFUL heart-shaped diamond necklace, a nice card with a wonderful note written inside, and a rose. ♥ I had already surprised him with a Nook and cover for Valentine’s day, a few weeks earlier. :) We had a great dinner at Houlihans, which has pretty much become our 'special place' to go whenever we have a date night.





I was in dire need of a haircut. Every year I get it chopped short, then grow it out the rest of the year, and then chop it off again. Not this year! I chopped it all off in January 2010, but for 2011 I decided to grow it out. But I had to get something done to it, it was looking plain, so I got the ends trimmed and added some layers. Not a major change, but noticeable enough (for me at least!).

January 2010


February 2011: Before


February 2011: After


Several of my friends on LJ were doing this, so I made one of those accent videos. Was fun! ^_^ I liked getting to hear everyone's accents. My still pic makes me look like a crazy person. No bueno.



March 16 was our 5 year anniversary! Hooray for milestones. We celebrated by having our first night completely alone, sans kids, since Joley was born 3.5 years ago. My aunt kept Joley overnight for us, and we traveled up to Atlanta to go to Medieval Times. The show was awesome, we had the best time, and afterward we went to see a movie, I am Number Four (I won't bother posting about much of a disappointment that movie was, after reading the book), and then had a great night at a hotel. It was so relaxing, being able to wake up on our own. No alarm clocks. No screaming kids.

Ready for our big night out!




Drinky








It's now mid-April which means we're only a few weeks away from Jeremiah's graduation! He doesn't care to go through the ceremony, but we're having a graduation party for him the following weekend. I'm pretty excited because this is a huge milestone for this family. Jeremiah has worked super hard the past 3.5 years. Going back to school while maintaining a job and family (especially with 2 young kids!) is no easy task, but he's done it and succeeded with flying colors. I'm so proud of him. Now it's close to my turn to return to the classroom. Eeeep! I'm pretty excited about starting this new chapter of our lives. A little scared, but mainly excited.

Caleb is in his 7th season of soccer and doing well. He seems to enjoy it still, but once we move I'm going to ask him if he'd like to consider any other activities. That's always been a possibility here too, of course, but he's always just stuck with soccer. I'm not into watching professional sports, but I love seeing my little man play. :) I sure do hope he grows up and looks back on these moments as fondly as I do.






Caleb turned 7 years old 2 weeks ago. My little April Fool. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 7 years already. The past 7 years have flown by so quickly… what if the next 7 years fly by just as fast? Or even faster? I was told once the kids start school, the years REALLY fly by, and thus far that’s been true. In another 7 years Caleb will be a teenager (eeep!) and starting high school (double eeep!). I don’t even want to think about that. I feel old enough as is. But to celebrate Caleb’s big day, we had a party here at home. He got a bunch of cool toys from family and friends, and even some awesome new clothes. And then that evening his buddy Nick stayed the night. Jeremiah and I took all the kids out for bowling, and then to Blockbuster so they could pick out a movie to watch that night. Since we invited 30+ kids to Caleb’s party and only 1 showed up, we felt bad for him and decided to go ahead and let Caleb put his birthday money towards what he really wanted - a new Nintendo DS. He wanted the DSi XL since it has a huge screen and can take pics and all, so we let him get that. He was so excited and seems to really enjoy it! It’s weird to think of my baby being 7 years old already. Three more birthdays and we’ll be in the double digits! I’ve been a mom for 7 years. That’s nearly a decade! That blows my mind!



I made cupcakes to bring to his school on his actual birthday. He wanted cookies & cream cupcakes. They were delicious!




Enjoying cupcakes at lunch at school.


My baby and me!


The banner I made for his party. He picked out a “camouflage” theme.












His cake was awesome!


Opening gifts










Pinata time!




Caaaandy!


Nick and Caleb playing with Caleb’s new Nerf toys!


Caleb, Nick, and Joley playing Mario Kart


Pin the Tail on the Donkey


On the way to bowling


Bowling




Yesterday we had a free afternoon with nothing planned. Caleb’s been having a great week at school so I took the kids over the Chill for some ice cream. It’s one of those self-serve frozen yogurt places. We love it! They had a “mint chocolate cookie” flavor that tasted like those girl scout cookies! Delicious. Joley kept talking about the Easter bunny, randomly. I remembered they have the Easter bunny at the mall, to visit with and take pics with, so I mentioned it to the kids. Of course they wanted to go. Joley was all excited, talking NONSTOP about seeing the Easter bunny. Then of course, once we got there she freaked out. But she saw Caleb get in the bunny’s lap, so I decided to sit her in his lap despite her hesitance. She screamed “No!” and then as soon as her butt hit his lap, she looked up at him and said “Oh hi Easter bunny!” and was all chatty and happy. So it was just like this: “No! No! No! No! No!.. oh hi Easter bunny!” I wish I had gotten video, it was hilarious! Caleb was acting like he was too old for that mess, but still sat there for Joley’s sake. Of course I bought the pictures, it was too cute. Plus Joley hates being photographed, so I take any opportunity to get a photo of her smiling instead of screaming “No pictures!” LOL! I bought a super cheap package, but still got several prints. Perfect idea to send one to family members inside an Easter card!



Aaaaand that brings us current! Whew! Hopefully I won’t get too terribly behind again. :)