10 Things to Smile about February

I’m a day late and a dollar short… but that’s okay, I’m still liking up with EmmyMom on her monthly mem about 10 things to Smile about February! Because I can and why not! All the cool kids are!

1. I’m still plugging away on my 365 project. No one is really rooting me on, although when I post my daily picture on facebook/instagram I do have people who are rooting for me when they like it. Just makes me feel good and I keep plugging away! Sunday I’ll post all the pics from February but here are the pictures from January

2. We celebrated my grandma’s birthday at Red Lobster. It’s become a yearly tradition. Grandma passed away in 2007 but we still celebrate her birthday every year. My SIL had her baby that same day.

3. I finally made something to display my tickets stubs in after how many years….

4. The little things like smiling because I know it was the wind that closed the gate, but thinking it could be grandpa…

5. Valentine’s Day and seeing friends in time of need (visitations/funerals) and hanging out with other friends. Finally ending the day with my love.

6. Baby girl had her first snow day.

7. Homemade Chicken and Noodles

8. I finally got my Basset Hound!!!

9. Baby girl turned 8 months old. While that makes me sad she’s growing so fast I’m sooo happy that she’s growing!

10. Baby girl started crawling! Now please hold that thought while I go chase her! 🙂

Public Speaking is not my Forte

Circa 2003 Queen Pageant – I was Miss Congeniality

I would have to say we all have downfalls, and one of mine is public speaking. I freeze up. Now I must admit that being in FFA for 4 years in high school did something to change some of that, but I still froze even then.

My freshman year of high school I joined FFA. One thing that FFA does is work on public speaking through many different forms from making you say the Creed in front of the class to actually joining public speaking contests. I never could do it. Nope, I was shy! I did however in the spring that year join a judging team. I wanted to be on the horse judging but if you go to state with any judging team, you can’t go any other year. They wanted me to be on that team later in my career so they convinced me to judge dairy cattle.

I knew absolutely NOTHING about dairy cattle except that milk comes from them and there were Holsteins. From there I knew nothing. Now, I’m not going to toot my horn or anything but I learned a lot and I was pretty darn good at it. The worst part was taking a test and reasons. Reasons are where you go to a person and tell them why you placed a class of cattle the way you did. I could place classes 45/50 or higher (top points is 50) most of the time but to tell someone… nope… I got 20’s on reasons scores (out of 50 again).

Now I have to laugh here because my senior year I was on the livestock judging team. One of the advisors though found out that I didn’t go to state on the dairy cattle team and they didn’t have enough people to make a team so he convinced me to judge dairy cattle at the district contest that year as well. Um… yeah I smoked them, even the people on the team who had studied all season long. And the best part was, the advisor I had my freshman year (she left our department after my sophomore year) was one of the reasons takers I had to give reasons to. Now I didn’t study for any of this my senior year because I was hit up 1 week before district contest to do this… yeah my old advisor was like, dang, you’ve really improved. ha!

Anyway another example of my not being able to talk in public, my junior year I wanted to be on the horse judging team. 4 people make up a team and there were 5 of us trying for 4 spots. I got into my own head and couldn’t give a set of reasons to save my life and didn’t make the team. I could out place any of them but I always lost it giving my reasons why.

They removed the stress of it and I smoked all of them on reasons scores. My advisor asked me where that Nicole was the whole time.

Yup, I’m not a public speaker.

And I have no idea why I’m typing this particular topic today other than I am. I was thinking about it on my drive to class last night. In classes I tend to be reserved. I’m always afraid of sounding stupid so I don’t like to talk in class. Yet especially now you have to as part of your grade so it’s really pushing me to get out of my comfort zone. I survive and sometimes do sound dumb but I can talk.

Truthfully I don’t like to talk in a group of my friends at times because I get so tongue tied and they love to tease me about it. I laugh it off although always feel dumb! I think the one I get teased about the most is saying

I May have been born last night but it wasn’t at night

instead of…

I may have been born at night but it wasn’t last night.

Woops! But just because I’m not a good public speaker, I do try! A lot. I put myself in situations to overcome my fear every day.

So happy Tuesday, I’m going to go read The Lais of Marie de France now for class. Wish me luck, I have to talk about it tonight in class. ugh!

Newest Family Member

On facebook there are many different groups you can be a member of, MANY! So I signed up on a couple of the give and take groups around the area and now I get notifications. Yesterday while I was making Chicken and Noodles for Sunday Night Dinner I jumped on my phone to check facebook (my MIL had baby girl asleep so I didn’t know what to do with myself). I got a notification that a gal I’m friends with on facebook posted in a group Basset Hound Puppies for sale, $20. WAIT, WHAT? I’ve always wanted a Basset Hound so I showed hubby and he told me to contact her. an hour later… we had our newest family member. Now I’m off to clean his dog crate and hopefully get him to quit howling at me. Btw, he needs a name!

When the weather outside is frightful….

Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart

and the fire is so delightful… When there’s no place to go, let it snow let it snow let it snow!

So that is what my front yard looks like and I hear there’s more of this stuff/rain (and cold weather) in the forecast. Then I got a text from hubby yesterday that said he wasn’t feeling the best and baby girl has a snotty nose and ugh! So we made Homemade Chicken and Noodles for Dinner. Oh and Carrots. Those carrots, they’re to die for! Well maybe not die but they are pretty dang good!

Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart
Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart
Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart
Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart
Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart

Oh so you’re asking how I made this? I’m so glad you asked:

Chicken & Noodles with Midwestern at Heart

Cook the chicken:
I did 1 chicken breast per person. Place the Chicken breasts (2 breasts per measurement) in 4 cups of water. Season. I used hubby’s mix which who knows what’s in it but make sure you use salt and pepper. Then 1/2 onion, I grated mine in just so it was incorporated real well. Cook the chicken for about 30 minutes or until it is cooked through. Then pull it out and shred it.

While the chicken is cooking, make the Noodles:
1 egg whisked in with 1 tsp salt. Then add 1 cup flour. Mix well and add 1-3 tbsp (options: cream, milk, water, we used a combination of water & milk). Spread flour on the counter. Knead until it is smooth then roll out cardboard thin. Like as thin as you can. It comes out to around 14″ long and wide… mine was longer than wide. Now cover the noodle dough in flour. Then fold in half and then in quarters then roll up like you would a cinnamon roll. From there cut into 1/4″ strips. Now grandma says from here give 1/2 day to a full day to let them dry… just kidding. She said truthfully it would be better but you don’t need to.

Once the chicken is done and the noodles are done, then place the noodles in the water that you cooked the chicken in. I wound up adding about 1 1/2 cups water back in… maybe just 1 cup water so you don’t have to cook down as much.

So the noodles will be covered in flour, that’s okay, put the noodles/flour in the water and cook. You can add the chicken back in at this time as well, but make sure you’re around to continually stir it, otherwise it will go to the bottom and stick. If you aren’t going to be able to constantly monitor, wait until the last 5 minutes or so and then add the chicken back in. Cook the noodles for about 30 minutes on medium-low to medium heat.

The sauce will thicken up. If the sauce doesn’t taste “chickeny” enough for you, add chicken bouillon to the water and that will help. You can also cook all of this is Chicken Stock/broth in a box if you don’t want to use the water you cooked the chicken in or if you bought a rotisserie chicken from the store.

And as an added perk, make these carrots! YUM!

Ok so these were the baby carrots but you can use whole carrots. Put them in water with a couple tbsp of sugar. Cook 15 minutes at a rolling boil or until they are tender. Then put butter, salt and pepper in a skillet and saute the carrots the last 10 minutes. YUM!

You’re welcome!

Valentine’s Day Part 2

Once we left BassPro hubby and I took off separately from our friends. Hubby wanted to see American Sniper in theaters. Very seldom does he have a movie he just WANTS to see in theater but this was one and we had an opportunity so we took it. OMG! That is one heck of a movie!

Then we went and wandered around the mall for a bit and finally headed to dinner.

Hubby was able to get us reservations at Houlihan’s. Our first time at eating at Houlihan’s was last year when we went on our “babymoon” to Kansas City.

this picture found here

Because we ate at the one in KC, we kind of knew what we wanted already. We started with an appetizer of Classic Spinach Dip. with cheesy lavosh crackers. It was just as good as I remember. ah!

(more…)

Valentine's Day Part 1

Valentine’s Day this year was a little different than normal for lots of reasons… one of which was baby girl was with us for the first time! This was her first Valentine’s Day.

The night before we had a photo shoot with her in a Valentine’s Day outfit then sent the picture off to be printed and bought photo frames for all the grandparents as a Valentine’s Day present.

While I worked on the grandparents presents, hubby put together his own presents for my mom, his mom, and 3 of our friends we’d be seeing the next day. They each got a chocolate rose and 3 different types of chocolates in their bag.

Then it was time to head off to dream land but not before I set out baby girls Valentine’s Day present so it would be ready when she woke up the next morning!

The next morning my mother-in-law was coming over around 8:15 to watch baby girl for us because a dear friend’s father passed away and the funeral was Saturday morning so while baby girl was eating her breakfast I got my workout in, then it was time to give her her present. She seemed pleased :).

From there we went and met up with our “convoy” to head to our friend’s father’s visitation/funeral. When we got there we walked up to talk to her and she had her back to us. Amy pinched her butt and she turned around and laughed at us. We decided it was great to know our group is always inappropriate. Other stories from that day was when I went up to a water fountain to get some water to take some ibuprofen for my headache and the water squirted over the fountain and into the corner of the wall, Dan looked at me and asked if I’d been squirting long. Then when Pokey gave Kimmy a hug she said something about filling her up. And finally Kimmy talked about how her dad’s favorite drink was 7 & 7 and how she thought she should have brought some with her so that her family could have a drink in his honor so Pokey and hubby left and went and found the only store in the small town that sold liquor to get some Segrems (sp? don’t know I’ve never even had it) and seven up so that the family could have a drink in his honor. Kim started crying when they walked in to bring that to her. Kimmy kept referring to us as her friends from “down south” which kept ticking us.

From there our group left and drove to Lambert’s for lunch and then took off to Bass Pro for the afternoon.

 Zebra Girl may have gotten stuck in the tree…..

While we were in Springfield my parents met up with my Mother-in-law and got baby girl. They took her to my grandma’s (baby girl’s great grandmas) and gave her the Valentine’s Day present we put together for her.

And that was just part of our Valentine’s Day.

Our First Snow Day

I live in Southwest Missouri. That means that we could go a whole winter without snow or we could get a SW MO style Blizzard and get 18″ of snow dumped on us. And if you don’t like the weather, stick around 30 and it will change.

Last night they were calling for 5-12 inches of snow. That’s a pretty big difference really. So we all laughed and said we’d probably get nothing. Well we woke up to snow this morning. I’m guessing (and by I, I mean hubby) 5-6 inches of snow. Plus it was still snowing this morning.

Baby girl hasn’t seen snow yet so we put her in the snow suit that her auntie gave her and out we went to play for a total of approx 2.3 minutes. We stood, we crawled, we lost a glove, we ate snow, we grasped snow in our bare hand. We screamed and went in doors. And that was our first experience with that white stuff in the yard.