California Day 1

Our vacation started with a 4am wake up to head to the airport. Our flight left at 6am and was 4 hours long. Mason was awake the whole time! Marley slept the whole time! You win some, you lose some.  Once we landed and got our luggage and car we headed south to San Diego. My dad wanted to check out the USS Midway Museum. While we were there I deleted all the pictures on my camera on accident while I was waiting for Marley and my parents to do a tour (oops!). We were there for a few hours before heading back to Anaheim to our hotel. It was a tiring day, but we were up early on day 2 to head to the beach!

The view off the ship.

Marley earned her wings for completing the kids portion of the tour.

Recital Time

Marley has been in dance for the past couple months and it's finally recital time! She did great up on stage and had lots of fun. She did a tap routine and a ballet routine.  I'm not sure if she'll do dance again or not in the fall. I hope she does because the dance school does The Nutcracker.

BBQ Pineapple Pulled Pork Crock Pot Freezer Meal

Back with another crock pot freezer meal. This recipe scared me a little because I've never cooked a pork shoulder. I usually only make pork chops. If we want pulled pork I just buy the containers of it premade.

4-6 pound pork shoulder

all purpose seasoning

1 bottle bbq sauce

15 oz can pineapple, undrained

Dump it all in the crock pot and cook on high 6-8 hours or low 10-12.

 Shred pork and return to crock pot for 10 more minutes. Serve on burger buns.

To freeze it, just mix it all together in a freezer bag and lay flat to freeze.

It smelled amazing and tasted pretty darn good too.  It seemed a little tough and not as stringy as pulled pork at restaurants though, but still good.

Garlic Ranch Chicken Freezer Meal

This is another one of my freezer meals. It's not for the crock pot like the others, but I'm sure you could cook it in the crock pot on low for 4-6 hours and it would come out perfectly.

4 chicken breasts
1 packet ranch dressing powder
1 cup milk
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp dry minced garlic

Grill chicken on grill over low-medium flame until chicken is no longer pink.

Since I was freezing mine, I just mixed it all together in a freezer bag and froze it. I pulled it out in the morning to thaw and just cooked it up.

Cheddar Vegetable Sausage Casserole Crock Pot Freezer Meal

This recipe is one that I made the other day when I made all my crock pot freezer meals. It didn't last very long in the freezer, but it was nice to just pull it out, thaw it a little, and pour it in the crock pot.

10 ounces frozen vegetables

3 large diced potatoes

sausage

1 can cheddar cheese soup

1 can cream of celery soup

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Just mix it all up and put it in the crock pot on low for 8 hours. If it's not frozen then 6 hours should be good.

Since I was freezing mine, I just mixed everything together in a medium sized bowl then poured it into a freezer bag and froze it laying flat.

It was pretty tasty. It didn't end up looking how I imagined it would look, and I think for next time I want to try it with pasta instead of potatoes. 

May Kiwi Crate

I know I just shared a review of the March crate, but this one was probably the best one we've received so far so I wanted to share it with you guys. 

It was a feathered friends theme and Marley made a bird costume, bird nest and two eggs. 

I helped her with the nest and we each painted an egg. While I was off seeing Wicked, Mike helped her with the bird costume. 

If you are interested in try out Kiwi Crate for your kiddos just click here. 

This post was in no way sponsored by Kiwi Crate and I was not compensated for my time or review. 

Crock Pot Freezer Meals

When we have nice weather we spend a lot of time outside. Before I know it, it's 8pm and I haven't even thought about dinner. I decided the other day to make up some freezer meals and since I can't start cooking at bed time, I decided to make some crock pot meals so that I could just throw them in and continue on with my day. I went shopping for all my ingredients and then when everyone was in bed I started assembling. It took me about 2 hours to put everything together and clean up so that's not bad at all.  I tried to pick recipes that were more summery and that the kids would also like so I didn't have to make 2 meals every day.  I searched on pinterest for a while and gathered up my 7 recipes from several different pages.

I made- 

Cheddar Vegetable Sausage Casserole

Creamy Italian Chicken

BBQ Pineapple Pulled Pork

Chicken Taco Chili 

Chicken Tacos

Garlic Ranch Chicken

Italian Chicken

I labeled all my freezer bags with what's inside and how long to cook them so I don't have to pull the recipe out when I decide to make them.  I also wrote any other notes like add water or shred chicken once cooked. After the bags were full I laid them flat to freeze. Once they're frozen I can stand them up in my deep freezer and they don't take up as much space this way.

I will post individual recipes and more pictures once I cook them up, but for now, do you have any good freezer meals to share? 

Zoo Day

Last year my parents purchased a membership to the Brookfield Zoo up near Chicago. Since it was about to expire and both my parents and Mike were off work we headed up for the day. It wasn't very crowded so we just took our time and strolled around. Marley's favorite thing was probably the sting ray petting pool, my mom however, didn't enjoy it at all. 

Mason loved the fish and has been saying "ish" ever since our trip. 

DIY Uncrustable Sandwiches

This is an idea I stumbled across on pinterest. I have seen the Wonder Bread Sealer and Decruster before at the store, but never really put two and two together to realize what it did. Now that I know I am in love! Haha! 

Super easy. All you need is the decruster and your choice of sandwich fixins. 

Make your sandwich. Then place the decruster on top. Push down the white part, then remove the crust. Then you'll push down the red part in the center to seal it up. 

I made a whole loaf of these then put them in the freezer. So easy to just pull on out and heat it up in the microwave for about 20 seconds. 

Pizza Spaghetti Casserole

Since it was the end of the month I was running out of food. I sort of just searched my cabinets and then hopped online to see what I could make. This recipe reminds me of the pizza casserole I made before but since it had spaghetti noodles and was assembled a bit differently I decided to give it a try.

I actually made all this while the kids were eating breakfast, then I just put it in the fridge until it was dinner time. Then I popped it in the oven.  

12 oz uncooked spaghetti

1 lb ground beef

2 ounces pepperoni

1 (26 oz) jar pasta sauce

cheese 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown ground beef. 

Cook noodles al dente. Drain and place in bottom of lightly greased baking dish. 

Pour cooked and drained meat on top and cover with sauce. 

Place cheese and pepperoni on top of everything. Cover with foil. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. 

It was pretty good. It did need some more sauce though as the bottom portion of the noddles didn't even have any sauce on them. I still preferred my other pizza casserole recipe though =)