Just Dreaming

Mother's Day

We had a lovely Mother's Day celebration at our house yesterday.  We also decided to celebrate Ella's third birthday while we were all together (her birthday is on the 15th).  We had lots of family over and had some great food.  As usual, I made some new dishes for us to try out:

Almond-crusted salmon with leek and lemon cream - delicious.  I don't normally do sauces for salmon, but this was amazing and the crusted almonds on top of the salmon was surprisingly good.  It was a pretty high-fat cream sauce but you only used a couple of spoons of it underneath the salmon.  I can't wait to eat this again tonight! Yeah leftovers! 

Roasted new potatoes with spring herb pesto - this was so flavorful and good.  I was concerned that it had garlic in it that would not be cooked and so the dish would be too strong.  I made the pesto up beforehand and then when the potatoes were done just mixed it all together.  It was so tasty, none of the flavors were overpowering.  A great spring dish!

I should have taken pictures of the food but I was a little busy :)  My Mom ended up cooking all the salmon and she did a great job.  Frying salmon stresses me out so it was nice that she took that over so I could get all the other food on the table. 

I should say that every-time we do a big feast at our house - my wonderful husband does almost all of the clean up.  As soon as the meal is over he takes over the kitchen and lets me visit with my family.  How nice is that.  I get to cuddle with the babies and sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy everyone.

Although it was a pretty busy day overall, we had a nice relaxing morning and Dave and the kids gave me an iPod Nano for Mother's day!  When I walk on the treadmill I use a cassette radio player and listen to AM radio.  I am so behind the times!  Not even a CD player - a cassette player.  I mean who even has cassettes anymore?  Anyway I have been thinking about getting one for awhile.  Dave has one and I use it when he is home on the weekends but during the week he takes it with him to the office.  I love that in addition to music, you can download pod-casts on it.  I enjoy talk radio so I am hoping I can download some of my favorite shows - Coast to Coast AM anyone?

Here are some pictures of our day:

The adult table.

Missing in action: my sister Amy and I

The kids table (the boys sat on the couch together).  This is why you don't say "smile" and take a picture when the kids are eating.

Ella blowing out her candles.  Ella and Avery decorated her cake.

Baby Noe wearing Ella's new Dora sunglasses.

Connor, Andrew and Avery.  These boys love to play together.  My boys were so excited to find out Andrew was coming!

All of us Moms.

Easter

We had a lovely Easter dinner at our house on Sunday.  We had both of our families over so it was dinner for 16!  I had fun cooking some new recipes that I have never tried before.  My Mom thinks I am crazy but I love to cook new (and untried) recipes for these large parties that we have.  Here are the new recipes that I made:

Braided Egg Bread (a crowd favorite & Connor helped me make it)

Orzo with Everything (amazingly delicious)

Green Beans with Lemon and Pine Nuts (needed more lemon!)

Strawberry Walnut Salad (this was so good and it was nice not to have to litter the table with various salad dressings)

All the kids ready for the egg hunt in our house.  It was a little hard to get a good picture of them - they were all excited and squirrelly.

My Grandparents.

My niece Hannah.  I am not sure you can tell in this picture but she likes to curl her hair in a flip just like her Aunt Jill :)

Ella was adorable in her Easter dress.  I was so busy cooking the dinner I didn't get a lot of good pictures.  Next time I will try and get a good picture before they all destroy their dresses with chocolate.  Dinner can wait.

Deborah reading Captain Underpants to Avery.  Captain Underpants just adds so much to any festive occasion.

Neighborhood Fun

I just love our neighborhood!  We had our giant neighborhood Easter egg hunt on Saturday.  9 families + eggs hidden in each yard = lots and lots of kid fun!  We had 21 kids total running from yard to yard to get eggs.  We took them as a group so they would descend on the yards all-together.  They just had so much fun.  The Adults had a nice little set up as well of coffee, pastries and other appetizers.  It was nice to see everyone and catch up!  During the winter the weather is so yucky we don't all get together.  It just reminds me that summer fun is coming!

All the kids ready to go!

Give Thanks

It has been busy busy busy around here.  I have been making soap like a maniac - we haven't even done school for the last two weeks :(  But I was sooooo happy to take a day off from the soap grind and host Thanksgiving for our families.  We had 21 people here on Thanksgiving day.  It was a lot of fun.  The kids ran around like crazy and the food was delicious.  My Grandma even brought 6 pies!  It was lovely and a nice break for me (even though I was busy with cooking and cleaning). 

Funny quotes from the day:

My sister and I were trying to get our kids to calm down a bit so we could talk to people and hear their answers (ridiculous huh?)  Anyway my dad said  "if they calm down I am going home".

Avery (after everyone had left)  "phew now I can go to the bathroom with the door open again"