Happy Easter!

Some Veggie Tales about Easter, stickers, bubbles, a bunny, her first bow, zinnia seeds, and eggs stuffed with candy filled Millie's first Easter basket (she didn't have one last year). 

This is the best we could get out of her this morning.

 I'm loving her curls.  

Of course she gives her best smile once we go inside. 

 The Pioneer Woman's strawberry short cake was delicious.

 The cake and these colored deviled eggs were my contribution to lunch.

I thought they were very festive. 

Hunting eggs filled with candy was not a great idea for two year olds right before lunch.

I finally got a decent picture of her. 

They were too cute at the kids table...for about 5 minutes. Then Easter lunch with children met reality. I'll spare the details, but let's just say, we were glad we didn't invite any new friends over. 

From today's Our Daily Bread:

"If Jesus had not come back to life, our faith as Christians would be pointless, and we would still be under the penalty of our sin (1 Cor. 15:17). However, the Bible tells us that Jesus “was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25 niv). Today, we can be right with God because Jesus is alive!

The empty cross and the empty tomb provide a full salvation."

Happy 30th!

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY

SARAH BARRY!

You are a great sister, mama, friend, wife, blogger, cook, gift giver, photographer, room-rearranger, pizza maker, cleaner outer, aunt, nurse, reader, and seamstress!

I hope your day has been wonderful! 

Busy Days

I hate when I don't update the blog very often. The truth is that we have been busy, and I haven't been feeling great. So my free time and blog time has been spent resting on the couch.

A few weekends ago Millie went to her first Easter egg hunt.

She was practicing before we left for party. 

She was more into swinging and sliding than hunting eggs. I also ate all the candy. 

This was before we left for the egg hunt. I just like this picture. She really wanted to get on the other side of the fence. By the way, the pool is now uncovered, and new herbs are planted in our little garden. This year we are attempting to grow lettuce and blueberries. I'll let you know how it goes. 

I've also been cooking a lot. I have recently made some orange scones and pad thai. I'll post the recipes soon.

Last weekend we finally received a play set that was ordered a month ago. It came with all of these screws and wood, but no instructions were included. We searched the Internet before Nick tracked down the company that actually made the swing set. He called and was able to get them to email us the instructions. They couldn't send the instructions until Saturday around 10:30, so this delayed Nick about a day and half.

Once we got the instructions, Millie and Nick spent the rest of Saturday putting it together. 

Millie has loved the play set! 

These pictures were taken last Sunday. She is in her Auburn gear because her dad took her to an Auburn baseball game.

Then he took her to Toomer's to get some lemonade and see the trees. 

Nick said she started crying when he told her the trees are dead. I'm glad he got this picture, even though the trees aren't very pretty. They are taking the trees down later in April. 

Millie also had her first egg dying experience last week.

Thank you Jessica Govan for the pictures below, and thank you Laura for having us over! 

This past week one of our neighbors cut down a magnolia tree and put it on the street. I got my hedge clippers and cut a lot leaves to make a magnolia wreath. I'll share more about that later. Below is not even a fraction of the leaves I got.

The rest of our time has been filled with tutoring, laundry (Thank you to Nick who did the laundry. It was a lot of laundry, and it seemed to never end.), running errands, eating with friends, resting, and feeling the new baby kick around in my stomach! This is an amazing feeling, and I don't mind feeling bad for my little baby. One week from tomorrow and well know if it is baby girl or baby boy!

I'll conclude with these cuties. This was yesterday in our backyard.

Braciola

Last week we had braciola for dinner. It is pronounced 'brah-cho-leh.'  According to Wikipedia, braciola is the name of an Italian dish that contains slices of beef pan-fried in their own juices, tomato sauce, or in a small amount of olive oil. 

I have never heard of braciola until watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. I often watch this on Instant Netflix. The episode centered around Debra's braciola. She is often known as a terrible cook. However, she seemed to cook a perfect braciola that everyone loved. After watching this episode, Nick googled the dish, and I decided to give it a try. 

I used this recipe. It is from Giada De Laurentiis, and she has a video to go along with the recipe. 

This recipe includes simple ingredients. I had almost everything except the meat, parsley, some cheese, and wine. 

 After prepping the filling, you might need your husband's help. 

He helped me roll the meat. A lot of the filling may fall out, but don't worry, there is still plenty in the dish.

You will also need some kitchen twine. 

This was easier to tie with two people. Make sure to tie as tight as you can so that the meat won't unroll and let any more filling out. 

If you are lucky you will also have a cute tiny helper in the background, who was begging to help the entire time. 

Our final product was delicious. However, the meat wasn't as tender as it should have been. I think we should have cooked it longer on the stove and in the oven. 

Since I'm not drinking wine right now, and Nick doesn't like white wine, I bought this fancy box of wine for the dish. I only needed a cup, and I hated to waste a whole bottle for one cup. I also thought the wine was too important to the sauce to leave out. 

I did end up tasting the wine. It wasn't too bad if you added an ice cube to it.

You can make your own marinara sauce, but Giada said it was ok to use the stuff from a jar. So that's what we did. 

After adding all the sauce, it sits in the oven for an hour and a half. Again, I think it could have cooked a little longer. 

Grab your husband again, and ask him to slice the meat so you can photograph it because he is better at it. 

Also ask him to make sure and get all the strings off the meat. 

We served it with pasta, because when I think of an Italian dish with red sauce I automatically think of pasta. However, Wikipedia said to serve it with salad and potatoes. That would probably be good too. Our version was delicious, and I will be trying this dish again soon.