Our day trip

Last weekend we took a short trip down to Johnson City and Pedernales Falls State Park. It was nice to get out of Austin for the day and enjoy being outside, even if the rain almost washed out the day. We headed down to the river first to check out the falls.
Of course we had to take a self-portrait once we got there. We have so many pictures like this. I'm not sure why we don't ever just ask someone to take a picture of us. Hayden had never been to Perdenales Falls before so we took a while to explore and take in the views.
We tried to find our way down to the river bed and the falls. I think we got lost on the way down because it took us about 30 minutes to weave through the rocks and we kept seeing more and more people quickly make it down. It turns out most of them were just jumping down 7-8 foot drops. I took the picture below of Hayden scaling the rocks.
We thought the picture below would make an awesome tube shoot. Too bad they do not allow swimming on this section of the river. On second thought, it may not be the safest tube shoot, but it would be fun to try.

After trekking around a bit more, we drove down to meet the Smith family for lunch in Blanco. I can't pass up an opportunity to see one of my favorite people when I'm already so close by.

And a Couple More

Here are a couple more dishes that we've made in the past week. The first is Jamaican jerk chicken, polenta and asparagus. We've been wanting to make jerk chicken for ourselves ever since our honeymoon in Jamaica last May. The chicken and polenta recipes came from Morgan's gluten free cookbook. Even though the chicken was a little spicy, it had good flavor, but I'll have to work on making a firmer polenta.

The second is blackened catfish with vegetable stir-fry rice. Once again, I made it a little too spicy, but it's flavor was great and I got to use a lot of vegetables.

Catching Up...food-wise at least

It's been a while since I've posted so I've got a bit of catching up to do. This post is our Valentine's Day 4-course dinner.

We began with an Onion Soup that I've had before at Christopher's, my favorite restaurant in the College Station/Bryan area. The chef is nice enough to place some of his recipes online and this one turned out really well.

The next two recipes come from The Learning Channel website courtesy of the "Cake Boss." He's recently started a cooking show that has quite a few good dishes. The second course was a squash and zucchini casserole.

Followed by shrimp scampi which Morgan had been requesting.

Finally, for dessert I baked some cookies and took some leftover strawberry icing from the Valentine's Day cake we had made and made what I am calling redneck macaroons.

Valentines Day

Hayden and I said that we weren't going to do very much for Valentine's day. We decided that we wouldn't even get each other gifts. Well, we ended up celebrating for almost a week... and we did get gifts.

Last week I came home to my Valentines gift. Hayden had gone to the craft store and gotten me a cake pan that I wanted. He also picked up some lilies in advance so they would open up before Valentines Day. For Hayden's gift I got him a super goofy K'nex Jeff Gorden race car to put together. For some reason I encourage the goofiness.

My lilies

On Saturday night we had dinner with our two favorite Leander couples the Johnsons and the Shoemakers. Jaclyn and David made an amazing dinner and Hayden and I supplied dessert.

Dinner at the Johnson's

The fancy Valentines Day dinners continued on Monday night when Hayden prepared a four course dinner- french onion soup, zucchini and yellow squash casserole, shrimp scampi and pasta, and macaroons to finish it off. We even sat at our dinner table to eat. I may be a little spoiled by my husband. After we finished eating Hayden realized that he may have set the Valentine's Day bar a little high for future years. But, I really won't mind if he keeps trying to top this year.

Hayden putting together his "redneck" macaroons.

Bon appetit!

I realize it's been a while since I've posted so here are a few more pictures of meals we've made in the past week or two.

The first are Baja Fish Tacos with Tomatillo Spanish Rice. This is a recipe Morgan had made before and I think we did a pretty great job making it again. The homemade coleslaw Morgan made for the tacos really brings the recipe together.

We had been craving stir fry for a while so I put together a batch of chicken stir-fry with egg drop soup. There are definitely more vegetables in it than I would usually include (broccoli, carrots, onion, bell pepper), but it turned out really well.

And finally here is a pizza we made with Italian sausage, pepperoni, onion, bell pepper and green onion. The homemade crust came from Morgan's gluten-free cookbook and had a really good flavor so we'll have to experiment some more.

The Snow Post

This is our snow in Texas post. Why? Because everyone needs a snow post. It's so rare that all you can do is grab your camera and go outside to play. This is what we woke up to last Friday morning.

The view from our balcony.

Hayden getting ready to throw a snowball at me. To be fair I did get him with one first.

The pool looked so inviting! Who wouldn't want to lounge in the snow covered chairs.

We went out to the road to check on the driving conditions. Unfortunately, the road was pretty iced over right by our complex. Thankfully, the ice melted some before I had to head into town for work.

I love the weekends!

I thought I'd put up some pictures of what we've been up to the past few weekends. The weekend before last we headed down to New Braunfels to have some wonderful bbq at Cooper's. I've been looking forward to Cooper's ever since I picked out a gift card for Hayden as a Christmas gift. (Tricky right?) Of course, if we go down to New Braunfels there is a good chance that my family will be around.

Jake and the girls hanging out after lunch. Everything was going well until Jake knocked over the drink and some of it got on his sister. Thankfully we took plenty of pictures before that happened.

After lunch we went over to Gruene and introduced Hayden to my new favorite store, Rusty Bugs and Roosters. I enjoyed picking out lots of home decor items that we could get for a future home. I don't think Hayden enjoyed that part as much. Next, we stopped in at the Gruene Flour Cupcakery for some dessert. The kids enjoyed their cupcakes.

I caught Jeff trying to bribe Jake with a chocolate cupcake.

Before heading home (by way of Cabelas) we had to visit more at Megan's house. My mom bought the girls dancing outfits, so we had a fashion show. This part of the fashion show involved jumping on the bed.
I had to include one more picture because Kensie looks so much like my mini-me. I think we have tons of pictures of me at this age where we look exactly the same. She even has the trademark ballerina twirl with the tongue hanging out. It's a secret dancing trick, I'm just glad that I grew out of that by grade school.

Midnight Snacks

Hayden and I have been talking about trying out a beignet recipe for weeks. We had planned on making them last Saturday morning, but we wanted to get some of the ingredients on Friday night. At least that's what I thought we were going to do.

So about 11:30 pm I started mixing things up and before I knew it we were frying up beignets for a midnight snack. Yummy! I've been craving fried doughnuty goodness and our recipes turned out pretty good. They didn't look exactly like the ones at Cafe Du Monde, but that's okay.


I learned two important lessons from our baking adventure. 1) Sometimes I'm really glad we don't have kids yet, so I can stay up until midnight and then sleep in the next day. 2) When making fried pastries, don't cook the entire batch late at night. Only cook what you will actually eat- fried beignets are as hard bricks in the morning.