Crockpot recipe: Cranberry Chicken

After nearly a year of having the crock pot MIA (packed away somewhere), I finally found it last week. I am nothing less than thrilled, my crock pot is seriously my best kitchen friend. You chop everything up, toss it in the crock pot, add some ingredients and voila.... 4-8 hours later you have a homemade meal ready to serve, while you got to enjoy the day or get errands done.

This is my first crock pot meal in a year, and we're going to enjoy it tonight.

ingredients:
- 4-6 boneless chicken breast halves, skinless or skin removed
- 1 can cranberry sauce
- 2/3 cup chili sauce (see note below)*
- 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 pkg dry golden onion soup mix

preparation:

Place chicken in slow cooker/crock pot. Combine remaining ingredients; add to the slow cooker, coating chicken well. Cover and cook low 6-8 hours. Serves 4-6.

* Chili sauce....
I realized that I didn't have a jar of chili sauce, so I found this recipe and it tasted just like the jarred chili sauce.

1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon vinegar
dash cloves
1 minced garlic clove
1 tablespoon chili powder
simmer together for 5 minutes

Future engineer (like daddy)

But this engineer likes to build forts. Not your typically "built" forts of chairs and tents. But forts built with wood.

Owen even said he was adding electricity so that he could watch dvd's.

He also made a "fireplace" and of course what every guy needs, a refrigerator.

But here's where my influence comes in..... he decorated the outside so that it looked nice.


I'd say he is a nice combination of mommy and daddy.

Tornado drill

Growing up in New York, we never had Tornado drills in school. It will be something that Owen will become very familiar with, living in Indiana. Since we moved to Indiana in April, there have been over a dozen tornado warnings for Allen County; Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Last Wednesday we had our first tornado warning in our new house, in our very own storm shelter! How mid-western! The sky grew dark and ominous, as we watched leaves blow in circular motions across the street. We grabbed some blankets and pillows and Owen's baby mattress that was handy in our garage, and headed into our storm shelter. Owen of course, loved every minute of it. He was so excited to help me gather items to take in with us. When we got in there we looked at each other and Owen smiled and said "mmmmm!!! Look at all of this delicious food in here!" and proceeded to eat scooby snacks, apple sauce and peanuts. I'd say that our first tornado drill was a complete success. There was even a verse or two of "Somewhere over the Rainbow". As we left the storm shelter Owen said "can we do this again tomorrow?" and I thought to myself, man.... I hope not!

Making room for LIFE

The past few blogs I've written, included words such as "hectic", "busy" or "crazy", which has prompted me to blog about a recent sermon series that has started at my church. For the past two weeks, and another week to come, our pastor has discussed how important it is for people to not cram so much into their lives that they barely have time to do normal every day tasks. I have been trying to make my life less busy. Of course there are some things that I just cannot change (ie. the house situation - but once we close on the house, we won't have that craziness anymore. Well, just the craziness of unpacking. But once that is all over, and we're settled in.... there are no more excuses!)

Owen started preschool about two weeks ago and he is LOVING it! I don't know who loves it more, Owen, or myself. They have this drop off system where the moms line up in their cars and drop their kids off at the front door. It's great because Owen unbuckles himself and when the teacher comes to his door, he gets a huge smile on his face, grabs his back pack and hops out. Sometimes he's so excited that he forgets to wave goodbye to me! This is SUCH a relief because last year was anything but joyous. He would kick and scream and cry, and the teachers would have to pry his arms off of me. It was a nightmare. I felt like the worst mom in the world every single day when I left him (which was only 2 days a week, but it was torture for both of us) So that was the reason why I took him out of preschool last year. This year is just amazing. He goes four days a week, but always says "I wish I went to school every day!"

We thought that once everything settled down, we would sign Owen up for hockey because he is obsessed! I can't wait to see him out there on the ice in his hockey gear.... so cute!

I see your promises, promises

I promise I will get better at updating this at least once a week now that Owen goes back to school on Tuesday. There has been a lot going on here (when isn't there, right?) To our great disapproval we haven't moved into our new house here yet. That is a LONG story that I most certainly do not feel like getting into right now, but it looks like we will close on the house by the end of September, or early October. It's ironic because we closed on our house in NY in October of 2007. Speaking of, our house in NY didn't sell - which complicated the whole house buying issue here even more. We took our house off the market after our contract expired after five months. Several people were interested in the house, but nothing concrete ever surfaced. We felt like we would have been taking a huge hit if we had sold it, after all of the upgrades we had done to it, and the sale price which would have been what we paid for it three years ago if we were lucky, or less.

You're probably wondering how we pulled this off. Well, a couple circumstances were in our favor and we were able to rent it out to Navy nukes stationed nearby for training (the same site Brian was at almost 8 years ago when I met him). We plan on doing that for however long it takes for the real estate market to pick back up, and then sell it. Meanwhile, we're buying another house here! We are in love with this house. It is absolutely perfect for us. It has everything we were looking for and here's the best part.... it's 10k less than what we paid for our house in NY and it has SO much more than our house in NY has. Unbelievable.

We feel so blessed to have found such a wonderful city to call home. Not only is the cost of living lower here, but the quality of life is so much greater than in NY. Great schools, great hospitals, low taxes, more for your money house-wise, low home prices, friendly people, great churches.... I could go on and on. We are confident that we made the right decision in moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana. The move has been tough, and things haven't gone smoothly the whole time we have been trying to settle in here, but nothing worth it is ever 100% easy. We have learned a lot about ourselves, our family, people in general and our faith. We miss our family in friends a LOT, but look forward to seeing them whenever they can make it out here, or we can head over there.

46804

Hectic, hectic, hectic! I have barely had a spare minute to update ( as you can see, I haven't since January).

We moved to Fort Wayne two weeks ago and aren't completely settled in yet. I forgot how difficult it is to move. It's especially difficult to move with a child. Last time we moved Owen was only a year old, and it was WAY different. Besides that, we had also moved from Virginia to NY, near my parents so they helped watch him a lot during the whole process.

The move has been really hard on Owen and we're trying to make it as easy as possible, so I have been spending a lot of time taking him to do fun things so that he really loves this area. It's not too difficult, because this area is easy to love if you're a parent or a child. Fort Wayne really must be one of the most family friendly cities in the world. Everything you could want is so close by.

One of the first things I did when we moved here was buy a zoo membership and Owen have already been to the zoo 5 times in the past two weeks. It is such a great thing for him and I to do together, and he is absolutely fascinated by all of the animals and their habitats. It really is very humbling to see animals and how peaceful their lives are, and how they interact with one another.

Brian loves his job here, which is a definite plus. He comes home smelling like printer ink, office paper and magnet wire from his companies plant which is next door to the building where Brian's office is. The best part is, it only takes him 10-15 minutes to get home. He had to drive 45 minutes to get to work when we lived in NY, and that was pretty tough (factor in an extra half an hour if there is snow/ice)

I've been trying to get our home life as stable as possible even though not everything is completely squared away. We still have boxes that need to be unpacked, and we still have another 30 or so boxes back in NY with two living room sets and a ton of other furniture. We didn't really bring any furniture with us, other than our bedroom sets, which meant we had to buy new furniture when we got here. We will be moving all of our other furniture when our house sells. Then we will store it in Indiana until our house is built because we will need it. Our new house in Indiana is going to be about 3,500 square feet (our house in NY is 1,700 square feet).

From now on I'm going to try and update once a week, and I'm going to try really hard. Maybe I will make it a goal to update every Sunday. That's usually a pretty laid back day.

New Year, New....

... place to call home. Brian officially accepted the the promotion, so we're off to Fort Wayne, Indiana come Spring or early Summer.

I was really torn with the idea for a long time but finally come to terms with everything. I found comfort in the following;

"Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there...to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson or help figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be but you lock eyes with them, you know that very moment that they will affect your life in some profound way.

And sometimes things happen to you at the time that may seem horrible, painful and unfair, but in reflection you realize that without overcoming those obstacles you would never realize your potential, strength, will power or heart.

Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by chance or by means of luck. Illness, love, lost moments of true greatness and sheer stupidity all occur to test limits of your soul.

Without these small tests, life would be like a smoothly paved, straight, flat road to nowhere safe and comfortable but dull and utterly pointless.

The people you meet affect your life. The successes and downfalls that you experience can create who you are, and the bad experiences can be learned from. In fact they are probably the most poignant and important ones. If someone hurts you, betrays you or breaks your heart, forgive them because they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious to whom you open your heart.

If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but also because they are teaching you to love and open your heart and eyes to little things. Make every day count. Appreciate everything that you possibly can, for you may never experience it again.

Talk to people whom you have never talked to before, and actually listen. Let yourself fall in love, break free and set your sights high. Hold you head up because you have every right to.

Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will believe in you. Create your own life and then go out and live it."