I went to Texas a couple of weeks ago and had a BLAST! It wasn't very long, but it was great! I went because Joy received her Masters Degree! It was great to see Darin and Joy and Brooklyn! I had tons of fun. Brooklyn and I made homemade Butterfingers! Yum! We went out to lunch with Joy's family and went to a movie. The graduation was nice and the rest of the weekend was just enjoyable! I missed them from the moment I got on the plane! If only I could go back more often!

Landon and dad had a fun, but stressful weekend without me. Jeff was definitely glad to have me home again! It was a good bonding time for them though. Landon seems closer to his daddy. Of course, when I got home he had changed! I'll be posting pictures soon!

Cooking!

So obviously, I've been cooking a lot more lately with different things, and have been enjoying it a lot. It hasn't been easy because I have a picky husband, I admit, I am picky, but I also can't eat some things because my body doesn't process it, so it has been challenging, but enjoyable!

If you want to share any recipes, I wouldn't mind!

Sweet Pork!

So I have been wanting to find a good recipe for Sweet Pork to make some burritos at home. I looked on several websites and even blogs and someone, I don't know who, suggested a recipe that is so much simpler than all the others that I have seen! I tried it and LOVED it! (So did my family!) So I thought that I would share it with all of you too!

Sweet Pork

3 lbs Pork (can be roast, shoulder, or butt)
1 can enchilada sauce (any kind)
1 to 1 1/2 Cups brown sugar
water

In a crock pot, add as much water that will cover half of the pork. Cook for 5 hours on high, or 8 hours on low. Take out pork. Drain water from crock pot. Shread pork with fork and take off bones and fat.
In a mixing bowl, add enchilada sauce and brown sugar.
combine pork and mix and return to crock pot.
Cook for additional 2 to 3 hours. Enjoy!
(doesn't smell sweet at first, but after an hour or two will smell and taste divine!)


I also bought green enchilada sauce, back beans, and mozzarella and made rice to add to the burrito, which made it even better!

For the rice, I just put 1 cup rice with 2 cups chicken broth (or 2 cups warm water with 2 dissolved bouillon cubes in it) and cooked it in my rice cooker. Yummy on it's own too!

Try it! You'll like it!

The Dam and The Strip

Tuesday night Sam and Chris (her boyfriend) came to Vegas. They stayed til this morning, then left for Missouri to begin their travels around the world. I got to have Sam here for a whole day yesterday! It was really great!

(Chris making a weird face and Sam being her beautiful self)

We all slept in (even Landon) and we decided to go to Hoover Dam. That was really cool. We didn't pay for the tour or parking, so we just walked around and took pictures. There is a suspension bridge going up to bypass the dam and it looks way crazy!

(below is a picture. To put it into perspective, we are at the top of the dam looking west toward it and it is several hundred feet above that. There were working on there too! It was scary!)

It's also really sad because the water level is so low behind the dam. It makes me sad. I have never been to the dam (except to cross it when we went to Arizona to visit Annette and Jana. Fun times!)

(the white is where the water level used to be... really sad!)

After we go home we all relaxed for a while. Then Mike (Jeff and my long time best friend) hung out with us. We went to Claim Jumpers and then to the strip. I am depressed to say that I forgot my camera! :( We didn't leave until around midnight but we had fun! We looked at the gardens at the Bellagio, and saw the water show, and went to the Mirage to watch the 'volcano' errupt. (it was revamped, but the old one was better.)

We walked over 3 miles yesterday! We all zonked out pretty much as soon as we got home. It was a long but glorious day with friends! Jeff was able to hang out with us all day and wouldn't have otherwise, so that is positive thing about him not having work right now. So I told him that Wednesday was a good day for him not to have work, but that someone could hire him and he could start work next week and I would be a happy wife... what can I say, I'm a positive thinker!

(Jeff, Landon and me with the dam in the background)

Jobless

So Jeff calls me this morning and tells me that he got fired. Apparently where he works you can't have 1 mistake after 4 or 6 weeks working there. A couple of weeks ago he was told that, but also told that he wasn't in trouble or anything, he just needed to work on getting zero mistakes... well, today he found out that he made one or two mistakes, so he was called into an office and fired. Just like that. He had absolutely no idea that there was a possibility of getting fired or anything close to that, and he had been getting mostly 100% on his drawing, with every 5 or 6 drawings coming back with one or two mistakes, but I guess that's just not good enough.
To make things worse, Jeff went to the supervisor Tom last week to talk to him about getting things up to date (they are working on way out of date programs) and to make things a lot more efficient. Tom was on board for that and they were scheduled to have a meeting in Jeff's office TOMORROW. I find it odd that they fired him the day before he was going to show how much more efficient they could be and how great he is at his job. He is one of the only, if not the only one who is studying or has studied to be a CADD tech or civil engineer. Everyone else is on-site trained and only know the programs of this company. He is over qualified, and I think they saw that and were threatened.
If it weren't for the economy, I wouldn't care as much, but it's extra frustrating when we are already living with my parents as it is! So today has been a bad day. And Jeff got fired for the first time in his life from a company that was intimidated by him. HOW RUDE!

The Mom State of Mind

As I began this blog, besides thinking about writing down my thoughts and adding pictures of the family and my hobbbies, (still to come) I always come back to my son. When you are a stay at home mom, your life is, of course, your child/ren. So being a 1st time mom, I am realizing the state of mind I am always in. Places I go, things I talk about, how I act when I'm around others, even around my husband... all things I think about or talk about or how I act have to do with how I would be with Landon around. It's pretty amusing if you really think about it. They are so dependent on us, but really we become dependent on them as well. We live and breathe each other.
It's really quite amazing! I literally live for my son, and he's alive because of me! So my state of mind is always in the 'Mom' mode, even if it's toward someone else I'm not even related to, but that is completely fine with me! I love being a mom! Plus anyone who views my blog will get to know my son really well, because he will probably be 90% of it!

Twilight Movie Truth

I really love the books, and I need to read them again, but I have to say I'm not extremely impressed with the movie. I saw it in the theaters and thought that maybe I didn't like it all that much because we had to sit so close (there was a birthday party and a ton of teenagers there... of course almost all were girls!).
Anyway, I'm not impressed with the acting mostly. Some of the way they said things bothered me. Like 'Bella' says things way too fast sometimes without any expression. That kinda ruined it for me. I like her as an actress, but I wish she would get more into character.
Did anyone else feel that way?? I did buy the movie, but it's like the Harry Potter movies; they don't do the books justice, but they are still fun to watch to be able to visualize what you read.