Halloween Weekend

I know, I am playing catch up but better late than never, right? Anyway, we took the trailer and went camping at Marval Resort outside of Gore, Oklahoma. A couple of friends took their trailers also and meet us there. Our campsite was right on the Illinois River and was absolutely beautiful. I felt like I had left our crazy world behind and entered a different world. The trees with their leaves turning colors, children playing everywhere, people fishing, carving pumpkins, participating in all kinds of Halloween traditions. This place is the neatest place. They have a swimming pool, outdoor movie theater, hiking trail, playground, mini golf and an activity center with activities for the kids. I can't even begin to think how many hours Mia and Maddox spent fishing. I had no idea at how good they do casting their own poles.

On Saturday evening there was a costume contest for the kids, pets, and adults. And nope, our firefighter, red lego, and ballerina were not among the winners. Although I heard more than one person say that the lego should have won his age bracket. Then when that was all over, we went trick or treating to all the trailers and cabins. There were lots of people that had even decorated their sites and some really went all out.

We left on Sunday and made it home in time to unpack and leave to eat dinner with some good friends and go trick or treating in their neighborhood. Such an amazing weekend and by the end of it we were all wore out!

Freezer Cooking Day

I had a freezer cooking day today. This makes life so much easier. It takes one full morning and you have some meals to fall back on when you are busy and don't have the time to cook. In the picture is everything minus one baked ziti which we are going to eat tonight and two batches of whole wheat chocolate chip pancakes. Pictured is 20 brown bag burritos, 2 cheeseburger meatloaves, 2 baked zitis, 2 spaghetti pies, and 1 chicken spaghetti. I was going to make blueberry muffins also but didn't plan well and ran out of eggs. I could have easily made a few more meals but at the moment our deep freeze is at maximum capacity.

While it is a lot of work for one morning, I love freezer cooking. I like to keep muffins that I can pull out and put in the kids lunches or use for a quick breakfast. Another time saver is to make a batch of cookies and freeze the dough balls. Then I can pull a few out for an afternoon snack. The kids of course love it and there aren't leftover cookies to be hanging around for me to eat! Another idea is when you are making dinner, make a double batch and freeze the second one. If you are going to all the work anyway why not make a little more. Yet another idea is to brown ground beef, turkey or sausage then freeze. You can also add taco seasoning to your ground beef or turkey and have it ready for tacos or other mexican dishes. So easy!

Hawaii Part 2

I think I have figured out the difficulties I was having uploading pictures. I wanted to share some pics from Maui. I truly loved it there. It was so beautiful and lacked the tons of concrete and people that Waikiki had. We found a mexican restaurant there that was amazing. It was right by the ocean and the food was the best. We actually ate there twice we liked it so much. Matt's coworker was in Hawaii vacationing with her husband after she had been in the Philippines with Matt. We had gone with them to Pearl Harbor the first full day we were in Hawaii. We had such a great time with them. I have told you all of this just to say that our second visit to this restaurant as we were leaving they were coming in. What are the chances?

This pic was from the Luau that we did while on Oahu. We enjoyed it. The food was really good. We were both good and tried everything. Somethings we liked and some well.....
This was in Maui. People were just stopped everywhere along the beach to watch it. Amazing. Being there in person was incredible. God can sure paint an incredible sunset and I feel so blessed that I got to witness it. I fell in love with a few other things in Hawaii as well. Besides all the beauty, I found White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Ice Cream. Really, no words. Worth every expensive penny. Coconut syrup. As big of pancake eaters as we are in our house, I am not sure why we didn't bring any home. Fresh pineapple frozen yogurt......thank you Dole! And of course, coffee, it was so wonderful there, another thing I am not sure why I didn't bring any home. One thing that I did not try however was the spam and rice that McDonald's offered for breakfast.

We got to see and do so many things. Something that I love about us is that we aren't afraid to venture out and see what we can find. I think that we got to see and do so much more because of this. What a great trip and a wonderful way to celebrate ten years of marriage!