South Carolina

Wow, it has been almost a month since I have written anything on this little blog.  There has been a lot happening in our lives since that last post and all that is happening has kept me from having the time to sit down and write.  Now, I think things are finally slowing just enough I can write a little bit about what has been happening.

Right after I posted that last time in January, Paul, Palmer and I took a trip to Sumter, South Carolina.  We went for a business meeting Paul had for work.  Really it was a final interview for a promotion.  A few days after returning from Sumter, Paul found out he was offered the job.  Basically that is when all craziness broke loose in this household and it didn’t feel like there were enough hours in a day.

Right after we found out about Paul’s new job, which meant the whole family would be moving to South Carolina, we started working on getting the house ready to be put on the market.  Painters came in and refreshed the whole main floor with new paint.  Yes, it is basic tan that goes with anything.  They painted in 1 1/2 days what it would have taken me 2 weeks to get done.  It was so worth the money we paid and my sanity to have someone else do the painting.  Next came the new carpet in the living room.  It is carpet that has needed to be replaced over the last couple years, but we just didn’t take the time to get it done.  Now it looks wonderful and we will enjoy it for the short time we are still here.

After all the painting and carpet being laid, then came the deep cleaning.  I spent an entire weekend just cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning.  My nails didn’t look very pretty when it was all over, but the house was clean.  After the cleaning, the realtor came and took pictures of all the rooms.  Then the 2nd floor carpets were cleaned so when people start looking at the house it will be beautiful.  Then the realtor’s sign went up in the yard and the reality set in that this is really happening.

There was still more organizing or closets, a deep cleaning of the basement, and cleaning out the fridge.  I have made 6 trips to Goodwill in a week.  We also have a consignment store called “Stuff” that I have been to and dropped of stuff about 5 different times.  The car just about automatically goes to Stuff and then Goodwill without me even having to steer it.  So now the house is officially on the market, an open house has been scheduled, Paul starts his new job in a week and Palmer and I will be here trying to sell the house!

We are still trying to live a “normal” life while all of this is happening.  Sometimes it feels like nothing is going on, but other times I start to feel a bit overwhelmed.  I’ve started my list of people/places/things to contact when we know the house is sold.  Next will be getting estimates on the cost of movers to move our things.  So much to do and so many things to think about.

Please understand if this little blog doesn’t get updated as much as I would like.  I will try to keep things updated so all of you will know what is happening.  So, until next time…

Jodi

Another New Recipe

A few days ago I put a new recipe we tried in this little blog of mine and promised I would put another one a few days later.  Well, those days have come and gone and it is time for another new recipe.  Hope you enjoy!

Mac n Cheese Soup

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups dry elbow macaroni

½ cup minced onion

¼ cup minced celery

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

1/3 cup all purpose flour

½ cup dry white wine

2 cups chicken stock

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 cups whole milk

4 cups shredded sharp Cheddar

1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Salt to taste

¼ cup crumbled blue cheese

2 Tablespoons minced fresh chives

 

Directions:

Cook macaroni in a pot of salted water according to package directions; drain and set aside.

Sweat onion and celery in butter in a large saucepan over meium heat until soft, about 5 minutes.  Stir in flour to coat and cook 1 minute.  Deglaze with wine and simmer until nearly evaporated.  Stir in stock, mustard, nutmeg, and cayenne.  Simmer until slightly thickened, 5 minutes, then whish in milk and warm through.  DO NOT let boil or base may become grainy.

Add Cheddar, 1 cup at a time, allowing it to melt completely before adding the next cup.  Stir in macaroni, lemon juice, and salt; remove from heat.

Combine blue cheese and chives in a small bowl.  Garnish each serving with blue cheese mixture.

Makes about 7 cups.

**I used mild cheddar because I was afraid it would be too strong for my 9-year old.  It turned out great.  I don’t like blue cheese, so I did not put any into my soup, but my husband loves blue cheese and said it was great in the soup.

This was a different soup from most, but it was really good.  It is definitely not a low-fat dish, so will be one we only make once in a great while, but will enjoy when we make it.

Jodi

 

One Great Quote

I heard this quote tonight while watching TV.  It is from the movie “We Bought a Zoo”, which I have not seen, but I loved the quote.  I thought I would share.

“All it takes is 20 seconds of insane courage and great things will happen.”

I think this will be my new mantra whenever I feel like things aren’t going the way I want them to.

Jodi

New Recipes

So, I love reading magazines about food.  I enjoy reading new recipes.  If a recipe sounds good or intrigues me, I pull it out of the magazine and put it into a binder that I have with my recipe books.  This binder has clear page protectors in it and I put the recipes in the page protectors by category.  So I have a protector for main dishes, side dishes, appetizers, etc.  About once a month, sometimes more, I go to that binder and pull out recipes to try.  I think of it as getting out of our “normal” rut and trying something different.  As we eat dinner, then I ask my husband and son to rate the recipe.  They get to help me decide if it is a keeper or not.  Even if I don’t think it is that great, if both of them like it, then I keep it.  This last week was my week of new recipe trials for January.  I tried 4 new recipes, 4 nights in a row.  One of the recipes was just for a different topping for baked potatoes.  Out of the 4 recipes, 3 were keepers.  I thought I would share one on my little blog today and will share another one in a couple days.  So here is the first new recipe:

Penne and Smoked Sausage

Ingredients:

2 cups uncooked penne or medium tube pasta

1 pound smoked sausage or fully cooked kielbasa, cut into ¼ inch slices

1 ½ cups milk

1 can (10 ¾ oz) condensed cream of celery soup, undiluted

1 ½ cups cheddar French-fried onions, divided

1 cup (4 oz) shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

1 cup frozen peas

Directions:

Cook pasta according to package directions.  Meanwhile, in a large skillet, brown sausage over medium heat for 5 minutes; drain.  In a large bowl, combine milk and soup.  Stir in ½ cup onion, ½ cup cheese, peas and sausage.  Drain pasta; stir into sausage mixture.

Transfer to a greased 9×13 baking dish.  Cover and bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes or until bubbly.  Sprinkle with remaining onions and cheese.  Bake, uncovered, 3-5 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

6 servings

This would be an easy dinner to make and put into 2 square casserole dishes.  Then you could either probably freeze one, or maybe give it to a friend or neighbor as a surprise dinner.

I served this dish with some glazed carrots and fruit.  Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Jodi

The Robbins Family

When we were together with Paul’s family we took some family pictures.  I thought I would share with the world to see what our 17 members of the Robbins family look like!  First we start with the “original” Robbins family.

Paul, Chad, Susan, PeeWee, Brad and Jenny

The Robbins Family Now – All 17 of us

Grandma and Grandpa with the Grandkids

Just the Grandkids

Paul (the oldest), Palmer and Me

Chad (one of the twins) with Saudi, Hayley and Ashlee

Brad (the other twin) with Dusty, Amanda and Seana

Jenny (the youngest) with Joe, Allison and Zachary

So, there is the Robbins Family!

Jodi

More Holiday Fun

So, on December 29th, we headed south to celebrate the holidays with Paul’s family.  We met the family in Kansas City, where Paul’s parents treated the whole family to a night at the Coco Key hotel with the indoor waterpark.  Both of Paul’s brothers and Paul’s sister were also there with their families.  The kids had a great time playing in the water and the adults enjoyed visiting.  Some of the adults got in the water too, but mostly we just enjoyed sitting and watching the kids.

My niece Allison

My nephew Zach

Palmer with his green goggles

Allison making a "big" splash

When everyone needed a break from the water, we headed over to the arcade.  Grandma and Grandpa Robbins had given each kiddo a card with credits for the arcade, so they were super excited to go play games.

My niece Hayley figuring out the game.

My brother-in-law Joe playing with Zach

Paul and Palmer figuring out what to play next.

Look how many tickets Allison won!!!!

Palmer figuring out the motorcycle game.

Palmer and Hayley "helping" my niece Ashlee with this game.

Allison playing air hockey.

It was a great time for everyone.  When the night was over and more swimming was done the next day, we headed back to Marshall, MO, where Paul’s parents still live.  We spent the weekend in Marshall and more pictures will follow later!

Jodi

Christmas

My family left on Christmas Eve to head home and get out their cookies and milk for Santa.  We had a quiet afternoon with our annual traditions on Christmas Eve.  What are those traditions you ask?  After having supper, Palmer heads for the shower and gets into his pj’s, then we snuggle down with blankets and watch “The Polar Express” movie.  This has always been one of my favorite Christmas books and I was so excited when they made it into a movie.  The movie is so well made and has such a great message.  I love that it has become our Christmas Eve tradition.  After the movie is over, then it is time to get out cookies and milk for Santa.  This year Palmer basically did everything on his own, with Paul and I watching from the sidelines.  (Just makes me a little sad knowing how much he is growing up.)

The cookies and milk are ready for Santa.

We tell Palmer not to get out of bed on Christmas morning until 7am.  I guess you could call us “mean parents”, but that has just been the way we have done things.  So, at 7am, Palmer came in to make sure we were up and ready to head downstairs.  When we asked Palmer what time he “woke” up, he informed us he had woken up at 3:30a, went back to sleep, woke up at 4:30a, went back to sleep, woke up at 5:45a, went to the bathroom, went back to sleep, then woke up at 6:15a and laid in bed until 7a.  Love my kid!!!  So after Paul gave Palmer a hard time for about 10 minutes, we finally got out of bed and headed down to see if Santa had arrived.

The stocking was full!

A new Lego Wii remote

One of many Lego sets

New Hawkeye gear

Light up drum sticks - Palmer said, "Now I can practice in the dark!"

And even more Lego's

What could this last and biggest present be?

By the look on his face, it must be something good!

The one Lego set he really wanted and asked Santa for.

Palmer had a great Christmas and Santa even came through with that one Lego set Palmer really wanted!  Hope Christmas was good at your house too!

Jodi

The Holidays

Well, the holidays are technically over, but there was so much going on that I need to get this blog of mine updated.  So I will get started and hopefully get everything updated in the next week or so!  Here we go …

On December 22nd, my parents, brother, sister-in-law and nieces arrived at our house to celebrate Christmas.  It was a little hectic for a couple days, but we had a lot of fun!

The three amigos - Palmer, Vivian and Mia

Pulling apart the annual Christmas Crackers with Grandma!

So there were presents opened while in pj’s.  Then after everyone got dressed, the annual Christmas crackers were pulled apart, jokes told, crowns worn and everyone had a chance to just be silly!  Then, it was time for more presents …

New dogs for their American Girl Dolls

The Lego White House

New clothes

The Lego VW Camper Van - Palmer REALLY wanted this set!

My niece Vivian, who thinks she's a model, showing off her new hat!

Even though it was chilly outside, the kids went out and tried out Mia and Vivian’s new scooter type things called “Flying Turtles”.

Mia trying out her "Flying Turtle"

Vivian

Palmer

And the "Big Kid", my brother Tim!

It was a great time to be together.  We ate lots of great food and had lots of laughs!  Great memories were made and before we knew it everyone was on their way home to get their cookies out for Santa!

More later ….

Jodi

A Favorite Holiday Visit

We are very fortunate to live so close to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.  It is just 20 minutes away from our house.  Every year they have a display of Christmas trees that are decorated and each year the trees have a different theme.  We try to go over to the museum each year to see the trees.  This year the theme for the trees was fairy tales.  It was fun to look at each tree and try to guess which fairy tale the tree was decorated for before reading the sign next to it.  I thought I would share the trees with everyone!

The Aladdin Tree

The Hansel and Gretel Tree

The Jungle Book Tree

The Little Red Riding Hood Tree

The Paul Bunyan Tree

The Pinnochio Tree

The Rumplestiltskin Tree

The Snow White Tree

The Nutcracker Tree

The Three Little Pigs Tree

The Wizard of Oz Tree

We loved seeing all the trees, hope you did too!

Merry Christmas!

Jodi

 

Lots and Lots of Cans!

On our way home from Thanksgiving, we stopped in Moline, IL, so I could do a little shopping at the Isabel Bloom store.  Lucky for me, there is a John Deere Pavilion right across the street from Isabel Bloom that has a variety of different John Deere equipment displayed inside.  This year the marketing department for John Deere came up with an idea to build a S-Series Combine all out of cans of food.  So they did just that and it was on display at the pavilion.  The boys went over to check it out and when I was done shopping, I met them over there and checked it out myself.  It was really cool and I just thought I would share.

As you can see it was an impressive structure.  Here are some of the details John Deere provided about the sculpture:

- Volunteers built the sculpture completely of stacked containers of food.

- The combine is 16 feet tall, 80 feet long & 60 feet wide.

- More than 300,000 cans of food were used and it weighed 170 tons.

- It took 450 volunteers working around 64 hours to create the sculpture.

- When the sculpture is disassembled in December, the food will be donated to a local foodbank in the Quad Cities.

- There were regular sized cans, large cans, small cans and some bagged items.

I am so glad we decided to stop and glad we went in to check it out.

Jodi