"Ana"

Today Cora woke up from a nap and asked me for a snack. Well, I couldn't figure out what she was saying, probably b/c I was trying to catch up on my blogging and not fully paying attention, but when I finally figured out what she wanted I realized she wanted a "Ana" as she calls it. I don't usually buy bananas very often as my girls go in and out of liking them and then they go bad and I am usually the only one that eats the banana bread, so to save my waist line, I indulge in other sweets! :) Anyway, I guess Cora has since realized that she loves Bananas! :) So I snapped a few pics of her with her bed head!

Our Cousin Katrina

The other day Katrina came over and played while Jess and Jud got some things moved and cleaned up at their place. She had pig tails in, which is now her trade mark according to Kayley. Anytime anyone has pig tails in now she always says they look like Katrina, no matter who it is! :) Well, I decided to see if Cora's hair would fit into pig tails (all of her hair that is) and it did and looked very cute I th0ught. I tried to get Kayley to wear pig tails so they would all match, but she's so into princesses that she has to always have her hair down now. Anyway, we had lots of fun with Katrina, I've never seen her so upset to leave our house before, Jess could barely get her out the door. It was cute!

JT's Birthday

Well, JT's 26th birthday was last week, so for his birthday he wanted everyone to join them for dinner at "On The Border" for dinner. Well, as JT was gone from the table, Jess asked the waiter to sing to him, but to keep it a secret as JT wouldn't have wanted them to sing to him. It was hilarious to see how embarassed and red faced he got. Sorry to enjoy your embarassment JT...er should I say JD as they called him! :) I forget how red faced JT can get. I remember when he and Jess got married and it seemed like the littlest things would get him so embarassed. It's also funny to look at the pic of his "BFF" as Jess and Becky call them. He's in the lower right picture. Salmone (sp?) and Becky Pinarosa joined us for dinner too. Sal is one of JT's managers so they work together 5 days a week, plus they work together in the Bishopric in church, so they see each other 6 days a week. They get along great and their wives sometimes have to tear them apart, but it's fun to see such two BFF's get along so well! :) Happy Birthday JT!

Cashew Chicken Recipe

Ok...so I had a few inquiries about my cashew chicken and since I know there are lots of restaurants that sell this, I wanted to let you all in on a little secret recipe and share Arlaine's (Nick's Mom) recipe of Cashew Chicken, which is Springfield style, which is in my opinion the only way to have it! Hope you enjoy if you decide to try it. I would say that it is almost one of my favorite home-cooked meals too. It is definitely Nick's!

Arlaine Bell’s Famous Springfield Style Cashew Chicken

Ingredients:
2 cups of flour 1 T garlic powder
1 T salt 2 eggs
½ cup milk 5-6 chicken breasts

Directions: Thaw chicken and cut into bite sized pieces. Mix eggs and milk and put chicken in there for about 5 minutes, but no longer. Mix flour, garlic powder and salt in another bowl and put chicken in there (without the milk mixture, go ahead and pour this out as you won’t be using it anymore). Heat skillet fryer to about 350-400 and melt a stick of margarine/butter and about ½ cup of oil. Fry in a skillet until golden brown and serve on top of rice with gravy sauce listed below. Arlaine Bell.

Cashew Chicken Gravy

Ingredients:
Chicken bouillon Oyster sauce
Water cornstarch

Directions: Doing a 1-to-1-to-1 ratio of each item, put a Tablespoon of bouillon and a Tablespoon of Oyster sauce and 1 cup of water to boil on stove top. Make more cups and more Tablespoons according to how much gravy you need. Then add cornstarch mixed in water to thicken gravy and serve on top of cashew chicken with rice. Arlaine Bell

Family Pictures 2009

Our family pictures from February 2009...

Just reminded of how old and grown-up Kayley is getting from all the pics!...Cora too!

We tried to get a few pics of just the girls, but Cora wouldn't leave my side...

Overall I thought they turned out pretty good. I always stress that one of the girls are going to freak out by one little thing the photographer says or does and that Nick's eyes are going to be shut. I was pretty pleased...although as you can see Cora seemed to have a little bit of a hard time at times, but we were able to get one that everyone was smiling and everyone's eyes were open! Wahoo! :)

Dates and more Dates

Nick went with Kayley to this Parents as Teachers Daddy/Daughter Valentine's Day Party. She was absolutely excited about going to it as we told her it was just going to be her and Daddy. She requested to ride in his truck with him and to wear her Sleeping Beauty Princess Dress. They had a blast! They came home with this cute magnet (or maggot as Kayley still calls it!) to be put on my fridge. I'm so glad that I'm blessed with such a sweet husband who is loving and kind to me and will do anything for his girls. It just made for such a special night for Kayley..she is anxiously waiting her next Daddy/Daughter date! Oh...and to make things extra special for Kayley, her song played on the radio on the way to their date. Her song is "Love Story" by Taylor Swift b/c it says "You be the prince and I'll be the princess." She always asks for me to look for her "Prince and Princess" song...you can listen to it below on our playlist if you haven't heard it before.

Then, we had a great Valentine's Day as I'm hoping everyone else did too! We decided to make it low key in order to save money. So to start it off, Nick came home on Friday after work and surprised me with my favorite snack, Jalepeno Cheddar Bites from Captain D's...with Ranch, they are to die for! :) I was excited and devoured them very quickly! Then, Nick's treat was for me to make him Cashew Chicken on Sunday (his favorite meal of all time), which we all enjoyed yesterday! Then we decided to do something different than what we do all the time. We like to go out to eat, but we very rarely go out to eat for Pizza at a Pizza Restaurant. Well, Saturday started and we went out on our normal errands. We got hungry, but didn't want to go out to eat for dinner yet, b/c it was too early, so we stopped at Sam's to get a snack and ended up getting pizza...so that pizza idea was shot. We decided instead to go to El Maguey's. It was still out of the ordinary as Nick is not a big fan of Mexican and we hadn't eaten at this one in Blue Springs yet. So we went and it was a success for everyone...even Nick! We also had a coupon, which made things even better! I love getting a bargain! It was a great Valentine's Day, but the best part was that I got to spend it with my very favorite 3 people in the world, Nick, Kayley, & Cora!

The Cutest Apology

Ok...I just have to write this so that I don't forget because it was so cute to me. The other day was Nick's day off during the week and we went to Petsmart to get some things for our new dog, einstein. Well, we were planning on going to Michelle's to see Shannon in the evening and on the way home from our errands the girls both fell asleep. We decided it would be best to let the girls sleep in the car while we got the dog washed before heading to Michelle's. We left the door open to the garage and the windows down so we could hear the girls. Well, evidently we weren't listening well enough as Kayley woke up saying she had to go potty, but she couldn't get out of her carseat as we had kept her strapped in to keep her asleep. Well we cleaned it up and had a fun visit at Michelle's. On the way home from eating dinner, Kayley got in her seat and as I was strapping her in, she said, "Sorry I peed in my carseat mom." I told her it was ok and it wasn't all her fault and that Mommy and Daddy should have listened for her better. I then told Nick what she said and he told Kayley it wasn't her fault either and then Kayley replied with, "Yep, it's partly your fault Dad." It was so funny and really cute and sweet that her apology was so sincere. I love our girls.

We Have Really Done It This Time!!!

Well, I thought we had done it with the guinea pig, but no, we had to go and get a dog! Both Nick and I like dogs, but we had both wanted a dog at separate occassions and finally we decided to go for it. After much contemplation on what kindto get from our selection on petfinder.com, we decided to go with a Basset Hound/Beagle mix. He is so cute and looks more Basset Hound to us than Beagle. Apparently they call this breed a Bagle Hound, so his name is Einstein (that was his name when we got him and we kept the name)...for those that don't know their is a Bagel chain here in KC area that is called Einstein's Bagels, which is where his name comes from. He is the sweetest dog and as you can see is well loved by our girls, especially Cora. "Sti Stein" are the first words out of her mouth in the morning. Kayley actually likes him a lot too as we were afraid she wouldn't want anything to do with him. He's part inside/outside, so we are working on housetraining, which is going sort of ok if we can master his marking his territory. Apparently it takes about 6 months for hormones to get regulated from neutering. We've also lost him twice since we've gotten him...another feature of Basset Hounds is to follow their sent until they don't even realize they are lost. Well we lost them at Michelle's. After we searched for about 2 hours, we happened to come across the car of two girls who had picked him up and had been looking for the owners for the past two hours also. We hadn't put a tag on him yet with our number b/c we still weren't sure on his name. Then he got out once from our gate, but we found him in our street in the front yard luckily. We have now boarded up all possible escape routes in our fence. He also has a tag with both our numbers on it. So far, so good on having a dog. We just have to stay on top of bathing him/cleaning up after him as my allergies sometimes act up if we're not careful. Oh...and the picture of Bubbles is up there to show that we still have her, although she doesn't get played with as much now that we have Einstein. We worry that the more we play with her around the dog, that Einstein will want to explore later when we aren't looking with her and that may not end up as a good ending if you know what I mean! But Bubbles is still a part of the Bell family and I like cleaning up after her poop better than Einstein's! :)

Pictures of Einstein

Ok...per request of Nick...he wanted some pictures of Einstein standing up so you could see what he looks like. Well, I tried to earlier before I put his original post up, but he wouldn't hold still enough for me. So, here are the pics that we downloaded from Petfinder.com that they had on their website. I still think he looks cuter in person seeing his personality and all, but they are still cute of him.