New Years!

New Years was quite an adventure this year. Some things happened and we won't talk about it right now but it was kind of a bad night. My boyfriend and I went to his friend's girlfriend's parents house that was out in the woods about 45 minutes away from Houston. When we got there it was freezing cold and everyone was outside. Then the ground was muddy and I got my boots covered. Luckily I brought another pair with me so I changed. Then after a little time drunk mouths were shot off and people got their feelings hurt. So it was kind of crappy night. There were some good photos taken though so I will share them with you.

The girls-It was cold plus we were carrying cold drinks in our hands. Bummer!

The boys

The boys being crazy! Look at my baby, he looks cute being silly.

This is my boyfriend's friend and his fiance. They were together a couple of months after us. Um hello where is my ring??? By the way this Sunday marks the 5 year anniversary. I am still happy, isn't that great?! You would think that we would get tired of each other. Not yet.

Open bar baby!

Food, which I didn't have any.

And us in the new year. I love this picture.

Happy New Year everyone! Hope this year is a great one. Especially getting busy again at work.

Christmas in Liberty

Christmas this year was really nice. It really was about spending time with the people you love. This year I spent it with my boyfriend's family. It was one of the best Christmas days I had. The night before I finished wrapping the presents and put them under the tree. My boyfriend put his under there too, that's y it looks so full haha.



And of course there was a whole bunch of Christmas movies on and cartoons...A Christmas Story, Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, The Santa Clause but this little guy comes from one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time....can you guess???.............Home Alone!! If you have never seen it before you should see it now. It always putts me in the mood for Christmas and it also reminds me of my brother when he was that age. Blond hair, blue eyes and bad as hell.

The next morning of course we slept in ( which was nice ). I had made cinnamon rolls the other day and I kept a batch for myself. Oh wow it was good.

Washed it down with some milk in my favorite cup. Go Saints!!

Then it was off to Liberty to my boyfriend's sister's house. I had never been there before and I thought it was really a nice place to live if you want a quiet place with lots of running room for your children. The town was very quaint and had some decorations up that really made it feel like Christmas.

Both my boyfriend and myself got presents for his family. His little nephews were so cute. Here is one of them. I just could hold this one all day.

Here is the other one. I remember when he was a baby and now he looks like a little boy. He was so cute because he absolutely loves my boyfriend. He just thinks that he is the greatest person in the world besides his daddy.

Tio (uncle ) is helping with the gifts.

So here is the little man. That is actually the present that my boyfriend gave him. His mom was telling me that he loves stuffed animals. His face lit up when they took it out of the box. It sings and says his name. It is so cute.

My boyfriend bought a leap frog learning game for the older nephew. He played that thing for hours. (That's his brother in the back.)

Every Christmas there is a sandwich that I LOVE!!! It is basically chicken, cabbage and other toppings on a crunchy yet soft bun. OH WOW WAS IT GOOD!! If it wasn't so big I would have eaten another one.

At the end of the day we decided to take pictures. I love this one.

The men in the family (minus his dad- he was in El Salvador at the time visiting his family that lives there).

Sorry about the women of the family. I forgot to take a picture of that. It really was a relaxing day. His sister was so nice and welcomed me in with open arms. The kids were happy and every body's bellies were full. What a great Christmas!

Christmas Idea....

Christmas has already come and gone. It is like blinking your eye. There is all this hype and then nothing. This year I decided to be a little creative and make baskets for some people according to what they liked. Some got the same items but I tried to add a little bit different to each one.

I decorated it with these items below. It was a little crazy because there was so much to choose from but I think i made the right choice.

Some of the items I got:

This was tow things that I made. The one on top was coco mix and the other one was oatmeal raisin cookies. I have to ask my cousin how that came out. I hope it was good.

Sparkling grape juice

50 million pounds!

This has been a crazy couple of weeks. You will have to forgive me on the entry stuff. I have been busy with Christmas and shopping and visiting family. Since my pictures from Christmas are not ready to be put up yet I decided that I needed to write something. As you know this blog is all about what is happening in my life and here is one of the just writing entries instead of the usual picture theme. The last 2 years have been kind of hard for me and there has been a lot of transition in many different aspects. There has been a lot of fights, my sister who I am very close with went into the navy and I hardly get to see or speak to her anymore, moving and even a new dog. Of all these things the most drimatic that has happened to me is when my mother passed away 2 years ago and I was not the same after. I began to get depressed and mad at everyone that said anything about my mother or death for that matter. I didn't really show it but I was mad for a long time and then when the sadness came over me I let it take me completely. Along with the depression came the eating and not exercising. I really just ate like a horse when I was excising 3-4 times a week. After I didn't want to exercise I was eating the same and 20 pounds later I looked at myself in the mirror and went...WTF?? Who's body is this. All of my clothes were too tight and I kept thinking I need to do something. But still something in me was not wanting to exercise. After my boyfriend started to work out and he lost so much weight in very little time ( Damn you men and your ability to loose weight really fast). I still didn't want to loose weight. So stupid I know but when your not ready you definitely won't do anything about it even if you tell yourself it will be different tomorrow I promise. Well the other day I was watching tv and I saw this commercial with this woman at a buffet and she was about to carry a huge ice cream Sunday away and there was this man standing there like don't you dare take that to your seat and she stopped looked at him like she was a 7 year old just got caught doing something bad, put the ice cream down and said " I think I'll hit the salad bar". I laughed a little because it really was funny and then it said join the 50 million pound challenge. Out of curiosity I looked up the wed site and signed up. It is free and they have really good tools for you to use. There is a meal tracker, daily journal ( it even has the mood you are in today), weight tracker, grocery list of good things to get for meals and snacks, team building, and other things. I started yesterday and so far I feel accomplished. I have a goal of 20 pounds by the end of 2010. I don't want to put on a lot of pressure because in the past pressure just makes you fail ( well with weight for me anyway). If you are interested in the 50 million pound challenge go to http://www.50millionpounds.com/.... Wish me luck!

Cinnamon Rolls!

This weekend I was being very adventurous. i made red beans that turned out great and also I made cinnamon rolls that everyone loved. I usually read this blog The Pioneer Woman. She takes pictures of everything she makes and I love that because you can tell whether or not you are doing it right. Well one day I looked and saw that she made cinnamon rolls for a Christmas tradition and I decided I wanted to make mine one too. So here we go....




First I put the mixing bowl in the oven to warm up. I have a setting for warm and I figure that would be good enough. I heard that in order for your dough to turn out good you have to feel everything nice and warm and happy.


Next I combined milk, sugar and veggie oil and scalded it together. I had to let this sit until warm.

Then 2 packages of yeast went in.

After the yeast was cooled I added 8 cups of flour to the liquid mixture. Then the hard part came...waiting for it to rise. It doubled in size and I was jumping up and down "It worked...It worked!!!". My boyfriend thought I was nuts but he said good job anyway. It was so weird to see it doubled in size.

After it had risen I punched it down and added an additional cup of flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. ( I am telling you that baking dough or rather making dough is extremely exhausting)

Mixed it together..

Put some flour down on the counter and poured the dough over it.

Ok I know this is ghetto but I used a can to roll the dough out. ( I took the paper off and cleaned it ok people?!)

Melted some butter

Pour that goodness on!!!

Spread it out a but with a brush

Sprinkled a lot of cinnamon and sugar over the whole thing.

Roll that sucker up!

Cut it in 1 inch slices and put it in like this.

Took it out the next morning and set it to rise once more for 30 mins and baked them for 30 mins at 400.

Oh wow they look good and my house smelled of cinnamon and sugar all day.

I also made homemade icing to go with it. It was just powdered sugar, milk, a dash of regular sugar and vanilla. I poured it on heavy and since they were hot it melted right in. Oh wow!!

I brought them to work and they were all gone in an hour!! Merry Christmas everyone and have a great rest of the year!