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My sister had the good suggestion that I share some of my “old favorite” recipes once in awhile. I love to try new things but it’s also nice to have a few tried and true recipes to fall back on!

I found this low calorie alfredo sauce recipe online several years ago when I first joined Weight Watchers. I try to keep the ingredients and a bag of tortellini on hand and sometimes add grilled chicken.

Creamy Alfredo Sauce

• 4 Tbs. light butter
• 1 cup fat-free sour cream
• 1 egg or 1/4 cup egg beaters
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. Garlic, Garlic or 1 glove garlic, minced
• Pinch ground nutmeg
• Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter over medium heat, add garlic. Add sour cream and reduce heat to low. Whisk until well combined. Add the egg and continue to whisk (if heat is too high the egg will scramble). When completely mixed add cheese and continue stirring until cheese is melted into mixture. Remove from heat; add nutmeg and season to taste.

My friend Kecia gave me this recipe when Aaron and I first got married and it quickly became one of our favorites. The ingredients sound a little strange at first but trust me it’s a very yummy combination!

Enchilada Fantasticas

• 1 pound ground turkey
• 2 cups Pace Picante sauce, divided
• 1 package (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed dry)
• 2 tsp. cumin, divided
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 package cream cheese
• 12 flour tortillas
• 1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 cup shredded cheese

In 10″ skillet, cook turkey until no longer pink. Add 1 cup Pace Picante sauce, spinach, 1/2 tsp cumin & salt. Cook & stir 5 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add cream cheese, stirring until melted, remove from heat. Spoon about 1/3 cup filling down the center of each tortilla; roll up and place in a lightly greased 13×9 baking dish. Combine tomatoes, remaining 1 cup Pace Picante sauce & 1/2 tsp cumin; mix well. Spoon over enchiladas. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until hot. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese; return to oven for 2 minutes to melt.

When Spencer was a baby my good friend Laura made him a very cool full body bib. It was my absolute favorite!  I decided to use it to trace a pattern and duplicate it for Emma. Here’s what I came up with…

This morning I was very surprised to receive an e-mail from our adoption agency letting us know that our court date in Ethiopia has been scheduled for October 7th!! The courts are getting ready to close (they take a recess every year, for several weeks, usually in August or September) so I wasn’t expecting to hear anything for several months.

So, based on time-lines we’ve seen for other families, we will probably travel sometime in the end of October. Generally we’ve seen other people travel 3 weeks after they pass court. Hopefully the same will be true for us! YAY!!!

Just discovered this very cool microwavable mac&cheese at Trader Joe’s. It has five single serving packets, is made with organic pasta, doesn’t have the yucky orange dye, is only $2.79, and most importantly Spencer LOVES it!!

I haven’t posted in awhile because I’ve been on vacation! Even though it’s a lot of work to pack up a household for a week (especially when you add little ones into the picture!) and leave behind your responsibilities(did somebody pay the bills?!), once you’re finally on your way – it’s worth every minute! It’s wonderful and needed to let your brain relax and recharge once in a while!

5 years ago when my brother and his wife got married, we started a tradition of planning a summer vacation together. We camped a few times and then when babies started to arrive we switched to renting a house and splitting the cost. We’ve built a lot of fun memories together and this year was no exception!

We found a cute cabin about 15 minutes from the southern entrance into Yosemite. It would have been perfect except that we forgot to check for air conditioning (we usually vacation near the ocean so we’ve never needed it before). We managed fairly well with fans running 24/7 and usually left in the afternoon when it started getting unbearable.

Day One: We enjoyed a relaxing day at the cabin and then headed out to the nearby Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. The fed us a steak dinner, took us for a train ride through the woods where we stopped over for fun time of singing around the campfire, and ended with a moonlight trip back to the station.

Spencer was just a little bit excited – can’t you tell by the nerdy face!!

Day Two: As native Californians we decided it was high time we made a visit to Yosemite! So we packed a lunch and headed into the park. There wasn’t a lot we could do with four little people in tow but we did enjoy the amazing views and phenomenal scenery that surrounded us.

View from our picnic spot with Yosemite Falls in the background…

Views from Glacier Point…

My brother Ty, Sister-in-law Amy, and their children, Elaina (4), Lily (3) and Colin (1) with baby #4 due in November…

Day 3: The guys left the cabin around 6:15 to make the strenuous 14 mile round trip trek to Half-Dome. From what I hear they enjoyed themselves except for: Aaron slipping and cutting his leg, running out of water by the time the made it to the top (Ty had a water purifier but the only place to get water is the Merced River, several miles from Half-Dome) Aaron’s back going out and barely being able to walk the last few miles, and not making it back to the car before dark (thankfully they had a flashlight)! I was just praising the Lord that they had cell service and could tell us where they were - otherwise I would have had search and rescue out looking for them. Especially when they said they’d be back around 6:00 and didn’t roll in until 10:45! (Ty took all the pictures with his camera so I don’t have any to post).

Amy and I had a much quieter day back at the cabin with the kids. We planned a few crafts for them to enjoy and let them splash around in the little pool we brought along…

Day 4: The guys were pretty tired so we planned a low key day. Bass Lake was only 10 minutes away so we packed another picnic lunch and headed to the water. We found a great spot with a sandy beach and parked ourselves there for the afternoon.

Later when the kids were down for their naps, Amy and I got to sneak away for a few hours and do a little shopping in town. We ended the day with dinner all together at the Pines Resort overlooking the lake!

Day 5: After a fun and relaxing week it was time to say our farewells and head home. One last picture together in front of the cabin…

Adoption is an amazing and rewarding journey but at times the long wait can really get to you. I know pregnancy must also be a very hard wait but the real difference to me is that with adoption you don’t have a definite end date to look forward to. You can guess about how long the process will be based on others who have gone before you, but you also need to be prepared for unplanned set backs.

In the middle of Spencer’s adoption we received word that babies were not going to be released for adoption until they reached 6 months old – this brought referrals to a halt and added about 3-6 months onto our wait. When my husband’s family was in the process of adopting my sister-in-law, Dora, the government changed hands and they were required to do their paperwork all over again – adding a whole year until she could come home.

When you see a picture of that little face, all you want to do is bring them home and love them. But instead of sitting around worrying about possible setbacks, I’ve been trying to dwell on the fact that nothing happens outside of God’s control and I just need to trust and rest in His perfect timing.

Easier said than done – but I’m working on it!

And It helps to stay busy while you wait! I’ve been sewing, painting, stamping and more! So this is part 1 of several posts to come, displaying my most recent projects…

Emma’s Crib

Spencer and Emma will be sharing a room, so I picked green and brown colors to paint the walls and then added pink to Emma’s side and blue to Spencer’s.

I already have a really cute jungle animal crib set that I used for Spencer, with all the matching acessories, but of course it’s too boyish to use for a girl. I started looking for a girl set that wasn’t too expensive but most of the ones I liked were upwards of $200.

Then I stumbled upon a mix and match set at Target where you could pick individual pieces to buy and they were much more affordable! So I purchased a quilt (pictured above), a crib sheet and a set of receiving blanket (for a total of $26) and had the bright idea to modify the set I already owned. They have the same green and brown colors that I painted the walls and coordinate perfectly!

So I used the receiving blankets like material, cut them into flowers and changed this…

Into this…

And with the extra pieces I made my first rag quilt!

Every night before going to bed Aaron and I sneak into Spencer’s room just to check in and give him one last goodnight kiss. We don’t usually let him go to bed with toys because he will play for an hour instead of going to sleep, but last night he really wanted his ball mitt (as he calls it) so we caved and let him have it. He obviously didn’t have trouble falling asleep because this is how we found him…

I know I’m a little bias but I think he’s adorable!!

I always have my eye out for something new to rotate in to our diet – so when I ran across these sandwich thins I was really excited to give them a try! They are round like a hamburger bun but thinner and a whole lot lighter on the calories. At only 100 calories, 5 fiber and 1 fat they only equal 1 Weight Watcher point and my husband loves them! So far we’ve used them for sandwiches, turkey burgers and pulled pork. These will definitely be a repeat!

The last few weeks have been so hectic that we didn’t make any big plans to celebrate the 4th. We really didn’t feel like fighting traffic and crowds so we opted out of the traditional parades and fireworks and enjoyed a quieter day hanging out as a family.

We slept in (yes – Spencer too!), went out to breakfast at a great little place here in town, attempted a little bit of creativity…

(Spencer had fun helping me stamp this paper bag and fill it with a small gift for Grammie and Pop!)

…threw dinner in the crockpot and headed out on the boat for a few hours.

I forgot how relaxing it is to sit on the boat, getting a suntan and enjoying the wind and water blowing in your face. Spencer was a little unsure about the whole thing – he didn’t want to go in the water but was content to sit on Grammies lap and eat snacks all afternoon!

It felt a little weird not BBQing on the 4th but by the time we got home I was very thankful that all I had to do was pull our roast out of the crockpot, stir together some Cheesy Beer Bread Biscuits (recipe below), throw together a spinach salad and dish up some Mango Breeze Margaritas (left-over from my TS open house – more pics of that to come later). Easy and yummy!

Bountiful Cheesy Biscuits
Submitted by Rosemary (MN) HQ Resident Chef

Ingredients
Bountiful Beer Bread Mix®
1 Tbsp. Garlic Garlic^TM
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese**
2 – 3 Tbsp. melted butter

Directions
Combine first 5 ingredients; stir until dough forms. Drop dough by large tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 400º for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Brush tops of hot biscuits with melted butter. Serve warm. Makes 18-20 biscuits.

*Can use any Tastefully Simple seasoning blend in place of Garlic Garlic^TM.

**Can use any shredded cheese in place of cheddar.

This morning as I was prepping for my open house, I received an e-mail from my social worker asking me to call her right away. I knew instantly that she had news of our referral! And indeed she did! After I got her on the phone she quickly forwarded me an e-mail with a picture and for the first time I got to see my precious little girl! She is 2 1/2 months old, has very sweet little features and big brown eyes! She is absolutely adorable!

Thank you for all of your prayers and support. We can’t wait to bring her home!

(Sorry - we are unable to post a picture until we bring her home)