Christmas in Indiana

We travel to Indiana each year to see my family. For Jeff, coming from a small family I know that my big family holiday gatherings were a little overwhelming for him at first, but I think after 7 years he's finally getting used to them :-)

For the first time in the 6 years that I've lived in Texas we finally had a good snow while I was home! It was so beautiful! Its super nice for us because we get see the beauty and then go home to 60 degree winter temps ;-)

Maddox loved the snow. Especially the first day. After the second snow it was pretty deep so when he would fall in the snow his face would get snow on it. Then he would try to wipe it off with his snow covered gloves. The first day though, Jeff showed him how to make and throw snowballs so of course he loved that!

And of course there were more presents!

Holy Crap!

I'm blogging again!! Its only been 3 months so i'm not that behind ;-) There has been a lot happen in the past three months obviously, as life happens rather you blog about it or not. But I thought I'd upload some photos from Christmas so when I look back at this blog I don't think we skipped Christmas of 2012 or something.

One major fail on this Mommy's part. Going all the way to Indiana with only one battery for my camera that only had one bar. FAIL! Oh well, it was kind of nice to participate only and not from behind my camera the entire time. I still managed to get photos from our little family Christmas we had at our house before traveling to Indiana and I also got some from our Christmas with Jeff's family and mine, just not too many.

 Does it fit?? He was so cute, after he saw both Jeff and I open up clothes and hold them up to us, you know, how everyone automatically does! He did the same thing with the next clothing item he opened up.

 Hmmm....Santa is kinda weird

 Jewlsie and Maddox!

 I'm going to get you mom!

 Ahhh!

 haha!

 No seriously, I'm going to get you!

 Uncle Chris got him the car and he loved it so much he wouldn't get out of it. So he opened a few presents from inside his car

 Batman pj's! Yea, and we do Christmas in Texas in shorts

Maddox's gift to GP. Of course it has a photo of himself on it. How self centered he is!

 At the Christmas Train with our friends

 Opening his stocking! He was so funny, he spent so much time looking at each thing and then he'd put it back in his stocking.

He loved opening presents this year. He was a big help to everyone when it came to opening ;-)

 So excited to see this broom! And once he opened it he was happy, he didn't care to open anything else...ha!

 Aunt Jackie, Uncle Mark and cousin Miles stopped by

 Kisses!

Ok, I realize this post is getting crazy long. So ending it here! Indiana Christmas to come! Along with super dooper cute videos!

Pork Enchiladas

So this week I've not made it to the grocery. Maddox has been sick and grouchy, we've been busy and I've just not felt like it. So I've been "Pantry Cooking"! I've just been trying to come up with things to make from what we already have in the pantry and freezer. I think I hit this one out of the park though, Jeff must have told me 10 times how much he liked these.

It all started with leftover Pork BBQ that I had in the freezer. I wanted to do something different than just BBQ sandwiches. We had tortillas, so I figured I could do something like an enchilada with the pork!

Pork BBQ Enchiladas

2 1/2 cups of shredded pork BBQ (Pork BBQ recipe below) 

1 cup brown rice

1 TBS chopped chipotle chilies in adobo sauce

1 cup shredded cheese plus some to sprinkle

16 small tortillas

4 TBS peach salsa

1. Defrost pork, when its defrosted throw in a pan on medium heat.

2. Make rice according to package directions.

3. As pork is warming, add the chipotle chilies. These are pretty spicy, you may want to just use the sauce, or use less if you don't like spice. 

4. Combine the cooked rice and pork mixture, add cheese

5. Spoon mixture into middle of each tortilla and roll them up.

6. Top with shredded cheese and peach salsa.

7. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees

You could use bigger tortillas, I used small because its what I had. Pretty easy and delicious meal!

Pork BBQ

5 lb pork loin

1 can beer (darker the better)

1 medium onion (you can either chop or slice the onion)

Salt and Pepper

BBQ sauce

1. Place the pork loin in the crock pot, pour in beer, you may not need the entire beer, make sure its covering at least half of the loin. Add onions. Salt and pepper. Top with BBQ sauce. I usually squirt it back and forth a few times (don't worry, you'll add more sauce later)

2. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

3. Remove from the crockpot and shred the pork. Drain liquid from the crock pot and add pork back in. Cover with more BBQ sauce (as much or as little as you want) and mix well. Leave in crockpot on warm.

We usually eat it for one meal and maybe leftovers the next day at lunch then I portion it out and freeze it for those quick nights where I didn't have time to cook or just don't feel like it.

Halloween

....was kind of lame. Whoops! I'm probably not supposed to admit that one huh?!?!  Maddox has been sick this week.  Snotty, coughing and a low grade fever on Monday and Tuesday. We took it easy this week. Although I have to say, taking it easy for Maddox made it super easy for me to get things done around our house! I got lots of projects completed while he got better :-)

Wednesday was the first day he was really feeling better. Jeff had to work late and traffic was bad so by the time he got home, we ate dinner, I threw on MD's costume, it was time to get trick or treating!

Disclaimer! I couldn't find my camera, but I'm not going to lie, I also didn't look for it. HA! 

I know this is pathetic. I'm a photographer, we were in my home (in front of my studio actually) and I have to share with you a picture of the back of my neighbor's camera of a photo that her husband took of our boys. Photographer FAIL ;-)

Also, I feel like we should have done photos then given them suckers (with the wrappers still on them...yep!) (from May....shhh, don't tell anyone we gave out candy from MD's birthday party)

Passing out candy to trick or treaters, and stealing suckers any chance he got

Super lonely little boots....

So yea, this is the best photo I got. He kind of looks like he wants to punch me.

We had a good time, even though I have no photos to reflect that. We went to a few houses in our neighborhood then sat on our porch and handed out candy. We didn't have a ton of trick or treaters, I think less and less people are handing out candy in the neighborhood so other people outside of the neighborhood aren't coming anymore, which I'm probably not going to complain about. We were left with a bunch of delicious candy because of it ;-) We ended up coming inside around 8:30 because we were getting eaten up by mosquitos. That's something that never happened when I was growing up and trick or treating in Indiana. We also didn't have to worry about over heating on Halloween either.

Uncle Chris got Maddox this Auburn Tiger costume last year, I just found it last week when I was organizing closets and it fits him perfectly. He looked super cute in it! I was going to put him in it for a Halloween party we were supposed to go to, but we ended up missing because he wasn't feeling well.

War Eagle!

Fall in Pearland

A little different than fall in Indiana, by just 25 degrees or so :-) 

This week we did story time at the Pumpkin Patch! Of course Maddox wasn't interested in smiling for photos, but he was interested in throwing the small pumpkins. We didn't really stay too long...

I'm going to guess that 1 second after this photo was taken that pumpkin was being thrown

Just a little dirty

This week we also got to have lunch with Jewelsie and go to the Children's Museum!

Lunch at Tiny Boxwoods

We're REALLY into dipping. If I give him ketchup he'll eat everything. Who knew that strawberries and ketchup were good together?

Playing with Grandma Jewelsie

And yesterday we did the most fall-ish activity I can think of. We went to the BEACH! :-) It was a beautiful day and honestly in my opinion this is the very best time of year to go to the beach. A little bit cooler weather and no crowds! Jeff was in Gavelston for a work meeting for two days so we went and hung out at Hotel Galvez for a little bit until he was done and then went to the beach for a little bit.

There was a sailboat race and there were at least a hundred boats out there. It was beautiful!

First (and hopefully not last!) family beach day

I did take the time to snap a few fall photos of Maddox this week. He actually did really well, and I was very surprised seeing as this is the first time he's ever cooperated in my studio!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful fall! I know we are!