Some dinner recipes

Braegger Shepherd's Pie

1 lb. hamburger
sprinkle of onion flakes
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can French style green beans, drained
2 cups mashed potatoes (we make up instant), seasoned with salt and pepper
shredded cheese, optional

Brown hamburger in skillet. Add onion flakes, soup and beans and mix well. Spread mashed potatoes in a layer on top of hamburger mixture and heat through. If desired (but we don't usually do this), top with grated cheese and cover skillet until melted.



Hamburger Gravy over Noodles

1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 lb. hamburger
sprinkle of garlic powder
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream
egg noodles, cooked, drained and buttered

Saute onion in olive oil until translucent. Add hamburger and break up while browning thoroughly. Sprinkle with garlic powder and add soup, milk and sour cream. Heat until bubbly. Serve over buttered egg noodles.

I'm a totally cool parent like Phil on Modern Family, yo :)

Christian has still been revelling in his obsession with the Lego Indiana Jones game which, by the way, he now pronounces "Hone-ya Jone-yez" for reasons which escape me. On March 24th he decided that he wanted to draw Indy and asked me how to do it. I told him to start with a circle and draw his face. "But he face not a circle," he countered, "he face is a square!" I looked at the front of the game box and, sure enough, two-dimensionally it does look like a square.

I told Buddy that I'm certain that he knows enough about Indiana Jones to draw a great picture, and this is what he produced:

Square head, check! Hat, check! Squiggly whip, check! Intense expression, check! It's an exact replica!

I took a picture of our front door with the Easter egg wreath I made last year because the irridescent Easter grass was glittering so prettily in the sun, but in this photo you can't see it very well :(

Christian took some pretty cool pictures of Dusty that day

even an extreme close up of his bunny-fur tummy!

He didn't totally leave Crumpet out, but you can tell that her picture was a bit of an afterthought.

That evening we went to the school to see Faith's opera! Here is the scenery that the kids painted,

and the sign that faith did all the lettering for.

Doesn't Christian look excited to see it?

Here is the opening scene,

and the end, all lined up for picture taking.

Here is Faith's costume that she came up with herself, I just did a bit of hot glueing and sewing.

She wanted to be a hawk even though all the other girls but one (who was a bunny) wanted to be flowers. Way to not follow the pack! I took video with our old camcorder, but it will take me forever to get that on the computer or disc. I did get some segments with my camera the next week when they performed at Apple Village, and I'll be putting those in that post. It was wonderful!! It was so amazing that they wrote the words and music by themselves.

After we got home, we had a late dinner of spaghetti and Buddy got a little wild!

On the 25th Joy invited us to the Treehouse Children's Museum with her since she had a free pass for Christian and Faith had gotten a free pass from Weber State Credit Union. The kids had a blast!

This new bucking bull was a lot of fun.

We made lion and lamb sack puppets for the craft.

Faith did a great job on the states quiz (and Buddy copied her).

Joy wanted to bring her kids to the Treehouse because she was doing "X week" and could teach them about x-rays and xylophones there. Here she's showing Sierra a person picture (which you color to look like yourself) that you hold up to the light to see the skeleton inside. If you want to print this activity that I made for my preschool a while ago, see this post. Joy also did a few of animals, the frog one was really neat!

I think Christian could have played on this for an hour, at least.

We had such a fun time and the kids were sad to leave. And when I say leave, I mean get drug out of the building after it closed and I was getting scuzzed by all the employees.

That evening we stopped by the library. It's one of our favorite places to visit!

The kids slept over at Braegger's on the 26th (and Tony & I went out to Olive Garden!) but we picked them and Zach up the next morning to take them to Lowe's craft. The kaleidoscopes turned out really cool, but they were the most difficult project we'd done!

We took the kids straight back to grandma's because that afternoon was their egg hunt and early Easter dinner.

They got candy, money, bubbles, stuffed animal bunnies and outfits!

I brought Snickers Salad to the dinner and it was a big hit, so I thought I'd post the recipe:

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Snickers Salad

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4 apples (I used all Granny Smith, but it's also good with 2 green & 2 red)

4 or 5 regular size Snickers candy bars (I got the almond ones--yum!)

1 - 8 oz. tub Cool Whip, thawed

small box vanilla instant pudding

1 & 1/2 cups of milk

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Core and dice apples (with skin on) and immediately put into a bowl with a few cups of water and a squirt of lemon juice (to prevent browning). Drain and put in large bowl. In a separate bowl, stir together pudding mix with milk (or what I used instead was four cups [one pack] of the already prepared vanilla Snack Pack Pudding--it was cheaper!). Mix in Cool Whip and then add to apples. Stir. Cut each candy bar into three long strips and then cut pieces directly onto the apple mixture, stirring every so often (otherwise the caramel makes all the candy bar pieces stick together).

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I'm not sure how much in advance you can prepare this and have it look and taste its best, but mine was refrigerated for several hours and it was great. There weren't any leftovers to tell if it's just as good the next day!

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After dinner, grandma went out to blow bubbles with the kids. It was such a fun Easter activity day!

Sunday, the 28th was Joy's birthday and Faith got this shot of her and also a very unflattering one of her blowing out the candles. Unfortunately, I promised not to share that one on the blog!