Beef Taco Casserole

Our new favorite recipe:

(From Campbells)

Beef Taco Casserole

1 pound ground beef
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup
1 cup Salsa
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup uncooked instant white rice
1/2 cup slightly crushed tortilla chips
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

1. Cook beef in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until beef is well browned, stirring to break up meat. Pour off fat.
2. Stir soup, salsa, milk and rice into skillet. Spoon beef mixture into 1 1/2 quart casserole. Cover.
3. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until hot. Stir.
4. Arrange chips around edge of casserole. Sprinkle with cheese.

So yummy!

Christmas

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and enjoyed celebrating the birth of our Savior with your families. We had a crazy busy, crazy fun time with ours! I was terrible this year about taking pictures - I preferred to be down in the mix with Conni. Here's a fun little recap of our celebrations.

Christmas Eve: we had a lazy day around the house and stayed in our jammies till after lunch. Then we all got ready to head over for dinner with Dave's family. We had all but one of his sisters and their families with us. Conni loves playing with her cousins and kept walking around snitching crackers and snacks instead of eating her dinner. We played there for a while and then headed over to see my family.

We had the entire gang there for my family celebrations. There were projects for the little kids (crafts) and the big kids (setting up my dad's new tv). The cousins did their gift exchanges - and Conni almost got into opening presents. She was so tired she kept disappearing to the back bedroom with her blanket. She ended up laying in my dad's recliner while Dave and I helped her. But then she would get down and play with her My Little Ponies from her cousins and her new baby doll from Grandma & Grandpa. Then we did our sibling gift exchanges. My sister is a huge U of U fan and my hubby is a huge Y fan. She got us both BYU shirts, but wrapped them in U of U boxes. Very funny :)

Then we let the kids play and we put on the Christmas Carol animated movie with Jim Carry. It was hilarious to watch Conni watch it. The tv was much bigger than she was used to, and she was so tired. We were watching the beginning when Jacob Morley visits Scrooge. She would walk closer to the tv, then get scared and back up to be with mom. But she wouldn't get close enough for me to hold her or console her before she started going closer to the tv again. She did this over and over again - we were all laughing at her :)

We finally left there about 11:30 or so - I was exhausted and so was Conni, but Dave had some caffeine so he was set. We got Conni to bed and Dave was starting to get really giddy.

Christmas morning we slept in till about 9 and then got Conni up for presents. She was only partially interested in everything there under the tree. We started opening a few - which consisted of Dave or me starting to rip the paper, and if Conni was intrigued by what she saw inside she would finish unwrapping it. Then Conni was distracted and wanted some breakfast, so we took a break. It took us about two hours to get thru everything. Conni's favorite gifts were the rest of the plush characters from Toy Story (she already had Jessie), Minnie Mouse slippers (that she wears all the time now), and a Mickey pez dispenser. By the time we finished with all of this, Conni was ready to go back to bed (and so was I!)

We napped till about 2:30 or 3, then we got us all ready to go do visits. Conni did pretty well, considering she was still pretty tired.

Overall it was a fun holiday for us again this year. We were a little disappointed that Conni still wasn't in to opening gifts, but we had a lot of fun spending quality family time together.

The Influence of Mickey Mouse

I have two cute Mickey Mouse stories to share. Conni absolutely loves Mickey Mouse. We watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (MMC) almost once a day - if she gets her way :)

The first story - we were watching the Christmas special of MMC and it had Santa in it. She heard Mickey say they had to go rescue Santa. Conni looked at me and called (very distinctly): "Santa, where are you? Come back! I want to play with you!" Then she helped Mickey solve the puzzles to rescue Santa. Now she calls people all the time - especially her cousin Tini - "[name], where are you? Come back! I want to play with you!"

The second story - we were at Dave's parents for Sunday dinner. We had gone into the front room to have some quiet time away from the chaos to regroup. Grandma Mary had some 3-4 foot pine trees set up with some little birds scattered through the branches. Conni wanted me to get them for her to play with, but I told her they were just to look at, not to touch. She put her finger to her chin, said, "Hmmmm". Then she called, "Oh Toodles! Birds please!" (If you don't watch the show, Toodles is the character that always brings them a tool to solve the problem.) I was so pleased to see her trying to solve the problem and not get upset that I had told her no. She seemed a little put out that Toodles never showed, but she stopped trying to get at the birds too.

Signing

We use a little bit of sign language around the house. We use the sign for "I Love You" a lot - as we wave goodbye to each other when we leave, etc. On the slim chance you don't know that sign - here it is:

Conni has started signing goodbye to us to - when Dad leaves for work, when she says goodnight, when we leave Grandma's - random times throughout the day. But its very hard for a two-year-old to get her fingers to do what she wants them to without using her other hand. Conni's sign for "I Love You" has developed into this:

So close huh! But its so cute to see her sign and she waves her hand too. But she frequently is so busy looking at it herself she doesn't always sign to the person she's talking to! I will try to get some video of it to share too. So if you ever see Conni signing "L" at you, know that she loves you too.

Merry Christmas!

I know I won't be on the computer if at all for the rest of the weekend since we will be together as a family, so I wanted to hurry and wish the few of you out there that read this a very Merry Christmas! Enjoy the time to celebrate our Savior's birth and sacrifice for us so that we can have so much. I am so grateful for this truth!

Merry Christmas!

Little Red Sweater

Conni loves her little red sweater. You can see it in my posts about Making Choices, Christmas Card Pic, and Our Family Pics. Every day when its time to put on our coats, she stands at the stairs and says "Mom, Red please!!!" While this sweater is cute, its not warm enough for winter. So once she gets her red sweater on, sometimes I can get her winter coat over it. Other days - like when we're just running to Grandma's around the corner - I don't want to fight that battle so I just bring her winter coat with us.

Once she has the sweater on, Conni will leave it on all day - and I mean ALL day. She will play in it, she will eat in it, she will nap in it too. Come bath or bed time, she cries when we have to take it off.

Luckily, its a pretty sturdy sweater and its holding up well. We are definitely getting our money's worth out of this one!

I love that she has found her "favorite things" and that she can communicate them with me. Now I just need to figure out how to teach her that its too cold for just a sweater!

Making Choices

This morning when I was getting ready to get Conni dressed - picking out clothes and hair bows, etc - Conni voiced an opinion. The first thing she chose was her red and black hair bows. Then she chose her black tights. Then when I tried to put her jeans on, she adamantly refused. I pulled out her denim skirt and she excitedly said "yes!" Mom chose the white t-shirt - wanting her to look a little matched - and Conni didn't object. Then Conni chose her sparkly red shoes.

When it was time to go, I went to get Conni her coat and she told me "red" - meaning her red sweater. Well, it matched, and so I didn't feel like that was a battle to fight. Its not the warmest on such a cold day as today, but since Grandma's house is always warm and its not a long drive to get there, I thought it would be ok.

Here are the results:

She wasn't thrilled about getting her picture taken, hence the tears and the little blurries.

My favorite was Dave's comment when I sent him the picture - "2 years old and she already color coordinates better than her dad." So true :)

#200

This is my 200th post! Almost two years after I started the blog. Thank you for following along in our journey and sharing in our adventures!

Sentences

Conni is starting to speak in full sentences! And I can understand most of them!! This morning, she told me, "Mom, help lights tree please?" to say, "Mom, will you please help me turn on the lights on the tree?" Then at Grandma's this morning she said, "Mom, rock me water please?" meaning, "Mom, will you please rock me while I drink my water?" And Grandma understood the whole thing too :)

I sometimes feel like she is taking her time to speak to us, and I know I keep posting about her speech development, but its such a fascinating process! Hopefully I can continue to understand her words and we can work on her grammer skills. Conni still gets very frustrated if she is using her words and I can't understand what she wants, but we also employ the ever-useful "show me" method of translation.

Oh, and as a funny side note: we still have to work to get the "please" and "thank you"s to come out - lots of reminders as we go thru the day. But Conni totally has " 'scuse me" down! When she moves something - say a blanket off the couch - she will say "scuse me blanket". Or when she pushes me or Dave off where she wants to sit, she sweetly says "scuse me Mom/Dad." She also will use it with her various bodily functions :) So at least something of manners is getting thru to her!

What a fun journey!

Christmas Card Pic

Since I was only able to send Christmas cards to immediate family, I thought I would post the pic here to share too. Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas season!

Festival pic

As promised, here's our part of the family pic from the Festival of Trees. I don't have time to upload the videos at the moment, but hopefully they make it on here soon. Thank goodness the rest of the Festival wasn't like this! Love my sweetie!

Just a side note - its cheesy, but can you tell we were matching that day? Red festive shirts with white long sleeves, our hair in a half pony and we're wearing matching flower bows! I love having a daughter!

The Festival of Trees

It is now officially Christmas - we went to the Festival of Trees last night! This is one of my favorite family traditions that we have been doing for as long as I can remember. When we were little, my other "mom" Marilyn would come with us and we would go see the trees and then go to Leatherby's after (and spill hot fudge on our nice white shirts - ahh the memories!)

As usual, Conni and I went with my mom, my sisters, my sis-in-law, and the cousins. I had to wake Conni up from her nap after only about 40 minutes, so I was a little worried about how she would do.

We got there and walked in and Conni's eyes got big and looked around and said "Mom, trees!!!" She was so excited! And of course, that made me excited! Conni was good to stay in her stroller. Her cousins took turns pushing her a little bit and I was able to get some video of her reactions to the trees. (Hopefully to be posted later)

After a little while, I could tell she was getting tired because she had less interest in things, but she was still in a good mood and happy to be in her stroller.

Then it was time to go see Santa and get her picture taken. We tried having her walk up to see Santa with her cousin Brad, hoping that would make it less scary for her, but no dice. Brad said "Conni, look its Santa" and Conni starting crying "no, Mommy, no, no!" So as usual, Conni was crying in the family picture with Santa. But we were expecting it, so we all just laughed.

Then we headed home. Conni was so tired - so much to see and such a short nap - but she was very happy. When Dad got home, so told him (with some help) that we saw "trees Dad".

I loved it! This is one of many of my favorite family traditions, and it was great to see Conni start to get into it. I'm really looking forward to sharing this with her as she gets older. Hopefully we can continue to go with the cousins, but if not, it will still be something special for us to share.