Recipe of the Year

Once upon a time, I made this recipe for my Bunco group. It was very yummilicious. Sorry for all of those who wanted the recipe months ago and are just now getting it - life gets in the way sometimes. But alas, here it is:

CHICKEN LASAGNA

½ c. margarine
½ c. flour
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. basil
4 chicken breasts, cooked and diced

3 c. chicken broth
2 c. cottage cheese
1 egg
10 oz. pkg. Frozen chopped spinach, drained

½ lb. Cooked, drained lasagna (almost 8 noodles)
1 lb. Mozzarella slices (I just used grated)
¼ c. grated parmesan


Melt butter in large saucepan. Blend in flour, salt, and basil. Stir chicken broth until mixture thickens and comes to a boil. Add chicken.
Mix cottage cheese with egg in separate bowl. Add spinach.
Place ½ c. of chicken mixture in 9 X 13 pan (sprayed with Pam), top with noodles, cottage cheese mixture then mozzarella. Continue for 2nd layer. End with last 1/3 of chicken. Top with mozzarella and sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.
Bake at 375 degrees for around 45 minutes.

Hope you enjoy!

making the world a better place, one music lover at a time...

Do you have friends trying to get you to listen to all kinds of new bands? Do you have a stack of albums you’re trying to make it through but can’t seem to find the time to listen to? Do you have albums in your collection that you listened to once in 2002 and still haven’t made it back to yet?

Do you remember how you listened to music when you were in high school? You were in your bedroom with the door shut maybe lying on your bed wearing those big cushy headphones following along with the lyrics in the liner notes, and by the time the album got around to the third or fourth spin you were dancing around singing every word to every song while playing your imaginary drum set on the ceiling. If you remember that feeling of falling in love with an album…and you miss it…and you want it back…you are the perfect candidate for: THE PROGRAM.

My friend Matt Lumpkin and I are taking part in an experiment in music listening – a journey to get back to the point of listening to music with the purpose of loving the music you listen to and listening to the music you love. If this sounds remotely interesting to you, check out my Mog (music blog), and read more about the program.

We invite you to join us or modify the program to fit you. As long as you are getting acquainted with the music you’ve acquired and are having a good time, you are becoming a better music listener, and the world will be a better place because of it.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Happy 1st Birthday!

Allison will be celebrating her first birthday with not one, but two birthday parties. Tonight we will be having a party with mostly our friends and their children at our house. The party will have a rubber ducky theme. And then tomorrow we will be celebrating in Searcy at her Nana and Grandpa's house with all of our family. So we will be tuckered out by the time the weekend is over.





Allison has accomplished so much this year. Some of the things that she has learned to do include rolling over (May), crawling (July), pulling up (late September), feeding herself using her pincer grasp (Sept-Oct), cruising (late Oct - early Nov), and getting her first teeth (Nov). Her vocabulary is up to 6 words. She can say mama, dada, bye-bye, puppy, baby, and ball. We cannot wait to see what all you do in the coming year. It is so much fun watching you grow and learn new things.


We cannot believe that you are already one year old. You have changed our life so much in the last year. Through all the complaints of sleepless nights and non stop crying, we would not change it for the world. We could not ask for a better baby. You have added so many smiles and so much laughter to our household. We pray that you would continue to radiate love and happiness the way that you do now.

Out with the Bad, In with the Good

The Clevelands celebrated the end of 2006 with a get together. The Lumpkins and also my sister and her husband (Deanna and Mason) came over to help us ring in the new year. We had Chinese for dinner from Fu Lin's. If you haven't had their Hot and Sour soup, you've got to try it. It's the best in town, hands down. Anyhow we were a little skeptical that both Allison and Eleaner (the Lumpkin baby) would both go to sleep and stay that way - but we were so glad that they did. While the babies slept, we all played a very fun game called Wise and Otherwise. I thought I wasn't going to like it very much. It is kind of like Balderdash - which I'm not too fond of basically because I'm very good at it. But instead of making up a definition, you make up the end of an old proverb. An example would be "There's an old English saying: "Cheese and money should always..." Then everyone would write down there response and the reader would read them all, along with the real proverb. Everyone then gets a chance to pick which one is real. We were having so much fun playing the game that we forgot to turn on the TV to watch the ball drop. By the time I got it to the right channel, the big neon sign was blinking 2007. We still shared a toast and then we all proceeded to go to bed. It is not often that we get to stay up till midnight with friends who also have babies.



New Year's day we slept until 10:00am! Unbelievable! Allison woke up at 7:00am - I brought her into bed with us and she went right back to sleep. It was fantastic! Anyhow, we spent most of the day taking down Christmas decor. I did do some reflecting on things I would like to change during 2007. My resolutions include:

1. Lose all the weight I gained while pregnant with Allison
2. Floss more often
3. Be more tidy

December in Review

Sorry for the lack of blogs the last 2 months. We thought we would start the new year out with a new post reviewing the busy month of December. In early December, Allison took her first plane ride to North Carolina to visit her Grand-daddy, Mimi and Uncle Sam (Kim's dad, step-mom and half brother). This was the first time for her to see her Mimi and Uncle Sam so it was an exciting trip. Allison did very well on the plane for an 11 month old. She loved to play with the shades on the windows - opening and closing them a million times. We had a great time in Raleigh visiting with our family. We celebrated Matt's birthday while we were there by eating at The Angus Barn. It's supposedly a pretty famous restaurant in the area. In fact, the night that we ate there, the head chef was on Iron Chef America and won! We thought that was pretty neat since we are fans of the show. We also celebrated Christmas with them while we were together. Mimi made a delicious Christmas dinner in which we all had to wear reindeer antlers while we ate (the antlers also played music). Everyone had a great time - even Allison as you can see.

We visited the rest of our family in Searcy over the Christmas holidays. It was good to visit with all of our family, but it is so much more exhausting with a baby. Both of our parents live just a few blocks away from each other, so we end up trying to be at both places for all events. This means that we usually end up eating 5 meals a day for most holidays. And as all of you non-parents will learn, nap time is an essential part of both baby's and mommy's day and it's very hard to schedule naps when you have so many people wanting to play with Allison. But we are glad that everyone enjoys her so much.

She didn't really seem too interested in opening the presents, but she would try to help you tear the paper a little or pull the tissue paper out of the bag. Some of her favorite gifts were her Sesame Street "Baby's First Purse" that included her own lip stick, keys, cell phone, and coin purse, her blow-up ball pit (thanks to this toy, Allison has added the word "ball" to her vocabulary), her Leap Frog Fridge Farm, and her newborn Cabbage Patch doll (named Vanessa Sylvia - Sylvia is her NaNa's name, and you can guess who the gift was from). When she opened up her Cabbage Patch, which came with a bottle and a car seat for the doll, Kim asked Allison to give the baby the bottle - thinking that the request was a little too advanced for her yet - but to everyone's amazement, she did it and has done it every time we've asked her to. Granted, sometimes she is banging the bottle into the baby's face, but she is learning to pretend play, which is a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of Allison opening presents that I thought you may enjoy:

For anyone who still reads this, I will be updating the blog frequently this week. I have lots to catch up on, so please stay tuned...