Insta Ready

I got an Instant Pot from my mom for Christmas. Mostly because she made me go shopping with her for my present and I couldn't think of anything else to get lol. My mom likes us to have something to open so she doesn't like gift cards and promises to go on a road trip. My buddies have Instant Pots so I was like heyyy I know what you can get me.

So here we are. Jessica kept telling me I was going to blow up so I was a bit nervous to use it for the first time. I joined a bunch of Facebook groups and read the whole instruction booklet (that's a first for me..). I did the water test and we didn't blow up! 

I had been craving this flu fighter soup and had most of the ingredients so I decided I'd start with that. The recipe is not made for InstaPot but I just modified it a bit and away we went.

Honestly though, it took the same amount of time it would have taken on the stove. I'm not completely sold yet lol. I did make the noodles separately on the stove since one recipe I was looking at said to do it that way for their soup. I added them in when it was done. 

My friend said I could have added them on the "saute" mode after but I think that would have done the same thing since it was already boiling hot.

I should probably go to the grocery store today but I don't really want to. I work tomorrow and then we have the party. I want to get my food stuff for my menu I made for the rest of the week. Time to get back to cooking every day and stop eating out so much. 

I have my whole grocery list made so that part is done. I'm going to add in the calorie counts on my spread sheet after I make them. I wish I had saved all my meals with calories from when I was hardcore lol. I'm going to save my weeks menus so I can just tweek them a bit and rotate them I think. That's the plan Stan!

Floating

This time of  year is so weird it's like we are just floating around waiting for January 1st to kick in.

I worked on Thursday and Friday. Friday was great since Anxiety Girl is off on Fridays. If you've never sat next to someone who leaks anxiety out of their pores you are lucky. I think she needs to lay off the coffee and drink some calming tea.

I spent all day Thursday and Friday going through some files and shredding stuff. I shredded 4 black trash bags of papers on Friday. I thought I was getting sick afterwards but I think it was just all the fibers in my nose.

We had a teleconference and they told us they have enough money to pay for us to work the next 2 pay periods which would bring us to January 18th.  Hopefully they will pass a budget before then.

A local police officer was killed on Christmas and they went on a man hunt for the "illegal" who killed him. They didn't release his name for 3 days because they weren't sure exactly what it was but they knew he was an illegal. Doesn't that sound fishy? The big Cheeto even had to tweet about it. I'm hoping the guy that they caught really is the one that did the deed and not some poor Mexican who they are using for their political agenda. Not that I don't feel bad for the police officer and his family, I do, but I've listened to a lot of crime podcasts where they arrest people quickly to "close the case" and they turn out to not be the person who actually committed the crime.

Anyhow, Friday night we had a meeting for the New Years Eve party that is quickly approaching. Apparently it's "40's" themed. Who just has 40's stuff hanging around? Not me lol. I'll be wearing a dress I bought at one of my events I attended before I knew the theme. I'm not going out and buying a bunch of stuff I'm never going to wear again.

Yesterday was "put up the tables day" for the party. They like to drag out the party stuff over several days. Today they are doing lip sync practice but I'm doing doing that lol. Here's me goofing off lol. These hats are funny.

I suggested they add a few more tables this time since people always "reserve" tables and then everyone else gets there and there is no place to sit. Not like you can reserve a table for 2-4 people when it sits 10. In my opinion I don't think they should be reserved at all unless everyone gets a chance to reserve them at the same time but that's just my opinion. Club politics lol

This year it's going to be a "potluck" and not start until 7:30 with the hopes that it goes until midnight. Usually we do an east cost midnight and then retire to the bar. I imagine that will mostly still happen.

So I started off I was going to blog about something else so I think I'll put that in another post since this one is long enough now haha. 

We Survived

We survived Christmas!

Here's a few pictures from my brother's house.

All the presents from all of us

Adrian being an "elf" handing out presents

We open presents youngest to oldest. This is starting to take a really long time since our family is big lol.

Vincent the younger of the twins (we had to skip baby Joey since he was sleeping)

Emma

Ava

Adrian

Trevor

Tony was next but I didn't get a good picture.

Melissa and her boyfriend

Jessica and her boyfriend

Then all the other adults, who I didn't take pictures of and then back to baby Joey lol

After dinner the kids played for awhile then my brother Louie's kids went home for a bit (they live a couple blocks over). We hung out, played, made snacks, ate snacks and made dinner.  I had made 2 lasagnas the day before so I just had to put them in the oven. 

Baby Joey in his toy my mom bought

Gotta get pictures with them before they forget about me and just want my kids to play with lol

Dinner time!

The boy on the left is Adrian's cousin from the other side of the family

Scott went and got his mom and sister for dinner. Look at his mom's mean mugging!! I think she didn't like us taking pictures at dinner haha. Scott said when he was a kid they weren't even allowed to talk during dinner. Can you imagine? The one time a day everyone is together and you can't even talk. 

God this will be a great before picture if I actually manage to lose weight this year.

Mom and Dad

Only got these guys at the other table since something was going on with the others.

After dinner I helped clean up a bit until my mother in law was really itching to go home. Scott wanted me to go with them so I did. 5 minutes after we were in the house this is him. It's ok honey I'll put the food away...

There is still crap all over everywhere where Christmas exploded. I spent my extra day off doing laundry and cleaning up my room a bit. I'm trying to get things straighten up so I can get my sewing stuff back in there instead of the kitchen table. (Originally I did that because it was too hot in my room). I'm itching to do some sewing. 

Today I went to work. We had a teleconference with someone from the state office who said we will get paid Saturday, then we can work for another pay period or two before they run out of money. We may not get those paychecks on the regular paydays. Awesome sauce. A couple of the other departments at work are already furloughed. The other larger one will be out starting Monday. Not sure how much work we'll actually have to do even though we are there since everything is half working with the new farm bill coming out. Today I spent all day working on cleaning out some old files. That should take me another day or two.

Editing to add Santa pics of the nieces and nephews

Merry Christmas Eve

I've just been sitting here on my butt all morning. I should probably get up and do something soon but now Scott is making breakfast so no point in getting up just yet ;)

Christmas Eve is so weird now. It used to be our hurry hurry day and now, nothing.  Well the kids should all be here again tonight to hang out and have pizza but we don't even have to go to town for anything. 

I do still need to make those 2 lasagnas. I should do that when we are done with breakfast so I can clean up the kitchen again.

Oh and need to plate up the cookies to deliver to neighbors. Play a bit of Santa's elf, that's always fun.

I hope you are all are having a happy holiday! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Baking and More

So this will forever be known as the year my mom was going to cancel Christmas. This morning she sent me a text saying that they were cancelling Christmas and her and my dad were just going to go out to eat. I did a slight panic, oh shit what do I do with my 88 year old mother in law, look at my living room that contains a teenagers bedroom and a lot of sewing stuff and Christmas boxes that still needed to go out, and wtf. Really just wtf.

After I took a few deep breaths I messaged with my brothers and 20 minutes later my brother Joe said we can have it at his house. Whew.

Today was spent making cookies with all my kids and the boyfriends were both here too so we had a full house. I only took a couple pictures since we were busy. Here is the finished results.

Jess also made the mandatory Peanut Butter Pie and Scott his mom's recipe for Banana Bread (3 loaves!)

Here's our pretty tree, just my old fake one the kids hate but they decided it was better than nothing and got it out and put it up all on their own earlier this week. Having big kids is nice when life is overwhelming and you don't have enough energy to do it all. 

I'm all done wrapping except one thing that Jess is going to wrap for me. For 15 minutes today I thought I lost my decoder paper for whose presents are whose. I always put fake names on them (with a theme) this year is cookies since that was on my mind. TG I finally found it or they would have been opening gifts and passing them around to the right person. 

Yesterday Scott and I went out and did the rest of the shopping (all except my step dad, he's the hardest person to buy for, he's getting lottery tickets lol). We did our grocery shopping (mostly for cookie ingredients) and his mom's grocery shopping for the week too. We spent all day together and we didn't even argue. It's like a Christmas miracle ;)  

So as you have probably heard the government is on furlough. Crazy though my agency some how has some money to use for us so we are supposed to go to work on Wednesday. I took Wednesday off as a vacation day before the furlough though so I go back Thursday. We'll see what's going on by then. I've decided I'm not going to stress about it until Thursday haha. 

EDITING TO add Christmas Caroling in the club!  12/15/18 Loads of fun! I was in the golf cart following the train handing out goodies to people that came out of their houses. 

Paying Respects

Saturday was Scott's dad's 90th birthday so we went out to the cemetery to pay our respects. We took his mom and sister Suzie out there with us. Scott and my kids had been out there since he got the headstone.  His mom, sister and I had not been since the funeral over a year ago. His headstone is very nice. He's in the "Little Arlington" section since he was a veteran.

One thing about not moving far from home is you have a lot of family in the cemetery. This is Gene's mother's. My mother in law was upset that the headstone didn't look as nice as it used to. I think there is some way to shine them up isn't there? It's marble.

Next my Grandma and Grandpa on my dad's side. I always have a hard time remembering exactly where they are but now there is a big headstone next to it with my aunt's picture on it. That's a bit creepy since she's alive and well. Her 2nd husband is buried there and she has bought the plot with it for herself.

Then my Grandma Marilyn. I can usually walk pretty close to hers without looking too hard. I swear she's driving around in the car with me half the time so there's that. 

Probably should have took some flowers to fill all those empty flower cups. Scott's dad's does not have a flower spot. I noticed some people put little potted plants so that would be nice.

I have told everyone that I don't want to be buried, I'd rather be cremated so everyone doesn't go broke trying to put me in the ground. That got me to thinking of how different things are when you don't have a site to visit. I guess you'd just do something else in memory right?

After our outing we went to lunch at Perkos. Of course the seat my mother in law sat in on the bench seat was worn down but it never occurred to her to just move over a bit haha. Just complain that makes it all better! Gotta love the elderly. We all had burgers and fries but of course hers were too salty. The doctor doesn't want her eating too much salt or drinking coffee (Scott said he has not heard him say anything about her food..) 

I think that's the most exercise she's got in years since she had to walk from the car to the graveside and then around a bit. I keep telling Scott we need to take her out more so she gets out of the house. I can't imagine only ever leaving the house to go to the doctor. How depressing. 

She'll be coming over to my mom's for Christmas dinner so hopefully she enjoys that.