This & That

Happy Halloween!!

Precocious.

Less than a week old and already smiling.

 I have the most precocious grandchildren.

Baby Time

James has made his way home from the hospital. Here he is dressed up for the trip home. Great-grandpa James Collin sent the dandy camo hat. He was wearing some camo socks to match.

His bilirubin levels have been a bit high so he has also been back to the clinic to get those checked, but mostly it's been a round of eat, sleep, look around...

 And get some cuddles. Lucky, lucky Gramma.

Sausage & Vegetable Skillet

Things are cooling off here, much to my delight, and this is a really tasty fall-ish recipe I tried earlier this month. The onions and potatoes here came from the garden...maybe that contributed to the tastiness. I had big ambitions to plant a fall crop of spinach for things like this but that didn't get it done. I ripped this recipe out of Taste of Home magazine.

Sausage & Vegetable Skillet

• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 (12 oz.) pkg. fully cooked Italian chicken sausage links, cut into 1" pieces (I used regular Italian sausage links I had in the freezer)
• 3 cloves, garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 8 medium red potatoes (about 2 pounds), thinly sliced (I didn't use quite this much)
• 1 (10 oz.) package frozen corn (I had 3 ears of leftover cooked corn on the cob and I just cut that off to use)
• 1 1/4 cup vegetable or chicken broth
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 2 cups baby spinach

In a 12" skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sausage; cook and stir until the onion is tender and sausage is browned. Add garlic and crushed red pepper flakes; cook for 1 more minute.

Add the potatoes, corn, broth and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, covered for 12-15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add spinach; cook just until wilted. Serves 4-5, and takes about 30 minutes to prepare from start to finish.

Around Here This Week

The title of this is a bit deceptive, since at the moment I'm not "around here." I am in the mid-west being Gramma.

But before I left, I bound off a baby quilt. Having this done means I'm one ahead on the boy quilt count. I'm 2 1/2 ahead on the girl quilt count, but given the last year in which 4 grandsons have been born, I won't be using them any time soon. :)

My Air Force son and his wife were doing a lot of walking trying to get the baby here. They stopped in a store and tried on these "Frozen" character hats with hair. 

I was treated to this sunrise one morning before everyone got up.

But mostly I was trying to get things ready to head out, and also getting things ready for a visit from baby Emmett's family. They will arrive a little before I get home. I'm hoping to see some grins from the little guy. ETA: And as you saw in yesterday's post, there's a pretty big likelihood of me getting some. :)

He's Here!

Introducing the newest addition to our grandbaby collection.

This is brand new James Collin. He was born early this morning and weighs in at a hefty 8 pounds, 10 ounces and is 21 inches long. He has a head full of black hair, and is as precious and sweet as he can be. I left Isaac's house this morning and crossed some state lines to meet him this afternoon.

I am so lucky to have the chance to spend some time with him and his family and love on him a little bit....OK, maybe a lot. And I'm really grateful that my son left me his laptop to post with so I don't have to try to do it on my phone...bonus!

Sharing a little more grandbaby goodness that I've received this week on my phone. Baby Emmett is now grinning. Almost unbearable cuteness. I can't believe how much he's changed since I was out there!

My DIL posted this photo on her blog and I really needed a copy...my boy and his boy taking a snooze.

And Isaac is pulling himself up on everything and it enables him to reach the keys on the piano. A future pianist for sure!

 

 

Testing, Testing

Trying a new way to post using my phone. I'm in the Midwest enjoying Isaac for the moment.

Looks like it worked...sort of. The picture sizing is a little messed up, but you get the idea.

Changing Leaves and Chasing Critters

It is fall. In my world, that means that I'm loving the season and so are the guys in my family but for entirely different reasons. 

I love the cooler temperatures (although earlier this week it was a stinking 81 degrees here), the colors of the changing leaves and just the atmosphere.

The guys, on the other hand, are chasing critters through the hills. We had a successful elk hunt here and spent last weekend at the cabin where we did things like measure the size of the antlers in preparation for the annual antler dance.

My husband enlisted our help in tilting the solar panel for winter sun. 

Ollie rolled around...in case you can't tell what that picture is. The guys vacated the cabin before I did this trip. I was still working on a quilt and had a load of sheets going in the washer. I have to take advantage of the washer every chance I get because soon we will be blowing out the pipes and I won't have access to it until spring again. It's just too hard to get the anti-freeze in all the little pipes and hoses running around in it...as we found out to our dismay the first winter we were there.

They left Ollie with me and this was the view I had as they drove away... leaving Ollie behind...poor dog.

Card-o-Rama...Sort Of.

Kristina Werner has started her annual holiday card series on her blog. I love following this series and trying out some new stuff. I have learned a really big truth doing this, though, and that is that I am not and never will be a Copic coloring maven. Nope. Can't do it to save my life. Her Wednesday posts are usually devoted to some kind of colored-in card. Yeah....I probably won't be doing those.

On the up-side, I have done a few of the other design types. This was my take on her Day 1 card. Embossing paste sprinkled with distress glitter and a die cut sentiment. 

I tried it out in guy-birthday-card form as well. I used just the white embossing paste on one, and tried adding some ink to the paste in the other.

Day 2's take. Hers had a really cute little reindeer looking in the window, but as I said, I don't color, so I went looking in my stamps for something else that would do and came up with this snowman. I did acutally try to shade in a little on one side of his rear. That was a total fail, so I put wink-of-stella shimmer on the front and back which doesn't show up here, so you see just a very plain snowman butt on the front.

It will have to do.

Day 3's take. Now, I happened to have the exact stamp set she used for this one, although I did use a different color scheme for the night sky because I didn't have all the distress ink colors she used.

At the end of each card video, she has suggested ones from years past you can look at as well. This was one I apparently missed and had similar stuff to make it. Love doing the holiday cards. They make me feel prepared and festive and somehow that's very different from the Christmas stuff showing up before Halloween in Target or Costco. That's just irritating.

Checking In with the Missionary

My daughter and the rest of the visitor's center missionaries went on a field trip this past week to a couple of church history sites nearby. 

She got to see her mission training center companion.

This one was taken at Far West.

And this is near Adam-ondi-Ahman. She says she misses being out in nature so this was a special treat for her. I believe it. As much as she grumped sometimes about going to the cabin instead of being with friends, she is a nature girl at heart.

I think she'd also like to get more mail maybe? Overall, she is loving what she's doing, although transfers are this week and she thinks her trainer might be moving on to a different place. She has loved her trainer and will miss her. She's great about sending chatty, newsy letters and lots of pictures, and I love hearing about what she's doing, but let me be a mom for just a minute and say that I miss her...a lot.