I'm Thankful For...

I'm thankful for Marshall's daycare.
I can't tell you how much time I spent this summer stressing and worrying over where Marshall would be once I went back to work.  We couldn't be happier with the daycare we found and we absolutely LOVE it! The owners and teachers truly love the kids and Marshall loves them! They take such good care of him and my favorite thing is when arts & crafts projects are sent home on Fridays so we can add them to the fridge ;)

I'm thankful for the LuLaRoe opportunity.
I've posted about it before on my LuLaRoe shopping page on Facebook, but I truly am thankful to have the opportunity to be a LuLaRoe Fashion Retailer! Coming from someone who used to dread shopping for clothes, LLR has been such a positive thing for several reasons: 1) I enjoy trying on clothes and getting new clothes!; 2) LLR has helped us SO much financially! We never have to worry about where the money is coming from to make my car payment each month which is SUCH a huge relief; 3) I've met so many awesome people through LLR! Whether we've met in person or just online, it's been great to make new friendships! (And I'm not even really a "people-person", except for LuLaRoe, haha)

I'm thankful for our family.
1) Well, you know the saying, "friends come and go, but family is forever." Family is always there for you and there to help you out.  Which leads me to #2... 2) We always have a babysitter. haha. I kid, I kid....but really.

I'm thankful for the essentials that are needed for living (that we can easily forget how fortunate we are to have).
Our house, electricity, water, our cars, our jobs, food on the table everyday, the air we breathe (Dad, thanks for bringing that to Thanksgiving this year, haha!),

I'm thankful for ridiculously random things that still make me happy.
The TV show, Arrow, for finally being a show that Matt and I can watch together and enjoy (this is rare, but it's something we look forward to every week!); For always having some type of dessert in the house, because I like dessert. But nothing too sweet; For Christmas music, because everyone's always happier when listening to Christmas music.

I'm thankful for an awesome forgiving God.
Because we all mess up sometimes, right?
Psalm 18:30: As for God, his way is perfect: The Lord's word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.

I'm thankful for all the things I forgot to mention, because it's after 9:00pm and my contacts are drying out and my brain is shutting off, so I simply can't list anything else tonight.

I hope you all have an amazing Turkey Day tomorrow!!

Monkey Bread

Good Morning!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We had a busy day of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, decorating the Christmas tree--yep, we've already started decorating!!--, preparing food for lunch, and then we headed out for the day.  First, we headed to my aunt Cathy's house for lunch with Mom's family.  We had a great time and lots of laughs!!  After lunch, we headed to Matt's Nolte grandparents' house for dinner.  After dinner, we headed to his Doustout grandparents' for dessert!! So. Much. Food. All day long!  As we were finishing lunch at our first stop, we were already getting full, so we knew we had a long day ahead of us! And, as full as I was there, I made sure to get a piece of Mom's chocolate pie! Mmmm.

To start off the day, I got up early and started making breakfast. I was trying something new, so with my luck, it could've been a total flop, but, everything actually turned out great! And edible!  I made Monkey Bread in the crock pot, and it's so super easy.  Here's the recipe if you'd like to try!

Ingredients

• 1 can of Grands Original Biscuits (we had accidentally used the Original biscuits for dinner earlier this week, so I used the can of Southern Style biscuits we had. They seemed to work just as well!)
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 1 stick of butter

Directions

1. Melt the stick of butter.
2. Mix the brown sugar, white sugar and cinnamon in a gallon sized Ziploc bag.
3. Cut each biscuit into 6 pieces.
4. Dip each piece of biscuit into the melted butter, then toss it in the bag of sugar/cinnamon.  Once all of the pieces are in the bag, shake it up to completely coat each piece.  Some of the biscuit pieces will stick together, so after shaking the bag, you may have to peel some of them apart and toss them in the sugar yourself. This was easy to do as I was taking them out to put in the crock pot.
5. After getting all of the pieces coated, put them into the crock pot. We used a crock pot liner which I know saved us a ton of time of scraping up a big, sticky mess afterwards! lol
6. Pour any remaining melted butter on top.
7. Cook on low for 2.5 hours.

When there was about an hour left on the cooking time, Matt realized we DID in fact have walnuts, so he chopped some up and threw them on top of the Monkey Bread.  I can tell you it definitely wouldn't have been as good without them!

Yum, yum! 

 

It's Never too Late to be Thankful!

I didn't do that Facebook thing a lot of people did/are doing where each day they post something they're thankful for.  I also was so wrapped up in the holiday and having Abby & Matt home that I never even pre-blogged a Thanksgiving post or got it up! (Nevertheless, I did think about it while Abby and I were on our Wednesday adventure and spent like an hour trying to find a place to eat!)  So, since I never posted last week, I still wanted to take the time to list a few things I'm thankful for: