Snow Day!

Em helped me shovel off the back porch yesterday after we woke up to about 3 inches of snow on the ground.

Snow makes the dogs really frisky.

Henry isn't a huge fan of snow. It is difficult to use the bathroom when the snow comes up to your stomach.

So we made him a path.

Lincoln was greatful as well.

The End.

Pretzel Time

My most recent addition of Food Network Magazine told me to make homemade soft pretzels.

They ended up being hard, bland, difficult to make, and so not worth the mess.

There was so much dough, I ended up making plain, cheesy/everything, and chocolate/coconut.

They all tasted like plain.

"What a waste of time and arm strength," I said. (the dough was really hard to roll out) But then Em woke up from her nap and said she wanted a snack. So I gave her one of the pretzels to see what she would say. She took a bite and said, "Ooh Yummy!"

I no longer felt defeated.

I hope she doesn't mind having a pretzel for snack for the next two weeks.

Oh Henry

Meet

Henry Lewis, or

Henry Lewis Ayer The First, or

Leeewwwiiiissss, or just

Henry

He has acquired many nick names in the past couple of days. Yes, we broke down and adopted one of the puppies. David woke up on Saturday morning and said, "maybe we should just go check them out." And everyone knows you don't go "check out" a litter of puppies without coming home with one. After a process of elimination...the Brut, the yippy one, the girl, and the runt, we settled on Henry. He was gentle, the second smallest, more interested in licking our face than barking at the rest of the group and happened to resemble a certain someone at home. Coincidentally, we walked in with the name already picked out and found out that one of the ladies in the vet office had temporarily named them all and named ours Henry! We knew then, it was meant to be.

Henry is extremely well behaved as far as puppies go. He has only had a couple of accidents in the house. Lincoln has been a huge help in that category. We brought the bell back out and he has been ringing it every hour to remind us that Henry needs to go out... and that he wants to sniff.

One thing we forgot to consider was how lonely puppies get at night. When we locked him in his create, (which we will be doing at night and when we leave the house) he yelped for about and hour. But then, he was silent all night and waited for us to get up the next morning. The second night, he walked right in his create and went to sleep without a peep.

Lincoln handled the new addition better than we expected. He is almost 8 and isn't always in the mood to wrestle with a young pup. But Henry understands who's boss and is happy to cuddle when he settles down to sleep.

Another thing we didn't consider was meal time. You know how dogs can be about their food. Luckily they eat at the same rate...warp speed.

Emery has really enjoyed having Henry around. They have the same energy level and he is just her size. He is not quite as strong as she is so, a rousing game of tug-of-war is held at least once a day.

He also seems to like cartoons just as much as she does.

Welcome Henry. So far you have been a joy.

Lets keep it that way. ;-)

Dog Dilemma

We had our friends David, Jill, and their son Mason over for dinner the other night. Jill manages the vet office where we take Lincoln and told us that they had recently received a litter of beagle/blue tick heeler puppies that needed rescuing. Of course they had pictures to melt our hearts.

It was like they bottled up a little Lincoln DNA and made more of the cutest puppies in the world.

We've spent the past 2 days thinking of reasons we shouldn't get another dog and then refuting every single one of them.

1.) We would have to potty train another dog. I'm home all day, and it's easier to potty train a dog with one who is already trained. Plus, we plan on replacing the carpet with hard wood in the future anyway.

2.)Lincoln is getting older and would get annoyed with having a puppy tugging on him all day. Emery tugs on him all day. This may give him a break. Plus, he could assert some dominance where in Emery's case he cannot. Also, studies have shown that bringing a puppy into a mature dog's house extends the life of that dog, more exercise, more companionship, less moping around, etc.)

3.)Leaving town is harder when you have two dogs. We have been boarding Lincoln at the Vet's office when we go out of town. If we had two dogs, they would put them in a "room" together and would have more space than just staying in a small cage.

4.)We are thinking of extending our family and a new addition would make that more difficult. We would have at least 9 months to get things in order, adjust, and train. A puppy accepts a baby better than a mature dog.

5.) It would be more expensive. Yes it would...but the actual dog is free.

We are really having a hard time coming up with anything terrible to detour us from taking one of these guys home.

I mean look that this little guy...

Potstickers!

Homemade pot stickers are not that hard to make and they taste 1000 times better than what you buy in the store. Since I was making them already, I thought I'd share my recipe with you. The only thing that makes this recipe time consuming is wrapping the mixture in the won ton wrappers. So, I make a bunch ahead of time to freeze so that I don't have to do all the work every time.

First, you brown 1lb of ground pork in a large, deep skillet on med-high heat. Then turn heat down to med-low. Add 1 clove of fresh minced garlic, 1 Tbsp of fresh minced ginger, 4 chopped green onions, 1 tsp of salt, 1 Tbsp of sesame oil and stir to combine. Then add 1 10 oz bag (4 cups) of chopped cabbage (cole slaw mix) and stir for one minute. Remove from heat.

Your mixture should look like this.

Now, set yourself up in front of the tv to watch your favorite show while you fold the mixture into the won ton wrappers. This is the only part that is time consuming. However, you are going to make like 60 of them so, you will have plenty to put in the freezer for the future. A DVR'd episode of the Biggest Loser is about the perfect length of time. (no commercials)

Spoon the mixture by scant tablespoonfuls onto the won ton wrappers. Wet the edges with water to seal.

Fold the bottom corner up to the top corner to make a triangle and seal. Pinch and pleat the edge to look like this:

Once you have a tray full, pop them in the freezer and continue folding the others.

By the time you have finished folding the next tray full, the ones you previously popped in the freezer should be hard enough to put in a ziploc bag without sticking to each other. Now you have a whole bunch of pre-made pot stickers to fire up whenever you please.

After you have finished folding all of the mixture into the won tons, set aside however many you want to make for that day. The method of cooking the pot stickers is the same whether frozen or fresh.

Heat 2 Tbsp of veg. oil in a non-stick skillet over med-high heat. Add pot stickers and saute on ONE SIDE ONLY for about 5 min, or until brown. (Try non to disturb them too much...shake the pan to make sure they don't stick.)

Pour in 1 cup of water and cover to steam for 8 min.

While that is cooking mix together ingredients for dipping sauce.

1/3 c. soy sauce

1 tsp. brown sugar

1 green onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp. ginger, grated

1 tsp. sesame oil

Serve and Enjoy!

1/3/11

It seems fitting that David train in this type of weather.

1/1/11

I did it! One whole year!

And here is where all the magic happened.

I have to say, this project kept me a lot busier than I thought it would. Taking and posting 1 picture each day for a year is ten times harder than it sounds. And trying to keep it interesting...that was a whole different mountain. There were many days where right before bed I said, "Shoot! I need to take a picture!" Though, sometimes those turned out to be some of my favorites. It is amazing to me to look back and see how much has changed in only one year. Emery is a great example. When I started, she was newly walking and barely saying mama and dada. Now she is running circles around us, speaking in complete sentences, and almost fully potty trained. It took a lot of creativity to keep from posting a pic of just her everyday. Maybe that can be a project in the future. For now I think I am going to take a break from 365. I will still post from time to time, maybe even many days in a row. Just not 365 times. The thought of not having an obligation each day sounds good right now. I hope everyone has enjoyed this project as much as I have. I greatly appreciate all of your following and comments. Stay tuned. There will be more...

December 31st

We spent the last day of 2010 playing in the snow.

Sledding! Em wasn't a huge fan. Sledding is a little more extreme in CO than it is in MO.

Since the snow was up to her knees, Em was happy to be on the deck where she could actually walk.

The turkeys even came out to say hi.