Open Face Meatball Sandwiches

So I made this recipe before deciding to get back into blogging so I have no pictures for this, BUT I will be making this again because we really enjoyed it so when I do I will try to remember to take some pictures. Now on to the recipe!

Open Faced Meatball Sandwiches:

Prep: 5 Minutes
Cook: 6 Hours

*24 frozen cooked Italian Style meatballs, Thawed (I used Trader Joes frozen meatballs, I used LESS than 24 since its just the two of us)
*1 jar of favorite pasta sauce (I used Trader Joes Tomato Basil)
*1 14.5 oz Italian style diced tomato's
*1 5.5 spicy tomato juice (v8 has some, I didn't use it this time, I added just a splash of water instead)
*Hoagie Rolls, split and toasted (or you can just pop them in the microwave a bit)
*Shredded Mozzarella Cheese to top


Combine first 4 ingredients in slow cooker.
Cover and cook on high for ONE hour. Reduce heat to LOW, and cook for around 4-5 hours. Mine only took four, or even a little less, just make sure sauce is slightly thickened. Spoon mixture evenly into rolls and top with cheese.

Enjoy!

So funny!

A friend of mine posted this on facebook and I had to share. SO funny. My husband and I were cracking up.

Broccoli, Ham and Cheese Soup

So I don't have a picture for this recipe, from now on when I post recipes I am going to try to take a picture of them to go along with the recipes, but this one was SO good I had to share it tonight. If you don't have a crockpot you MUST go get one! I love them. They are so easy! Especially for a busy lifestyle or if you aren't a fan of cooking they are great to have. And did I mention how EASY they are? :)

5 large russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 garlic cloves roughly chopped (or a few more if you love garlic like me)
1 onion chopped
2 14oz cans of chicken broth
2 cups diced cooked ham (I use the thick ham steaks)
1 1/2 cups fresh broccoli florets
Salt
Pepper
2 Cups whipping cream
2 cups Cheddar Cheese

*Combine the first 8 ingredients in at least a 5 qt slow cooker.
*Cover and cook on Low for 8 hours (mine only took six) or until the potatoes are tender.
*Process half of the soup in a food processor until smooth.
*Add puree, whipping cream and cheese back into the crockpot and combine well.

If its too cool for you, you can leave it in the crock pot on low for an additional 30 minutes, but I found that it was perfect to serve right away.

Serve with desired toppings, I just added a little cheese.

My husband LOVED it!

Fast forward 5 months!

Why hello! Haven't posted much in 5 months! Quite a bit has changed!

Louie got a job!!!!! Since this is public, I won't say where, but its been such a BLESSING. The people are great, and the job is great. He loves it. It is pretty close to our home as well, so no commute which is great. He really can see himself working there for a very long time, so we pray that over time opportunities for him to advance will come about. We are so thankful!

As for me, I went back to school to finish up my child development classes. After this semester I should be able to apply for a permit to work within childcare which is great. I am really enjoying school, and being home to be a housewife. Life is pretty good at the moment. :)

We have also discovered Dave Ramsey who has pretty much saved our (financial) life. He is a Godsend to us. We have been following his Total Money Makeover plan and loving it. We should be debt free by the fall. I will vouch to say we will NEVER EVER use credit cards again! No new cars ever again! The buyer is slave to the lender and we will never be slaves again. With the exception of a home, whenever we buy our first home since now that we live at my Grandmas home since shes passed, the how is paid off so there is no mortgage to worry about currently.

I have also gotten back on track with weight loss again. I hate having to say that! lol! But I have, and I hope to stick with it THIS time. The holidays really threw me off, but I have lost about 25 pounds total.

Which leads into baby making! Now that Louie has gotten a job, and we will be getting insurance again shortly, and our debt will be paid off, we are going to be getting back to trying to conceive in the next few months. Well, probably more than just a few months, our goal is to be pregnant BY the end of the year. In the mean time we want to pay off our debt and loose weight while we wait until around the end of summer to start really trying. My dad turned 70 this past January, I refuse to wait much longer. My parents are the most important people in our lives, and I want my child to KNOW them, to really KNOW them. Not to mention, I have been dreaming of becoming a mother for years, and years. I am ready. My husband is ready. So that's exciting.

I was thinking of doing some posts about cooking as well. We never eat out, I'm always cooking so I figured maybe I would do posts about some of the meals I make, along with the recipes. We'll see. It was actually my husbands idea. :)

This past weekend I chopped my hair off also. Which was great! I wish I would have done it years ago! I mean its still to my shoulders, but it was around the middle of my back before, so that's a lot of hair to me!

2010 wasn't a very great year for us, and already 2011 has been great. We are in a very good place in our lives and the only thing better would be to add a little addition to our family which HOPEFULLY will not be too far off into the horizon.

Update

So I haven't done too well with this now have I?

Lets see, well since I last blogged I was in the process of working at my DREAM location (The Queen Mary). After going 4 times, wasting almost 2 tanks of gas, I never got a call back. Discouraging FOR SURE. BUT, finding out how much gas and time it takes to get there, not to mention the pay wasn't that great, it probably ended up being for the best. But I am a little bummed. It would be amazing to work on the ship. Maybe down the road a better position there will pop up, if we live closer. Louie STILL hasn't heard from TSA. He finished all he has to do, and now its just the waiting game. He's so anxious and wants this so badly.

My birthday was a couple weeks ago! I had a great day. My family all drove down to my moms, and we went to lunch at my favorite restaurant. Before lunch though my parents surprised us all that they bought a new house! I LOVE IT! I'm so excited. My parents have a horse boarding facility, so they are renting the house to a client to take care of the every day duties like feeding and whatnot, so my parents now that my dad is retired have the ability to go on vacations and whatnot. My mom *of course* will still be there every day though. We have spent the past week helping them move. I love the house. Its great. I can't wait until they are settled and we can go spend a few days there. Fingers crossed my Dad caves and puts in a pool!! Wishful thinking lol.

My brother also moved in with us, he hasn't been here much so there isn't that much of an adjustment yet, the kids will be staying here about every other week (switching off with the soon to be ex wife), and I will be taking the kids to school and what not to help my brother out since he doesn't get home from work until 6:30ish. Theres been some issues because of my ex sister in law. But a public blog isn't really the place to get into ALL of that drama lol.

While the kids were here last week, they have the southern california disneyland annual passes, so they were blocked most of the summer. Well the past Monday their passes were finally good again so Louie and I decided to surprise them. We decided to tell them we had to run an errand first thing the next morning. Come monday morning they wanted to know where we were going. We decided to make up a cheesy story about how we have to go see an exterminator because we had a MOUSE problem. haha!! The kids were kinda interested hoping they would get to see some bugs and stuff, so about a block away from Disneyland Louie stopped to get some gas, he took the kids inside to get a drink, and while they were inside I set up the video camera on the dashboard so we could film their reaction. When they got back in Louie said "hey guys, maybe we should go ask the Mice's cousin what to do about the problem" and they asked who that was and Louie told them Mickey Mouse, and they laughed lol. So I asked Alyssa "Alyssa do you know what that means?" and she said "yeah cause of the mice" and I told her "No, that means we're going to Disneyland, we were never going to see an exterminator, we wanted to surprise you, we are on our way there right now!" and the look on her face was priceless, and she goes "RIGHT NOW?!...your the best aunt EVER!" It was adorable. We all had a great time. Of course it was like 100 degrees that day which wasn't fun but kids seem to not even notice the heat lol.

Other than that, things are kinda same old same old over here. :)

Things might be looking up.

Today was a pretty good day. Louie went in to have his airport assessment, he is a little over half way done in his process of joining TSA. Its a long process, and this seemed to be one of the big hurdles. And he passed! Everything! He has a few more steps, and then he'll be placed into a pool based on when he can train (which is whenever) and after about two months of training (which is paid) he'll get his badge! He is so excited, and I am so proud of him. This is going to be a great thing for our little family.

As for our unemployment, luckily congress passed that extensions are able to continue again! So apparently we should be getting paperwork in the mail soon. Thank God. We had no idea our regular claim would run out so fast, so this will be a God send.

For me, I am going back to school. One of our local community colleges has a medical transcribing program that I'm going to attempt. I say attempt, because it frightens me a bit! lol. I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle it. I feel like I can, but I want to try it out. I was originally looking at those online schools, but you have to pay thousands of dollars, and a friend of my moms who is a doctor says alot of places look down on those "schools" and don't hire people from there. Plus, it would be better for me to be able to take one class at a time at our local college, and if I absolutely CANNOT grasp it, then I have the ability to stop after the class is over, and not waste thousands of dollars. I applied for the school last night and am waiting for my student number to come in the mail so I can make an appointment with the counselor. I don't know if its an actual program I need to sign up for, or if I just take the required classes to get my certificate. I tried calling today, but of course, they were closed. I dont think classes start for another 3 or 4 weeks, so I should be ok. I know some medical transcribers can work for home, so thats my ultimate goal, after working in a hospital or doctors office for awhile. Theres nothing I want more than to be home with my child, and be a room mom, take and pick them up for school, and not have day care raise MY kids, so if this possibly can allow us to do that financially, then I'm willing to do it. I just hope my brain can absorb all the medical terms! lol. Eventually we won't be living here at this house, we'll move on, and buy our OWN home, which of course comes with a mortgage two or three times what we pay now. So we need to be prepared and save for that. And obviously my clerical/administrative skills I have now, aren't helping me that much since in 7 months I haven't been hired. This economy sucks so bad. BUT, I'm hoping things are starting to look up. I hope anyway!

Not good at blogging lately!

So Sorry! I've been terrible with blogging lately.

Well, I can't really recall anything huge happening since the last time I blogged. We did have my niece and nephews birthday party a couple weeks ago, that was a nice time. I have pictures, but they aren't on my computer yet. :-/

The only other thing that's happened is we lost our unemployment. We've only had it since the very end of January and it was totally unexpected. My claim was until December, SO, I expected that's how long we would have for unemployment. Well the money we were allotted for our claim has run out. Apparently what we would NORMALLY have to do is file an extension. Well, (and forgive me but I don't really know all this political mumbo jumbo) but basically congress has now passed something were NO ONE can file for an extension, and those who already were ON a extension were cut off. So yeah, we found this out pretty much the day we received our last checks. I was panicking. Thank the Lord for my parents, who said they'd help us but still. We have BILLS. So that day I went on a application rampage. I literally sat at my computer and applied for jobs for Louie and I for over 10 hours. For everything. Including retail. Which I have STAYED AWAY from this whole time. My skills are administrative, that's what I was going for. I got an interview on the 1st of July for a customer service job at a corporate office for a furniture company, the interview went GREAT (it was actually the only interview I ever did, I never did one for my last job) the man told me about 2 weeks if I moved on the customer service manager would call me, and I never got a call. So of course, now I got a call back for a retail job. I'm not complaining, because I need whatever I can get at the moment, I just never saw myself working retail, AND its only a part time position, which frightens me. Just of not knowing how much my checks will be if I get bad hours kind of thing. I've just been applying for administrative positions for almost 7 months now, and I got the ONE interview that didn't come through. Its so frustrating. Louie is hopefully getting a warehouse job. Doesn't pay a whole lot, but like for me, he'll take what he can get. I just hope we get SOMETHING SOON. I've never not worked, or had NO money coming in. So is scary. :-/