More Milestones

Yesterday, Andy and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. He got home late so I made a lasagna from scratch for dinner. As some of you know, he is the cook in the family. When he is on trips, I don't really make big meals for just the girls and I so I rarely get a chance to make a meal that doesn't consist of hotdogs or chicken nuggets. So I was excited to try something from scratch instead of getting the Stouffer's Lasagna that I normally do.

It was an adventure. First of all, I could not find italian sausage that was already ground up. Do they even make that stuff anymore? I looked in the sausage aisle and could only find breakfast sausage. When I finally asked an employee, she pointed me to the Johnsonville Italian Sausage Links. I had a hard time getting the meat all ground up because of the casing around the links, but I eventually got it after cutting up a couple of them by hand. I had actually found these "Oven Ready" lasagna noodles. I bought them because I was thinking that they were probably thicker than normal noodles and wouldn't fall apart while trying to transfer from boiling water to cooking pan. As I was getting ready to stick them in the water, I realized that there were no directions on how long they should boil for. In fact, there was no mention of boiling them at all. Apparently, "Oven Ready" means that you can just stick them into the pan, still hard, and they become soft while they bake. That probably would have worked except that I was so busy running to the livingroom every five minutes to keep an eye on Sarah who was rolling around on the floor that I forgot to add the second layer of noodles to the pan. I put the final layer of mozzarella cheese on top and then saw the noodle box and remembered. So I figured I would just add the noodles to the top and put more cheese on top of that...it all gets mixed around while we chew anyway, right? That apparently was the wrong thing to do. While baking, a couple of the noodles on top stuck up in the pan and the cheese that was on them burned. I guess they need more moisture also because they were still kind of brittle there. Other than that, it still tasted ok, although Andy said it reminded him of Stouffer's. So I think I will just go back to that next time and avoid the hassle. The cheesy garlic bread and salad were really good.

I had also made Andy's favorite pie, a strawberry pie. The only problem I had with that was how to convert a pound of strawberries into the quart that the recipe called for. I ended up just using 2 pounds and had a little bit of filling left over. The third thing I made was some vanilla caramel brownies with butterscotch that Andy loves. He only gets them once a year usually.

We are going out this weekend to celebrate with just the two of us.

Another milestone was that Emily lost her third tooth! When she woke up yesterday morning, she showed me that it was really loose. Just after lunch, she wiggled it around until it fell out. She knows that the Tooth Fairy isn't real, but we still give her money. She put it under her pillow last night and the bad thing was that I forgot to leave her money! Sarah hadn't gone to sleep until midnight and woke up once. Eliana also woke up once and then I had to get up really early to finish my reports so I guess I was too tired to remember. Emily came downstairs this morning and was upset that I had forgotten. I told her to go back to sleep for a little while and I did it then. She still has a couple more that are loose so she is excited about getting more money. :)