By request...

We served this to our cousins, Nikki, Rob and Robby last week and Nikki liked it enough to ask for the recipe.

grilled chicken with oregano, cinnamon and paprika

served with

tomato and red onion compote


We are just catching up with life having returned for 2 nearly back-to-back trips out of state!

Some interesting things:

1) Steve and I had passports that expired a month or two ago.

Time from day sent to day received: 11 business days

The backlog is truly over! Actually, it may have been as few as 8 since we had our mail held and I am even counting Christmas Eve as a business day since it isn't a federal holiday. Those who haven't seen the new passports are in for a surprise. They are quite flashy, even tacky in my opinion. Each page has images and quotes of/from American icons (statue of liberty, Mt. Rushmore etc.) drawn in a way I would describe as propagandistic, considering they are designed to be seen by foreign officials. There is also an overbearing abundance of eagles. It looks like the same people who designed the intro to the The Colbert Report made it.

2) We discovered our screen door has a storm door. Oops, we should have noticed that in our basement last year. It looks a lot nicer than the green fleece blanket we had hanging over our door last winter. Good thing I took to riding our exercise bike about 2 weeks ago and noticed it. (You can tell how much we used it last winter).

Ick!

This is off our normal topic (ok, I guess there is no "normal" topic for this blog), but here it goes.

OK, I am not a germophobe at all and generally am not a fan of news exposes, but this is disgusting.

Just in time for holiday travel :(

Hotel Glasses

ok, enough with the trains!

Think it is genetic?

Yum

Balsamic-Glazed Sirloin Steak

Just tired it for the first time this week, but will definitely make it again. We had it with brown rice (and green beans) to soak up the glaze - great stuff. Oh, and we doubled the sauce like some the commenter mentioned. I am glad we did.

Lights

I should have gone to the street and taken the photo from there, but it is cold out!

Another Lego Train!

This one is for the little man of the house. It is part of the now discontinued "Lego Baby" line.
We got it free (well we had to pay shipping) for buying enough pampers to redeem points.

A Christmas Miracle

Ok, I am using that term VERY lightly, but not only did our chimney not cause us any problems with the first fire of the season (YAY), but we finally figured out what our hall light switch does (YAY, YAY).

I swear we have tested every outlet in the living room to see if it is tied to the hall, but apparently we hadn't. So now I can switch off our Christmas houses with the flip of a switch. These houses, save the lego-themed one, date to when I was in middle school/early high school and my mom and I had way too many Christmas decorations. Some, like these, have been handed down to me. Luckily I like these and some are even worth some money now (they are collectible and get "retired" every so often). I have some more playing to do with the "snow" to make it better , but I am guessing next year there will be too much attraction to the high cords so this will be our only chance to use them for awhile and wanted to get them out.