Best Family Dinner, EVER!!!!

I may have hit it out of the ballpark on this one. Thank You to Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman. I was working on the menu, looking for inspiration, and once again, found the perfect answer on Ree's website. She makes real food, for real people. I read out the title, sometimes give some of the ingredients, to Dave and we go from there. I bet you're wondering what we served.....here it is:

Pork Sandwiches with Cilantro-Jalapeno Slaw

Baked beans....okay, some pieces and parts are just fine dumped from a can and heated up. Sheesh, I don't do everything from scratch.

Strawberry Sparkle Cake, my boys LOVE it when grandma brings out the mixer...they know they're going to get a beater to lick. What happens when all three want a beater? There are only two beaters. Oh no!!!!! I'll worry about that later. And this photo was taken a little late. It was much prettier earlier on.

I pretty much lifted part of her Fourth of July menu. All the food can be prepared prior to dinner, and there was tons of food. We will all be having leftovers for many more meals....and NO ONE is complaining about that!!!!!

Helping With Dinner

Everyone wants in on the action

And then there's the clean up

Time With Great Grandma

We LOVE Family Night......Family, Fun, and Food!!!

Ezra is showing his imagination. He found an old looking box (well he started by taking down a decoration that looks like an old treasure chest and I had to lead him to this box to get my decoration back!) and made up a game with it. Here he is sharing his story with Great Grandma and brother (that's what he calls T)

Another Grandma?!

Family Dinner includes all the generations. Here's a precious photo of V with one of her Great Grandmas

Party Hats & Candles

We like to put the Happy in Happy Birthday....and that does require party hats!

Party Time!!!

The party hat tradition lives on!!!!

Our 30 year old baby girl with two of her babies....the youngest gave up the hat to play football (which was later cleaned of all cake matter). Love them all...plus others in attendance not included in the photos

Can It Be?

My sweet, adorable grandson said "Grandma, actually you're wrong". How can that be? Not that I'm wrong, but that he would say something like that. We all chuckled.

Oh, and for the record, I wasn't wrong.

Family Dinner Menu

Three recipes that I found on Pinterest this week.......

Chicken Gloria, which is a new family favorite and will most definitely be prepared again and again. Easy, low cost, big flavor. The little guys asked for seconds!  We were all members of the clean plate club.

Garlic Ginger Green Beans, tastes fabulous, easy to prepare, and everyone had a clean plate from 19 months to 89 years.

Quinoa and fresh bread....to soak up all the good sauce from the chicken

Blueberry Dump Cake which is super easy and super delicious.

GREAT Family Dinner

I think this could be the best menu, ever....

Jack Daniels Pork Tenderloin, not the one on the official Jack Daniels' website, and Lust Cake (or as we say in our church, Four Layer Cake)......

The base is a shortbread, then cream cheese cream, pudding of choice (I went with butterscotch which was a HUGE hit), followed with whipped cream. If I didn't send this home with the kids, I seriously would have eaten the entire thing.

Trudging Through March

This is our toughest month of the entire year. We are so close to the end of our busy season, yet so far away. Really people, bring your tax stuff in early because we are zombies by the end of March. Oh, and there is ALWAYS something big that happens in March. Like the straw that broke the camel's back. Many times it is an event that if it occurs after April, we can handle it in stride. When it happens in March, well, it is drama multiplied by a million. Sometimes it is even something good that happens, like a brand new baby girl arriving. We're just so weary and short on margin in our lives for anything extra.

You should be so proud of us since we are continuing our Family Night Dinner. Our oldest grandchild is enamored with Family Night Dinner. He LOVES it. And I get to try out new recipes, most from Pinterest. Last night was Ginger and Cilantro baked Tilapia

So I may have gotten a tad bit carried away with the garlic (Dave disagrees, he says you can NEVER have too much garlic) and it was still delicious. Very healthy too! This most definitely will be seen again on the dinner table. We served this over brown rice (LOVE Trader Joe's frozen rice) along with fresh steamed asparagus. Oh, and as an added bonus, I may have met a new best friend while purchasing the Tilapia at the fish counter.

Again, dessert was a big hit. I think my little boys have a major sweet tooth. We had Angel Food Cake and I cut it open to add sliced fresh strawberries and Cool Whip (yeah, I know, I got lazy and didn't make real whipped cream...can you forgive me?). I covered it with even more CW and fresh berries.

Both boys were "exuberant" last night. Right after bath they took off running around the house buck naked. I'm pretty sure Mama took video of this event. What is it about freshly cleaned babies running around naked? They were careening with reckless abandon, pure joy. They were loving it. Well not so much when E whacked his head against the marble topped island. He's just at the perfect height, which we discussed several days ago and cautioned him. Really though, does a three year old comprehend "caution"?

We trudge on....loving these sweet moments. Well, not the whacking of the head, but the rest of it was spectacular.

Vesper's First Family Dinner

Tonight was Vesper's very first Family Dinner. Ezra was so happy. He likes to have everyone together. He's asked several times if his baby sister was going to come to Family Dinner. He really missed her not being in attendance last week. 

Dinner was very simple this week, with it being our busy season and all. We had spaghetti with meat sauce, Caesar salad, and bread. The bread was good, and very funny story. We were both in the kitchen trying to get it on the table. Dave decided to help out with the bread. The plan was to put butter and garlic on the bread, when Dave grabbed my one-half cup of crust that I had set aside. Granted, I did have the cup sitting very near the bread prep area. The bread actually tasted good. Sweet, but good.

This is Ezra "cutting" his food. First he announced that he was cutting his own food. Then he called out to each individual to watch him. Waiting until he heard "good job" until he moved on to the next person. He even invited his brother to watch. Theo was not the least bit interested. He was playing peek-a-boo and that takes precedence.

Even without the full crust, the dessert was fabulous. Then again, with enough sugar and ice cream added, everything is fabulous! Here's a photo of yet another snag off of Pinterest, Peach Cobbler.