...and Hello 2008!

So far it's been a great year! :) On New Year's Eve we played games for a little bit with Jena, Ryan, Joelle, and Marc and then came home around 8 to put Jackson to bed. Jon and I stayed up and watched movies until the New Year (I was really surprised we made it that late because Jon had already fallen asleep at 830 when I was doing work in the kitchen!)

Speaking of work in the kitchen, most of my day New Years Day was spent cooking and preparing freezer meals. My mom got me the book "Once a Month Cooking" for Christmas and I was so excited to try it out. New Years Eve I chopped all the peppers, carrots, onions, etc I would need for the next day. Let me tell you, many tears were shed over the 5 onions and 2 bunches of green onions I chopped!! It did end up saving a lot of time though. I decided to try the first cycle, which is planned for 2 weeks, but since our family is small I was able to divide a lot of the meals and ended up stocking my freezer with 23 main courses!! I was so excited at the end of the day. The book is great....it has a few different 2 week cycles and a few one month cycles to choose from. It gives you all the information you need...grocery list, recipes, and step by step instructions of what to do in order to get everything done in the quickest way. Most of the things I made I was able to freeze in gallon bags so it didn't even take up that much room in the freezer. I didn't follow the plan exactly, because different meats were too expensive, so I bought the kinds that were on sale and found recipes in the book for those. I'm thoroughly excited about this new plan....I'll let you know how it goes when we actually eat some of the food! (I have a few things thawed out from when I was making room in the freezer, so we have to eat those first).

Wednesday before church Jon & I had to get our licenses renewed, so we went to Lancaster. Miraculously, it took us less than 1/2 hour at the PennDot place so we were able to go out for a quick sandwich at Sloppy Jane's and then decided to go check prices on furniture! We are planning to buy Jackson a big boy bed within the next several months and wanted to start looking at prices. We're thinking of getting bunk beds that can be separated into 2 twin beds. We looked at several places but weren't too impressed with quality vs. price...we'd like to get something good enough that it will last a long long time! One lady told us that prices everywhere will be going up in February....who knows if that is true or not, but we'd like to try and find something before then if possible. Any recommendations?

Last night was our final Christmas get-together of the season. We always look forward to celebrating with Jon's cousin Noel who spoils all of us! Here's a picture of the group from last night at our house:

Happy 2008!