It's a.....

Austin

We spent Valentine's weekend in Austin to see a friend of Korey's who had a baby in Oct. Here was my date for the weekend. He inadvertently scratched himself across the face and looked like he just needed a patch over his eye to complete the pirate look. We are sitting at the counter of the Magnolia Cafe to eat lunch in downtown Austin.

Here I am getting ready for our dinner double date. Korey stole my camera...

and he made me pose for pictures. P.S. I found this shirt at a consignment shop in the maternity section for only $3 and change!!

I am officially 17 weeks here in these pictures and I feel like I'm looking so big!

Here I am with the hubby at the Clay Pit in downtown Austin. Love the tandoori chicken and naan!

Here are Esme (short for Esmerelda) and Javier. Javier and Korey grew up together and Javier was a groomsman in our wedding. Esme is always laughing so she's always fun to be around.

After dinner they took us to a place somewhere in a shopping center in Austin called Viva Chocolato. We sat outside because there was a guy singing opera inside and the place was small so it was LOUD. They sell lots of truffles and they average $3 each! Crazy for a tiny piece of chocolate.

Here is Javier and Esme splitting a dessert. Korey and I got one and it was so moist and chocolatey!

Here is baby Carolina with her daddy and Korey. Can you tell she has her dad's hair?

On our way home from Austin we stopped in Cedar Hill to see my old college roommates because my friend Jayme had driven in with her family from Bryan. So the three of us got to reunite for a couple of hours.

Here is Jayme, her husband Israel, and Carleigh.

My other roommate Jennifer and her husband Glen.

The three of us! We all went to high school together and both of these girls talked me into going to A&M since they were already going. I don't regret it at all!

I'm sure we were laughing at one of the guys in this picture.

Funny, but I don't remember doing this but it's the Aggie thing to do when you're a senior. Ooohh baby bump is showing. Am I really going to get bigger? Yikes.

Snow!!

I am finally posting our snow pics. Here's our house. I have no idea why the garage is open. I think Korey took some of these pics.


Here's the view across the street.

The view looking out into our front yard.

Here's me staying warm inside propped up with pillows on the couch. I'm not sure if you can see this but I'm giving Korey a look out of the corner of my eyes because I never have my pic taken because I'm usually the one behind the camera.

I took this one (I think) while it was snowing. So pretty!

Beef: It's What's for Dinner

According to babycenter.com our baby is now the size of an avocado. Which happens to be Korey's favorite food. So in honor of Avocado Week I made beef enchiladas which we topped with slices of avocado.

I RARELY ever eat enchiladas in a Mexican restaurant. I prefer them homemade. But my mom has a couple of recipes that I love so I decided to make the beef one since I had all of the ingredients except for the tortillas.

Here I have sauteed onion and one jalapeno. This will make up part of the contents of the meat mixture. I used half an onion. I only used one jalapeno because I wanted it to stay mild so as not to upset my pregnant belly.

Here I have browned one pound of beef and added taco seasoning with the required water. This is mixed in with the onion and jalapeno mix.
For the sauce mix I have one cup of sour cream, one soup can of milk, and one can of cream of chicken.

My mom's recipe calls for Velveeta but a) it's expensive and b) I'm anti-Velveeta since it's processed cheese. Although I did eat it in queso dip on Superbowl Sunday. Oh well. Here I've substituted lots of cheese! This is cheddar and I usually buy it in huge blocks because we love cheese and use it alot. I shredded up the rest of this block and mixed all the sauce ingredients together. You could buy bagged, shredded cheese for convenience sake but the block cheese tastes much fresher when you grate it.

Here's what the finished sauce looks like. Creamy goodness!

I set the sauce aside and started to fill my tortillas with the beef mixture. Note that I added in black beans because I had them and they're good for you. But you can add anything you want. It's all good. See the huge bag of homemade corn tortillas in the background? Only $3 at the Mexican supermarket! They also have flour tortillas but they only have ten in the bag and I wanted to have extras for later.

What you can't see in this final picture is that my corn tortillas started breaking when I tried to roll them even though I heated them up. So I had to scrap the single, rolled enchilada idea and make it into enchilada bake. Which means I basically layered meat and tortillas until I ran out of meat. I then topped it off with the sauce. I also forgot to add the cilantro I had to the meat mixture so I sprinkled some on top which I didn't show you.

I also took a handful of corn tortillas, cut them into fourths with a pizza cutter, and made chips out of them. These were awesome!

Here is my mom's original recipe:

2 lb hamburger & onion

1 pkg taco seasoning

3/4 c. water

tortillas

1 can cream of chick soup

1 soup can of milk

1 cup sour cream

1 lb. velveeta cheese

Brown meat and onion. Add taco seasoning and water. Simmer until water cooks up. Roll mixture in softened tortillas. Combine rest of ingredients and heat until cheese melts -- pour over enchiladas. Bake @325 for 30 minutes.

16 Weeks

Here I am at 16 weeks already looking big! I met a woman last night who is 19 weeks and I'm bigger than her. :( Harley decided to be in the picture with me.

For my Sister

Once upon a time my sister lived with me and shared custody of two dogs, Camo (girl) and Harley (boy). But then she got married and her visitation has waned. And the dogs have missed her. So she told me to post pics of them cause she misses them. Awwww.... She now has her own dog to help take care of. When Korey moved in I could slowly see my favor with them waning. Maybe it's because he gives them more treats than I do. Or maybe it's because I'm the one who taught them/broke them of getting on the couches. He wasn't home yet when this happened. Maybe they secretly resent me for the fact that they are no longer allowed to climb on the couch and fall asleep next to us. As I type this I am sitting on the floor and Harley's head is in my lap and he is snoring. My compromise for him not getting on the couch.

Here they are doing what they do best. Camo is on the left and Harley is on the right. Harley always initiates tug of war with his sister. (They are from the same litter, same breed but yet their colors are remarkably different. That's just part of their Lacy breed.)

For once they are sharing a dog pillow. They prefer this other dog bed they had when they were puppies which they steal from each other when it's been left empty by one but for for once they are sharing space together.

Our guard dogs! P.S. That's a curtain rod in the background. Stay tuned for that post.