Yummy Soup

Okay, originally my Mom got this recipe from Rachael Ray, but she changed it completely and it no longer even remotely resembles the original recipe. So, here it is - it's simply delectable and makes enough to serve 6-8 people. I could eat it every week.


Tomato-Chicken Soup

Ingredients:
2-3 chicken breasts (depending on how much meat you want), cut into bite-sized pieces
(2) medium carrots, diced
(1) medium onion, diced
(1) can black beans, drained
(2) cans corn, drained
(1) 15 oz can crushed tomato in puree
(3) tsp chopped garlic or (3) cloves garlic, grated
Freshly ground black pepper
Parsley
(3) tbsp “Better Than Bouillon” chicken flavor or (4) cubes chicken bouillon
(3) pieces of bacon

For Garnish:
Tortilla chips (I like the blue corn chips personally, they get soggy slower)
Grated cheese (any kind – I like cheddar or parmesan)

Directions:
Cover chicken breasts with water in large pot. Add bouillon.
Cook 45 minutes to an hour. Remove floating stuff from top of water.
Remove chicken, allow to cool – cut into bite-sized pieces.
Cook bacon in a separate pan. Put grease from cooked bacon into pot. Eat bacon – yum!
Add onions, carrots, corn, black beans, tomato puree and garlic. Mix everything up.
Sprinkle top of water with parsley until coated.
Add 8-10 turns of cracked pepper. (You can add more of it later to taste.)
Stir pot well. Cook 1 hour on medium-low heat.
Add chicken back into pot. Cook 30 minutes more.
Taste your concoction and add more pepper if necessary. It shouldn’t need any salt, but you can add that too, if so desired.

Serve with grated cheese and tortilla chips on top. Delish!

Clay's Blessing

Clay's Blessing was actually Sunday, November 4th. I'm just slow in getting these photos posted. So, Clay is actually just a bit over 2 months old in these pictures.

I'm Sweet


With My Mommy


With My Daddy


My Outfit Confuses Me


With My Grandpa Falslev

Christmas Pics

These pictures are from the day of portrait-taking that we had to have to get Mom and Dad's Christmas gift: A family photo (see last picture). Since we were already taking pictures, Jer and I took the opportunity to get 3 month photos of our sweet Clay. Enjoy!

Happy Clay


Serious Clay


I'm Ready For My Close-Up!


Tummy Time!


Happy Family

CLOVERFIELD *Caution: Minor Spoilers*

So, yesterday Cristin, Chris, Ryan and I all went to see Cloverfield. I've been dying to find out what it was all about ever since we saw the first preview for it before Transformers. Well, I couldn't even begin to describe the monster to you - it was some weird combination of lots of terrible things. All in all I really liked this movie (I love monster movies in general), but those I saw it with were skeptical. I thought the "home movie" look of this film would get to me, but I really only remembered it when they were running. A lot of things go unanswered because the film only consists of the home video, not any epilogue of what happens after the video ends. It's from this fact that most of the criticism was made from my fellow movie-goers. I, however, don't mind it too much - the only thing that I really wanted answered was: What the crap happened to Marlena behind the curtain?! Did her head explode because she got bitten or what?? Anyways, overall I'd give this movie a "B". It was highly entertaining and had really great visual effects and I totally believed the whole home video angle. I would totally recommend going to see it on the big screen!

Catching Up

So, it's been a long while since my last post. Here's what happened:

My Grandma McKoy passed away (12/9/07) and Mom, Dad, Jer, Clay and I all went to Virginia for the funeral (12/14/07). It's sad that she's gone, but good that she's no longer suffering. See Cristin and Stacey's blogs for lists of great things about her. It was really cool to be with all the McKoy relatives. We never get together because everyone is scattered across the United States. Dad's brothers and sisters are hilarious when they get together.

The day we came home from Virginia (12/17/07) Clay fell out of his car seat going into our house. We took him over to the ER and except for a cut across his eyebrow and a pretty sweet black eye he turned out just fine.

Saturday (12/22/07) we picked my friend Adriana up in Provo to come spend Christmas/New Year's with us. We also had dinner in Salt Lake that night with Aunt Karen, Aunt Karol and some of their family.

January 2nd, 2008 - Clay had been running high fevers for about 5 days so we took him in to see Doctor Taylor (his pediatrician) and found out that the poor little thing had a urinary tract infection (UTI). Apparently, this is unheard of for an infant so young (4 months), but we gave him antibiotic for 2 weeks and he recovered quite nicely. He will, however, have to go in for an ultrasound of his kidneys the first week of February sometime to make sure that the UTI wasn't due to some sort of reflux between his kidneys and bladder. I'll update everyone after that happens.

Thursday the 3rd of January, Cristin and I drove Dri back down to Provo and had lunch at the Brazilian pasteleria with Brett.

Since then our internet has been spotty or plain not working and I've been working a lot for RGIS doing inventory. Last week I did KMart, Cal Ranch, Famous Footwear, TJ Maxx and American Eagle. The AE inventory took 11 hours - none of their employees knew how to count, it was absolutely ridiculous!

May I also add that it has snowed a total of like 2 feet or more here in Cache Valley and there are huge piles of snow in every parking lot and around every driveway. I haven't seen it this snowy here since the winter of 2001-2002!

That is all for now - more pics of Clay to come soon!