Recap of Our Trip to Columbia & Other Stuff!

Last week Matthew & Jacob were off school on Wednesday thru Friday so we had planned a trip to Columbia to visit my sister and her family. We had such a great time...absolutely no plans of doing anything...just hanging out and enjoying watching the kids play. We got there just in time Wednesday to head to Levi's baseball game, and then Noah & Ira's t-ball game. We got to see about 3-4 innings of Levi's game, and then a very dark sky/lightning/thunder/etc. forced us to leave the ballpark. On the drive home it was raining extremely hard it was difficult to see the road at times. Thursday we got moving kind of late...the boys played pretty much all morning & afternoon and then early afternoon we headed to Shakespeare's Pizza...if you're ever in Columbia with kids it's a great place to go. The kids get their own little pile of dough to play with while you wait for your pizza. And, best of all, the pizza was great! When we got home the boys all played outside while Elizabeth & me just sat on the porch...it was just gorgeous outside. The kids played kickball, football, played on the swing, and then hunted for mushrooms in the woods...they found a huge pile full! Later that evening we all got cleaned up and went to a Chinese buffet which was just great. Friday we just hung out at their house until it was time for us to leave...it looked like a huge storm was coming so we headed out early and tried to beat the storm. That's it in a nutshell! Thank you, Elizabeth (and Kevin!), for having us...we had a great time!

Last night Matthew had another baseball practice and he got to hit against the machine. Rob took him and he said he did great. I went to my monthly crop at Linda's house...we had such a good time. I just took stuff along to plan for the weekend...we're going on a scrapbook retreat to Paducah...I can't wait. More on that later.

Tonight I fixed Stuffed Green Peppers for supper - one of my favorites. I don't make it very often but now I'm going to add it to my meal planning sheet. I've decided to plan my meals a little bit better, writing everything down and stuff. I've kind of done this before but I never really wrote things down and actually PLANNED my meals. I'm doing this to really try and NOT eat out. It's just too expensive to eat out! Here's the recipe:

Stuffed Peppers:

4-6 green bell peppers (depending on the size)
1 lb ground beef
2 TBSP chopped onion
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup uncooked Minute Rice
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 eggs
2 cups tomato paste

Preheat oven to 350. Cut tops from peppers, remove membranes & wash. I usually then cut my peppers in half and just lay the halves in my 9X13 pan. Combine ingredients and mix thoroughly. Fill peppers and place in baking dish. Cover with foil and bake for 50-60 minutes (I bake mine about 20 minutes longer then with the cover off...just to make sure the meat is done). Enjoy!

Below are a few pics of our time spent in Columbia!