There She Blows!

Well, Mt. Redoubt has done it again. One of the interesting things about living in Alaska is that we are surrounded by several active volcanoes. Mt. Redoubt is one that is pretty close to us and it has been rumbling for a few months now but, this week it finally blew. These two pictures are from some of the eruptions this week. Until today, we had been free from ashfall thanks to the wind direction and such but this morning there was another big eruption and we are now under ashfall advisory until 4pm today. Hopefully we won't get that much...it's pretty much a pain to mess with. You can check out the Alaska Volcano Observatory and find all the details about current and past eruptions. It's pretty interesting.

Well, that's about it for today...more to come, more to come.

AllRecipes.com is my best friend :)

This post might be a little different that our previous ones but I wanted to share. :) At the insurance agency where I work, we have been cooking just about every day for the past several months because it tends to save everyone quite a bit of money as opposed to ordering in everyday like we had been doing previously. We all just take turns and it's been a great chance to try new recipes! My favorite source of recipes for any occasion is AllRecipes.com You can register at their site and you get new recipes emailed to you every day. Here are two that I've tried recently here at work. The first one is Rosemary Chicken in an Orange & Maple Syrup glaze. This chicken was amazing! You brown the chicken in a pan (after rubbing it with Rosemary, salt & pepper) with some olive oil and then add the sauce which is simply orange juice, white wine and maple syrup. I know the ingredients don't sound right together, but it is truly delicious and super easy!
And then, for those with a sweet tooth, we have Oreo and Nutter Butter Truffles. These take a little bit of time but are still pretty simple. You just grind up the cookies in a food processor and and dip them in melted almond bark. We dipped the oreos in vanilla almond bark and the nutter buters in chocolate almond bark and then drizzled the extra onto the other kind. These are sooo yummy but sooo sweet! You can't handle too many but they would be excellent for parties and such.

And yes, we made these at work. The only disadvantage we've found to how well we get to eat at work is that no one feels like cooking when they get home. lol. Anyway...it's a different post, but I hope you enjoyed it. We are all doing great...We've had some volcanic excitement here this week with Mt. Redoubt, but so far, no ashfall has come our way. We will post again soon..I got some cute video of Ben the other day. Till then, I hope you all are doing wonderful! :)

Time is Flyin'

Well, here we are, almost a quarter of the way through 2009 already, which is just crazy! Ben is almost 2 years old. I am admittedly in complete and total denial that our little guy is that big already. lol. A perfect example of that was this week when I finally gave in and let Corey change Ben's bed into a toddler bed. I was sure he was going to be out of it every five minutes but this is night #3 and he hasn't escaped once! (I'm sure the day is coming though...haha) Here are some pics of when he first went in his room and discovered his new "big boy bed". When we walked in the room and saw it the first time, he said, "Oh, man!!". It was like..."Whoa, where did the front of my bed go?!" From there it was only about one minute before he had climbed up and said, "2...3...JUMP!" (Jumping off of anything and everything is definitely his new hobby. :)

Ben has been talking so much lately too. We're definitely at the "watch everything you say stage"...because it will most definitely be repeated. My favorite thing is when he says "Wuv you much!" and holds his arms out real wide! If that doesn't melt you heart, nothing will! :) Well, I guess that's about it for now. More to come soon!