The Great Outdoors

We've had quite a fun week in our backyard. After a few days of sunshine, we noticed one of our birdhouses is now occupied! I hope we see some baby birds emerge this spring. :)

We also decided to fill up our other birdhouse with some seed and have been very pleased with all the traffic we're getting. There are even a few squirrels that like to stop by. For the most part, the dogs leave the birds alone, but not the squirrels. Thankfully, the squirrels are much faster than our dogs so no one's been hurt yet.

Yes, Tannen and Marty still love sticks. But we've got plenty, so chew away!

Here's one of our new residents. I'm hoping we can get him to pay rent soon.

I love this picture of Marty, who has just realized he's sharing the yard with a couple of birds. I think he chased them away shortly thereafter.

One of our squirrels, who I was able to get a quick shot of before the boys joyfully chased him back up his tree.

A Boy and His Dog

Mike has been working so hard recently (our garage is now semi-organized, for one!). So after a hard day's work, I caught him sleeping on couch next to his favorite buddy, Tannen. Life doesn't get more precious than that (coming from a woman who doesn't have kids yet, of course).

Thank you, Mike, for working so hard! I'm sorry our couch isn't more comfortable. :)

My Favorite Super Bowl Ad 2008

For some reason, this commercial just gets me every time. Enjoy!

Recipe of the Month - Jerk Chicken

Ever since we moved back to Washington last year and I had to leave my job in Jacksonville, I've been trying really hard to get better at this full-time house wife gig. One of the hardest things for me to enjoy is cooking dinners. It just seems like so much hard work for only a few minutes of reward. And then what's left after the dinner has been eaten? Yep, more work because now the kitchen is a mess!

Anyway, I didn't want to post just to complain (sure feels good though!). I've been working hard at finding good, simple meals and wanted to post a great recipe I've found each month for those in the same situation as me. Typically, I gravitate towards the recipes that I've found to be tasty and have easy instructions and ingredients (nothing that's not easily found at a normal grocery store, please!) and with minimal cleanup afterwards. So this month, I'm posting a recipe I found for Jerk Chicken. It's absolutely yummy and so easy!

Easy Jerk Chicken

ingredients:
- 1 italian dressing seasoning packet
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper/cayenne pepper
- 1 1/2 lbs. chicken breasts or tenderloins

directions:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Mix all ingredients together (minus chicken).
- Put chicken pieces in a glass baking dish (I use 9x9).
- Pour seasoning mixture over chicken.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
- Serve with white or brown rice and steamed veggies and you're done!

notes:
- I use red pepper flakes, which might turn it a bit spicier than using cayenne. I'm not big on spicy food, but I love this chicken with a little kick.
- The amount of chicken I use varies. The original recipe I found calls for 2 1/2 lbs of chicken, but I found I prefer to have more sauce. And since it's just Mike and me, I just throw in a couple chicken breasts or about 6 tenderloins.
- This meals usually fills us both pretty full, with maybe one serving leftover (sometimes). You could probably increase the chicken amount to 2 lbs and still have plenty of sauce to cover the chicken.
- The original recipe also calls for this to be cooked on the grill. Haven't tried that yet, but I'm sure it's great, too!
- You could marinate the chicken for an hour before putting it in the oven, but I'm usually not that patient.

Get Ready for Lost!

For all you Lost fans out there, don't forget this Thursday is the season premiere! We are totally excited, especially after the awesome season finale last year. Well, that and this unending writer's strike is really getting me anxious for some good non-reality-show TV.

I found a great video recap on ABC's website. It's got all you need to know to catch up with what's happened so far. So watch the video and get ready for Thursday's premiere at 9pm!

Clear skies and a happy Kate

For all those who have been sitting on the edge of your seats wondering how my recovery has been going, this post is for you. :) It's been two weeks now since my daily wound-dressings started up, and hopefully we've made it over the hard part. For the first week, it was just once a day. But then last weekend, we started with the required twice a day, and it was not pretty at first. But thank the Lord, Mike and I figured out a good system and now the pain is down to almost zero! I'm still taking percoset every time, which leads to groggy days sometimes (but a happy Kate!), but I honestly feel so blessed that these twice daily dressings aren't as traumatic as they once were.

I went in for a checkup with the surgeon yesterday, and she said the wound is healing extremely well, and from here the healing should speed up exponentially. Whether or not that means we'll be done with the dressings in another two weeks, I'm not exactly sure. But that's my goal!

On a different note, I don't know about the rest of you, but down here in Vancouver the weather has just been gorgeous for the past 4 or 5 days. I can definitely handle the freezing cold temperatures when we've got clear blue skies the whole day. It's been such a treat! I've been letting the dogs run around in the backyard (unsupervised!) in light of the dry conditions we've had, and it's so fun to check up on them to see what sort of trouble they've been getting into. Nothing too terrible, thankfully. :) But they sure love all the sticks they find!

Totally Rad Video

Here's a great video Mike found about how to dance "The Cabbage Patch" (and no, I'm not talking about those dumb dolls!). If you need any really rad advice on how to master this move, just ask Dancin' Kim... "You know, like you're in a cabbage patch!"



How To Do The Cabbage Patch