katie's wedding shower

This is a long over due post.  But Katie's wedding activities are in FULL swing and we are getting so excited for July 30 to be here.  She's under the one month mark and it's so exciting!!!  Keri, Lauren and I hosted a shower at my house a few Saturday's ago and it was so fun!!!  It was fun to see Katie's family, friends and watch her open all of the fun kitchen presents!!  Here are some fun pictures of the shower!

We had a nice spread of brunch dishes - including 2 new fun recipes that I got to try!  Lauren also made some delicious punch with some champagne to mix in :)

It was quite the party with college friends, her mom and grandma and lots of present!!

We started off with playing a game called "how well do you know Katie's kitchen?"  It was funny to hear her answers - like how she hates leftovers oh and that she's a mustard girl.  Guess that is who she roots for at the Royal's game races!!  (PS - love Lang's face in this picture!)

College friends!  Megan, Katie and Krista

Bridesmaids with the bride!!

Me, Keri, Katie and Lauren

Best friends!!

Megan brought her sweet baby Grace as well!  In Krista's post (please read this for HILARIOUS pictures of Katie - so funny!!), she mentions that Grace was the floor cleaner because she was scooting all over the floors and boy was I glad I made Jimmy clean the hard woods because I would have been mortified to have that sweet baby come up with lots of dust on here :)  She was so adorable!  Even Lauren got to help feed her!!  Look how good Studer looks with that little girl - think that is a sign? :)

Katie with her mom, sister and grandma :)  Love those ladies!!

What I call next is....the wonderful montage of Katie's facial expressions!  Haha.  She is hilarious and was so excited to get all the wonderful presents for the kitchen and grill!!  So fun to use some of these as well when we got to her bachelorette party at her house in Oklahoma in a week or so!!!

We had so much fun, as you can tell from the pictures with all the laughter, and cannot WAIT for the bachelorette party!!!!!  WAHOO!!

Ghosts and Gangsters~KC Style

As I took this last weekend to catch up on blog posts, more importantly to get pictures loaded to the blog...here we go with the catch up :)

A few Saturdays ago (June 18) the Carter boys and girls finally got to use a groupon that we bought a while back for a bogo free for the KC Ghost and Gangsters tour.  The girls thought this would be an outing that the boys would enjoy because there was talk of gangsters!  Even though it took a while for us to get it on our calendars (with 8 kids it's hard to get all of Jimmy's older brothers in one place at one time) and Bobby and Hillary weren't able to make it - we were excited to all go out and hang out!  It's always fun to get together with just adults and catch up!

We started the night at Harry's Country Club in the River Market for some happy hour specials, which included some delicious sangria!  Then we headed to the West Bottoms of KC to where the haunted houses are in full swing in the fall.  Once we saw this bus, we knew we were in the right place.  However, we were a little sad to see there was no air conditioning because summer was in full swing.  We managed to survive.

We got there around 5 minutes early and the guys realized that there wasn't alcohol.  So after a quick run to the convenient store with a grocery sack full of beer snuck to the back of the bus, we were off on the tour.  3 hours long, so we figured there would be lots to see.

Started off with telling us some scary ghost stories about another haunted house downtown where there have been 2 deaths from falling down the elevator shafts, then off to the Hotel Savoy where we learned about some scary stories about when it was a hotel and the people that haunted the halls....

Next was a church downtown that I drove by almost every day when I lived downtown and had no idea the scary stories that surrounded it.  I was hoping that the picture I took was going to have an orb because I guess lots of people get them.  Huh, maybe next time.  And the picture on the right is of our tour guide who was supposed to be a ghost.

Next up, it was time for a bathroom break at Union Station.  This was when they started talking about the gangsters in Kansas City.  The picture below is Jimmy pointing to a real life bullet hole that still remains there.

While we were stopped there - we got a good group picture...with the tour guide of course :)

There were lots of stops after that, including Union Cemetery, which is part of the Union Hill area and right by my work!  With stories about people living in the nearby condos hearing the sounds of crying babies....that were ghosts....yeah, very happy that I didn't ever live in those!!  And then there was another historic cemetery that houses souls that were disturbed when they put in Truman Road - yep, they literally dug them up and moved them.  Eek....

We then went over to the Kansas side to KCK to see the Sauer Castle, which I had never even heard of! Check out the link above to learn more about it.  Pretty crazy and there is a house next door where someone lives and watches the house.  The fence completely surrounds the house and apparently there are super scary guard dogs too!!

The picture on the left was of the house right across the street from the castle.  Interesting choice of porch decor :) 

At this stop, we had Jimmy jump out and take some pictures of the castle....while the rest of us sat in the back of the bus.  I did have one beer, dropped the can and it rolled all the way to the front of the bus and yep, the tour guide picked it up.  Oops.  So I stopped after that.  But here are both sides of the bus!

And the final group picture, minus the photographer, Jimmy.  

Overall, it was a fun trip.  Don't think I would have paid full price for the tickets, so happy it was a bogo free and we didn't!  But it was cool to hear about all the different parts of Kansas City and the scary stories.  After it was over, we had some more time left before the baby sitters (aka Jimmy parents) were going to leave, so we headed to the Peanut for some late night drinks and bar food.  Yum, loving those BLTs and wings!

Glad we have these Carter "culture" nights!  Can't wait for the next one!!

Happy Fourth of July!!

So this weekend was GREAT!  A full four days off and lots of things to do :)  It consisted of this...

Ripping up carpet upstairs.  Thank goodness my dad did 2 rooms on Thursday and Friday because Sunday when we did our bedroom, I came to the conclusion that ripping up carpet is my LEAST favorite house project ever.

Lots of bottled water.  Why? Because Friday and Saturday, there was a boil order in most of Johnson County because of a water main break.  That was interesting.  It was funny because people went CRAZY and all the grocery stores were sold out almost immediately after the ban!

There was lots of cooking.  Including a trip down to City Market early Saturday morning with my mom, dad and sister....where we had a delicious breakfast and did some shopping.  I picked up this amazing apron for Jimmy.  He liked it.  Our fridge was FULL, as we had some of Jimmy's family over on Saturday night.  Check out all the food!

Jimmy's favorite toy.  Love that smoked meat!!!

There was also so planning for an outdoor makeover of our bottom patio.  Plans on that coming soon!

And don't think we didn't take some time to relax.  We did!!  Lots of Friday Night Lights too...

And I mentioned that some of Jimmy's brothers came over Saturday night.  Oh my goodness.  We turned on Toy Story 2 in the basement and they were hooked.  Look at how sweet and innocent they all look on the couch together.  They continue to make me laugh every time we hang out with them!!!

They love Woody from Toy Story!!

Oh Sunday - we were going to do a surprise date, but part of it was outside, and it was raining, so we had to postpone.  Instead, we used a Plaza gift card and headed to Kona Grill for some sushi and drinks. So fun.  I had a completely DELICIOUS drink with some of that new sweet tea vodka and blackberries.

Jam with his standard Sapporo.

YUM!  Look at all that sushi.  It was SOOOOOOO good.  Also, the avocado egg rolls were yummy! 

With the long weekend coming to a close, just some family time left....very thankful for the wonderful country that we live in and all the luxuries we are so blessed to have.  Hope everyone had a great long weekend!!

Fast.Easy.Healthy.Delicious

Four words to describe a recent e-mealz recipe I made last week.  I should have added "cheap" to the list too.  And really...put those 5 words together and it doesn't get much better than that :)

So without further ado - here it is.

Ingredients:
1 lb tilapia filets, cut into small pieces (I actually just bought 2 of the individual tilapia filets on sale for $1 at the grocery store, instead of the full filet)
2 yellow squashes, sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced (I had a green already, so I just used that!)
4 oz whole mushrooms (I sliced these too)
2 T red wine vinegar
2 T olive oil
2 t garlic powder
2 t oregano
1/2 t salt

Directions: 
Combine all ingredients and place into a microwave dish or large Ziploc (I used the Ziploc) bag.  Shake or stir to mix ingredients.  Microwave on high for 4-5 min or until tilapia flakes easily


Serve with brown rice (I get brown rice packets from CostCo and they take 3 minutes to heat up - so delicious and easy!).


And there you have it - 8 minutes of cook time and probably 4 to prep.  In 12 minutes, you have a fast, easy, healthy, and delicious - don't forget cheap if you use my idea to buy the individual frozen tilapia!

YUM!

This is a much needed recipe for my weekly meals after all the food I have eaten this 4th of July weekend!

P.S.  For the summer time, we are back to using e-mealz vs. cooking 30 meals in one day and freezing.  This mainly because I feel lots of the 30 meals that I cook are soups and hot dishes and in the summer when it's like 100 degrees, that is the last thing we want to eat!  So e-mealz has been amazing this summer and I can pick and choose the recipes that are easy and fast to cook :)  We are loving it!