Scallops Provencal

I made Barefoot Contessa's Scallops Provencal from her Barefoot in Paris cookbook and it was a hit. I made it with a side of Herbed Basmati Rice and I think I'll never make plain ol' jasmine rice again! The only alteration I made was for the rice, I used flat leaf parsley instead of curly leaf - I had to get flatleaf for the scallops so I didn't want to buy both kinds.

I highly recommend these recipes - they use simple ingredients but the meal is elegant. Even my 7 year old daughter gobbled it up - it went so fast I didn't have time to take pictures. I'm sure you can substitute shrimp for the scallops and get similar results.

Thanks Uncle Sam!

We were planning to go to Hawaii the first week of August for our family vacation but airfare for a family of 5 is on the expensive side these days, especially since the cheapest airfare I can find is around $600-800 (multiply by 5!!!) Instead of Hawaii, we 're going to blow our stimulus check on a family vacation to Disneyland. We booked our trip through Southwest Vacations and opted to stay at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel. We were debating whether to splurge on the Grand CA hotel or save a little money and stay off site with a larger room/suite. Thanks Jenn & Joyce for the advice - as you can see I took it - we went for convenience and the overall "Disney" experience that I'm sure the kids will appreciate. We're excited - this will be our first time staying at the Grand CA hotel and we didn't tell the kids anything about this planned trip. We're going the day after school gets out (June 19-22) and we're just going to pack up the family and take our flight, and we're never going to tell the kids where we're going, they'll just have to figure it out themselves. We didn't rent a car, still debating whether we need one since our plan is to stay onsite the entire time. If anyone has any travel tips for Disneyland please feel free to comment or email me.

Baby B

I'm an Auntie! Congratulations to my sister and her husband - they had a baby boy on Sunday 5/18/2008 - Brayden Edward. Brayden tipped the scales at a mere 8 lbs. 4 oz. He's adorable if I do say so myself.

reading vs. writing

Wow it's been over 1 1/2 years since I posted here - I realized that reading blogs are so much more fun. No earth shaking updates, the 3 kids are bigger and badder than ever as you can see below. I'll start to post more regularly.