Cruising...

Tomorrow we're off for our week long cruise! I'm finally feeling somewhat relaxed after a whole day of packing, cleaning and preparing! And now it's time for bed! :)

Jon and I drove Brian & Sarah to the airport this afternoon so they could fly down to Miami tonight. They'll be meeting us on the boat tomorrow. Nate & Shawna will be meeting us here around 7:30 tomorrow morning and then Jon's dad will be driving us to the airport. We have a non-stop flight to Miami and we're praying that everything goes smoothly with no delays! We have at least a 2 hour buffer so even if our plane gets delayed a little we'll still be ok - but it would make for a much more stressful morning.

We're so excited to be getting away for a whole week with each other and friends, plus visiting 3 new islands! We're stopping at Nassau, Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten. Neither of us have been to St. Thomas or St. Maarten and only Jon has been to Bahamas. We've got some fun things planned for on the islands as well: snorkeling, para sailing, riding 4-wheelers and seeing lots of beautiful views!

I'm sure we'll have all kinds of fun pictures to show when we return! Here's one to hold you over... this is the ship we'll be on for the next 7 days:



Bon Voyage!

Simply Lasagna

I made this lasagna recipe the other night when we had a bunch of friends over and it was pretty yummy so I thought I'd share it. You make it with uncooked noodles which cook while it's baking - that was easy:

Ingredients:

~ 1 lb. ground beef (I used ground chicken)
~ 1 egg, beaten
~ 2 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
~ 1 container (15 oz.) Ricotta Cheese
~ 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
~ 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped (I didn't have fresh so I just shook in some dried parsley)
~ 1 jar (26 oz.) spaghetti sauce
~ 1 cup water
~ 12 lasagna noodles, uncooked

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown meat in large skillet on medium-high heat. Meanwhile, mix egg, 1 1/4 cups of the mozzarella cheese, the ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese and the parsley until well blended; set aside.

2. Drain meat; return to skillet. Stir in spaghetti sauce. Add water to empty sauce jar; cover with lid and shake well. Add to meat mixture; stir until well blended.

3. Spread 1 cup of the sauce onto bottom of 13x9-inch baking dish; top with layers of 3 lasagna noodles, one-third of the ricotta cheese mixture and 1 cup of the sauce. Repeat layers twice. Top with remaining 3 noodles and the remaining meat sauce. Sprinkle with remaining 1 1/4 cups mozzarella cheese and remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Cover with greased foil.

4. Bake 45 min. Remove foil; bake an additional 15 min. or until heated through. Let stand 15 min. before cutting to serve.

Makes 12 servings, 1 piece each.

My adjustments:

~ I used at least 4 more noodles than they said - I'm not sure what kind of 13x9 pans they were talking about but 3 noodles just wasn't filling my pan and I like a lot of noodles.

~ When it was all done it seemed just a bit dry so I think next time I'll use more sauce and maybe a little more cheese.

Enjoy!

Birthday Surprises!

I can't believe I turn 23 today!! That is scarry - time goes by so fast! I'm getting old...LOL :)

Jon woke me up early this morning with kisses...he then sat me up in bed to see a bouquet of pretty pink roses on our dresser with gifts and a little, pink, handmade coupon book from him. We didn't have much time together since Jon had to get ready and leave for work, but I got to open my gifts and read all my coupons - they were really cute! After Jon left for work I walked into the bedroom to find a single rose on my pillow with a little note from Jon. On the bottom of the note it said "8/12" (meaning: 8 of 12). Throughout the morning I found 11 more little notes in various places - each with a single rose next to it. All the notes were very sweet and cute. Here are a few to give you an idea:

I found this one in one of our food cabinets: "Thanks for going grocery shopping and using coupons that save us money and get us lots of good food"

This one was in my bucket of cleaning supplies: "Thanks for all the cleaning you do in our house to keep it a wonderful place to live in"

This one was in the oven: "Thanks for all the baking you do in here, whether it's bread, cookies or stromboli its always yummy"

And in the chest freezer: "Thanks for keeping this stocked with food and for the yummy apple sauce that you made"

This one was in our medicine cabinet: "Thanks for the way you keep this stocked with everything I would need if I got sick"

And this one was in the linen closet: "Thanks for always keeping this full of neatly folded clean towels"

There were 6 more similar notes. I was smiling/crying all morning :). I have the most amazing, caring, sweet husband in the world! I always thank God for him when I pray and I am so blessed to have him!

Here's a picture of all my flowers, my coupon book and my little notes:

Tonight I think we're going out for dinner and then to a jewlery store in Philly for me to pick something out. That should be fun as well. :)

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In other news around here, I had a lot of fun on my scrapbooking retreat a few weeks ago. I was working on our Everyday Life album which holds pictures starting from right after our honeymoon. When I got to the retreat I was ready to start on pictures from January of last year and I got all the way through our vacation to Germany which was in March of last year. I know it doesn't seem like a lot but we took a TON of pictures in Germany so that took a while. Sarah and I also got some pretty good deals during the three trips we made to the outlets right next door :).

Our cruise is coming up in less than two weeks! We leave on February 24th and return March 2nd. Jon and I are both really looking forward to the time away - Jon especially is now that he's working full time :).

Speaking of Jon's job, things have been going really well for him. He started back on January 28th so he's now half-way through his third week there. His first few weeks have been a lot of learning and getting familiar with the company. He is in charge of all website design, maintenance and promotion - which is no small task considering the company has 5 different websites and they want all of them re-done! He will also be doing general graphic design and he's in charge of all e-mail marketing. I know there's other things he is responsible for too but I can't think of what they are right now. He even has his own office with a window - which I think is really cool! :) He is on salary pay so he was able to set his own hours of 8-4 Monday-Friday. He's sometimes there a little bit after 4:00 though. Sheffield seems like a really good company to work for and Jon is liking his new job.

As for me... I've been busy as usual, although if you ask me what I do all day I probably won't be able to give you a very good answer. The days just seem to fly by! I'm still very much enjoying being able cook nice meals almost every night and slowly catching up on my seemingly endless lists of things I want to or need to do. :)

On that note - I should get back to doing something. I have fresh fruit to cut up and laundry to do! :)