Sickies

Common sense people! When your child is sick, you don't take them to places where they can expose other kids. The same is true for dogs. Thank you to the irresponsible owner who took their sick dog to the dog park and let him/her drink from the community water therefore causing me $350 worth in vet bills, chest x-rays, and antibiotics. NOT COOL! I guess we will now be vaccinating every 6 months for kennel cough. It's a small price to pay when our dogs are super social and LOVE to play at the dog park.

Look at these poor girls who are zoned out because they are drugged up on meds. None of us got sleep for approximately 3 days because every 10 minutes someone was coughing up a lung. Shelby ended up with an upper and lower respiratory infection and Liberty had what they think is a form of pneumonia. Alas, we are on the mend!

Scrumptious Sundays

Stuffed Pork Chops

This recipe was delicious and I tweaked it to my liking, but owe the inspiration to these cute girls.

4 boneless loin chops, 1" thick

4 oz. smoked Gouda cheese, grated

4 strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 cup cooked spinach, wring out extra water

bacon grease

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grate the cheese and mix with the bacon and spinach. Cut pork chops horizontally most of the way through (but not all the way) to create a pocket for the filling. Divide the cheese mixture among the pork chops filling them by hand. Season as desired. Heat grease from bacon using the same frying pan. Sear each side of the pork chops for about 2 minutes per side. Transfer pork chops to a cookie sheet. Cover with tin foil and bake for 20 minutes or until juices run clear when pork chops are pierced with a knife.

We Made It!

After a ridiculously long drawn out move...we made it to Arizona! I think that sometimes my LOVE for planning is a curse because really, how often do things go off without a hitch?! Well we were pleasantly surprised when the truck was loaded and the house was cleaned by 5:00 pm on the day we planned! That left us a few hours to do the finishing touches, say goodbye to some friends, eat dinner, shower, and get to bed early. Of course we ended up dragging our feet and taking far too long and crashed on our friends couches (thank you Comptons) in the wee hours of the morning. We were going back and forth about what time to leave the next morning because they were planning on icy roads (dangerous in TX). We ended up sleeping in until 7:00 am. Not bad, but we went back to our house to put the bikes on the car and head out. Our landlord pulled up as we were getting in the car and he ended up staying for 2 HOURS! At 10:00 we were finally at the gas station filling up and about to head out on the open road when Phil decided to check the tire pressure. As luck would have it...we had a screw on the side wall of our tire. So Phil told me to run to Walmart and he'd wait for me. Waste of time. Walmart said that they couldn't do anything for a puncture in the side and sent me off to Discount Tire. Discount Tire was super cool and said since I had a 5th tire on the back they could put that on...until he went and checked and found out that it was a different size than the other 4 tires. WHAT?! Plan B...buy 1 new tire and put the back tire on with it (I can have 2 different sizes on the front and the back - who knew). The guy ran outside to check and came back in to inform me that we needed to go to Plan C because it was the original tire from 2001 and they legally couldn't put it on. Plan C...call daddy! Daddy forked over money for one tire and we fork over money for the other. At 1:30 pm I called Phil from the freeway (driving on my 2 new $440 tires) and asked him if he wanted me to grab him something to eat so we could get on the road and maybe make it halfway. He laughed and said that would be great, but we won't be getting very far today...the moving van won't start. Of course it won't start, if you know us, we never have good luck! Plan D. Budget came out, jumped the van, took Phil to their location to install a new battery, and by 3:30 we knew we had to go to Plan Z. We called our friends to see if we could stay the night (thank you Browns) and they graciously put us up in their guest room! We did get up the next morning and got on the road and finally made it to Arizona with no other problems! Whew! And to think, we'll probably be moving again in 6 months!

Argh!

Poor Phil had a little accident with the dogs a few days before we moved. He was playing outside at our friends house in their backyard with all 4 dogs (2 were ours, 2 were theirs). Long story short he got scratched on the eye and eye lid. Luckily our friends saved the day because they just happened to have some eye antibiotics (way random)! So we quickly patched it up and kept it medicated for a few days. He makes a cute (tired) pirate!

Real BBQ

Before we said goodbye to Texas we felt it was critical to our departure that we eat real bbq. Boy howdy did we find the best smokehouse ever! Check out their loaded french fries! This place was awesome! If you are ever in Dallas you should try The Railroad Smokehouse!