Whatcha got cookin?

What do think of when you think of comfort food? If you looked it up in the dictionary, you would probably find a picture of a Paula Dean meatloaf (right next to the picture of my Memaw's chicken and dumplings!). I love meatloaf and used to feel bad about saying that in public because meatloaf just has a bad reputation.  Or it could just be that meatloaf had a bad reputation in my house growing up. Apparently it was one of the few things my mom knew how to make when she first married my dad and I guess made it a little too often. So, I don't remember eating meatloaf much as a kid because it had already been banned at that point. :) It really is so filling though and well, just comfortable. I love this recipe from Paula Dean. We ate this for dinner last night and it was delicious with some twice baked potatoes. Be careful to not pack down your meatloaf in the pan too much or it will end up really dense. Here you go! Happy dishes ya'll. :)

Paula Dean's Basic Meatloaf

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten
8 ounces canned diced tomatoes (without juice)
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats

Topping:
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon prepared mustard

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix all meat loaf ingredients well and place in a baking dish. Shape into a loaf. Mix ingredients for topping and spread on loaf. Bake for 1 hour.

Hailey's New Trick

Hailey turned 3 months yesterday! She is such a happy baby. She is not as great of a sleeper as Eli was, but we are still working through that one. :)

I love her dark blue eyes..

 ...and these big smiles!

 But I am not sure...

how I feel..

 about another THUMB SUCKER!

I found her thoroughly enjoying her thumb today when her paci fell out. Eli quit taking his paci at this age and his thumb has been his best friend ever since. :)

I put up a post today from New Year's Eve since I just uploaded those pictures from our new camera. I dated it for last week to keep my posts in order but you can see that post here.

Hide and Seek

We have a new game around our house. I'm not sure where Eli learned this game but I am assuming they play it at school. Any time I try to get Eli to do something or go somewhere he runs away like a mad man screaming "Hide! Hide! Hide!" Usually, by the time I catch up to him he is turned around in a corner in his room "hiding" as if I can't see him. :) When he turns around and sees me he gets so tickled and starts laughing like crazy. This game is not fun when you are trying to leave the house to go somewhere! I am trying to teach him not to hide from mommy, but so far I haven't had any success.

Eli also likes hiding his things. If anything is missing in our house then the first place we check is inside Eli's play kitchen oven. The other day I could not find the list I had made to go to Target. I looked everywhere until I realized that Eli had probably snatched it off the coffee table. Sure enough, it was a crumpled mess inside his oven. :)

A few nights ago Eli was helping us give Hailey a bath. Eli usually shares really well with Hailey and other kids (with some gentle coaxing), but he was not excited about sharing his ducks that we had put in her bath tub with her. He snatched them out of the tub and took off running. When he didn't come right back I went looking for him. I first found him putting the ducks in his oven (where else???). He was not excited that I discovered his hiding spot so he took off with them again. He next ran into Hailey's room and hid them in her bouncy chair. He once again got mad when I found him and the ducks so I decided to leave him alone and let him do whatever he wanted with them. Shortly after he came back into the bathroom and wanted Marc to come help him with something. He took him to Hailey's diaper genie and just pointed. Marc opened the diaper genie up and this is what he found...

Four little ducks in the diaper pail and a little boy who looks so guilty confused as to how they got in there. :)

I guess he found a good hiding spot that time... maybe a little too good. :)

Family Fun

Marc had the entire weekend off! It was so great to enjoy breakfast as a family on Saturday and Sunday. I cooked both mornings because the whole family was sleeping in (well, I don't really know that I can say Hailey sleeps in yet since she still wakes up at 4 or 5 every day but she does fall back to sleep after that feeding!). On Friday night we went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse. Marc and I tried their BBQ for the first time and it was delicious. We also put Eli in a booster seat for the first time at a restaurant so it was a big night! We actually brought our booster seat from home because it has a strap. Most of the restaurant booster seats we have found don't have straps and believe me, Eli still needs the strap. :) He likes the booster seat so much at home that we have put the highchair away, at least for a few months! Anyhow, we had a great time at dinner. Here are a few pictures before we left the house.

Eli is slowly starting to warm up to the camera. He now understands "show me your teeth" enough for me to get a quick picture.

Pretty, pretty princess

On Saturday, we wanted to get out of the house for a bit so we took the kids to the mall. They have an indoor kids playground that my dad and I took Eli to last month and he loved it. It was just as much fun the second time around. :)

I had to buy a few baby gifts while we were at the mall so Marc took off with Eli and I took Hailey with me. When we joined back up Eli was sporting some new eye wear that Marc had bought him from The Children's Place. He was getting so tickled about wearing his new shades!

We enjoyed some mall pizza and then headed home to put the kids to bed and watch a movie. It was a great, relaxing Saturday doing a whole lot of nothing!