Yummy Dinner

Hi all. So The Mr and I decided that we didn’t want the buffet OR Chinese food, so instead we opted for Texas Roadhouse, a very yummy steakhouse that’s just down the road from us.  If you live in Phoenix, we often go to the Metro location. The staff is friendly, service is great (for the most part), and the atmosphere is fun.

As usual, we ordered a Cactus Blossom for an appetizer, but kept to iced tea for our drinks. A Cactus Blossom is like an Awesome Blossom or an Onion Bloom, depending on which steakhouse you’ve been to before. The Cactus Blossom was delicious as usual. For Tank, we ordered chicken strips with french fries, while The Mr and I both ordered the 6 oz sirloin, cooked medium well. I ordered mine with the salad and french fries, while The Mr ordered his smothered with onion and mushrooms, with a side of cheese covered fries and a rice pilaf type dish. Unfortunately, the one issue I’ve had with this restaurant has continued with tonight’s dinner. Every time we’ve been there, my order has NEVER been cooked the way I wanted. Tonight I ordered medium-well, yet there was absolutely no pink to be seen anywhere. The first time I ordered it well done, I was brought out medium-well. Oh well, there are worse things that could happen, and the food is so delicious, no matter how it’s cooked, I never complain and always enjoy my yummy steak. I feel bad that I didn’t take any pictures of my food, I’ll try to remember to start doing that, sorry!

Do you want to hear something amazing? Remember how I went to the doctor today? While at dinner, I missed a call from the doctor’s office. I had asked them for something regarding Tank, so I figured the missed call and subsequent voicemail was from Tank’s doctors’ nurse. Imagine my surprise when I checked my voicemail and found it be message from the doctor I saw today, checking to see how I was feeling after my adjustments. To have the doctor actually call me up, himself, is really some amazing..um, customer service? Is that the right term to use for something like this? Hmm, either way, it definitely makes me want to stay with this practice. Our family practice is coupled with a pain management group, so I just had to travel upstairs, which is nice and convenient.

In other amazing news, we’ve been having a difficult time potty training Tank. In the last 2 weeks, he’s actually been going potty at school. In the last 2 days, he’s been going regularly on the potty here at home. Today, I put him in a clean pull-up right before nap, and that pull-up has lasted until bed time. That’s right, he’s kept dry since 2pm today! Squee! Here’s hoping this is a trend that will last for a while and be expanded on!

Alright all, I’m going to go get comfy on the couch and catch up on episodes of NCIS and Friends. Hope to see you all later!

A little bit of everything

It’s only Tuesday and this week has already been…wacky. If you read my post over the weekend, http://wp.me/p1WLgj-10 , then you know that my daughter randomly got sick. It was just that day and by Sunday it seemed to be gone. We figured it was one of those weird, freaky things that sometimes happens and called it a day. Yesterday, right after dinner, she started complaining about her tummy hurting her (which is how Saturday started). We got her settled on the couch, with her “sick bucket” right next to her. As I predicted, about 15 minutes after her stomach was hurting her, she was using the bucket. Got her all cleaned up, in new jammies, put her to bed and, not even 30 minutes later, she was sick again.  I have no clue where it came from, today there’s no sign of it. If it happens tomorrow, we’re going to see the doc.

So today we decided to go to Starbucks to try the holiday lattes, Eggnog for him, Gingerbread for me. I have to say…really disappointed. I didn’t even finish mine. I make a better cup of gingerbread coffee (regular coffee+gingerbread creamer) than they do AND it’s like $4 cheaper! Yeah, we both threw out our cups and headed for Denny’s. I have to say, I LOVE Denny’s. I try to avoid it as a regular place, because I use a lot of my Weight Watcher’s points there, but we had coupons for free food for the kids birthdays, and you can’t beat free food.

After breakfast, we rented a couple of movies and came home. It’s been a pretty mellow day, the Mr is recovering from the headache from hell. We rented Fast Five last night, which we didn’t get the chance to finish, and Green Lantern and Horrible Bosses today. I’ve seen 4 out of 5 of the Fast and Furious movies (I didn’t see Tokyo Drift because it didn’t have Vin Diesel or Paul Walker in it, so what’s the point?) and I really liked it! It’s one of those movies that’s great to watch when you just need a mindless movie. There’s eye candy for men and women, lots of action, some kick ass stunts (especially at the end) and a few tender moments. The Mr actually enjoyed it, for being all action-y, but that’s better than when we rented Red Riding Hood a few days ago. That movie was just….weird. Also, kinda gave me the heebies. When we find out who the wolf is, and what’s been on during the movie…yeah, if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. The Mr claimed it was all predictable. He actually was able to tell me who he thought the wolf was and was right on a few other story points. Oh, another good movie we rented this week was Something Borrowed. It’s considered a comedy, romance, drama movie, though the comedy wasn’t entirely there. Yes, there were a few moments, but I wouldn’t consider it a Rom-Com. Regardless, it was a great movie that made me hug the Mr just a little bit tighter that night.

So back to the movie today. We watched Green Lantern while the kids were napping. The Mr heard that Ryan Reynolds acting in this was horrible but we both thought it was awesome. I think he acted like he normally does, awesome and sexy and with lots of humor. The Mr enjoyed it, too, and he’s always critical of comic book movies. Of course, getting to see Ryan without his shirt was always a fabulous sight. Next up is Horrible Bosses. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find some way to have another vodka cranberry without my heartburn beating the crap out of me…some more.

Until Next Time….

Dinner

The Mr and I are both trying to lose weight. I’m on Weight Watcher’s and spilling what I’m learning from that on to the rest of the family. The kids obviously don’t need to lose weight, just us adults, but I think instilling healthy eating habits is good. We love beef, but it can be a lot of points, even when bought lean. One of the things my parents taught me to do to make beef meal healthier is to do half  beef and half ground turkey. Last weekend we had dinner with my parents, spaghetti with a meat sauce. My mom used turkey as the meat, but didn’t tell the Mr until after he’d eaten it. He actually enjoyed it, so this week he asked if we could do turkey burgers. Last night I made my burgers half and half, and then made a small one for him that was just turkey. He enjoyed it so much, he asked for burgers again tonight, this time just plain turkey for him. I can’t quite make the switch to just turkey, yet, for myself, so I made a combo burger, but the Mr and Princess each had turkey burgers. They just loved them!

I accidentally picked up the Italian seasoned turkey instead of just regular ground turkey, so that may be why I’m having a harder time making the switch. Next time, I’ll make sure to pick up the regular. I think the Italian would work great for pasta dishes, but it’s a bit…off-putting for burgers, in my opinion. Now to munch on a few chocolate covered pretzels before the night is over. Hey, I’m still within my points for the day, thank you very much! Ha ha.

Today was a good day, a productive day to end a productive week. Wednesday we had the meeting with the school district, yesterday we had the last of Goat’s occupational therapy sessions and his second to last speech therapy session. I also picked up his birth certificate yesterday and had our 6 month meeting with our support coordinator with DDD. Today I dropped off his paperwork at the preschool and got everything taken care of for that, picked up Princess, and got a little bit of cleaning done. I need to do more, but I have to clean in spurts or else I burn out and refuse to life a finger the rest of the day.  The Mr and I are going to watch some movies tonight, after Princess finishes her movie, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. We rented Something Borrowed and Red Riding Hood.

Off to do some more dishes (I HATE dishes).

What are you doing tonight?

Do You Enjoy Scary Movies?

I’ve always loved scary movies, for as long as I can remember. My mom tells the story of watching Child’s Play and turning around to see me, 2 or 3, standing in the corner watching. Apparently I had watched about 75% of the movie. To this day, I can’t watch that movie, but I’m always searching for a horror movie that will actually scare me. The last movie to scare me was Jurassic Park, it gave me nightmares for the longest time. That was more age related, I think. I was in 3rd grade when that came out, maybe 4th, so I was like 8 or 9. When I was in high school, my mom would let me pick my own rental at Blockbuster. I practically watched half the entire horror section, just looking for something to scare me. I’ve spent 19 years looking for a scary movie, but haven’t found anything that worked. All those movies were either super gory, like Hostel, or they just weren’t scary, for me.
Two night ago, the Mr let me pick what movie we were going to watch on Netflix (I love my instant queue). I decided I wanted to watch Paranormal Activity. I figured I’d be laughing most of the time, figuring it would be more like Blair Witch Project, but I was actually scared. It was scary in that old school way, that doesn’t rely on million dollar special effects budgets. It was noises, shadows, and simple things like doors slamming shut, yet it was the best horror movie I’ve seen. I didn’t want to go to sleep after.

So what did the Mr and I do? We played around with a Ghost Radar app on our phones, then sat down to watch Paranormal Activity 2.

This one had a few more special effects, but again it stayed with the simple scares. I’d say the first one scared me more than the second one, but it was still scary. I jumped, I got goosebumps and chills, I didn’t want to go to sleep again. We finished the movies around 1 am. I seriously had scary dreams all night and, when the Mr woke me up at 2:30, thinking he’d heard Goat, I just about screamed and peed my pants. We live in an apartment complex and have noisy neighbors, plus 3 animals, so there were lots of noises through the night. I kept waking up every time I’d hear thumping from next door, or my cat banging the cabinet door as she climbed in and out from under the sink (she goes there to hide from the kids sometimes). I have to tell you, I didn’t sleep very well or for that long, I may have been exhausted the next morning, but I absolutely LOVED the fact that I got scared enough for it to disrupt my sleep.

Now I’m trying to set up a date with the Mr and a few of our Twitter friends so we can go see Paranormal Activity 3.

Thanks to a sister who works for a movie theater, we’ve got some free passes, so all we have to do is find a babysitter. Thanks to the whole one income thing, we’ll probably have my parents watch them. Guess we’ll ask them this weekend when we head over there. Maybe we can get something set up for 2 weeks from now. That would be awesome!

Okay, I’ve got some housework to do, so I’m signing off for now.

Question of the Day:

Do you like scary movies? What’s the scariest movie you’ve seen? What’s your favorite scary movie?