My Sweet Little Angel/ Taco Soup/ Birthday Party Preps!

Ok, I'm going to brag a little about my daughter. This last week Emma has been such an angel. She wakes up happy and ready to go and is just full of hugs and kisses for Jacob and me. She does have some small moments here and there (she's not prefect) when she throws a fit but for the most part, this week so far has been wonderful. I think she may be going through a growth suprt though. She eats twice as much as I do at dinner now and takes 2-3 hour naps during the day. You should see how much this girl eats! I had one small helping of spaghetti the other night and she had 3 not huge but medium helpings. That's how it's been the last few nights. We haven't had any leftovers because Emma bats clean up at the dinner table! Speaking of dinner... here is this weeks recipe:

Taco Soup
1 lb ground beef

½ c chopped onion
3c water

1 (26 oz) can stewed tomatoes, undrained
2 (16 oz) kidney beans, undrained

1 (16 oz) can tomato sauce
1 can corn

1 envelope taco seasoning

In a large saucepan cook ground beef and onion until meat is browned. Drain off excess fat. Add the rest of the ingredients. Cover and simmer for at least 15 minutes. Serve with sour cream, cheddar cheese, tortilla chips, tomatoes, green onions, and/or avocado. Makes 6 servings

For those of you who haven't ever had this before here is what I do. I take a handful of chips and crunch them up in my hands and put them in my soup. Then I put a tablespoon of sour cream on top and some grated cheese and stir it up. It is so simple and easy to make. When I was going to school, every Friday the institute would have Friday Forum and this was one of the dishes the secretary would make for us to eat afterward.

So everyone that voted on the cake liked the middle one the best and the top one second. I got to looking at the middle one a little closer and decided that it was above my level. I looks like they did screen printing on it for the grass and I've never done that before. I think I'm going to try the top cake and if I'm crunched for time then I'll probablly end up doing the bottom one.

I was looking around on the internet for Sesame Street Party Ideas and I found this really awesome website. I went to the dollar store and bought red, yellow, green and blue crate paper and balloons, yellow, green, and red die cut letters, and Sesame Street books for party favors. What I'm going to do is tape the die cut letters all over the walls and hang streamers and blow up balloons and let them just be on the floor for the kids to play with. I'm making a pin the nose on Elmo games and also a cookie monster cookie toss game. I wish I had batteries for my camera so I could show off the Elmo invites I made.

For the food, we are making homemade pizzas, jell-o jigglers in different shapes, and we are going to have a fruit and veggie tray with homemade dips to go with them. I'm also going to have soem goldfish crackers in a container for people to guess how many fish are in the container with a prize for the winner.

I'm really excited about the birthday party! It isn't for a couple weeks but I'm still excited.