Cooking with Jordan! #17 Egg Nog Pie

Time for another episode of Cooking with Jordan. You can view earlier episodes by clicking on these links Preview, One Dish Mexican, Grilled Chicken, Cooking(?) with Daddy, Tortellini Soup , Teriyaki Chicken, Buffalo Chicken Bites, Parmesan Chicken Pasta With Broccoli, Garbage Casserole, Cheeseburger Pie, Golden Crusted Chicken Asparagus Lasagna, Baked Rigatoni, Tuna Noodle Casserole, BBQ Beef Crumble, Feel Better Chicken Noodle Soup, Faux Sushi,Chicken Pot Pie on the Fly and Chicken and Dumplings.The whole point of the cooking lessons for J is to show her some basic easy meals, teach her how to plan a menu, learn how to follow a recipe and help her become more comfortable in the kitchen...this is not anything totally gourmet or culinary school worthy. We hope you enjoy Cooking With Jordan and try these recipes with your kids. They are totally J approved!

Today we are sharing a family holiday favorite. We usually make this to have for dessert on Christmas Eve. Egg Nog Pie. My girlfriend Donna (holla!) taught me this recipe MANY years ago and it is a must have EVERY Christmas. 12/24/08

Egg Nog Pie

open store bought graham cracker crust 1 large package of Vanilla Pudding
follow instructions for pie filling but use egg nog instead of milk
mix on lowest speed for 1 minute
take a break to lick some beaters with your goofy Grandpa
i wonder where she gets her goofiness from (my FIL)
fold in 3 large scoops of cool whip

fold into pie crust

make it pretty
chill for 30 minutes and serve...YUM!!

Fa La La Flirting

Jordan is part of a Youth Group through school that provides the kids opportunities to do service work in the community. It is a pretty great little program and it helps them build character and self esteem. The kids went caroling at our local Christmas tree lane. It was a whole lot of fun. We really enjoyed tagging along with some other parents and seeing all of the light displays people created. It was fun watching the kids sing with such enthusiasm. It was also pretty funny to watch J get a little goofy over a boy, we will call him T, who she has been friends with for a couple of years. T has been to our home for swim parties and he also goes to our church. His parents are really great and his mom happens to be J's pre-algebra teacher. We see T when we drop J off at Mutual at the Church every week and he is always smiley and waves. It has been revealed that J has a crush on T. Though she did not need to tell us...her goofy giggles said it all! 12/17/08 post made with J's permission

J with her friend Lyndi

the kids and chaperones
sharing music

caught J looking at T...tee hee

Crafty J

(Thanks for all the email, text messages and phone calls, I am still here...has it REALLY been almost a week since my last post?! I have been sick and also took a little time off for the holiday. I am seriously trying to catch up, but I also want to keep things chronological...please be patient)

Jordan loves to craft. She made most of her Christmas gifts this year. Since my back was pretty much messed up for most of the month she was on her own creativity wise but she did REALLY well coming up with a plan and executing it while cleaning up her messes along the way. I love that she is getting older and able to take care of things on her own sometimes. We found some cute ornaments for her and her BFF to paint at a recent sleepover. 12/11/08

total concentration

happy to stop and smile for Mamarazzi
attention to detail smile

so cute!

back to working hard

Merry Christmas

May this Christmas and New Year be filled with all things wished for and wonderful. May your family have good health and gather often. May your home be filled with love, peace and much laughter this season and always. May the Lord's blessings be abundant and may 2009 bring many opportunities for you to lose yourself in the service of others.

From our Family to Yours Merry Christmas!

Bloggy Business and a WINNER

Thanks to everyone who entered to win the earrings giveaway. Our winner chosen by random.org is HeatherY from Middle Georgia Mommy. Heather send me your mailing address and i will get these little beauties out to you ASAP.

Thanks again to Shelbi at for donating the GORGEOUS earrings. Don't forget you can shop and use the code MAMARAZZI and you will get $5 off $30 or more plus FREE domestic shipping. Sweet huh?!

If you have a product you would like featured here on Dandelion Wishes drop me a note. I would love to host a giveaway for you!

I have about 100 tags to get to and MANY awards that I need to pass on...but I have very little bloggy energy with Christmas quickly approaching. My google reader is all goofy, my google alerts is totally wonky and I just haven't the time I would like to come around and read all of your blogs. I am going to have to follow my bloggy friends who comment and stay away from my reader for a little while.

The GOOD MAIL has been flying in. I am loving all of the Christmas cards I have been receiving from my bloggy friends all over the world...so cool! Queenie Jeannie from Jeannie's Happy World surprised me with a lovely box of pure deliciousness...thanks for that Jeannie, you made my day!

Life is good...be sure to scroll down to see a super cute letter that my daughter wrote to Santa...we believe!!

We Believe!!

Look at this face....This is my 13 year old daughter who with all her heart wants to believe that there is indeed a Santa Claus. We have had Christmas movies playing in our home non stop the last few weeks. If the movies weren't on there was Christmas music playing. This kid of mine LOVES Christmas. She loves the traditions that come with special holidays. She knows that on Christmas Eve we will gather around the table for a big dinner. Following dinner we will play games . We will roast marshmallows for S'mores and gather around the tree where she will open one present and then she will get ready for bed. Once she is all snuggly in her pajamas she will tell The Christmas Story using her super cool flannel book that we got way back when (she has been practicing since we got out the Christmas stuff). Then right before bed we will snuggle in and watch Charlie Brown Christmas (a movie she selected years ago because, "it talks about Jesus and stuff at the end") with popcorn and drink hot cocoa.

Jordan has been asking, as she does every year, if we believe in Santa Claus. My answer is always the same, "Of course" and Big Daddy always says, "Yep!" too. She has been asking her friends, most say no...but the ones who whisper "Yes!" back get the secret 'we believe' high five. It. Is. So. Much. Fun. I love it. I know it is not going to last forever but deep in her heart she truly does believe and that is magical. She even wrote a letter to Santa and dropped it off at the post office to make "double sure it gets to the North Pole". Of course I scanned it...it's not a great copy but i love what it says.

You can see that Santa Clause did indeed get the letter...by going HERE !

So as you can see we are all a bunch of believers here. I hope you are too...and if you aren't you can feel free to keep it to yourself. We like sharing Christmas magic with the people who believe in it because as you know...what you pay attention to GROWS!

Photo Story Friday #20

Every Christmas we put up 2 trees. One tree is a little one that holds our growing collection of traditional and homemade ornaments. The little tree is in our family room in the back of the house where we spend most of our time. The other is bigger and sits in the formal living room, its a little "fancier" and looks gorgeous from the street in the big front window. It is also beautiful on the inside and I have really been enjoying it as our light in the morning as we gather for family scripture study and prayer each day before we go our separate ways for the day. I will post pictures of that tree later.

This is really the first year that Jordan did all the decorating of the little tree. She couldn't believe I let her do the whole thing. Yea, I can get a little anal when it comes to decor, I have a crazy sense of order that can take the fun out of things for other people (even though the organizing part is pure bliss for me). This year is just let it go...I was so proud of myself and I REALLY resisted fixing all of the ornaments once Jordan went to bed (to be honest I moved a few, just because they were backwards). For the first few days the tree in all its disorganized, unbalanced charm disturbed my sense of order but after a while it really began to make me smile. Remembering the smile on my little girl's face as she took total control of decorating something important to our family makes me realize THAT is what life is all about. Letting go...relaxing and living in the moment. I hope we all do that this Holiday Season...I know I am planning on making a REAL effort to just let things go in the coming year and just living in the moment, soaking up the awesomeness that is my child and finding the beauty in the little things that are perfectly imperfect.

smiling already

one little tree, one strand of lights, one happy girl

snowmen, so cute!
giving the snowman bunny ears...goofy kid!

the star and angel...small tree on overload

yep...life is pretty darn good! Merry christmas everyone!

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

thanks to all my SITStahs who visited yesterday and left so much love. I had over 500 visits and around 389 new comments on the featured posts and throughout my blog all within a 12 hr period...pretty darn cool. You can still enter my GIVEAWAY!! the winner will be announced on Monday Dec. 21.

Wooo Hoooo It's MY Day!!

I just got a letter from Heather over at The Secret is in The Sauce i am going to be the FEATURED blogger TOMORROW!! woo hoo! I love SITS...i have blogged about them before but it is a GREAT place for blogging SITSta's to gather and read and comment on each other's blogs. I have made so many great friends through blogging and the SITStahood has brought many amazing women into my life making my entire blogsphere brighter and better.

Some of MY favorite posts are: Womanhood, A Celebration , Potty Talk , The Frog Whisperer and Jordan's 13th Birthday Extravaganza.

I love blogging, it is a great way for me to journal about my family and share the awesomeness that is my husband and daughter. Life is good, I love to talk about it. Thanks to all of my friends for making blogging so much more fun, fun IS comments. I love knowing that their are people in the world that are just like me..living and loving life. I love to read about you and your families. I love learning about the traditions you share as a family. I love sharing mom stories and reading your comments about you going through the same thing, or offering advice or just laughing along with me.

Click on Cooking With Jordan for some easy and delicious recipes that you can teach your kids to make. Jordan loves cooking and has mastered many recipes that she prepares for our family. I love that she knows how to cook and enjoys giving me a night off now and then. It has been a lot of fun teaching her and spending time in the kitchen together.

I also love when people ask me to host giveaways for their products. I love FREE stuff and passing it on to others makes me happy. You can scroll down for the latest Giveaway.You have until Sunday Dec 21 to enter, our winner will be announced on Monday Dec 22.

We went caroling with Jordan and a group of students from her school tonight. We were all bundled up and ready to head out the door when i decided we needed a quick picture. We decorated our big tree in the front window when we got home. I will post pics of that soon! But here we are in front of the little tree in the family room...yep those are antlers...J is a funny little girl and loved making us wear them.ANYWAY...thanks to everyone from SITS for stopping by today...and of course to all of my friends who read and comment daily...thanks for that, you make blogging FUN!

Cooking with Jordan! #16 Chicken and Dumplings

Time for another episode of Cooking with Jordan. You can view earlier episodes by clicking on these links Preview, One Dish Mexican, Grilled Chicken, Cooking(?) with Daddy, Tortellini Soup , Teriyaki Chicken, Buffalo Chicken Bites, Parmesan Chicken Pasta With Broccoli, Garbage Casserole, Cheeseburger Pie, Golden Crusted Chicken Asparagus Lasagna, Baked Rigatoni, Tuna Noodle Casserole, BBQ Beef Crumble, Feel Better Chicken Noodle Soup, Faux Sushi and Chicken Pot Pie on the Fly . The whole point of the cooking lessons for J is to show her some basic easy meals, teach her how to plan a menu, learn how to follow a recipe and help her become more comfortable in the kitchen...this is not anything totally gourmet or culinary school worthy. We hope you enjoy Cooking With Jordan and try these recipes with your kids. They are totally J approved!

Today's recipe is a family favorite and is soooo easy. Chicken and Dumplings is perfect comfort food for a chilly winter day. It brings up happy childhood memories for me, back to the days when my mom cooked up yummy stuff for us kids on a shoestring budget.

Chicken and Dumplings

2 cans Chicken Broth + 2 cps water
2 cans cream of chicken soup

grill 6-8 seasoned boneless skinless chicken thighs

of course you can also do these in a skillet

mmm we love pepper

chop celery about 5 stalks

carrots about 2 cups

add veggies to simmering soup and raise heat to high

add 1 bag frozen peas

season with garlic and herbs

fresh ground black pepper

cut grilled chicken into bite sized pieces

add chicken to soup and veggies

allow to cook for about 10 minutes

(longer if chicken is not cooked all the way)

make dumplings using 2 1/2 cps Bisquick mix

season mix with lots of pepper and a little garlic saltmix in 2/3 cup milk (makes a sticky biscuit texture)

drop by spoonfuls into boiling soup. turn off heat

allow dumplings to cook in covered pot for 10 minutes.

Mmmmm so good! Serve it up with L-O-V-E!

Chicken and Dumplings

6-8 boneless skinless chicken thighs

2 cans chicken broth

2 cups water

2 cans cream of chicken soup

4 stalks celery

2 cups chopped carrots

1 sm bag frozen peas

2 1/2 cups Bisquick mix

2/3 cup milk

garlic and herb seasoning

garlic salt

black pepper