Another year older...

Well, today is my birthday.  I feel like I should add !!!! to that sentence, but it's not that exciting.  However, yesterday was my little sister's 21st birthday and that is very exciting!!!  She can now legally consume alcohol.  That was around the time in my life when drinking became a lot less exhilarating and a lot more nauseating.  That being said, I'm sure my sister and I will be having very different birthday celebrations this weekend :)  My hubby took me to our favorite restaurant (Houlihan's) tonight. 

Side note: we have the worst luck with restaurants.  I'm not kidding--it could come with extremely high recommendations and then as soon as we walk in everything goes down hill.  So Houlihan's is one of the few places that has remained consistent for us. 

Tomorrow I'm going to paint pottery with a few of my girlfriends.  I'm not sure if that's a sign that I'm getting older, or regressing to my childhood years.  Either way, who doesn't like to paint?? 

I celebrated the day by having an IEP meeting (blah) and playing Snakes & Ladders.

Then my friend at work had some of my students make me cards....

...which is probably the nicest thing anyone at this job has done for me.  I love them :)

 OH, and this might be the first year that I had absolutely no idea what my husband got me for my birthday.  No offense honey, but you're an awful secret keeper.  He has asked me every day since the beginning of March if I want to know what my present is.  Since I'm a grown adult (sometimes), it was a little less tempting to say yes.  But can you imagine how hard it will be to keep secrets from our future children??  I was a very good girl, considering the present was sitting in a box under our coffee table all week.  Kids, however, won't be so obedient.  He kept talking about this present so I have to admit my expectations were pretty high.  And I was not disappointed.  He took some of the diamonds from his mom's ring and created a ring for me.  He even added sapphires for the month we got married.  I was blessed with an amazing husband :)

Onto other things...

Since we'll be eating out pretty much all weekend, I decided to share what we ate earlier in the week.  I thought this chicken cacciatore was so good, but Bob said it was "okay."  Because I put it in the crock pot, I think it lost some of its flavor.  So I would recommend either making it on the stove/in the oven or adding more seasonings.  (the original recipe is courtesy of http://freezermealsforus.blogspot.com/--if you ever need freezer meal ideas, that's the place to go!--I just altered a few things)

You need:

1 lb bone-in chicken thighs (skin removed)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 onion, chopped (or onion powder if you're me)
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1 cup white cooking wine (or any dry white)
2 cups chicken broth
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp marjoram
1 bay leaf
mushrooms and green peppers, chopped, if you can eat veggies in your house

Combine salt, pepper, onion, garlic, tomato paste, wine, broth, thyme, and marjoram.  If you're using actual onions, throw everything in the blender and blend until smooth.  If you're going to freeze it, pour the sauce in a bag and add the chicken and bay leaf.  To cook, you can first saute the chicken for a few minutes (I chose not to).  I just dumped in the crock pot and cooked on low for about 7 hours.  Once the chicken was tender, I removed the bones and cut it into pieces.  I then served it over rice.  You could serve it over pasta as well. 

The only thing I would do next time is add some ground red pepper and a little more salt.  I've made other recipes for chicken cacciatore on the stove and they turned out great.  The good thing about this one is that it's so simple and can be left in the crock pot all day. 

Since Bob bought me Les Miserables today, I'm going to try to convince him to watch it with me :)