Super PAPA Mario?

My sister Kari and I made these Mario hats for her daughters birthday party, aren't they cute?? Anyway dad decided to try it out!! Isn't it just GREAT!!!

Creamy tomato basil soup with italian sausage

We had family dinner tonight, we had a soup bar and this is what I made...I stole the recipe from a friends blog!! It was absolutely delicious!! My family asked for the recipe!

This recipe from Picky Palate is SUPER delicious, quick and easy.


2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 lb Italian Sausage(I doubled the recipe and used 1 lb of mild italian sausage and 1 lb of hot italian sausage)

10 fresh basil leaves, chiffonade (stacked, rolled and thinly sliced)

1 26 oz jar of your favorite pasta sauce or homemade sauce

1 Cup water

1 1/2 Cups half and half

Pinch of salt and pepper

Place olive oil into a medium sized dutch oven over medium heat. Cook sausage until browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in basil leaves, pasta sauce, water, half and half, salt and pepper. Cook until warm then reduce heat to low. Simmer until ready to serve. It’s that easy!

4+ servings

Lincoln City

We decided to start the year off with a trip to Lincoln City with the kids and some friends. We rented a beach house for 2 nights and had a lot of fun. The original plan was stay at the friends beach house but it ended up not being able to be used so we found a house, luckily, the night before that wasn't a bad price. We stopped at their house and picked the keys up on the way out of town and then we were off!! We stopped at the house first but the renters were still there so we decided to go down to the beach for awhile while we waited for them to evacuate!!

The kids had a fun time being chased by the waves and skipping rocks in the little "river" that was coming down the beach! It was windy and raining a little but that didn't stop anyone!I was telling Spencer to freeze and strike a pose this is what he came up with!

The first night we were there we played apples to apples with the kids..it was a close game but Caylie took 1st place. Shule couldn't get a card to save his life.. He ended the game with the 3 cards in his hand and we decided that all the cards we had were describing us...it was rather humurous. For some reason all we took pics of was Shule's... Joseph had the word "HOT" Shule's throwdown card was "FIRE" Joseph on the other hand though "GIRLS" was more fitting for "HOT" We all got a kick out of that!

We decided that since it wasn't raining and wasn't windy we would go down to the beach at 3am..Spencer decided to wake up and join us!

I honestly can't remember the name of this place..I know it's Oregon History, but it's escaped my mind!This is in Depot Bay...it was SUPER windy...we got a few pictures and thanks to a very kind lady that drove up took a pic of all of us! The only one we got all week!

We drove to Yaquina Head Lighthouse and they were having gale-force winds and so the lighthouse was closed, but we drove down to see the tidepools, which were completely covered with sand...you couldn't even go down on the beach. It was covered with massive amounts of sea foam, as we were videoing the seafoam and looking around we saw harbor seals, lots of them, and had a fun time watching them swim and play in the water...Ian makes the perfect sound and they came swimmin his direction..so that was cool!!

After that we went to Newport to see and hear the Sea Lions. pretty Cool!!
Spencer once again decided to join us on another late night. That kid's sleeping pattern sucks...lol! Anyway...he slept through dinner and when he woke up at 1am he decided he was hungry...what did he want...Cereal, smores, and Code Red Mt. Dew...so that's what he got! It was a vacation afterall!! We got some alone family time after we were done at Newport and drove back to Lincoln City. We spent about an hour roaming around the beach before it started POURING rain!! We headed back to the house after that. Becca and I decided to go outside while we were waiting for Ian to finish up dinner, who by the way cooked ALL the meals that we ate!! YEAH Ian!! It took a few time of us pressing our faces up against the glas before anyone noticed...then of course they had to take pictures. It rained all night!! Heavy winds and rain and at one point we got woken up by a loud clack of thunder that actually shook the house! Pretty cool...we were all too lazy too get out of bed though to go look outside!!

On the way out of Lincoln City we stopped at Pacific City...the best day at the beach. It was windy but the sun was actually trying to shine. We got to go explore some rocks and the kids and Ian and Becca, go you, hiked up to th top of the big sand dune!! We got to see little sand crabs, or hermit crabs, some sea anenome, and even some little shrimp! Spencer had a blast running through the seafoam!!

And on the way home we HAD to stop at Tillamook and get some cheese curds and ice cream!


We're looking foward to hopefully going back over spring break.

*hopefully the pics will enlarge if you click them...some of them are hard to see!