Happy Christmas, Harry :)

Finally sent these beauties out last week! Since we are poor and it's the Christmas season, we could only afford postage for close family and friends. Though, I wanted to send one to everyone we know! 

Christmas is finally just around the corner! I finally finished shopping for Tyler and Calvin last night. It's a great feeling :) Although  I love shopping and wrapping presents, it's great to have it done and be able to focus on spending time with my family and friends who are coming from out if town! We are so excited to see everyone :) Christmas wouldn't be the same without you.

In other great and random news... I have my handsome and sophisticated husband back!! I chopped about 5 inches of auburn hair off his head last week. 

I dunno about you, but I prefer my husband clean shaven and with a neat haircut. I can take him way more seriously this way, and for those of you who know Tyler, know how hard that is to come by haha. So I got my pleasant and handsome husband back. Merry Christmas to me!

Wishing everyone a very, merry Christmas. 

Love, the McKees 

My love of food... And money

So guys... I love food. And I also love money. As of late, the husband and I have been trying to find a way where we can have our food...and eat it too. Haha. So I decided we should try making a two week meal plan and sticking to it. Making a grocery list to an exact T of what we would need for the next two weeks. After I added everything up, we figured we would roughly save around 200$ per month. When we don't have a certain ingredient for a dinner we want, we get lazy and decide to just go grab subway or a pizza for ten bucks. It sounds cheap, right? But, ten bucks, is ten bucks. And we would do this probably two or three times a week! It adds up quick! We were spending way too much money on eating out and groceries. So, we opted for our two week meal plan idea.

Any who, The only downfall to this plan... Taking time to plan 14 meals and write a grocery list. It literally took me a whole morning to do it. But it definitely paid off. We stuck to our meal plan, and we've only ate out once in the last two weeks. And it was for a group date we went on to the temple... So it's ok :)

I forgot how fun it is to cook! And follow new recipes. I tried a few new ones I had pinned on Pinterest. My two favorites: 

Crock pot Broccoli and cheese soup-

    Tyler wanted to add a few potatoes, so we did. Fabulous idear :)

And chicken Parmesan | the Alfredo was a recipe I use from Our Best Bites cook book.

I just started my grocery list and meal plan for the next two weeks. Street tacos is definitely a must have for all meal plans. My sister is the one to thank for this recipe. It is delish. I used to use chicken, but pork is less hassle. Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to try it :)

Pork roast 

Raw tortillas 

Cheese

Chopped Romaine Lettuce

Homemade guac *

Sour cream

Tomatoes

Olives

1 cup rice

1 can black beans

1 big can green enchilada sauce 

1 can el Pato tomato sauce

1 can diced tomatoes

1-2 cups brown sugar

Start the pot roast in a crock pot for about 6-7 hours on low ahead of time before you plan to eat. After 5 hours, you should be able to pull it apart with a fork. Add the enchilada sauce, el Pato, diced tomatoes and brown sugar. Pork is done!

Cook 1 cup of rice in a rice cooker and once it's cooked, stir in the black beans (drained and rinsed) the rice will hear the beans enough after about 5-10 minutes.

Cook your tortillas and add whatever toppings you want! Home made guacamole is a must have for ours... It's a deal breaker if we don't have any. I have made this meal for many friends in the last, and every time I do they ask for the recipe. You can't go wrong! 

Here's to planning ahead and saving money! Cheers!

Holiday hoobie-whatie's

Guys...it's already December!! can you believe it!? Thanksgiving and the month of November have come and gone. This year we had thanksgiving with my family at my brothers house. It was delicious, as always :) I don't mean to brag or anything, but my mom and my sisters know how to cook a good meal. My mom is the best cook i know...and luckily she has passed on some of her tricks to my sisters and I. I was in charge of bringing 3 side dishes this year. The bean casserole, broccoli salad, and raspberry cheesecake. They all turned out fabulous, if i do say so myself ;) Any who, it was a great day hanging out with my family and being extremely grateful for all that i have. This year has been the best years yet, welcoming our sweet babe into this world and watching him learn and grow into the smart and handsome babe that he is. Being his momma is the best thing in this world. I love him to pieces. Im positive i have me one of the hardest working husbands around. He has done so much for Calvin and I this year. I scored BIG in the husband department. We have taken many risks this year as well, trying to better our family life style. Some were successful and others..not so much. But we are all about making the best choices we can, and if we fail at them at least we won't have to wonder "what if". In the end, family is all that matters, right? We have ended up in a nice apartment to keep us warm for the winter, food in our bellies, and clothes on our backs. I'd say we have a lot to be grateful for :)

  The only pic I got on thanksgiving... Missing Tyler :(

So going backwards a little bit, we went to the Catching Fire premier the week before thanksgiving! It was honestly... Amaze balls. We decided to go to the 8:00 showing Thursday night. Our friends Hailey and Kyle May surprised us the day before and told us they were coming down early Thursday so they could come to the movie with us!! It was so great. We were nearly the first in line, so we got grey seats. Our friends Chelsea and Tyeson Mitton, and Kaitlin Neilson, and my sister Amy and brother in law Hank joined us as well! Hank was the guy who stood up and yelled in the theatre "hooray for the hungry games!!" Yea... He said Hungry. Haha. 

                      Waiting in line 

We had a lot if fun while these guys were in town, we went to lava, played games, and went to the temple for ceilings and dinner. We were sad to see them leave, but they will be back in a couple weeks for Christmas! And our other friends will be flying home for Christmas as well! We are so excited. We really do have the best married friends. We are blessed :)

Now that it's December, you guessed it! Calvy is 9 months old! The cutest one around, too :)

He is doing Sooo good! He did get sick this last month, for what seemed like forrr-evvv-errr. (Feel free to say it in the Sandlot tone.) Poor babe had a fever for 5 days straight. It would go down when I gave him Tylenol or Motrin, but it was always there. We were worried he might have whooping cough, his cough was so bad. We listened to what it sounded like on YouTube and it sounded just like his. The cough started to get better after a few days so we ruled that out luckily, but it did give us a scare. Being a mother is the most stressful job on this planet. I wanted so bad to take his miserable pain away so that he could sleep through the night. This was luckily the first time he had been sick for more than a day in his 9 months of living. Which I'm grateful for because it was so hard for me. He mostly just wanted to be held and snuggled. Which was fine with me, they are hard to come by these days. Thanksgiving was the first day he was back to his normal self! Hopefully we won't be seeing any more sickness for a while!

He fell asleep in front of the heater :(

At 9 months Calvin is taking steps here and there when he wants to! The most he's taken at a time is 3. I think he will be walking in the next month but what do I know? Haha. He takes two naps every day still, and goes to bed around 9. Wakes up once during the night usually but goes right back to sleep with a bottle. He is not as crazy about baby food as he has been in the past... He mostly just wants to eat whatever we are eating. He knows we eat the good stuff... Like this morning I was eating a few flamin hot Cheetos and he kept buggin me for a taste. So I gave him a little lick thinking he would hate it and would quit buggin me. Nope... He loved it. And ate two of them himself. Haha. Bad mom award!? Probably. Whatev.

 He is the happiest baby I've ever met. He loves loves loves to laugh! And he has the cutest baby laugh. He loves to cuddle pillows and stuffed animals, it's pretty cute. He still says "dada" all the time, but we are working on "momma". Hopefully he will say it soon! My fingers are crossed :) his face looks like a Hansen, but he has his dad's mouth so some faces he makes he looks like Tyker haha... Weird. Cause Tyler and I look nothing alike. He also has Tyler's body; long torso, shorter legs. He still wears 4-6 month pants but he is in 9 month shirts. He is growing growing! His 9 month checkup is at the end of this month so we will see where he weighs in at, my gues is around 20 lbs. He is so great though and doing amazing. We love him so much. Happy 9 months Cal! 

We finally got all our boxes unpacked, pictures hung on the walls, and our Christmas tree up! We go this one from my sister in law! We threw our old one out before we moved to texas, so we're grateful to have one. 

Christmas is around the corner! I haven't even started shopping yet... Oops. We were too lazy to go Black Friday shopping this year, which was pretty nice actually. But now I have to get my rear in gear and get shopping done. 

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is having a great December so far! Cheers!