Who's Ruling the Roost?

We spent last weekend up north for a little long opening fishing weekend...while the boys were out fishing the girls (Barb, Naomi and I) played around the cabin, did a little bumming and went to meet some very fancy chickens at Uncle Pat and Aunt Annie's house. 

As always Naomi was a trooper with the traveling however we have been having MAJOR sleep problems since we said bye-bye to the nukkers a few weeks ago.  We are trying numerous please just go to sleep methods as well as please stay in your room methods, we have not had much success yet which leads me to the answer of the above question for our house right now...who's ruling our roost?  Well, she's about 35 pounds and a little over 3 feet tall and she is a tough ruler!!  We have had a number of very fun things happen in the last week though too - she absolutely could NOT wait for her grilled cheese sandwich the other night and got a boo-boo on her finger.  Later after many tears (hers and mine) Ryan offered to kiss her finger to make it better.  Naomi's response?  With wide eyes and a look of dismay, "No da-da, my boo-boo!"  Super cute. 

Back to the cabin, who rules the roost at the actual roost?  This pretty fella:

However he was not a fan of me taking pictures of his lady friends so I had to snap and run pictures of him - the black and white hen really liked me though so I was able to snap a couple of good ones of her as well...as you can see the rooster is in the background of this picture too - but lucky for me there was a fence between us!



Part of the fun of getting together with family on the weekends is the good food and this weekend was no exception - we ate dinner out at the Minocqua Pizza Company and it was awesome!  Perfect setting for our family, Naomi could run around without raising too many eyebrows and they had great Amber beer and fantastic pizza!  Sunday night was my night to take care of dinner, I had snagged a pack of baby bella mushrooms at Aldi's the week before and had some chicken in the freezer so thanks to the wonderful search engine at Allrecipes.com I found this recipe.  It turned out fantastic and I will definitely be making it again:

Chicken Marsala with Mushrooms

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour for coating
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - pounded 1/4 inch thick
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 cup Marsala wine
• 1/4 cup cooking sherry

Directions

1. In a shallow dish or bowl, mix together the flour, salt, pepper and oregano. Coat chicken pieces in flour mixture.
2. In a large skillet, melt butter in oil over medium heat. Place chicken in the pan, and lightly brown. Turn over chicken pieces, and add mushrooms. Pour in wine and sherry. Cover skillet; simmer chicken 10 minutes, turning once, until no longer pink and juices run clear.

The only thing that I would have done differently would have been to add twice as many mushrooms!  I paired it with roasted red potatoes with Italian seasoning, steamed broccoli and ciabatta bread.  It was a great meal and was ready in about 40 minutes and really was simple.

Here are three full but happy Thomases :) (and 2 pups)

The weekend was pretty rainy overall so we didn't get to play outside as much as we wanted but Naomi got to try out the new dump truck that "Boppa" refurbished for her.

We also spent a lot of time coloring and playing with puzzles...

It was a great weekend with family and I am looking forward to our next little get away!