Lovely outing

Today H3 and I enjoyed a trip to Newport News to meet some friends for shopping/lunch. We browsed through Kohl's and Lifeway Christian Bookstore before heading to Panera Bread for lunch (smoked turkey sandwich and black bean soup for me with a chai tea latte, spaghetti for H3 since she didn't want my lunch--normally she does). We then went to Michael's to pick up some crafting supplies for Robyn and I got some idea's for H1 and H3's Christmas stockings.

In my family, Christmas stockings are a pretty big deal My grandmother (mom's mom) handmade mine and my parents and they are extremely elaborate with tons of beadwork. I'll have to post pictures when I take mine out from storage. Anyways, part of the tradition is to add a little pin to the stocking each year. H1 and H3 have stockings, sort of, but aren't the same as mine and my folks so I'm going to attempt to make them. My grandmother is no longer able to do so, even though she was going to try at one point when H1 and I first got married. Again, the detail work is pretty incredible so I'm not 100% sure I'm up for the task but I will try! I did find pins to add to our stockings this year when I was at Kohl's, so now I have good motivation.

Anyways, back to the outing. It was so nice to be in some adult company! H3 is delightful, of course, but her conversation is a bit limited in depth. H1 usually doesn't get home until late, so often days go by without me talking to anyone except for H3 until late in the evening (my choice, I have to admit). I don't usually mind it because I have a million and one projects I'm working on around here, but occasionally the contact is nice! Dean and Robyn are such a sweet and fun couple too. Even when we do nothing I still enjoy hanging out with them.

Robyn taught me to make pan rolls a couple years back, which is what I made tonight. The house smells delicious and they went perfectly with the chicken. She taught me how to do the chicken too! She bakes hers in the oven, but I've been using a crockpot. Today I buttered the chicken (a whole one, minus the innerds) and added McCormicks Grillmatessalt-free chicken seasoning to it and stuck it in for 8 hours. It just fell off the bone by the time it was done. So yummy. H3 loved it too and ate about twice the amount I expected her too. I think my favorite part about it is that it takes about 5 minutes of prep to take it out of the packaging, butter it, put the seasoning on and stick it in the crockpot. By dinnertime it's ready to go and I didn't have to do a thing all day. Ahhhhhhh. Thanks Robyn!

~H2