Birthday!

So yesterday was my birthday and I had a really awesome time with my friends who came to celebrate!

That's them :D ---->

Thanks for the fun times guys!!

Oh and this one of the presents that I received, it was my favorite! Thank you Nick! I will put it to good use ;D

Soup

This is the beautiful soup that I made today. It's called Zuppa Toscana and I'm sure you are familiar with it if you've ever been to Olive Garden.

Here's the recipe if you're interested :)

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound bulk mild Italian sausage 1 1/4 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes 4 slices bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces 1 large onion, diced 1 tablespoon minced garlic

5 (13.75 ounce) cans chicken broth 6 potato, thinly sliced 1 cup heavy cream 1/4 bunch fresh spinach, tough stems removed

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Cook the Italian sausage and red pepper flakes in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until crumbly, browned, and no longer pink, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain and set aside.
2.	Cook the bacon in the same Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp, about 10 minutes. Drain, leaving a few tablespoons of drippings with the bacon in the bottom of the Dutch oven. Stir in the onions and garlic; cook until onions are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.
3.	Pour the chicken broth into the Dutch oven with the bacon and onion mixture; bring to a boil over high heat. Add the potatoes, and boil until fork tender, about 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and stir in the heavy cream and the cooked sausage; heat through. Mix the spinach into the soup just before serving.

Victory!

This last Saturday we went bowling with a few friends to celebrate my lovely friend's birthday (love you Brenda!) This is our score board!! My score is next to the J :D

Alright, alright! That's not my real score. It's just that I was doing so bad (my actual score was probably about 20) that some of my friends were either too embarrassed to be playing with me or wanted to "boost my self-esteem" and they tweaked my score just a tad :D It did make me feel better. Thanks guys!! But even with the tremendous failure on my part we all still had tons of fun! 

Close Up

Can you believe that these photos are close ups of sand?

Beach Scenes

I've been to the beach countless numbers of times. And I always love to take pictures of the sun setting. So here are quite a few photographs I took while at the beach. It's so strange how many of them look so alike even though they were taken during different years and different times of the year.