This is for You Sonia

I work at a rehab/long term facility, so it is pretty small, about 60 beds, and since it is a rehab/long term, the facility doesn't need to staff many nurses, in fact, on 3-11, only three nurses are staffed for the entire building, and on 11-7, only two. Ridiculous, I know. (Remember these statistics if you ever have a love one who needs rehab or long term care). Anyway, unknown to my employer, I was about eight weeks pregnant when I was hired. Shortly after I started, I had to share with Sonia, the nurse who was training me (for safety reasons) that I was pregnant. She laughed, and was like, "yeah, I don't want any children for awhile." Eight weeks later, Sonia informed me that she too was pregnant. Maybe a month later, the DON (director or nursing) also announced that she was pregnant! The facility had to hire nurses just to cover maternity leave!
Anyway, last week, Matthew, Matthan and I went to see Sonia, Chris (her boyfriend), and little Camilia (Camilia and Matthan are seven weeks apart- to the day). And, being the nut that I am, I made dinner for everyone, and took it with us. Since Matthan and Chris are both pizons, I decided to stick with a somewhat Italian dinner, but I didn't want to go overboard with the "Italian", so I decided to make a new recipe- Italian Meatball Soup, caeser salad, and garlic bread. I had first heard about the Italian Meatball soup from my friend Shawna, who had found it on Pioneerwoman.com which is a blog. I had finished the soup, and sadly, wasn't impressed. It lacked something. So I added a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and made another batch of meatballs, and walla- perfect! We all had a great time, the pizons hit it off perfectly (they had never met until this day), and the soup was a huge hit (specially with the pizons). By the way, I never did get the caeser salad made (which was probably the easiest part of this meal!). Sonia requested a copy of the recipe, and suggested that I post it to my blog! Great idea Sonia. So here is the link to the recipe- http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/01/italian-meatball-soup/ . So to make this recipe good- add two more cups of broth, double the meatballs, double the tomato paste, add a small can of diced tomatoes, about 1/2 a tsp red pepper, a tsp thyme, and 1-2 tps Italian seasoning, all equals delicious!

By the way, I have now bookmarked the pioneerwoman.com because she is just too funny in her blog- and she had great recipes!