Wow, I love this place! This weekend is Christmas Carnival on St. Croix. Apparently, all of the islands do Carnival at different times of the year ( I assume so as not to overlap, normally Carnival is is conjunction with Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) anyway today we went to the Children's Parade, it was a lot of fun. The kids are great a real excited, all of the schools have Steel Pan Bands and they are all terrific. Some of them have the more traditional marching bands, all in all we had a great time.

Tomorrow we are heading out early to the Adult Parade, we are told that this is where they have the elaborate costumes and of course, more music. The sound track to the islands is incredible. Most of the music has a real heavy beat and sounds more African than anything else, of course there is a lot with a Reggae beat too. Can't wait until tomorrow.

Thursday night we had a nice dinner with some friends. It really helped for us to feel like we are back at home. Thursday afternoon one of my friends called and said she read the blog about Rick being out of work and offered to lend us some money, I was surprised by how deeply that touched me. I know that no one is having an easy time of it right now and I was really moved that she would offer to help us out. Hopefully, Rick will get back to work in the next week or two and we should be ok.

Things have been spectacular for us since we have been back, except of course, for the job thing, but even that will probably work out for the best, after all we knew that it was coming to and end shortly, just thought we had a few more weeks.

I'll try to post pictures of the parade tomorrow.

Well here it is for those of you who wanted the Crock Pot Lasagna Recipe:

Crock Pot Lasagna

Ingredients

3 cans (14.4oz) crushed tomatoes 3 cloves of garlic(finely chopped)

2 Tbsp. dried oregano 1/2 tsp. Kosher salt

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes 1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

2 containers (15oz ea.) ricotta cheese 2 cups grated mozzarella

1/4 cup grated Parmesan 12 lasagna noodles

5 oz (about 6 cups) baby spinach

Note

I used regular table salt, not kosher and part skim ricotta and whole wheat lasagna noodles, also I couldn't find the small (15 oz) size ricotta so I bought one 32 oz.

Directions

In medium bowl combine tomatoes, garlic, oregano, salt, red pepper flakes and black pepper. In a separate bowl mix the ricotta, 1 cup of the mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.

In the bottom of a 5 - 6 quart slow cooker spread a thin layer of the sauce, top with 3 of the noodles (breaking to fit as necessary), spread about 1 cup of the sauce over the noodles and layer with 2 cups of the spinach and 1 1/2 cups of the cheese mixture. Repeat twice more with the noodles, sauce, spinach and cheese mixture. Top with the remaining 3 noodles, sauce and the 1 cup of mozzarella.

Cook on low, covered, until noodles are tender - especially in the center of the lasagna - about 3 to 3 1/2 hours.

Note

I cooked mine for about 4 hours(my crock pot is about 30 years old) and then inserted a knife in the center of the lasagna, it went in real easy so I knew the noodles were cooked tender. This is real yummy, and super easy, so I hope you enjoy. Rachel and I got the recipe from the Oprah Show it is from a cookbook by Jerry Seinfeld's wife. If it's good enough for Jerry...