Picture Project Completed!

On Friday’s show we said that we hoped to get photos and mirrors hung in the studio, brining the studio that much closer to completion.

Well, we did it! Unfortunately, it also made us realize that there are still several walls that now look even more bare now that we hung stuff on the other walls. So…still work to do.

But the photos look really neat on the wall. It’s been a long time since we hung updated photos of the boys, and in fact, I don’t think we’ve ever hung a picture of Tommy. Sad.

Anyway, below is the completed project hanging on the studio wall, behind where Greg sits.

Below is a picture of SAM. He’s our oldest son and is still wanting to pursue a life in the Priesthood. He’s our natural born runner and family artist.

Coming in at 2 years younger than Sam is our next son, WALTER (pictured at the right). He loves all things electronic and is our little tennis player.

Our third son, pictured below is our lovable BEN. He is a master at building unique LEGO creations. He also loves trains and cars.

Two years behind Ben, we have our 4th son TOMMY (pictured below on the right). He is full of life, incredibly bright and absolutely loves DC superheroes – much to his father’s delight.

Below is the only picture we have of our highly anticipated DAUGHTER. She is due for arrival in late January of 2009. Everyone is thrilled to meet and welcome her into the family fold.

Well, you know this picture 🙂 But you haven’t seen us in BLACK and WHITE!

Oh and we can’t forget the beloved family dog, JODY. She injects a lot of fun and silliness into this house and we’re so glad we adopted her almost 2 years ago.

Weekend Picture Project

We’re still not 100% done with the studio. This weekend we’re hanging photos and some mirrors in the room.

Jennifer is still looking for one of Walt. Here are the others. We’ll post another when the wall is complete.

The Amazing Luis

Our friend Luis Escobar has worked on over a dozen (thirteen? fourteen? a whole lot) seasons of The Simpsons television show as an animator. A couple years ago when we were visiting California he took us on a tour of the studio, and it was the coolest part of the trip. He’s a dedicated family man, Catholic, and overall great guy.

Luis also also a blog that I check quite frequently and he’s surprised us on more than one occasion by doing a cartoon just for me and Jennifer. Once again, he drew something on his blog that got a great big belly laugh out of me last night.

Luis always draws people as short little stubby people, but he always draws me as this huge towering giant.

I never get tired of the gag.

Check out Luis’ blog and look back in the archive for other drawings he’s done, including one when I finished my marathon last Thanksgiving, and when we hung out at the Podcast and New Media Expo last year.

And thanks, Luis, for the awesome new drawing (see below)! We really need to get these framed!

Box O’ Equipment

Yesterday we received our box of new studio equipment for The Catholics Next Door. As we were getting ready to start the show last week, somehow the equipment (except for the much needed ISDN box) got somehow misdirected. So we’ve been using our podcasting gear to do the show.

So we were thrilled yesterday when the new stuff showed up. I’m not sure if I’ll get it hooked up this week, but definitely by this weekend. There’s headsets in there! It’ll be interesting using headsets instead of table-top microphones. Either way – new equipment always gets us excited!

Guests from September 8-10, 2008

Hey, we have a new email address for the show. You can always leave comments here, but now you can also send your comments to [email protected]. We hope to hear from you!

We’ve had some great guests so far this week, and many more to come. In case you missed it, here are some links to their websites and other resources:

• Please help Catholic Relief Services help those in Haiti who are suffering so greatly right now! We just got back a refund check that we didn’t expect, so we’ve pledged to donate $500. Can you help?
• Monday – Randy Skoglund from Americans for Technology Leadership. Get the facts to prevent cyber bullying and other annoying Internet-related problems.
• Tuesday – Tom Hall and LoveToBeCatholic.com for great Catholic videos.
• Wednesday – Dr. Janet Smith from My Catholic Faith. Get a free copy of her “Contraception – Why Not?” talk, or just listen to it for free online. This talk helped change our lives!

As always, thanks for listening! Tell your friends 🙂

The Co-host Under The Desk

An unknown fact: During almost every show recording, our dog Jody walks in and out of the studio.

We live in fear she will suddenly start barking while we’re on the air.

Singing Jennifer

Jennifer is singing. It’s for tomorrow’s show. You’ll have to tune in to hear it 🙂

Sunday’s Dinner: Homemade Sliders

We REALLY didn’t need to know this was possible. I really didn’t need to know how easy it was to make these things.

On Friday’s show we discussed what we’d be eating for dinner this week. I was brainstorming some dinner ideas to save Jennifer the brain cells, and I came up with the idea of making homemade sliders. Basically, these are little cheeseburgers.

Back in college after a late night of…we’ll just call it studying…I often went to White Castle and would get a bag of their mini-cheeseburgers, affectionately known as “sliders,” because of the way their greasiness made them slide so easily through one’s digestive track.

As I’ve gotten older, I try to avoid these things. Down here in the south we don’t have White Castle, but we do have Krystal, which I consider to be a sub-par knock-off.

But now, I feel like I don’t need either. We can make our own, and they were far superior to both.

The way we did it was pretty easy.

We started with 2.25 pounds of hamburger and flattened it out into a great big flat rectangle. I then cut the hamburger into 18 somewhat equally sized patties. I knew they’d shrink during cooking, so I made the patties a little larger than the size of the bun.

The boys wouldn’t like onions, but the way they did it at White Castle was to actually cook the hamburger on a bed of onions. We chopped up enough onions for me and Jennifer, and let me tell you, this way was FAR superior to the ones without onions. I tried both, and the onions were incredible.

We chopped up the onions very small, and very, very fine. Then we spread out a generous bed of chopped onions on the griddle and placed three patties directly on the onions so both cooked together. The other patties we just fried on the griddle.

I flipped them back and forth until they were pretty much done and then put a layer of cheese on each of them.

We used King’s Hawaiian Butter rolls, sliced in half, for the buns.

Pure bliss.

Tommy whined and complained until he saw how much his brothers loved them, and then he finally relented and ended up liking them, too.

To make things even worse for our dietary needs, we fried homemade potato chips.

It was unreal. They were just too stinking good. We don’t need to be doing this too often.

Breakfast at Chik-Fil-A Dwarf House

All you can eat Chik-Fil-A chicken on Saturday mornings. ‘Nuff said.

Notes from Friday, September 5, 2009

Thanks to Angel Aloma from Food for the Poor. If you can, please help them!

And, as promised, here’s the Willits Menu for next week. Maybe it’ll help in your menu planning:

• Arroz con Pollo
• Grilled Kilbasa with onions and peppers
• Pork Chops with Grilled Potatoes
• Rice and Eggs
• Bean Soup and a Loaf of Fresh Bread
• Homemade Sliders (Burgers on the griddle with Hawaiian Sweet Bread Rolls) and homemade chips
• Family Fun Night (probably pizza takeout)

Thanks for hanging out with the Catholics Next Door. We’ll talk to you Monday morning at 10AM EST with a brand new show!

Boy or Girl?

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

As most of you know, we’re expecting our fifth kid, due in January 2009. A lot of speculation has been going around about whether it’s a boy or girl.

Well, check out episode #240 of the Rosary Army Catholic Podcast as we solve the mystery! All is revealed as you join us for an actual trip to the doctor for the official ultrasound.
RA #240 – Boy or Girl?

The Catholics Next Door

Greetings, folks. Welcome to GregandJennifer.com. A wee bit pretentious name for a website, eh? Well, the alternative was BrunetteandBaldGuy.com and that just didn’t sound right.

You may be here because of our daily talk show, The Catholics Next Door with Greg and Jennifer Willits (thus, the address of this website) or perhaps from our non-profit apostolate, Rosary Army.

In case you didn’t know, you can listen to us live Monday through Friday from 10AM to 1PM EST on Sirius Channel 159 – The Catholic Channel!

We also produce and host the weekly Rosary Army Catholic Podcast and are the creators of the popular That Catholic Show video series. We’re willing to bet you might enjoy those, as well.

Either way, we’re glad you’re here!

Recording at The Catholic Channel

Before I forget, here’s a photo of Jennifer right before we started our live demo broadcast on 7/26/08 in The Catholic Channel studio at Sirius in New York. She hates this photo of her. I think she may have asked me to remove it from the site. I can’t remember if I removed it or not.