Wednesday, October 26, 2011

squash recipe...

I'm not sure what inspired me to cook squash today, but I did! I guess I knew that it was going to go bad soon. Whatever the reason I am glad that I did! Here is what I did...

Cut squash up in slices (however thick is up to you). I put them in a little bit of buttermilk (mainly because I had some and didn't want it to go to waist like it usually does), coat them well. Then I dipped them in some parmesan cheese (I used shredded, but I guess you could use grated too). Then sprinkled a little rosemary on the entire pan. I highly recommend using fresh rosemary over dried rosemary, I think the texture is much better fresh. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, I put it on broil for the last minute and a half. Take out and enjoy! I did!

I paired it with some strawberries and a piece of garlic toast! Turned out to be a lovely meal!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

A reminder is sometimes needed...

My sweet friend emailed me today this link to a video by Steven Curtis Chapman. I have really been depressed as of late and this was just the reminder I needed to do everything I do for the glory of God. I hope it encourages you too!


Monday, October 24, 2011

a little too much to drink...


I guess this monkey puppet had a little too much to drink :) (I swear I didn't pose it that way, one of the kids through it in the pack n' play. I know your next question is "why is the potty chair in your pack n' play?" The answer is: we have a 1 year old who likes to play with it while it is not in use.)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Fun food day...

I declared today to be fun food day! We had our friends Misti (aka: Teetee) and Calvin over for lunch and play time.

I made hot dogs with spaghetti pulled through them (they looked cool, but the kids preferred the hot dogs with out the spaghetti). It was easy to make, you just push uncooked spaghetti noodles through a piece of hot dog then cook them like you would normally.

We had cheese in the shape of a teddy bear and alligator (all though the boys thought it was a dinosaur). This is pretty self explanatory, but just in case I will tell you that I took a cookie cutter and cut out shapes in sandwich cheese. :)

Last we had apple mouths (not sure if that is the official name but I will call them that). That is apples with a little bit of peanut butter and then mini marshmallows in the middle! I think that was my favorite part of lunch.

At nap time Ian prayed and thanked God for fun food day! That just made my day! Here are some pictures of our food from today and a few silly photos of me and the boys with our cheese goatees. :)





The boys were using the cheese slices as phones. Since it was fun food day I allowed it. :)

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Dinner and dancing...

Last night I had a date! I was so happy when he asked me, it came out of nowhere. It happened on the way to school, the most amazing, cute and cool three year old asked me to go on a date with him! :)

Ian is just so cute when it comes to wanting to go on dates with me. Yesterday on the way to school he said "but mommy, we didn't go on a date." I was like "I know, we are on our way to school" and that is when he asked if we could go on a date. I checked with Justin (my awesome hubs) and he said yes!

Ian and I headed to IHOP for dinner. I love when he chooses IHOP because not only does he eat free, but I love breakfast for dinner! They seated us in a section where we were the only ones there. So when Ian asked me to do ring around the roses and to dance I said yes! It was so much fun. There is nothing better than having dinner and some dancing with your three year old! Loved it.

After dinner we, of course, headed to Target. Looked at toys and TVs and had a great time! He wanted to listen to the CD sampler, but it was broken. :( He was bummed, seeing how that is one of his favorite things to do.

Oh, I should mention that he used the potty at IHOP!!! I was so proud of him!

Over all it was a great night!

I love this kid!! This isn't from our date, but I thought I would share this picture of him eating Nutella and pretzels. :) A kid after my own heart!


Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Potty training...

It has finally begun at our house! I didn't think Ian would ever want to use the potty. In fact I have asked him several times if he wants to use the potty or wear big boy underwear and he says "No, I'm okay".

Things just changed yesterday! He was in my bathroom when he saw the crayola banks (piggy banks in the shape of crayons) that I had hidden in my closet. Oops, I guess that wasn't a great hiding spot, but who cares. Ian wanted to get them out and I told him that he had to start using the potty in order to get them. I explained how we would make a chart and he could put stickers on it and once he went a certain amount of times he would get prizes (the crayon banks). To my surprise he said he wanted to go potty in the frog potty!

Seriously, I was SO shocked! I thought he would end up wearing diapers till he was 16. :)

He has now gone 4 times in the potty! He has to go 7 times before he gets one of his prizes. He is also getting a few skittles each time he goes. I remembered my sister did something like that too and it seems to work.

We went and got him pull ups and some more big boy underwear yesterday. I told him that his teacher will tell me if he goes potty at school today and if he does then he will get a sticker and skittles when he gets home. He seemed okay with that.

I just hope this works! I would love to have him potty trained! Just in case it doesn't work, leave me a comment on what worked for you! I would love to have more ideas.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Googly eyes, I just like to say it...

I love googly eyes, don't you? Ian says it in the absolute cutest way. It makes me want to record him saying googly eyes just so I can share it with you all!

I recently joined Pinterest. I know you are probably wondering "what does that have to do with googly eyes?", well you are about to find out!



I found the cutest little table decoration on there! Someone had pinned it on there board so I did too and decided to make it. It cost me $2 to make this craft! I got the googly eyes at Dollar Tree and a styrofoam pumpkin there as well! Just glue the eyes all over the pumpkin and you're done! Isn't that cute? I love it.

Now the question is, what else can I do with googly eyes? They are so much fun! Do you have any craft ideas for googly eyes?

Okay, I gave in and had Ian say it for the video. :)



Monday, October 10, 2011

cookies and company...

Let me first start by saying we are done with the sickness that Ian had! Two weeks it lasted. I know our entire family is so happy that it is done and over with!

Which brings me to our company. Justin's parent's, sister and Aunt are here for a visit! We are having a good time. The boys are doing really good with them. On Saturday we went to the outlet mall and shopped and then had lunch at Smashburger (of course)! They were so sweet and bought the boys lots of clothes! Yesterday we met them at church and then had lunch at Johnnies (mmm!) The rain made for a good setting to have naps, so the boys and I headed home to lay down. Today we are planning on going to Mardel, which I am very excited about because we haven't been there in a while!
So we took this family picture at church on Sunday. I planned ahead and fixed my hair and of course the one time I have a good hair day, Ian is right in front of my face so you can't tell. Oh well.

The boys in their matching PJ's that his family got him! Yes, Ian is playing with an iPhone, Grandpa was letting him watch videos.

Owen turned 15 months on the 8th! He is getting so big and just walks all over the place. I just love watching him grow! See his one month picture here.



Last night I made cookies (I kind of bribed Ian while getting his hair cut. I told him if he would just let me cut it I would make cookies). They were good, at least I thought so. I found the recipe on one of my friends Pinterest boards. It was a Pioneer Woman recipe (I will share it below, it's easy as 1,2,3).


Nutella Cookie recipe (Found here at Pioneer Woman)

  • 1 cup Nutella
  • ½ cups Sugar
  • 1 cup All-purpose Flour
  • 1 whole Egg
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter chips (not on the original recipe)
  • 1/2 cup marshmallows (Not on the original recipe, I actually will leave these out the next time I make them, they didn't really add anything to the cookies)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Blend all ingredients together well. Form into 1″ balls. Place on a cookie sheet. Press down firmly with the bottom of a glass. Bake 7-8 minutes or until set. Cool.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

eating at home...

Hi, my name is Jessica and I am an eater outer.

I joke with that line, but really I am. Back in the day, before kids, I used to call Justin when ever I thought I would be eating out, just to make sure he was okay with it. After all it was our money, not just mine. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point after we began to have kids I stopped asking him if it was okay to eat out during the week or I would call him while en route to the place I would be eating. Either way not good.

I think for some reason I justified going out for lunch because it got me out of the house and as so many stay at home mom's/wives know, getting out is a huge boost to moral (at least to mine anyways).

To make this quick, Justin pointed out that we could save money if I wouldn't eat out so much during the week. He is a great husband and said it in a very nice way. It got me to thinking that I really do need to stop eating out during the week. Every now and then isn't bad, but I was doing it everyday, sometimes for breakfast and lunch!

Now my new rule is if it costs more than $2 then I need to seek Justin's approval. I told him that it is okay if he says no. Now we have gone three days with no eating out for breakfast or lunch! Part of that is because the boys are sick, but I was really tempted to pack the boys up today and get something from McDonald's. I resisted though. It helped that my friend Misti brought me a Diet Dr. Pepper! :)

What are ways that you save money?

Meant to be...


The other night Justin, my number 1 hot husband, and I got to take a much needed date night! It was really more of a date afternoon/evening.

We started out by going to the outlet mall and eating linner or should I say dunch? You know kind of like brunch but putting lunch and dinner together. It was like 3:30. Anyways, my favorite hamburger place is there, Smashburger, so we ate there. Then we decided to go look around places we don't usually get to enjoy going to with kids. It was nice! We went to Best Buy, Ulta, Walmart and last but not least Office Depot.

While I was checking out at Office Depot Justin was off looking at some more "toys" they had at the other register. When the guy told me my total was $19.81, I said "that was a good year." He kind of looked at me like I was weird, which I am so no insults there. ;) When Justin came over I told him what our total was and get this, he said "that was a good year." We were SO meant to be together!

We finished our evening with some ice cream from Cold Stone. It was delish! Over all we had a wonderful night! So thankful for date nights

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Never would have thought...

The last week and a half has been crazy around our house. It started out with Ian getting sick. I'm talking throw up in the bed and in the car. YUCK. Then it turned to diarrhea, again not fun and a big YUCK! We thought he was getting over it, but Sunday morning I was hit with a huge wave of gross when I opened Ian's door. I had to take him directly to the bathtub and clean him up.

To make a long story longer and a little more graphic, Ian has continued to have this sickness. We took him to the doctor and they said he was hydrated and that he should get over it soon. Well since he didn't I called back and they said we could do some tests on his stool. That brings us to today.

Today was a day full of poop. There I said it. It is really the only way to describe my day. It started out with Owen, yep Owen has it now. Owen was covered in poop, his crib was covered in it too, dolls, sheets, EVERYTHING!!!

So I cleaned him up in the bathtub, which let me just say is much harder to do with a one year old than with a three year old. With Ian he understood what needed to be done, Owen not so much. He wanted out so bad and was shivering. I felt so bad for him.

After that I got Ian changed (yep, nasty diaper). Then I realized that Owen had "stuff" under his nails. Never thought I would be cutting my sons nails because there was poop under them.

Now then back to Ian. His doctor had told us they could do a test, but we had to collect his stool (like how I keep changing how I say poop?). Never in my life did I think I would be scooping poop out of my sons diaper with a tongue depressor. Let me just tell you that I never, NEVER want to do that again! YUCK! But I sure hope they figure out why he still has this nasty sickness. :( Poor kid.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this I washed sheets and dolls and drove madly to the doctor's office and to the Lab to drop off his samples for them to test.

So there you go. The day of poop. Hoping it is over and that it never happens again. I know what you are thinking, you are completely jealous of my day. Right? No? Oh well I can dream that someone is jealous of my day of poop.