This is for AHP

Since your dinner dilemma the other night I realized I haven't shared my latest discovery. I bought a bunch of canned chicken and have been trying to stretch our budget. This is what we came up with:

Super Easy Chicken Quesadillas
1 can of chicken
Salsa (whatever you have on hand)
Taco sauce - to taste
shredded cheese
tortillas or wraps

Mix the canned chicken with salsa and taco sauce until it's a consistency you like (I use about a soup spoonful of each.) Fill tortillas with chicken and cheese and heat till melted.

We use a medium salsa and a mild taco sauce, but Little Man likes spicy so it isn't a problem. I've made these with whole wheat, jalapeno cheddar and even sundried tomato wraps. They all tasted good. It's perfect when I need something easy. Little Man gobbles them up and Wil is happy with them too. Plus it's all stuff that I keep on hand.

Hope you like it!

More Food Please!

Sunday, we had some friends over for dinner and they brought dessert. Lauren was very happy because it was chocolate fondue.

Little Man and their kids were going to town on the Strawberries and Bananas. Bug wanted in on the action. So, we decided to let him try a small piece. He went to town, he ate it really quickly and we gave him a second piece of fruit.

Bug and his mesh feeder bag of bananas

He constantly reaches for our food and so we are waiting for him to learn to eat cereal so that we can start introducing him to additional foods. For now, he still makes a huge mess that is best followed with a bath.

w.

Look who's talking

I was changing Little Man's diaper Friday night before bed when he tooted. He looked at me surprised, smiled and said, "Mommy, my butt say Hi!"

Early Birthday Celebrations

My cousin and his family were visiting my grandparents this weekend. We went up on Saturday to visit and have an early birthday party for my Grandad and my brother, Matt. Two of my Grandmother's sisters, Aunt Beryl and Aunt Dorothy were visiting too. The kids had fun riding in the canoes and took turns holding Bug. K was especially good with Bug and kept coming back to hold him. I'm not as good at remembering to get pictures of everyone as Zizi is, but I did try.

The Silver Lining

Sometimes it's hard to live SO close to my parents. Really. Hard. Then there are days when I wonder how we would survive any other way.

Last night was a rough night. I couldn't sleep. Bug was up a couple times. And both the boys decided to be up for the day at 6am. I am not a morning person by any means and was really struggling. I'm getting spoiled with Wil at home and being able to sleep until 7:30 or 8, while he keeps Little Man occupied. But we had already made plans for Wil to go to the temple today, so I was on my own. Wil got a later start than we had planned and I was grateful for an extra hour of sleep. So with both boys up, we started the daily arguments. They sound a little like this:
"Nunie is for sleeping. Put it away or go take a nap." "Please don't (insert verb here) your brother. I said no. 1. 2...". "Give Bug the toy. Those are Bug's toys. Where are your toys?" You get the idea.

So when Little Man asked to call Grandpa, I was thrilled to have something to distract him with. I was surprised when he asked Grandpa to take him for a ride in his vroom vroom. Even more surprised when Grandpa said YES! Oh happy day! My rough morning turned into a nice quiet one. Bug is asleep. Little Man is going to get stone and see the big trucks with Grandpa. Wil is at the temple. And me? I'm going to take a nice long shower.

Tomato & Spinach Pasta Toss

This is what we had for dinner tonight. It's a recipe I saw in a magazine and happened to have everything on hand. It was a huge hit. Even Wil, who doesn't like cooked spinach, liked it. You should try it too!


Tomato & Spinach Pasta Toss

2 cups rotini or penne pasta, uncooked

1/2 lb. hot or mild Italian sausage, casing removed

1 pkg. (6 oz.) baby spinach leaves (7 cups)

1 can (14-1/2 oz.) Italian-style diced tomatoes, undrained

1 cup Shredded Low-Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese

2 Tbsp. Grated Parmesan Cheese

COOK pasta as directed on package.

MEANWHILE, crumble meat into large deep skillet. Cook on medium-high heat 10 to 12 min. or until cooked through, stirring occasionally; drain. Add spinach and tomatoes; cook 2 min. or until spinach is wilted, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; cover to keep warm.

DRAIN pasta. Add to skillet along with the cheeses; toss lightly.

(also found on kraftfoods.com)

*If you follow the recipe exactly, it's a 6 point dinner. If you sub the sausage for a turkey sausage, that would make it healthier because it would lower the fat.

The Big Movie House

A local movie theater has free movies two days a week for kids all summer long.

Lauren decided that it was a good idea that I take Little Man to see a movie. We went this morning to see Shrek the Third. We got there an hour early and got snacks and seats. Little Man sat down and ate his snacks and mine. About 15 minutes later the movie started & he was enthralled.

We watched about an hour of it before it was time to go home. He asked me to go home & I told him the movie wasn't over. He went back to watching it for another 5 minutes. He then asked again to go home. So, we left.

He got upset as we headed outside; but he was ready to go. We may take him to see Bolt this November; but that will be the 3 of us.

w.

I'm in LOVE....

I saw this bag at Peebles last night and fell in love. L-O-V-E. It's the perfect Mommy Bag. Stylish. Super cute! TONS of pockets. There are 2 large outside pockets and one smaller outside zipper pocket. Inside there are two (maybe three) open side "technology" pockets and another zipper pocket. Plenty of room for both my stuff and diapers, wipes, bottles, sippy cups, matchbox cars, fruit snacks and crayons that end up in there. It needs to go on sale, please. But then I would have to pick a color. That's going to be hard.

Genius!

Watching this, reminds me of this:


I love Joss Whedon! He's a genius.

Weekend Roadtrips

Friday evening we drove up to Kensington to meet David and Robyn at the Temple. David was trying to convince Little Man that his name was really Uncle Fishlips. They had a great time... climbing trees, talking to Jesus and just hanging out together. We also stopped by IKEA to pick up a couple things and get frozen yogurt for dessert. (If you didn't know, IKEA has great big fozen yogurt cones for a $1!!! They are tres delish.)

Saturday we got up early and drove up to Pine Grove/Tremont to visit the Grandmas. We visited with Grandma Becker for a while and took her to lunch at Red Lion (Papa's favorite restaurant). Then after a quick stop at Buddy's for hot chocolate milkshakes*, we drove up the mountain to see where Nana's house used to be and ended up at Grandma Scheib's. We visited for a while and then headed for the pool. Wil and David enjoyed reliving their childhood. Little Man was super brave and went down the 10 foot (?) slide. He realized about half way down what was going to happen. The look on his face was priceless and of course I didn't have my camera out in time. Wil was there to catch him and he was such a good sport. Our conversation after went something like this:

Me: Was that fun?
LM: Yeah!
Me: Wanna do it again?
LM: NO!

He did climb up to the top of the slide again and I got some pictures, but there was no way he was going to slide down again. While we were swimming Grandma Scheib was hard at work, two apple pies and two blueberry pies kind of work. Blueberries from the bush next to the house, blueberries. I think Little Man ate at least 2 cups of fresh blueberries that afternoon. He kept convincing different adults to take him down to pick more. I lost track. Thanks to Uncle Danny, Aunt Belinda and Harley, we also had an awesome dinner of BBQ ribs, mashed garlic potatoes, green beans and corn (at least a pound of butter went into the veggies, does that still count as a healthy dinner?) We left around bedtime and Little Man was asleep before we got to the bottom of the hill. Bug was out pretty quickly too and we had a nice quiet drive home. It was a great day!!
Here are the photos:


I realized that I didn't get any pictures of Grandma Scheib, the Aunts, Uncles and cousins. Sorry guys!

*The girl at the carry out counter at Buddy's was about 14. Our conversation went like this:
Me: "I'd like a hot chocolate milkshake, please?"
Girl: "We don't have hot chocolate milkshakes."
Me: "Oh." Stopping to read the menu. "What's a cocoa milkshake?"
Girl: "A milkshake with hot chocolate mix in it."
Me: "I'll have one of those."

Getting ready for the fun

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we were super busy getting ready for Uncle David and Aunt Robyn to come and visit. David is being deployed to Iraq next month and we were really excited to get to see them both before he leaves.

So we cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned some more. We also switched out the dishwasher. Organized the boys' closet. Installed shelves in the pantry and got a bunch of stuff put away in our storage closet. For five minutes the whole apartment was clean. It was amazing. All the work was really exhausting for Bug.







I also watched one of Little Man's friend's for the morning. She's super cute! I love her curly pigtails. While they were playing and Bug was sleeping, I finally hung the vinyl lettering on Bug's side of the room. It's really hard to see the white letters on the blue background. I wanted it to be subtle and it worked. Unfortunately a bit too well to get a good picture.

"It's always fun to share with everyone"

I have a ton of stuff to write about our adventures this last week. But until I can get caught up I thought you might like to see how well Little Man is learning to share with his brother:

Little Man and Bug were playing happily on the floor in the living room. Little Man was eating an apple and I was loading the dishwasher. At some point I realized that Little Man was saying, "bite it, baby j, bite it". Then I found Bug happily gnawing on the apple. I'm guessing that the cold, juicy, sweet apple was quite the treat and felt great on his gums. Too bad he's still a few months away from actually being allowed to eat apples. We haven't even started the veggies yet. I'm just happy Little Man chose to share his apple and not goldfish, chips or cookies.

And the winner is....

Michele P.!

Please be patient with me while I find all the fun songs. I will get your cd in the mail asap.

Reminder

Don't forget to post your votes for our clean up play list. You have until Monday, July 14th to add a comment.

He's definitely a boy

Wil has been adamant that we teach the boys the appropriate names for things, especially body parts. This weekend while I was changing his diaper, our conversation went like this:

Little Man looks down and says, "Penit?"
Me: "Yep"
Little Man: "Biiiiig penit."
Me: "Ok"
Little Man: "Biggest penit ever seen!"

I laughed so hard that now he keeps repeating it to see how we'll react. I can't wait til he's old enough to use this one as blackmail.

The weekend in review

I remember the time

Here are the directions:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Playlist The First - A Giveaway

I was REALLY sick of our messy apartment yesterday and perfectly happy cleaning on my birthday. It was that bad and it felt good to get some of it taken care of. As we started to clean we needed something to keep our spirits up and get Little Man involved.... so I started a playlist. (I'm learning from Zizi and Megs. My playlist is much more kid-centric and alot less cool.) Here's our clean-up playlist so far:

A Spoonful of Sugar - Mary Poppins
Happy Working Song - Enchanted
Heigh Ho - Snow White
Be Our Guest - Beauty and the Beast
The Work Song - Cinderella
It's time to clean up - 50 Giggly Wiggly Songs

There's a definite Disney theme here, but I'd like to include more than just children's music. I have to be able to enjoy it too. This is where you come in. Make suggestions in the comments. We'll randomly pick one super lucky winner to receive a cd of our final playlist. Have fun!

it's a good thing he's cute

what were you doing at 4am?

Overheard

We are trying to separate Little Man from his pacifier, which we call a nunie. He didn't want it at all until J-Bug was born and we've had a bit of a relapse. Today was our first day of the "only while sleeping" rule. This is what I overheard while getting ready for lunch....

Little Man: "No nunie, Baby J! Nunie is for naptime."
J-Bug: "WWWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
Little Man: "Only when you sleeping, Baby J."

They say it's my birthday

I have honestly been dreading today. 35 isn't such a fun number, but thanks to my husband, friends and fabulous sissy, it's been a great day. Some of the highlights so far:

• birthday wishes - here, here and here
• kidnapped for lunch at Mexico
• wearing my birthday dress that Zizi made
• sleeping until 8am with only one interruption
• finding pictures of bad 80's hair hidden all over my apartment
• seeing that they've made their way online
• cleaning up the living room and kitchen (I've lost some steam on the cleaning front but it was SO nice to come home from lunch and not have to tiptoe over the booby-trapped floor.)
• a long shower all by myself
• both boys napped!
• birthday emails from sd, hd and jen