My New Watch

When Debi was here visiting, she had this really neat watch and I guess they are all the rage in Utah. They are hand made beaded watches and Debi had made hers. They are a basic watch face and then you can make different bands out of beads so your watch can always match your outfit-how cool! So I decided to try it out and make me a watch. It's a little drab, but that's because the colored rock/beads I bought wouldn't fit on my string. I'm learning and it was fun, so I'll probably be making me some different bands soon...

Logan and Cereal

If you don't know by now, Logan is a VERY picky eater. By just looking at an item, he knows whether he will like it or not. One thing he will always eat is cereal. He rarely has only one kind of cereal in his bowl, he loves to mix them together. Here are a few of his recent concoctions:

This is Cheerios, Cookie Crisp and CocoaPuffs

This is Frosted Flakes and Trix.

This is Cheerios and Apple Jacks.

For the past 9 months or so, I have been working on eating better and getting back into an exercise routine. I've done pretty well so far, but still have my hangups...chocolate... In the process I've lost 7 lbs even though I didn't go into this to lose weight. I have a family history of high cholesterol and heart disease and realized I better get my act together. One of my goals was to lower the amount of soda I drank and I now only have one or two a week versus one or two a day before. I am really bad about getting vegetables with dinner, so this week I decided to try one vegetarian meal a week and here is how week one went...

I had seen recipes for Black Bean Burgers and decided to try them since I like black beans a lot.

Here are the ingredients:

Here is what it looked like after I put all the ingredients into the food processor:

And here is the final product after baking:

I know it doesn't look like the most appetizing thing in the world, but it tasted really good. The mix was pretty gooey, and therefore the middle was a little gooey, but not in a gross way. I think I'll definitely make them again. Ty hasn't tried them yet, so we will have to see what he thinks about them.

I'm a Little Eskimo

Alex had her first recital yesterday and here is the video of it. She is the fourth from the left.

What we have been up to...

We have had some fun times lately with the holidays and everything else going on. For Thanksgiving we stayed here and my parents drove down to spend a week with us. They watched the kids for us so we could go to the Transiberian Orchestra. Ty has always wanted to go and it was an amazing concert. There is nothing like rock and roll Christmas music to get you ready for the holidays. We had a nice turkey dinner for Thanksgiving and I braved the crowds and did some Black Friday shopping. I will never go to Walmart again, it was CRAZY, too crazy for me. I went to Target and it was so much better. After Thanksgiving the kids and I went to Zoo Lights and that was really cool. They decorate the whole zoo with lights and animals made out of lights. The best part was there was an alligator that opened and shut it's mouth and Alex was staring at it and she asked me if it was real (I was standing behind her). I said "No, if it was real it would go GRRRRRRRR" and I grabbed her arm. She proceeded to scream and I started laughing. I can't help it, my dad did things like that to me all the time as a kid :)

We stayed home for Christmas for the first time since Ty and I have been married. I got to put up my Christmas tree and the kids helped put the ornaments on. For Christmas morning I made these huge cinnamon rolls that were delicious. The kids opened their presents in 45 minutes. Logan would open one, take a look at it and move on to the next one. They got all sorts of cool stuff for Christmas. We made a small ham and all the fixings for dinner and just hung out at the house and played with the kids.

Logan and I started a parent and child swim class this week and he loves it! He has always loved water and they hold classes at the local community college. It's a half hour long and they hold it in a smaller pool that is nice and warm. He told me afterwards that it was a "great swim class today." Alex is a little jealous and wants to take swimming now too. I told her she has to wait until her dance class is done and she can do swimming this summer.

As you can tell from our blog background, I'm anxiously awaiting spring. I can't wait for the leaves to come back and to see if all my bulbs come up. I miss the warmer weather and the days I can spend outside. But I have been getting some good work done on my scrapbooks and that is always fun.

I am embarrassed that I haven't posted a blog post since JUNE! We have definitely been busy with playdates, the garden, vacation, etc. Let me recap the past few months...Alex turned 4 in July, we had a little family only party at home the day before her birthday. We drove up to Seattle to visit Blake and Britney for the weekend and Britney made ice cream and put a candle in it for Alex-which she thought was the best! It was a fun weekend! We got our puppy Bailey in August and she has been a fun addition to our family. She is 16 weeks old now and is learning to sit and lay down. Alex started a dance class in September and LOVES it. She does 20 minutes of tumbling, 20 minutes of ballet and 20 minutes of tap once a week. Logan hasn't done much besides eat and get into mischief. He drove his little car down some stairs and bruised up his lip, nose and forehead. He still loves to snuggle and now comes up to Ty and I and says "I wuv you." Our garden went nuts and I have a nice stock of frozen tomato sauce, vegetables and fruit. Our tomato plants are still getting flowers on them, go figure. We had lots of fun making dinners out of our peppers, eggplants, broccoli, snow peas and tomatoes. We planted some honeydew melons which Alex and Ty loved. We are about to pick our watermelons, hopefully they are ripe now. We tried one a few weeks ago and it wasn't ready :( Our baby pumpkins did very well and so did our blueberry bushes. Ty's plant got up and running this summer and they are producing foam insulation now. I've been hosting a scrapbook night with my playgroup once a month and I really enjoy it. We also started a book club so I'm back reading consistently again. Overall life is hectic but lots of fun and we love where we live. The weather has been awesome here lately and I find myself wanting to spend all afternoon in the back yard enjoying it. I love fall and the smells that come with it.

It has been very busy around our house this past month.  I haven't had a lot of time to sit and do a new post.  We've had visitors, went to my cousin's wedding, and been generally busy keeping up with the house and yard.  Lately this has been taking up my time:

We have a big strawberry patch and we were told that a lot of the plants were old and therefore might not produce fruit.  Well, they had no problem producing fruit!  I go out every 2-3 days and pick for at least an hour and then come in and cut them for another hour (at least).  Lately I have been cutting them and freezing them and then putting them in food saver bags.  I have already made 8 small jars of freezer jam too.  So I'm up to my ears in strawberries, and will probably be eating smoothies all year long.

I've done some fun stuff with the kids lately too.  We bought a pass to the zoo for Alex and I (Logan is free) and we have gone twice already.  Much to my surprise, Logan wanted to pet the goats this year and actually did it!  It's a nice zoo and we never get to see all of it in one trip so it's fun and they are currently building new exhibits too.