Easter Eggs

Today we got together with Jake's sisters who live in town and let the cousins dye eggs together for Easter. I know its a little early but since I am leaving for Hemet tomorrow and won't be back until next Saturday we decided to do it early. It was so fun to watch the kids get excited to see what their eggs would look like. I am also so glad that Mackenzie came! I always love spending time with her, and Ty does too. So here are a bunch of pictures from our fun activity. Enjoy my super cute nieces and nephews and of course Ty enjoy the simple things that make up ones childhood, family.

I'll Start with some pictures of Ty, since I have the least of these

Ty's egg made by Aunt Kenzi

Dying Eggs wore him out

Here are some pictures of Jake's sister Melissa and her cute kids!

The only time I could get Sammy to look at me! So cute though! 

 And last but not least! Jake's sister Kristy and her cute kids!

Highs and Lows

Little Poser

As usual my week was full of embarrassing and amazing moments, so take a look and hopefully they bring a smile to your face.
 
Lows:
-pushing T in his swing by hand because we ran out batteries again (that thing eats them)
- T having a huge blowout during the Hunger Games, it was everywhere
- leaving the fridge door open during my 3 am raid and spoiling most of the food.
- dumping out the ruined lemon-aid in the sink forgetting that the pipe had been removed because of a giant crack. yup that was fun to clean up.
- finally admitting realizing that 1/2 my tops no longer fit over my chest, kind of thought that they would go back to normal after T came...guess I now need knew shirts    

 Highs:
- packing to go home! CANT wait for the sunshine, swimming with little T and spending time with fam
- spring cleaning! I love going through everything and throwing away a bunch of stuff I haven't used/don't need anymore
- lunch dates as a little family to Costco. Love those hot dogs and caffeine free diet coke (I know I have relinquished my self control and finally started drinking it...I cannot wait till I can drink the real kind again!!)
- fitting into more pre-pregancy pants!!


 

Knock Off

The biggest craving I had while I was pregnant was for salads. I loved all and any salads especially Zuppas BBQ chicken salad. If I could live there and had enough money to eat that salad every day I would. I thought that once little T came I wouldn't want to eat salad anymore, considering I hated them before becoming pregnant (except for cafe rios pork salad). Well I haven't lost my craving for salads which is kinda nice considering I am trying to fit into my old clothes. So I decided to roll with this craving and get creative. For dinner I decided I was going to make this Zuppa salad as best as I could. Honestly it was amazing. I am not even going to pretend to be a creative or good experimental chef. I am a great follow someone else's recipe and take credit for others creativity chef. However I branches out and made my own. Best part about it is how easy and cheap it is. It can also be adapted to whatever you like! Here's what I did and used.

Ingredients
Lettuce
Corn
Black beans
Chicken
Red onion
BBQ sauce
Ranch

I started of cooking my chicken because it has to cool. So I cut up chicken into bite size cubs. Then I placed them in a sauce pan to cook. For taste I added a dash of brown sugar, Hungarian paprika, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper and cinnamon. (The great news is though that you don't need to add any spices if you don't want. The salad at Zuppas doesn't have any and it's still delicious!)
Then I added a little bit of chicken stock (not even enough to cover the chicken) to let the chicken simmer in. I hate dry chicken but am always worried about not cooking it enough, so chicken stock is a great way to get juicy chicken that's fully cooked. Once my chicken is done I put it in a bowl to put in the fridge and cool down. Then I moved on to the rest of the salad.

1/2 cooked chicken

The other half cooled in a bowl

I used 2 different kinds of lettuce because I like a variety and texture to my salad. I used a bag of spinach and a bag of romaine. I combined my lettuce with a small can of corn and black beans. I then chopped up some red onion. I used a ton because I am a freak who loves onions!

Once I finished combing the rest of the salad I pulled out my chicken and added it to the salad. And served it.

Finished Product

 Literally that's all. I placed the ranch dressing and BBQ sauce in the table so that each person could put as much as they wanted. Jake likes a lot of BBQ sauce I like about 1/2 and 1/2. It is literally the easiest salad on the the planet and can adapted so many ways. At Zuppas they add olives and tomatoes but since I hate both I keep them out. They also add tortilla chips but I forgot them at the store. think next time I am going to add some red bell pepper to it because it will give it another crunchy factor and they taste good. The 2 bags of lettuce gives you tons of left overs!!! And it's ridiculously cheap. We spent less than 30 dollars and that included all the fruit we used for a fruit salad (from Costco) and we have enough left overs for about 5 more lunches or dinners. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

A Few of My Favorite Things

These are just a few of my favorite things lately...

This workout...is the death of me. I honestly can't do the whole 25 minutes without stopping. However  I figure that doing it for a couple of minutes every day for the next couple of months will eventually add up to 25 minutes and I will count that as good.

Dear monkey bouncer I don't know what I would do without you. Thank you for keeping Ty entertained so I can shower and get ready in the morning. Also it is really cute watching him talk to you ass you play music and light up. Although at the time I though you were a ripoff I have since decided you are the best 50 bucks I ever spent.

Photo Calender from shutterfly. Randomly we ended up with a 20 dollar giftcard to shutterfly and I had no idea what to spend it on.  However it was expiring soon so I went on the site just to see what I could get. I was thrilled with the idea of making a calender full of pictures! I am obsessed with calenders and keeping everything organized and written down and I love it even more now that I get to look at cute pictures while writing important dates. This thing puts a smile on my face everytime I walk into my room and see it hanging there!

Dear High Buns, my life was lost when I cut my hair too short to use you everyday. However thankfully it is long enough that we have joined together once again. Thank you for making it easy for me to fake it (getting ready) and keeping T's fat grabby hands from yanking my hair out. I missed you so much, never go away.

Baby Fat, I CANNOT wait to see you pop out all over when Ty puts on his little swimsuit. Thank you for making perfect places for my lips to kiss and make raspberries. 

Little T, you are the highlight of my day! I love the faces you make and that fact that you are mine! Keep being a happy and smiley baby it makes my day and makes me grateful for everything I have. I don't need much in life as long as I have you and your dad.

Oh Hello Stupid

I saw this piece of subway art the other day that said "Faith in the Lord includes Faith in his timing". And I thought crap, ugh why did I have to see that? I would rather sit and pretend as if it is better to be frustrated in the situation I was in.  Being the first child that I am, I am a complete control freak. Total type A personality. So this challenge of not knowing when Jake is going to have a job, where he is going to have a job or where we will even be living is awful. As usual this phrase kept repeating over and over again. And I realized my folly in being annoyed that I didn't know when everything was going to happen or how anything was going to happen.

Friday sweet little Ty turned 3 months old. I cannot believe how fast time has flown by since having him! He is quite possibly the best thing that has happened to me since meeting Jake. I love that little child more than I ever though was possible. He has filled this hole in Jake and my hearts that we didn't even know was there. He lights up our lives and I couldn't imagine him not being here. As I was thinking about Ty and the changes that have come into my life since having him I was hit with a double whammy of my stupidity and folly.

The biggest testament to how true this statement is, is sweet little Ty. I was not planning on having a baby so soon. It was something that at the earliest I would consider after we had been married for 3 years. But the Lord had something else in mind for us. It took a great of faith to trust him and his plan before Ty was born, but since it has been no problem. Deciding to trust him and in this new plan he was giving us was one of the best decisions ever. It hasn't always been easy but I can say it is definitely worth it. I could not imagine what my life would be like if we hadn't followed his timing on this important matter of kids. So after feeling like a moron as well as someone who is blind to their blessings for a couple minutes I realized that I already had all the examples I needed to trust in His timing. So little by little I have been working on being a complete werido about not being able to control this situation. For now I will enjoy all the blessings I have like my little family as I wait for His timing to tell us what the next step in our life is.

Love this fat cheeks!

Highs and Lows

I noticed that as soon as I got pregnant with Ty my usual blonde moments and clumsy nature increased dramatically which led to some pretty funny and interesting stories, like the time I stuffed my face with an entire bag of powered doughnuts in the Chevron parking lot before returning to teach 5th grade because I seriously couldn't stop myself.    I decided that I would just bottle them all up from the week and place them here for you all to enjoy and laugh at. 

Low Points of the Week 
- Not being able to last 3 minutes without having to take a break doing Jillian Michaels kettle bell workout
- Only fitting into 2 pairs of pre-pregnancy jeans
- Screaming at your husband to wake up and help you because your son has proceeded to poop everywhere including your hands, wipes container is all out of wipes, and its 6 am
- Almost getting hit twice in the parking lot of Michaels. Im not that hard to miss, I know I am pushing a baby stroller like 99.9 % of the women in this city but I am also wearing green jeans (not that hard to miss) 

High Points of the Week
- Being able to button 2 pre-pregnancy jeans without my extender, never-mind how they look I can at least button them!
- Purchasing 3 lovely tickets to the Hunger Games 
- Planning to spend most of my Friday with my sister, Jake and Little T, life rarely gets better than those peeps 
- Getting plane tickets to fly home with T!!!!!
- Re-purposing old t-shirts into new ones. I guess those sewing lessons I always thought were lame are paying off

Hope everyone has a great weekend, I know I will be enjoying the sunshine as long as it lasts and desperately trying to make myself look tanner before going home to the warm CA sunshine. 

If I had extra money...

Since we are about a month away from Jake graduating we have been doing a lot of thinking about our life and things lately. It is so frustrating and annoying faith promoting to have no idea where we are going and stuck at a rather large fork in the so-called cross roads of our lives I have figured out a way to combat my grumpiness at having to be patient and follow the Lord's timing. Clearly I didn't learn that lesson too well with Ty so I am therefore repeating it now. I guess I should learn that I will continue to have this trial until I learn my lesson. What clears my blues for a little bit? Looking at things I would buy in a heartbeat if we already had a job and the green that goes with one. I know...its a little backwards to look at things I would buy if we had money to help me cope with the fact that we don't have money yet but I blame it on pinterest and my addiction to it. 

 

I would love either a new  4runner or a new pilot. Unrealistic? Completely! Doesn't mean I still don't love the way these black cars look and that I can't dream about driving one.  This baby is what I am making Jake buy me when we our 3rd kid and cant fit everyone in my 4runner now. 

Now some more realistic things...

Here's her site!

 Isn't this nursery print the cutest?! I want to email the woman who makes them and ask her to do a custom one of a little boy for Ty. I have loved Paris ever since I went there in High School, and it only makes things better that Jake served his mission there because we have a lot of sentimental Paris things around our place.  I think this would be the cutest thing in his room, and would go along great with these...

2 Christmas ago we found this lovely book at Anthropologie (A store that I would literally live in if I could).

Yes that is what you think its Green Eggs and Ham in French! Jake has read this to Ty a couple of times and he loves it! He sits on Jakes' knees memorized by the sounds Jake is making lol. So we started doing some research and found a whole bunch of classic children books in French.

I think this is the book I am most looking forward to buying! My mom gave me my book that was mine as a baby and I have read it to Ty but I would love to have this one and all the other classics in French!







Speaking of Anthro...I seem to have an obession with white. I dont really know why since it is the hardest color to wear (you have to layer it so many times so everyone doesnt see all your goodies) and it would be messy in 2 seconds with little T. But since this is a dream list it is covered in white!

And of course there are other things in there like gifts for my parents and Jakes' parents for all have done for us, amazing b-day presents for our siblings and tons and tons and tons of things for T. But until I know where we are going I guess I stalk pinterst and dream.