Stay little

I loved when my babies would fall asleep on me. It was my favorite part when they were teeny tiny. Luckily Caitlyn is still young enough that she randomly takes naps. I certainly mean random. If she's tired, she will lay or sit where ever she can and pass out. It's so cute. I'm addicted to taking pictures of her in her random sleeping spots. My favorite of course is when she falls asleep on me. Yes she still does it. I can't help it she's my baby.

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Here she is from today. We swam in the pool for a little bit and we snuggled up on the couch afterwards. Next thing I know, she was asleep.

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Just for laughs I'll share a few of the other pictures I have of her sleeping on me.

This one was a few weeks ago. We were getting ready to leave the house and I was brushing her hair. She fell asleep while I was brushing her hair. And yes she was standing up at the time. :)

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This one is from a month or so ago. We were on the floor watching cartoons, she laid in my lap and fell asleep as I rubbed her back. I let her stay there till I couldn't feel my legs anymore.

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This one is from a year ago. Not quite a funny one, but still a great moment to share.

Tarts

The kids have a ton of books. They were overflowing on the living room bookshelf. So I went through and organized them, putting Brogan's books in his room and Caitlyn's in hers. they were together in the living room. Now I have more room on my bookshelf so it doesn't look so cluttered. During my organizing I found a great kids cookbook that Brogan got for Christmas from my mil. I totally forgot we had it. I decided we would have some fun and make one of the desserts from it. the kids had a blast! We made Jam Tarts.

The kids making the dough.

oo it's squishy

taking turns rolling out the dough

Cutting out circles

about to fill the tarts with Jam...Strawberry, Peach, and Apricot, we had fun mixing them.

After filling them with the jam, we put little cut outs of dough on top. Oh and we filled them too much so the jam overflowed haha oops.

The kids were proud! and the Jam Tarts were yummy!

Here's the book.

Ok I'll attempt to type up the recipe for these fun little treats.

Heat oven to 400F

For 12 tarts:

3/4 cup of flour

2 tablespoons of softened margarine (I used butter)

2 tablespoons of shortening

2 tablespoons of very cold water

pinch of salt

1/2 cup of jam or preserves (any flavor you want, we used strawberry, peach and apricot)

greased mini-muffin pans

round cookie cutters

tiny cookie cutters

Making the pastry:

1. Rub the flour, salt, margarine, and shortening so that it looks like crumbs.

2. Add the water. use a blunt knife to mix it in. Squeeze it into a ball of dough.

3. Sprinkle flour onto your work surface. Roll the dough to 1/8in thick.

4. Press out 12 shapes from the dough with the round cutter

5. Push the shapes into the greased pan. Put two teaspoons of jam into each one.

6. Press out some shapes with the tiny cutters. Put one on each tart.

7. Bake the tarts for about 15 minutes.

Wait until the tarts are cold to eat them.

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While I'm on the topic of food I have to share what I made for dinner tonight. I didn't take a picture of it, sorry. Check it out. http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/smarter-fettuccine-alfredo-91370.aspx I used whole wheat pasta and it was still yummy. Tasted yummy for being a low fat version. This is a must try, I promise!

On another note, Kell just called from the library. His dad is coming to visit in a few weeks!! Yay! We've been together for 6 1/2 years and not once has he ever come to visit us! I'm so excited! Only thing is, he's coming during Kell's break from school and that's the same week Kell's mom is coming. They are both staying like 4 days, so his mom comes the day his break starts. Then as soon as she leave, his dad will be here. Yikes! :)

Perfect Heart

Brogan was born with a congenital heart defect called Patent Ductus Arteriosus aka PDA. All babies are born with it actually but it is supposed to close within the first 12 hours of life or something like that. Well Brogan's never closed. We've had to take him to the cardiologist every year to have an echo done to see if it will close on it's own. If it doesn't close on it's own, it would require surgery. Today Brogan had one of his cardio appointments. I loved this cardiologist, pretty awesome Lt. Col at Lackland AFB. He was very thorough with everything. After spending 3 hours with the cardiologist, they gave us the news. No more PDA! It finally closed on it's own. So no more cardiologist and no worrying about surgery.

Brogan was pretty excited about seeing his heart today. It was so cute. When the technician had his heart up on the screen, Brogan asked, "Mommy does my heart look good?". I replied with, "Your heart is perfect." He was so happy and so proud. They thought it was so cute how excited he was, so they kindly took a "picture" of his heart for him to take home. He wants me to frame it for him.

I tried to explain to Brogan today how important the heart is. The physical heart. It's the reason we are alive. Without it, we wouldn't exist. My kids are the reason I'm here. Without them, I wouldn't be me. To me, they are my perfect heart.

Ok I can't end the blog on a sappy note so I'll add a few pictures from today.

I didn't have my camera with me so I used my cell phone for this one. We were waiting for the results from the cardiologist and that's a video of Brogan's heart on the screen behind him.

Showing off his "heart" picture.

Caitlyn wanted to pose for the camera too.

Chef Brogan

Brogan has always loved cooking. I've taken him to cooking classes at the Young Chef's Academy and he loves it. I really try to let him help me out in the kitchen whenever I can but I've been slacking lately. So this afternoon while Caitlyn took a small nap on the couch, I asked Brogan to help me with dinner. We had fun and the dinner turned out great.

http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/stuffed-shells-52713.aspx (I don't know how to do the cool link thing that everyone does, so this will have to work for now.)

Stuffing the shells.

All done!

I did make a few changes to the recipe. It calls for Cottage cheese and I was grossed out by the thought of that so I used Ricotta Cheese instead. Also I didn't have a red pepper so I used a couple of tablespoons of Kraft Red Pepper dressing. My entire family loved these. Brogan and I will be making them again.

After dinner we noticed that some ugly clouds rolling in. I could only get a couple of pictures of the clouds before it started pouring on us.

As Dolly moves on, we'll get more rain. I won't be complaining though because we certainly need this rain. Bring on the movies and board games. I love rainy days.

musicals and cake

I've been meaning to share the bag I picked up from Whole foods on Thursday. 99cents! yay! Pretty decent size too.

Last night I went and saw Mamma Mia! and I loved every second of it. I want to go see it over and over again. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can bust a move in my living room. You'll hear me screaming "Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine..oooo yeahhhhhh". ah so much fun.

Today we went to a birthday party for a sweet little girl. Her mama emailed me just a few days ago and asked me to do a last minute cake for her. She wanted it to be very simple and she was providing a cake topper for it. I would have loved to of had more warning on the cake because I could have done such fun things for a Little Mermaid theme. But I kept it simple due to time. It was yummy and everyone enjoyed it. Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting.

That's about it for me. I'm going to relax and enjoy the rest of my sunday evening with my family.

cookbooks galore

I just had to share how sweet my husband is. I mentioned to him last night while going through my recipes, that I needed some low fat, low calorie recipes for WW. I really don't want to spend the money for a new WW book. Since he goes to the library every night to study anyway, I asked him to look and see if the library had any WW cookbooks or even low fat cookbooks. Guess what he did. He brought me cookbooks! Not just one or two cookbooks....but....

14 cookbooks!!! He's so cute. The librarians there know him really well since he's there every single day for many hours (lucky women). They thought it was the sweetest thing. He wanted to make sure I had plenty to choose from. He's too good to me. :) Alright off to search for some yummy recipes.

Sew relaxing

haha I made a funny title. Or maybe not. After venting to my wonderful hubby at lunch about my lack of a life, yes I'm allowed to have a pity party from time to time, I decided I needed to pull out my sewing machine. I find sewing to be so relaxing. Just me and my sewing machine. A great time to clear my head. I don't know why I kept putting it off the past couple of months. 1 project down..3 more to go.

a cleaning fool

Our lease is up at the end of the month. We were supposed to be moving to our next location but due to uncontrollable circumstances, we are here till April now. In order to renew our lease till April we have to pass a home inspection. I know weird huh. Our inspection is Monday morning so I've been cleaning this weekend. I hate the idea of strangers coming into my house and looking around. Therefore I will make sure my house is perfectly clean. Probably all unnecessary but will be done anyway.

We did have a nice Friday afternoon though. We took the kids up to Brogan's school to ride their bikes. They had so much fun riding around the empty parking lot with their daddy. It was cute to watch. ahh the simple pleasures of a child's life.

is it still happy hour?

Cause mama needs a drink. 3 hours, 2 stupid doctors, 2 fussy misbehaving children, no snacks.....BIG headache. That's all.

Farmers market

I finally found the farmers market today. There were only 2 stands but this one farmer was really nice and very helpful. He gave me lots of info about some of the other farmers markets, which days are best, etc. But considering how little of a selection we had, I still got some great goodies. tomatoes, onions, potatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and pretty flowers all for just $14. I can't wait for next week when we go again. We even took the kids to the playground afterwards because they were so good in the car while we were lost haha. I'm really glad we did because it's been raining for the past couple of hours. I'm going to snuggle now.

a bit of randomness

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Ours was pretty good. Kell had a 4 day weekend, which was wonderful. He took Thursday night and all day Friday off from studying. Saturday and Sunday he just studied at the library till 8 and then didn't study anymore once he was home. Since he didn't have school today either, he went to the library this morning and will be home before dinner. No studying tonight either. I love 4 day weekends. We get to spend quality time with him and he can still get plenty of studying in as well. It's great and couldn't have come at a better time for us. We needed it.

Saturday the kids and I had planned on going to a Farmers Market with a friend but we got lost and couldn't find the Farmers Market (don't worry, we're going to another one tomorrow). So instead we went to Central Market and I got a yummy Cantaloupe that was grown locally. Better than nothing huh. We also picked up some yummy organic sandwiches for lunch and took the kids to the park to have a picnic and play on the playground. It was a beautiful day for it. I had some really good Iced Tea. It wasn't organic though. But the kids lemonade was organic and they loved it.

After Central Market, we went to Target and I got a couple of 4 packs of napkins...that one's for you Amber ;)...The best part is they were on clearance for $4. Awesome right! Goodbye paper napkins and papertowels!

I'm going to toot my own horn and say that I used my cloth bags with all my purchases on Saturday. Bring on the Green Challenge. :)

next subject..... 1 year ago today, we said goodbye to New York. I can't believe it's been a year since we moved away from there. It was the hardest goodbye I've ever had to do...ok well with the exception of when I said goodbye to my husband when he deployed.... Moving away from home (KY) was pretty easy. I did it without hesitation and without looking back. Leaving NY was so much harder than I thought it would be. I made the best friends there. They became more than friends, they became my family. We got each other through deployments, training, holidays, birthdays, etc. It took me many months to get over the sadness of leaving my friends there. It's something, as an army wife, that I have to learn to get used to. It didn't take me long though to make new wonderful friends here in Texas. But come April I'll have to say goodbye to my new friends when we move to our next place. Where ever that may be. Don't let my whining get you down though. I'm not trying to give myself a pity party here. I know I'm blessed to have made such wonderful friends over the past 4 years. Thanks to the Army moving all of us around all the time, if I ever want a vacation, I have many places I can go and stay. I've been blessed with a large group of friends....more friends than I ever thought I would have in my life. And with each new place, comes new great friends to add to my life. I just hope that over time, saying goodbye will get easier.

Productive Day

I thought I'd put up a quick blog for the day. I'm relaxing watching Harry Potter, yes I know I'm a nerd. I took advantage of some unexpected motivation and cleaned my butt off today. The past week I've been lacking motivation to clean. So I decided to reread a book. Happy Housewives. It's a really great book and Darla is a wonderful person. The first time I read the book was a year ago. I was totally shocked at how much her book motivated me to really focus on my kids, husband and my home. She also has a website, click on badge under my pictures if you want to check it out.

Ok back to the cleaning my butt off part. Instead of using my regular "green" cleaning supplies, I decided to mix vinegar and water with some lemon juice to help the vinegar smell. I've used vinegar before on my floors and laundry but for some reason I hadn't gotten around to using it as an all purpose cleaner. I'm officially in love with it. My kitchen is so sparkly and shiny right now. I cleaned everything with it. Once I started I just couldn't stop. Tomorrow I'm going to go to this cute little gift store that sells a ton of natural and organic products and pick up some Essential Oils. Try and make the vinegar cleaner smell prettier. :)

Alright ladies, I'm going to make my hubby's lunch for tomorrow then head to bed. Actually I'll probably wait till Harry Potter is over. Which is weird considering I watch it everyday. :P

It better be worth it

It's been an uneventful weekend here. We had a playdate on Saturday. Sunday we relaxed all day. I probably shouldn't say it was totally uneventful though. Brogan had a bad day Sunday.

First let me share with you Kell's schedule. For those that don't know, he's in the PA (physician assistant) program through the Army. It's an accelerated program done in 2 years. The first year is all the "book" work, they take 4 years worth of classes in just one year. The second year is all clinicals and rotations and at the end of it, they get all their certifications, etc including a Masters. It's a pretty tough program. Kell has to study almost 24/7. His classes are Monday through Friday from about 7 till 4:45. He gets home around 5:15, I have dinner ready for him when he walks in the door. We eat dinner together as a family, then he's out the door to get to the library at 6. He stays there studying till 9 (when it closes). Then he comes home and rests for about 20 minutes and it's back to studying till atleast midnight, sometimes later depending on how much he needs to get done. He takes off on Friday night. That's our family night. We cherish it. Saturday and Sundays he goes the library from 10-10.

Ok now that I shared his schedule, you can see that we don't get much time with him. I don't mind it so much. I've been through a year deployment with a 2 year old and a newborn, I can handle this no problem. It's our kids that suffer the most. Atleast with the deployment Kell was gone all the time. The kids got used to it. Plus they were young enough to not really understand. Now the kids see Kell leaving them every night during the week and every day on the weekends. I think it's harder on them because they feel like he doesn't want to be with them. Don't get me wrong Kell is a wonderful daddy and plays with the kids and loves on them every free second that he gets. He would much rather be at home spending time with us. It breaks his heart to leave the kids every night.

I've rambeled quite a bit so far. But that's the backstory. Now this weekend, Brogan was quite upset. He didn't want his daddy to go to the library Sunday morning. Kell tried playing with him as much as he could before he left. It just wasn't enough. Brogan cried and screamed at him not to leave. He even screamed "I'm sick of you leaving me!" ...ouch that one hurt Kell pretty bad. How does a 5 year old come up with that? It took all he had to go study that day. Brogan cried for his daddy for hours. No matter how much I tried to comfort him, it didn't help. Caitlyn's turn was yesterday. She sat at the dinner table crying and begging Kell not to go to the library. She kept saying over and over "Daddy please don't go, please don't go Daddy".

I have to keep reminding myself that this will all be worth it in the end. Kell's doing a great thing for our family.

My man playing with kidneys during school. He's on the right.

Yikes, sorry today's blog turned into a little rant. I'll try and post something happy tomorrow.