James's 2nd Birthday

The real title of this post should be PROCRASTINATION. I've put off blogging about our trip to Utah and James birthday for over two weeks. There's good and bad to having a fantastic camera (blame my fantastic husband!), the bad being THOUSANDS of pictures to sort through. A third of them aren't very good, a third of them are great, and the last third are too cute to delete, even though they are partially blurry or pretty much duplicates of the "great" ones. I try to only pick the best of the best for my blog because blogger is SO SLOW at uploading pictures. I started going through the pictures and found myself becoming more and more discouraged. Halfway through (with 40+ pictures tagged to upload) I gave up. Facebook is so much faster at downloading multiple photos, so you'll have to go HERE if you haven't already seen how our time in Utah went. Here's a quick overview of our visit:
Played with Gramma & Grampa's goaties (2 mama and 5 baby Nigerian Dwarf goats)

Visited the Bountiful Temple

Celebrated James turning two

Hiked up Centerville Canyon

It was lots of fun to go, and so nice to have 4 extra people to entertain and love on the kids. They LOVED spending time with Gramma, Grampa, Aunt Lynsey, Uncle Matt, Nana, and Papa!

6/18 Menu Plan

Since Mike is actually going to be home this week (as opposed to Denver, or Houston, or Ohio, or wherever it is that he goes to avoid me and the kids provide for our family) I better make a menu. He is still going strong with Paleo, so I really have to plan ahead. The things I can cook without thinking all have pasta in them. Cooking meat feels like a foreign language to me. And since he's off work Friday and Saturday, I have chosen lunches, too. He will cook them if I'm having a bad nausea day, so I've got that going for me. Really it's putting together the menu that's hard; the prep and cooking isn't nearly as difficult. And now that I've whined and made you all not like me, here's what I'm planning for the week:

Mon: Bulgogi
Tues: Polynesian Chicken Salad
Wed: Salmon with Tomato Salsa
Thurs: Caveman Pie
Fri (lunch): Curried Tuna Salad (I know, it's a recipe for chicken salad, I'm swapping for tuna)
Fri (dinner): Indian Meatballs
Sat (lunch): Mediterranean Marinated Steak
Sat (dinner): Tilapia with Mustard Chive Sauce
Sun (lunch): Creamy Chicken Tomato Soup
*usually Sunday evening is "Leftover night", so whatever is left in the fridge is fair game
Mon: Cilantro Lime Chicken

Birthday/Baby-moon, B&B's, and Fine Cuisine

For Mike's 30th birthday I surprised him with a second honeymoon. Our "real" honeymoon was one night at a B&B just north of Salt Lake because we were married on a Saturday and had to be back to work and school the next Monday, which always felt like a cop-out when I'd hear stories of friends going away for a week to some tropical beach. I was so happy that he was able to take the time off from work for us to spend 3 days just being together.

We started out our child-free time by eating at Fuji Sushi in Centerville. Mike got their Diet Noruko (totally paleo!) and I had them custom make me a roll that I could have - smoked salmon, mango, and cream cheese rolled in nori and shredded coconut. Mmm - I've never been a salmon fan (or a sushi fan) but I dream about this roll.

Diet Noruko - tuna, salmon, crab, fish egg, avocado, wrapped in cucumber

We call this the Snow Mountain :)

 We stayed at the Inn on the Hill for two nights. It was fantastic! We stayed in the Saltair room the first night and the Snow Canyon room the second. Both rooms were fantastic, but the view from the first room was impressive. It was on the second floor and jutted out so you could see all the way down State Street.

Breakfast was superb (we had a delicious Asparagus, Bacon, and Cherry Tomato Strata that I want to recreate) and I would recommend the Inn to anyone. Dinner that first night was at The Roof (we'd both heard lots about it but had never been there) and it lived up to our expectation. We both left the restaurant totally stuffed, so much so that the next day we were barely hungry enough to eat out! But we soldiered on and went to lunch the next day at P.F. Chang's - where we really weren't impressed with the food or the service, so I didn't bother to take any pictures of the food. But here are before and after shots of us:

Ready for a nap

We wandered down to the Gateway theater to watch Hunger Games (we were two of maybe ten people in the whole theater and got prime seating!) which made me want to read the books all over again. For dinner we hit up Macaroni Grill because I was craving some pasta. Funny thing, though, once we got there, we didn't order any pasta. We were still so satiated from the dinner at The Roof the night before that we ended up ordering drinks (Mike's virgito and a ginger-lemonade spritzer thing for me) and a few appetizers (baked prosciutto and mozzarella, bruschetta) and a caprese salad (SO GOOD!!!).

And so ended our birthday/babymoon/2nd honeymoon. It was such a fantastic weekend, and so relaxing. I really enjoyed being able to reconnect and just be with Mike. I'm so happy I married him!

James Favorite Beverage

This post again showcases why I'm a great mom. James's favorite dipping sauce used to be ketchup. Everything was dipped into it. Is there a kid out there that doesn't go through this phase? Then Lily introduced him to HER favorite dipping sauce, ranch dressing. He has loved it more than I ever imagined possible. After lunch a few weeks ago I caught him looking like this:

No, that's not a milk mustache, he actually DRANK the ranch dressing out of the cup I had poured it into. I am the epitome of nutritious living, eh?

Poop and Why I'm a Good Mom

Yes, really, poop. If you don't want to read about my daughter's bowel, skip this post.

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with poop.

A little background: Lily has a hard time pooping. Always has. When she started potty-training a year or so ago, she refused to poop in the potty, then started refusing to poop at all. So we resorted to bribing rewarding her for "listening to her body" and allowing herself to poop, whether it was in the diaper or the toilet. It took a year of daily laxatives to get her to FINALLY poop on the potty. It's been a few months, but we will still give her a treat if she asks for one after pooping.

Tonight Mike brought home donuts from work. Halfway through eating her donut, Lily got up to go poop. When she came back she asked for a treat. I told her that the donut was a treat. She disagreed, seeing how she was eating it before poop ever entered the picture. So I told her she could have a treat after she finished the donut - I, of course, assuming she would be full of donut and not have room for a treat. With one swift motion, she unhinged her jaw and shoved the donut down her throat: "Treat, please". Guess she earned those four pretzel M&M's.

Sweetest Dreams

Usually when the kids go to bed, I'm pretty strict about "No Noise, No Getting Out Of Bed". The kids get a warning, and then I shut their door. Neither of them like that. Well, last week Mike was out of town and I was just tired of being the "bad guy" all the time. I started putting them to bed and then going to my room and shutting the door. One night I went in to check on them and Lily had climbed out of her bed and into James's and they had fallen asleep together. It melted my heart.

Since then, Lily has begged for "sleep-overs". That used to mean she wanted Mike or me to sleep on her floor (and Mike has been a great sport and camped out with them a few times), but now it means she wants to curl up with James. I've given in once, figuring we can let it be a little treat whenever the kids don't need to get a good night's sleep. James still rolls around so much that he ends up getting kicked in the face during the middle of the night. I sure love my babies, and I'm so thrilled that they love each other!!

Garden Time

A couple weeks ago we transplanted several of our veggie plants outside. I checked the weather every day and any time the "low temperature for the day" threatened to be below 36 degrees, I covered the beds to protect our little seedlings. This last week it has been so warm and sunny, so I've left the cover off and some of our little plants are thriving! Others, like our cucumber and onions, are not doing so well. Oh well, live and learn. The radishes, mixed in with our lettuce, were seeds planted straight into the bed. The broccoli were starts we got from Native Roots (love them!). The basil must have been planted last year, because it came back with a vengeance! Everything else we started inside from seed.

Onion - this is the best looking out of 15 transplants

Carrots

Top left: lettuce & radishes, zucchini in the middle, corn on bottom

Broccoli

Sad, sad cucumbers

Peas

Strawberries

Basil

Lily modeling next to our first red strawberry!

She's such a cute poser - don't know where she gets it from :)