Good Food!

I told Pat to choose his birthday cake and handed him my favorite baking cookbook. He then gave me a choice of two and I picked this one! I'm well aware that homemade cakes don't usually taste as good as the boxed kind but I think this one was just as good! I opted not to make the buttercream frosting that was supposed to go with it though and I don't think it mattered.

I love food with lemon in it (like lemon pasta!) so when I saw a picture of this lasagna I really wanted to try it. Luckily, Pat pretended that he thought it looked good too so I made it a few days ago. It was so good and I'm so glad I made it! Pat liked it too but Owen was scared of it... It took forever to make though and I had to use three different sauce pans just to prepare the ingredients that went in to it. I probably won't be able to make it very often!

History!

Pat took a day off from work on Monday so we headed to the History Museum! They had two new exhibits where we spent most of our time. My favorite part was watching the naked mole rats. Apparently there was some sort of turf war that resulted in the aggressor being separated from the rest. Then the queen had a litter and ate all of them so everyone got mad and ate her and then two other females started fighting it out over who got to be queen. Crazy. They were just sleeping and running around when we were there.

We learned that Owen is extremely good at balancing. You had to stand on this circle and see how long you could balance without tilting too far. If you tilted too far it would stop counting but Owen got bored with standing there before that happened so we'll never know how long he would have lasted!

He also dressed up like a chicken but not long enough for me to get a good picture.

I also made them pose in this shell thingy.

Pat's Birthday!

Pat's Birthday Week Extravaganza is over but we had a lot of fun celebrating! We surprised him a few times throughout the week. I collected birthday greetings/memories/cards/photographs from family and friends and gave them all to Pat on his birthday. I think he was really touched and I didn't realize it until the moment I gave them all to him how touched I was because I got a little weepy...Anyway, thanks to everyone who did something! We also bought some giant number balloons and took them to his work earlier in the week. He didn't notice us for a minute and when we finally said something he was so shocked that he pretended not to be shocked and acted like it was totally normal for us to be standing there! We put them in our window at home so everyone driving by could see them, if you look closely you can see Pat peeking out through the zero! We also got to spend some time with Pat's family! We went out for a great lunch and had some yummy cake.

30!

Happy Birthday Pat!

Funny Girl

Paige pulls this joke on me at almost every meal.

Oatmeal Bars

Paige doesn't often get to try new recipes when I make them but this one was just for her! I kept putting bits of oatmeal bar on her tray so I could take a picture of her eating them but by the time I would pick up the camera they were mostly gone! Needless to say, she loved the bars. Since I knew they were for her I mostly cut out what little sugar is in the recipe so no one else really likes them!

Tapioca Pudding

Did you know there's not really a good way to take a picture of pudding? Pat was trying to request tapioca pudding as his "birthday cake" and I wasn't having it. So instead I made it as part of his birthday week celebration (he'll be 30 on Sunday!). I think he liked it (Paige too)! I'm not the biggest fan of tapioca and Owen refused to try it even though I kept repeating, "Owen, it's pudding!" Oh well. I didn't want to mess with the recipe too much since I didn't know what I was doing but I did use a vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract and I think it made a big difference.

How to Nap

Stuffed animals are so overrated. Paige would much rather snuggle with a pouch of babyfood when she sleeps.

St. Patrick's Day

You already saw what we ate but here's what we did.
The kids had fun making leprechaun beards!

The kids did not have fun wearing the leprechaun beards...
Owen got to hold baby Vinny! So exciting!


We played outside three times! When Pat got home from work and asked Owen if he got to go oustide he said, "Not so much..." What?!


Paige was happily stuck on the driveway. She kept leaning forward to crawl away but would sit back every time her hand touched the driveway!

Shepherd's Pie

We're not too fond of Corned Beef and Cabbage here but still wanted to have something Irish for St. Patrick's Day. We made this Shepherd's Pie and it was really really good. I thought the mashed potatoes should have been much thicker but if I had read the online reviews of the recipe I guess I would have known not to add as much milk as the recipe said...



Owen taught Pat that you need to blow on your food so it's not too hot. They also had green milk but Owen didn't like it.

Classic.

It's funny. Every time.

Hello!

I haven't been posting very regularly and it's mostly because I'm a bit lazy. I'll work on that. Later. One of my favorite things is when Owen sits down by the bookshelf and starts "reading." This generally happens a few times a week. He pulls book after book down and pages through them, usually for a pretty significant amount of time. It's the only time I will clean up his mess without making him help because I don't want him to ever feel discouraged from getting cozy with some books. Paige is getting into it too. She is an overachiever and likes to read her books upside-down.

Experiment 2!

I liked this experiment so much that I had to go do one myself so I wouldn't steal the one I had put together for Owen. Here's what you do: put some milk in a dish, put different colored drops of food coloring in the middle, put some dish soap on a Q-tip and touch it to the colors to see what happens (if you want to find out for yourself don't look at the pictures I put up yet!). I found this experiment here which led me to here. We have more experimenting in our future since we had so much fun with this one!

See? Fun.

The dish soap repels the food coloring so it disperses around the plate. Once you touch all the colors a few times they start to mix. I'm pretty sure Owen would have done this all day if I hadn't been concerned about using up all our milk!

Experiments!

I ran across some fun "experiments" the other day and decided to try a couple with Owen yesterday. They were a huge hit! He was super excited and, I think, felt really important to be conducting experiments (now that he knows what they are). The first one we did (I made this one up) was just lots of combinations of oil, water and food coloring. He was surprised to find they didn't mix and also what happens with the food coloring when you drip it on the oil versus dripping it into the water. I'll put up my favorite experiment tomorrow!

Exercise!

Time to start getting in shape for soccer season.

Paige!

Paige is very close to being one but sometimes she still seems very little...like in this picture.

Finished!

We had to paint and assemble shelves before we could officially declare the closet finished and we accomplished that today!

Here is the sad, frumpy "before" shot (after I took out the the clothes that were hanging up). Let's pretend that I made my closet all messy just for effect. Notice the two closet rods. If you put clothes on the first rod, you can't get to the second rod or the back shelves. It was very poor planning.


Ta-da! Fancy new closet! You don't have to dodge clothes to reach things! Crazy concept!


It looked especially nice when it was empty.


Pat was very pleased.

Closet

Not much has been happening around here, so over the weekend we finally got motivated to do some work on my horrible closet. I don't really have a good "before" shot but here is a "during" shot of everyone but me hard at work:)