Remembering...

Daddy,
   I love you and miss you.  As this day comes and goes, I hope not to dwell on the events that happened on it 8 years ago, but rather to remember the words you once wrote to me,

Cadi,  
   I'll be with you in heaven- just in case you ever wonder!

I will always love you, 
Daddy 


I am so thankful to have those words to read and always remember. I don't think you knew how much meaning they would have and how much peace they would bring for years after you wrote them. Need that reminder today, and everyday!

Thinking of you today and always,
Cadi

True Blue

Breaking News: My hubby and I went on a date!!!! Yup a whole HOUR without kids, eating a meal at the same time, while its still hot, and could actually talk for a whole hour without being interrupted, feeding kids, or changing diapers?!?!
True story, this actually happened! First "date" since March! We had to deliver a bed to my Mom's, so while we were visiting, we asked if she'd stay with the kids for an hour and we went to a cute little restaurant for lunch.
We intended on going to a little deli, but walked past True Blue Mediterranean Cafe and it looked perfect (and smelled amazing). We had a latte, some really yummy gyros, and amazing hummus!




Perfect little hour together! Hopefully we can do it again soon!
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Recipe of the week: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bars

I love finding awesome Pinterest recipes right as I am walking out the door to the grocery store! Got to try This one right away!

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bars

Here's what you'll need:
Angel Food Cake Box mix
Cream cheese
Water
Pumpkin purée
Cinnamon

Here's what you get when you mix all that together and bake!




Pretty much that easy! These turned out fabulous! I maybe should have baked them a few minutes longer and not covered them so soon, they got a bit mushy. But overall, I'd recommend them! Perfect for a cold, rainy Fall day!
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"You gotta see this!"

A phrase that can be so innocent, unless it's coming from a 3 year old who has had the run of the house for 10 minutes while you were feeding the baby!

My cute, wonderful little 3 year old came running to me as I walked out of the baby's room yelling "Mommy, you gotta see this!!" I held my breath and many thoughts flashed through my head...nail polish, soap, flour, paint, what could she have done in 10 minutes?

This is what I just HAD to see...



Her counting bears organized PERFECTLY! :)

Why do I have a feeling my son will not be organizing counting bears in his free time?


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1st Day Jitters!

Yesterday was my baby girl's 1st Day of Preschool!! And 1st time away from Mommy when she wasn't at home or with family! She did great at the Meet and Greet we had last week, so I went in feeling pretty optimistic!

Of course she woke up really grumpy (I think we all did, it was a miserable REALLY rainy day!) and as I tried to get her excited about going to school she says "but Mommy, I never did this without you before!"

As if the day wasn't hard enough for me already, I almost broke down in tears thinking "it's been a really long time since I've done this without you either"

Despite BOTH of us having 1st day jitters, I knew I needed to stay positive for her! So we got dressed, packed her backpack, and tried to talk about all the great things about school and ignore the fact that Mommy wasn't going to stay there.

Although drop off in the pouring rain was a little chaotic, the 1st day went well, she walked right in and didnt even look back. I didn't know if I should be happy that she adjusted so easily or sad that she wasn't clinging to Mommy. But we made it through with no tears from either of us :) and she keeps asking to go back!

My baby girl is growing up :(



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Photo Book

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Recipe of the Week: Asian Turkey Lettuce Wraps

My Brother-in-law, Dr. Ben Lerner, along with other great chiropractors and nutritionists, has created some great healthy living books as well as cookbooks.  While we were visiting my sister and family in Florida we tasted one of the great recipes from one of their cookbooks, Maximized Living Nutrition Plan.
My sister had some leftover Asian Turkey Lettuce Wraps when we got to FL. And well after traveling with 2 kids from PA to FL, we were starving. I am not going to lie, I ate 5, yes 5, of these wraps when we got to my sister's house. So of course the first meal I made when we finally got home, you bet ya, Asian Turkey Lettuce Wraps.

Ingredients:



1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons organic almond butter
1 lb. ground turkey
1 tablespoon sesame oil (I used olive oil)
1 cup shiitake Mushroom caps, chopped
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 (8 oz.) can water chestnuts, drained and chopped
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons fresh ginger(I used 1 tablespoon ground ginger)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup green onions (optional) (I used 1/4 cup)
1 head lettuce, separated into leaves

Directions:
Cook Turkey in skillet with oil about 5 minutes, stirring until turkey crumbles and is no longer pink.  Add mushrooms, and next 5 ingredients.  Increase heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring constantly, 4 minutes.  Add green onions if desired, water, and almond butter and cook stirring constantly, 1 minute.  Spoon mixture evenly onto lettuce leaves; roll up.  Serve with extra soy sauce if desired. 

Tips: You can replace the lettuce with all natural whole wheat tortillas as well.

Source: Maximized Living Nutrition Plans By: Dr. Ben Lerner, Dr. B.J. Hardick, and Kimberly Roberto

Doesn't look fabulous, but if you could smell it you'd want to eat it! 

These, IMO, are AMAZING! We ate ours on flour tortillas with some spring mix on top.  But I have had them served in romaine lettuce and they are just as amazing that way! I could literally eat these for every meal of the day!




I actually bought everything to double the recipe and freeze 1/2 of it for later, leave it to me to open the second can of water chestnuts to realize they are bamboo shoots (cans look exactly the same). So hopefully I will get the second batch made tonight!

Scavenger Hunt

We've been staying with my mom for the past week since the hubby is back in FL for work. We've been having a great time visiting with family and relaxing a little.

Since the weather is GORGEOUS today we decided to take a little walk downtown and also go on a scavenger hunt!

Last minute plans led to a quick search on the Internet for a printable scavenger hunt page! Most of them I found were for long trips in the car, but I found one that worked out great for our little walk.




As you can see, I found this one at Momsminivan.com

We packed a snack, loaded up baby brother, got her a marker to fill out her paper, and we were off.

Made the short walk to CVS meaningful and kept her busy. We would never have been able to use this scavenger hunt at our house, we'd pretty much be searching for houses, trees, and maybe a bird there. I have to say I enjoyed walking in the busy little town today and REALLY miss being able to walk to the grocery store on a beautiful day!

If we ever use this again, I will probably add/remove a few things depending on where we are! Would love to make a color, letter, number hunt which would have been fun too!

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The Children's Place Sale!

We were so busy this weekend, I completely missed the 25% off email for The Children's Place. Just in case you did too, you can still get 20% off your order online and free shipping! Use the promo code SHOP20 for the discount. I am pretty sure the shipping is automatically deducted!


Hurry, promo code expires tomorrow, Monday, August 27th!


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Recipe of the Week: Peach-a-Berry Pie

This week was "peach week" at read and pick storytime. So after a long morning of peach picking with a 3 month old and an almost 3 year old (Fun!) we were left with this...




So I began a search for a good, but easy peach recipe. Found Peach-a-Berry Pie on www.allrecipes.com. Looked simple and yummy and had good reviews.

Not being much of a baker, especially pies, I bought some frozen pie crusts and fresh raspberries to get started.

That brought me to peeling and cutting all the peaches... After trying one I realized it was not like cutting and peeling apples and I had no clue what I was doing. (I have since googled the easy way to do this!) So I recruited some help, my wonderful husband to peel all the peaches while I fed baby boy, who conveniently decided he was hungry as I was starting this task! :)


He's the best! After letting the fruit dry out for a few minutes, you simply had to mix sugar, flour, and cinnamon and then toss the fruit in!



Pour this in the pie crust, put a few pieces of butter on top and cover with another pie crust!

Make sure to place the pie on a cooking sheet while baking, mine leaked like crazy(as you can see)!!!



Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it tastes amazing, especially with a little whipped cream on top!


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A Sunday of Pinterest!

Since I spend alot of time everyday breastfeeding, I usually "pin" while nursing! I have been pinning so many great things lately, but haven't had a whole lot of time to actually try any of it. So today was designated as a Pinterest Project day.

Of course after very little sleep, I got a late start and decided to do a quick shopping trip before starting any projects.  Headed out with my baby boy, while baby girl went grocery shopping with Daddy.  

First stop...Marshalls! Pretty uneventful trip, other than my baby screaming the whole time and of course parking right next to Kate Gosselin and her twins! Not sure why that was so exciting, but for me it was. I happen to love Kate! :)


Sent a very detailed shopping list with my husband so that I could prep some crock pot meals for dinners the next few days/weeks.  I found the 1 hour, 1 mess = 5 Crock Pot meals on Pinterest. I loved that the recipes had natural ingredients and didn't use a whole lot of canned soups and other packaged stuff.  And they all sounded fabulous! And now we have 5 meals ready to throw in the crock pot! I will admit it took me more than an hour to prep everything.  I didn't have everything real organized when I started and was also not familiar with the recipes, so I had to keep rereading everything to make sure it got into the right bag. I think it will be easier the next time around.  But I now have, Garlic Honey Chicken, Beef Burritos, Chicken Fajitas, Hawaiian Chicken, and Teriyaki Pork chops in the freezer!

While I was prepping these dinners, I decided it was time to clean out our top loading washer.  So using another Pinterest Find, I got to work on that.  Pretty much just use bleach and vinegar. Let the bleach soak in hot water for an hour, then run a cycle.  Then let the vinegar soak for an hour, and run a cycle. Not sure how great it worked, but it definitely needed to be cleaned!

In between all this work, I also found some time for a good laugh! Roller skating with a 3 year old! :)


And we also had fun dancing in a small summer shower that passed through!



And after dinner we made our last Pinterest find, Hawaiian Blizzard. I had some pineapple leftover from the dinner prep, so we created these for dessert:

They were pretty good, but of course I thought they could have been a little sweeter :)

Find me on Pinterest to find these recipes and all the other great ideas I have pinned!

Recipe of the week/month/year: Garlic Lime Fajitas

Ok, let's be honest, I have no idea when I posted my last recipe! But here is a REALLY good one (IMO).  After making these for the first time a few weeks ago, I have been craving them everyday! And they are healthy!

The recipe is a McCormick spice packet recipe, so it is really easy to make! If you don't want to buy the package, here's what you'll need!


Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken, cut into thin strips
1 green or red bell pepper ( I use 1/2 of each for more color)
1 medium onion (I used 1/2 of the large onion I had)
8 flour tortillas
1/4 lime juice
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. minced onions
3/4 tsp. cumin
3/4 tsp. oregano leaves
1/2 tsp. cilantro leaves
1/2 tsp. black pepper
Directions:
1. Mix juices, oil, all of the spices, and salt in small bowl.  Reserve 1/4 cup of the marinade. Place chicken in large resealable plastic bag.  Add remaining marinade; turn to coat well. Refrigerate 30 minutes or longer for extra flavor.
2. Cook and stir chicken in large heated skillet, 3 minutes or until lightly browned.  Remove from skillet.  Add pepper, onion, and reserved marinade.  Cook and stir 5 minutes or until tender.  Return chicken to skillet until heated through.




3.  Spoon chicken mixture into warmed tortillas.  Serve with assorted toppings if desired. We only used some shredded mozzarella, but cheddar would probably work great too!




These turn out amazing, at least we think so! And we have been using the leftovers to make quesadillas the next day!
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Playdoh Letter Tracing

We've been looking for some new activities to do on these hot summer days, so where better to look than Pinterest!
We found this fun/educational activity the other day and thought we'd try it out!




All you need is playdoh and some straws cut into approximately 1 inch pieces. Use your finger or some other tool to draw a letter in the playdoh and let your little one "trace" it by sticking the straws along the line.
****note: small playdoh pieces get stuck in the bottom of the straws, my idea was to blow them out, which worked fine. Your toddler will probably copy you (mine did) and try the same thing! However, since my daughter is used to sucking on a straw she did that instead which may lead to a not so tasty snack! :) It's non-toxic right???

Think we made it through 4 letters when she decided she wanted to do her own pictures! But it was a quick and easy activity that allowed me a few minutes to feed my baby boy!

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Transitions

When I was pregnant with my daughter, and for almost 2 years after she was born, I had made up my mind that I was only having 1 baby. Ok, so I did that superstitious "ring game" (where you hang a ring above your wrist and it tells you how many kids and what sex) the day before I found out I was pregnant, and it said "one girl". So, there it was written in stone, one and done! After the rough labor and delivery and a rough transition into Mommyhood, I really decided we were only having one! My daughter rarely slept, breastfeeding was difficult, we had just moved and really had no social/ mommy network close by, and my husband was working crazy hours at his new job! It was really a depressing/trying time for us.
However, close to my daughters 2nd birthday, once we had molded her into well-behaved toddler (haha) we started having second thoughts about another baby. We decided to "pull the goalie" and see what happens. And the rest is history! We have been blessed with the ability to get pregnant very easily and we were announcing our pregnancy by my daughters 2nd birthday.
I will be honest, I had terrible feelings about the pregnancy at first, "what have we done, life was finally calming down, finally had some sort of schedule after 2 years of chaos and now we are starting all over again!?!?" I spent 9 ( I guess 10) months bracing myself for another c-section, a 24/7 screaming baby, sore nipples, no sleep, and a cranky, attention deprived toddler.

Needless to say, I have been completely surprised at how easy the transition from Mommy of 1 to Mommy of 2 has gone. Yes, the first 2 weeks or so were a little difficult, but once we got through those it was smooth sailing (knock on wood). My daughter seems to be adjusting well to having her brother around, and this baby actually SLEEPS!!! He rarely cries, only if he gets really hungry, and the breastfeeding has been easier (after a tough patch in the beginning).

I'm pretty sure I barely left the house for the first almost 3 months of my daughter's life, at least not by myself. When my son was 6 weeks old, I was already lugging both kids to my daughters swim lessons EVERY morning, read and pick storytimes, the library, hour drives to the doctor and to visit my mom, and it has actually been pretty easy...well it's exhausting, but both kids have been really great, so far.

I attribute the easy transition mostly to having 2 really great kids that amaze me everyday, but also to a change in my mindset. With my daughter, I would almost panic when days got rough, screaming In the grocery store, poop/spit up flying everywhere in my house, baby not sleeping. Pretty sure I cried almost as much as my daughter sometimes! Now when I'm in those situations, although they aren't easy, I try to stay calm, "laugh it off", and remind myself they grow up to fast that I need to enjoy EVERY minute with them. 3 years ago when my baby pooped up her back and out very crevice of her diaper I could probably be seen frantically trying to change her and get her in the bath. Now the baby poops up his back and around the corner, and my toddler and I have a good laugh about it, clean him up and move on with our day.

It's amazing how things change with your second child! So thankful for such an easy transition so far and my 2 beautiful happy babies!
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40% off at Educational Insights

Educational Insights makers of The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game and Hot Dots, is having a great sale! Use the Promo Code 40JULY12 to save 40% already discounted prices! Check out all their great products! And check out the links for more info on some of our favorites! But hurry sale ends today!

4th of July Fun!

Yesterday was our annual 4th of July bash! It is the one time a year that we entertain! (ok we entertain a few other times throughout the year, but not as big as the 4th).  Although the weather (105 degrees and thunderstorms) was not really in our favor, we still had a great time celebrating inside with friends and family! Thanks to everyone who came out for some food, drinks, and fun! 

My little family! Don't mind baby girl's crazy bouncey house hair! 

So much food! 

We had so much great food, and a huge thanks to everyone who pitched in to help! Here are links to some of the recipes for desserts and other treats from the picnic! 

White Strawberry-lemon Sangria (not pictured, but very yummy...Don't recommend using Fresca)

Berry Trifle (shown above, but not nearly as pretty as the one pictured with the recipe..sigh)

Strawberry Icebox Cake (shown above, Thanks Olivia for making this awesome dessert!)

Zesty Slow Cooker Chicken Barbecue (made with fresh, not frozen chicken) 

"Free" baby stuff!

Need a nursing cover, carseat canopy, or sling? Or maybe a gift for an expectant mommy! Get them for free (just pay shipping) from these sites:

Carseat canopy

Note: only the canopy is free, but I ordered the whole set for a discounted price

Udder Covers

Seven everyday slings


Pick a website and Click "shop now" at the top.
Use Promo Code FAMILY2012 or FAMILYBUMP at checkout

I intended to only order the carseat canopy, of course they sucked me in with their "free" offers after each purchase! I'll let you know what I think of each one when they arrive! Happy shopping!


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Recipe of the week: Energy Bites

Since having our baby boy, I have been trying to cut dairy and gluten out of my diet as much as I can to help with our breastfeeding.  I never realized how many snacks and meals I eat that have dairy and gluten in them until I did this.  Pretty much everything I had been eating was either dairy or gluten.

So of course I decided to browse through Pinterest for some healthy snacks without dairy or gluten and found the recipe for these no-bake energy bites.

Ingredients:

1 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup peanut butter (or other nut butter of your choice)

1/3 cup honey

1 cup coconut flakes

1/2 cup ground flaxseed

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

1 tsp vanilla

*Makes 18-20 bites*

Just mix all the ingredients together, put in the fridge for 30 minutes, then roll them into small balls. Store in the fridge and you can refrigerate them for up to 1 week.  

I have made these several times over the past few weeks and they are slightly addicting! Probably not going to help me much with the weight loss, but they are yummy! 

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Happy Father's Day to all the awesome Daddy's out there!
Happy Father's Day to my hubby who is such an awesome Daddy to our beautiful babies! Thanks for all your hard work and everything you do for our family!

And Happy Father's Day to my Daddy in Heaven! Here is how I remember my Daddy most....

My Birthday Party, always made sure that everyone had a great time!  

Camping vacation

Always having fun! 

Always smiling

So I will smile today watching my babies make memories with their Daddy and because of all the awesome memories I have with my Daddy!  I wish I was able to share so much more in life with him, but I know he is smiling down and watching over us everyday!

Closet cleanout

Thanks to my sleepy babies, I had 2 hours of free time today! They are rarely asleep at the same time, so when I finally got them to sleep, I tried to take advantage of the time!

Although I would have really loved a nap, my closet was in desperate need of a cleanout and some organization! Still had all my maternity clothes thrown all over the place and I was really ready to see those disappear! (at least for now ;) )

2 hours later...



I was finally able to part with ALOT of clothing! (even a pair of eeyore pj pants i had from 8th grade, haha, guess I decided with baby # 2 it was finally time to "grow up")

And none of this is maternity! That's in a whole different pile in our guest room!

Anyone have suggestions for donating or selling any of this? Some is pretty old, but I still have some things with tags on them?!? eBay, garage sale, Goodwill??

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