The Deal

We got the Pass of all Passes discount through City Deals. I have no idea how to access more deals. This was told to us, and we just clicked the link. (Sorry, I should have shared it right away.) 3 and under are free. Good luck.

Cotcha Date

We recently purchased the "Pass of all Passes" through a deal that got it for us for $20 eaches. So, I took Amy and Noel mini golfing. Here's Amy's first attempt on the first hole:

Go Ames! We had a good time, but Noel got tired and skipped the last three holes. Toward the end she was giving me her club and ball between each hole and lying down on a bench. She was tired.

The funniest part though was on the way home. Noel kept asking me to turn on the light (in the car). I told her I couldn't because I was driving. A little later, but not too much later, she asked "Daddy, can you stop?"
"Como?" (Huh?)
"Can you stop?"
"Parar que cosa?" (Stop what?)
"Can you stop?"
Not sure what she might need, I obliged and pulled over into an empty parking lot. Once stopped, I asked "Okay Noely, que necesitas?" (What do you need?)
"Can you turn the light on?"
I laughed, realizing that she wanted me to pull over just so I could turn the light on. I obliged.
Noel: "There! Now I can see my polka-dot pants!"

I laughed and laughed. We turned off the light, got back on the road, and headed home. That was what she wanted! To see her polka dot pants! Lol. Funny, silly, cutie, wonderful Noel. Love you girls!!!!!

On Body Image

My cousin posted this on her blog. She is an inspiration to me about healthy living and a mentor about nutrition (I ask her a lot of questions to learn how to do what she does. I love her sentiments at the end the most.

http://karahealthyhabits.blogspot.com/2012/02/beauty-redefined.html

Our New Bed

Matt's parents very generously bought us a new bed for Christmas. It just came on Friday and we LOVE it. I smile whenever I walk into our room. I see it, and I'm happy that we were as picky as we were. We liked a certain bed frame with room for books and built in lights. SO EXCITED! We also wanted drawers under the bed for more storage. Here's the clincher - we wanted white. In the searching we couldn't find anything with all those features. But we found something like it - it had everything but the desired color. We ended up ordering it and asking them to refinish it white. And I am so glad we did. We are both very antsy now to get everything set up in our room (but we really haven't had time to do it.) We'll surely post pictures when that's done. THANK YOU for the bed!!!

We Were Naughty

Today at church Matt and I kept whispering to each other and giggling during the hymns. Naughty. We were joking about the hymns. Opening - You Can Make the Pathway Bright. There is a line in there that says "And your cares will all depart if there's sunshine in your heart today." While I like the idea of being sunny and cheerful and that making things better for you, I'm not so sure that your cares will all just up and leave. That's not even doctrinally sound. So I gave Matt a skeptical look at that line, and we both just found it funny. (Maybe you had to be there.)

Matt whispered to me about how people used to think that emotions were originated in the bowels so he kept replacing heart with bowels in the song. (I told you we were being naughty.)

So the intermediate hymn was Scatter Sunshine. I whispered about how we gathered up all that sunshine in us during the opening hymn and now are scattering it around to everyone. Matt told me that in Costa Rica people really don't understand the concept of first and second endings and so just sing that chorus straight through - which really doesn't make the song make as much sense in my opinion. I responded by telling him that he has told me that every time we have sung this hymn. So we laughed some more.

I saw a mother and teenage daughter laughing about something during one of the hymns too. I wonder what joke they were sharing. The husband/ father of that family was the one conducting the meeting and afterwards shared that growing up on a dairy farm his dad used to always sing the chorus of "Scatter Sunshine" when they were scattering cow manure. Lovely.

Babysitting Opportunity

To the local stay-at-home moms who read my blog. (Franky, I think that's the majority of you.) My visiting teacher asked yesterday if I knew anyone who babysits for pay. She visits someone else who is in need of someone one day a week to watch her daughter (right around 1 year old I would estimate.) I know lots of you have done things like this before. (And I know a few of you who are probably not in need of anything extra right now. Nancy comes to mind. :) But if any of you are interested let me know.

While we are on the topic, Matt and I are almost always open to babysitting swapping. We started a swap last year and then fizzled. (Sorry, Heather, my bad. Having my parents live with us for four months greatly decreased the need for other babysitters.)

I have heard of or been a part of swaps, exchange co-op kinds of things and groups who take turns watching lots of kids one week so a few other weeks they get to go out while someone else watches all the kids. We'd be interested/ open to any of these. We try to go on dates often, but often finding a babysitter is the biggest deterrent to going.

I know many of you have family around who babysit for you and may not need this. I have a wonderful aunt in Orem and a sister in South Jordan who both help, but I can't ask them all the time. And we're not always in Salt Lake. I'm all about people doing this kind of thing ONLY if it would be beneficial to all involved. Let me know what you may be interested in! And please know I am happy to babysit when I can whether it's a swap set up or just an occasional thing for whatever reason. (But don't try calling me. My phone has been lost forever, and it's rather tempting to continue not having a phone. I like it a lot. If you really need to get ahold of me email or call Matt's phone.)

Some other pics

Here's some other pics from random things.

Amy & Noel with Cat in the Hat gear at Bishop Gardner's house. We decided to pay him a visit not long ago. It was fun to see him again. Amy "kind of" remembered him, but both warmed up to him quickly. Who's surprised! :)

Noel was so proud of having a pencil in her pocket.

Happy Eliza! Love this girl!

Glad "Yellow Parker" is only a doll. :)

Love my girls!

My Birthday

  For my birthday, well, there were various things. My b-day was on Tuesday, the 24th. We had planned to go to Pirate Island that night (somewhat similar to Chuck-e-Cheeses, but pirate themed). On Sunday, however, I heard the announcement for the first time that Stake Priesthood Meeting was that night at 7:30pm. Well, shot that down. So, we decided that we would go Monday night for Family Home Evening instead.
  But, Pirate Island was closed. Evidently they had a fire there a few months ago or something. Anyway, we went on over to Chuck-E-Cheeses.

 They have an activity that takes your picture and then you watch Chuck-E-Cheese (the mouse dude) draw it. Then it prints it out for you.

Me with Eliza 

Noel and Eliza (and me trying to hold her up so she was in the pic)

We had a good time.

The next day, the fam came to my work and we had lunch in the cafeteria. It was pleasant to have them there. I can't seem to find any pictures for it, but Bonnie brought a cake with 31 candles and all.  I also opened a present. Bonnie got me some speakers for Christmas because none of our computer speakers are very loud, but unfortunately the ones she got weren't any louder. Amy realized this and told Bonnie that she wanted to get me some new speakers. So observant of her! So that was my present, another set of speakers and yes, these one work very well!

As part of our standard birthday routine, we also go on an out-to-eat date. Well, with that Priesthood meeting that night and other things, we didn't get to that until last night (4-Feb). Kind of fun though because that's the 23rd anniversary of my baptism.

We went to a place called "La Jolla Groves" in the Riverwoods mall. I've wanted to try it out for a while and can I just say, AH YEAH YUMMY! It is my new favorite restaurant, hands down, bar none. It was amazing! Here are some pics:

Bont's salad wedge:

My Chicken Pesto pasta:

Bonnie's lemon chicken and potatoes

The food smelled so good it made us swoon and the taste upheld the marvelous smell. We also got a Kiwi lemonade, a Strawberry lemonade, and a Blackberry lemonade. All amazing, though we both liked the Blackberry best. I wish I had a picture of the Kiwi one - it was almost neon green color!

It was an all together pleasant evening. Before we headed home, we checked out a new "Provo Beach Resort" in the Riverwoods mall. I'd wanted to see what was in it for a while. They have some interesting "indoor surfing", a "miniature croquet" course (imagine mini golf but croquet instead), a ropes course, bowling, and lots of other fun stuff. But none of that is what would make me mention it here. What is really amazing is the ice cream shop inside it.... BLUE BELL!!!! And not just Vanilla! There are probably 12 to 16 different flavors of Blue Bell ice cream there!!!! In UTAH!!!! W00t!

... if you don't know what Blue Bell ice cream is, just ask anyone you know who has ever lived in Texas and they'll be happy to tell you all about it.

Speaking of Smoothies

You may not care but tonight we made an awesome smoothie with whatever we had on hand. Matt wanted me to write down what I put in it because it turned out yummy. A little sour - I kept saying it had a candy flavor.

Grape juice - I just finished off what we had which was kind of a lot as far as the juice part of smoothies go. And grape is kind of potent. Still, it wasn't overpowering

Frozen fruit blend - strawberry, peach, mango, pineapple

Frozen strawberries

2 red apples

half a grapefruit

1 lime

1 orange

ice

Yeah, it was yummy. Sorry if you didn't care. Thanks for indulging. Now we have a record of our smoothie.

On Snacks

I'm not going to title this until I see what it ends up being about.

Do you guys ever walk around composing blog posts in your head? I feel confident that my friend, Nancy does. She has good blog posts.

Anyway, here's the one I was working on in the kitchen while I was making myself some popcorn just now. Please know the views expressed are my opinions and do not have to be yours. Your opinions are welcome too. I just ask that no one compare yourself. I would read a blog post like this and judge the writer or myself. I try not to, but I do. I don't want to mess with anyone's mental health - just saying what I do and wondering what you do. Deal?

What do you all eat for snacks at your house? Do you snack? I am reading a book that suggests snacking isn't the way to go, but even if that's true I am not interested in that right now. I am a snacker, and being at home all day lends itself to snacking a lot. I try sometimes to resist, particularly the less healthy but... And Amy too. I swear the first thing she says when she comes out of quiet time is, "Can I have a snack?"

In my desire to eat healthier, I have been buying doritos a lot less. I am a sucker too for salty snacks. I love popcorn and chips. But I would love to love some other things that are really great for my body. When we were first married I wouldn't really buy fruit thinking that it was too expensive and not absolutely needed to feed our family three meals a day. (OK, now that just sounds bad - I'd buy doritos but not fruit? I really didn't buy doritos that much then either. Still, it's easy to splurge on things you LOVE and forget about the things that are great for you. Let's be honest.) Anyway, I buy fruit now. My girls LOVE oranges. I eat grapefruits at breakfast a lot these days. (I'm kind of in an oatmeal/ grapefruit/ toast phase with my breakfasts. I feel good about that.) We always eat a lot of apples and bananas and sometimes grapes and strawberries. We're crazy about fruit smoothies and have them at least every couple weeks - not regularly but not uncommon. We have fruit with meals and as snacks.

So fruit is a snack I feel great about. But somehow it's not what we will grab EVERYTIME we want a snack. I also often have tortilla chips - I just can't seem to give those up - and crackers on hand. Occasionally granola bars and fruit snacks. Those are pretty typical kids snacks (and Matt and I like them too.) Popcorn - especially at night - is not uncommon for me. You should see my parents. It's like daily for them. I feel ok about those.

But I need more ideas. I really like the idea of healthy foods, but they also have to be easily accessible and appealing. Otherwise we won't eat them, and what's the point of that. I'm not one to make funny faces out of food to try to get kids to eat them. So when I want kid friendly snacks, I want things kids will eat, not things kids will laugh at. Maybe that helps, but it's just not my thing. I would LOVE if my family would eat raw veggies - like celery or carrots for snacks, but that doesn't happen much. When we do eat veggies - which is not nearly as much as I think would be good - they usually are a part of a meal. Plenty of times Matt or I will want a snack and will go to the fridge and/or pantry, look in, and close the door with nothing in hand because we don't have ready appealing snacks on hand. This is due to factors I've already said - wanting healthy stuff, budget, lack of creativity.

So what do you all think? What do you eat for snacks? Please share if you want. (And don't be offended if I don't do what you suggest. We'll all do our own thing.)

So there was my stream of consciousness blog post. Thanks for reading.

Update

By last night, there was only some mess some places. So I achieved my goal. Some rooms were totally clean - like 2. That's something. Others had progress. That's something too.

Mark Your Calendar

  I called Ben & Jerry's today to learn when Free Cone Day would be for 2012. So, for those interested, it will be on Tuesday, April 3rd. Enjoy!

Conversation I just Had with Amy

Amy: Mom, can we go somewhere today.

Me: No.

Amy: Why?

Me: Look around the house. What do you see?

Amy: Mess.

Me: Where?

Amy: Everywhere.

Me: That's why we're not going anywhere.

She totally got what I was getting at. And she's right. There's mess EVERYWHERE. I hope by tonight there will only be mess some places. That's a good goal, right?

Mvelopes for FREE

   So you know how we've commented on here a few times about the budgeting tool we use called Mvelopes. You know, the one that's very ugly but very functional? Well, now you can use it for FREE! The free version is a bit limited, as one would expect, and I'm told it's ad supported as well, but hey, it's a good start! The limits I've been told is that you can only have 25 envelopes and 4 accounts. Now, 25 envelopes seems like quite a few, but we're using 58 and we just consolidated them a bit.
  But anyway, now that it's free, go try it out if you want!

UPDATE: Wow, just as I wrote this, they updated the UI. It is no longer "very ugly", but really quite nice! I'm impressed! They even have some graphical charts now. Not quite up to par with mint.com's graphs, but still nice. Sweet deal!

Eliza's Milestones - Sitting, Teething, Eating, etc.

Just for the sake of remembering -

Eliza learned to sit up in the last two weeks I would say. She's quickly getting better and better although I don't just leave her sitting on the floor yet.

I just noticed a tooth has broken through her bottom gums. The first one.

Today Eliza tried grain mix hot cereal for her first time. She loved it. If it hadn't have spilled all over the floor she probably would have eaten a lot more.