To all my fellow healthy peeps...

I came across this recipe from the Sneaky Chef and had been wanting to try it for some time. It's called Easy Stove top lasagna. Right now I am very interested in pureeing vegetables or fruits and throwing it in a dish. I think it's a great way to eat vegetables. Not only am I doing this for my husband and kids but for myself. There are a lot of veggies I don't like and I tend to get very bored with the same options each night. So I have no problem with grinding up veggies and "hiding" them in a dish.

This particular recipe called for peas, spinnach and broccoli. I did all of them but also added cauliflower as well. So I pureed them in my tiny mixer-which doesn't work the best but it does get the job done.

After pureeing the veggies I added some tomatoe paste to make it brown and then added that to my ground turkey. Then you are to layer the noodles over the meat and then add the sauce and let cook for 30 min.

Once it's done then you add the cheese. I thought it turned out well and my husband had no idea that there were veggies hidden in the lasagna. (I never told him hehe) Over all I thought it tasted good. I like my lasagna to have more sauce so next time I may add more and it was also missing ricotta cheese which I think gives it a little more flavor but for being "easy" this recipe was great.

Can we say, "pee-pee"?

I have been holding back on potty training Ethan because to be honest..I have no desire to teach him yet lol. Call me lazy or just too busy, either way I am planning on waiting. He's been showing some signs that he could be ready but not all of them. We had bought him a potty a while back just so he could play with it and get used to it. I ended up putting it away for about a month b/c he just really wasn't showing any interest in it. Once I brought it back out he's been sitting, playing, and noticing it more. One day I just asked him if he wanted to sit on the potty so we took his diaper down and he just sat. He laughed the whole time but did nothing. So like I said I haven't really been enforcing it at all and just figured he'll let me know when he's ready.
Well I had done some reading and heard that some parents' kids poop at regular times and they would just sit their toddler on the toilet and get them to poo in the potty. Ethan doesn't have a regular cycle but I do usually know when he has to "poo". He likes to hide! So he was getting behind the couch today and I just thought maybe I'd try it. So I quickly grabbed him and placed him on the toilet to see if he'd poop. The boy just giggled the whole time so I gave up and put him on his potty. I walked away to give him privacy and all of a sudden I heard the potty song playing! The only way for it to go off is if pee or poop touches the sensors at the bottom of the potty. I quickly got really excited and grabbed the toilet paper to get ready to wipe him. Well he wasn't ready to get off yet so I just assumed he was still going. After about 3 min he finally got up and when I looked in the potty, there was no poop..but pee pee!! I was so excited for him! He just looked at me like whats the big deal? haha I was trying to act out of the ordinary so he'd want to do it again so we'll see if it worked. Anyway, I think his favorite part was watching me poor it in the toilet and letting him flush it away.
So that's our 1st potty experience. Am I going to start potty training him now? Probably not. I think I may just do this method at least once a day and see if he'll show interest in it. I'm going to try and not stress myself out over potty training b/c it'll happen eventually.

Raleigh Visit

For the past few days I have been in Raleigh staying with my parents. Ish had a business trip in Las Vegas and didn't want to be by my lonesome especially since we got so much snow. So I packed my bags and headed to NC where it has not snowed yet!
Whenever I come to visit it's a little challenging to keep Ethan occupied. He has plenty of toys here but he seems to get bored much quicker than when he's at home. So you can imagine the challenges that come along with that. Ethan tends to want to eat and drink all the time when he's bored so he's constantly asking me for juice and when I say no the meltdown starts.
Well on Monday I decided to take the boys to the mall so that they could play in their play area. I just love having this option for kids. I really wish our mall was that cool. He played for a while and then we had lunch at Mcdonalds. He had so much fun running around in the play area. I love to watch him interact with other kids because he tends to gravitate to the older children. He'll just walk right up to them and start babbling something. It's the cutest thing. I'm sure the older kids wonder why this little boy is following them around but I think it's cute.
Well today's adventure was taking him to Monkey Joes. It's a huge play area with bouncy houses that consists of slides, climbing, jumping, etc. He had a blast trying to keep up with the big kids. It was exhausting for me because I had to hold Jayden most of the time. There were many times that Ethan couldnt climb the bigger steps to get to the slides and I would have to asist him. Thankfully I had a friend there to watch Jayden so that I could do this with Ethan a few times. There was one bouncy area that I was able to go in with both boys and let them roam free until the bigger kids came in and took over. This was my resting spot. I was so exhausted when it was all over. I will definitely go again but will probably wait until Jayden can walk and bring Ishmael with me.
Me and the boys have had a great time visiting my family and have enjoyed all the great amentities that Raleigh has to offer!
We plan on leaving in a couple of days if the weather cooperates!

A snowed in weekend

Saturday morning we woke up with 10in of snow covering the ground and it continued to come down all day. Because the wind was blowing the snow like a blizzard, I had no desire to go outside just yet. So I spent most of my day doing some cleaning and baking. And of course tending to the boys. Well whenver it snows Ish always makes up some excuse so he can go out and drive in it. He loves being able to use his 4wheel drive. Well this time his excuse was to go get some lunch for us and thought he'd take Ethan with him. I had no complaints there so I got to take a long shower (which I never get to do anymore) and Jayden got a good long nap with no interruptions.

After lunch I got the itch to bake some chocolate cookies. For some reason whenever it snows I always want to bake somekind of sweets. Ish likes it when I get in these moods b/c I hardly ever have 'goodies" in the house. My goal was to make homemade oreos and I was pretty excited about them.

Homemade oreos

So Saturday was definitely just a day that we lounged around and had plenty of family time. Ish and I attempted to finish the night by watching a movie together but we both fell asleep halfway through.

Well Sunday started off as another lazy day. I got to take 2 naps! It was so wonderful! When me and the boys woke up from our afternoon nap we decided to join Ish for some sledding. We got the boys all bundled up and headed out for the snow. We met up with some friends and had a great time going down the hill. Ethan's 1st time consisted of us all riding together on a sled and then we hit a bump and went in the air and landed hard on our bottoms. I think that scared him a little because that ended with him crying. Ish preceeded to go down with him again and he wasn't liking it but he took him down anyways. We thought he just needed some time to warm up to it. Well he did a lot of standing around and didn't want to even touch the snow. We're hoping he'll get more into it when he gets older but for now he had no interest. We were able to borrow a large tube to go sledding on and we made Ethan go down with us. He wasn't not happy that he was getting ready to go down this huge hill but after it was all over he was so excited.

Look at that face of his!

Overall we had a great time. I do wish that Ethan had been more excited about the snow but it'll come with time I'm sure. After we wore ourselves out from sledding we grabbed some KFC to go and headed home. What a great day and weekend we had being snowed in!

Sleepy baby

Just wanted to fill you in on our progress with getting Jayden sleeping through the night. We did start it a couple of weeks ago and didn't even get passed the 1st night. He cried for a solid hour with me checking on him every 5 min and he never calmed down. I wasn't sure how long he was supposed to cry before he would fall asleep so I just gave in and nursed him. And of course he went right to sleep and woke up again in 4 hrs. I waited 1o min before I went in the room and just layed in his room to see if he would calm down. I went back and forth from my room to his w/i an hr's time and he just wouldn't have it. So once again I gave in. The next day I was a little distraught from hearing Jayden scream and from also giving into his cries. I was so determined that I wanted him sleeping through the night that I was willing to do whatever it took to get him passed this. I just wasn't really prepared for him to cry that much. With Ethan it was 3o min tops and we had it perfected within 2 days. So needless to say I haven't tried this method in a couple of weeks.
When I went in for his 9 month check up I asked the doctor's opinion just to get reassurance and he said it could take up to 3 hrs of him crying like that. Once I get passed that point it will get better. Ugh it's soo hard. Especially when it's 2 am. But he also said that they usually stop after 2 hrs and it will get easier each time you do it.
So after reviewing the information on how to sleep train your child, I realized that it will prob be better for my husband to do more then me. One reason is that Jayden knows that Ish can't give him milk so maybe he won't cry as long. We'll see. I think we're going to try it again this weekend. It's definitely easier said then done. I just continue to pray for strength each time. The thing is, not only is it satisfying for me to get 8hrs of uninterrupted sleep again but it's also better for him. Babies need their sleep. And they always act better when they get the rest they need. So I'll try and keep you posted on our progress!! Pray for us!

A Bunko night!

A couple of months ago a couple of my friends and I had gotten together and started discussing about starting a Bunko group. For those of you who don't know what the game Bunko is, it's basically a dice game that involves 12 players, 3 tables, score cards and prizes. There are actually a lot of rules to this game and can tend to get a little overwhelming so we decided to tweak the rules a little just to make it more simpler. For instance the goal is to roll 3 1's which is Bunko. But if you get 2 of a kind out of the 3 dice then that is considered 1 pt. and you can continue to roll if you keep getting pts. If you got nothing, then just pass it to the next player. It goes pretty fast since you just continue roll over and over. Once someone actually gets Bunko then that round is over or if someone reaches 21pts 1st. There are 3 rounds and whoever at that table wins the most games then they move to the next table. Because it's a big group and we're split up in 4's, it's a way to kindof talk to everyone. I know it may sound confusing but it really is a lot of fun. So at the end of the game we get hand out the prizes. We decided to change the rules on this and just have each girl bring a $10 gift relating to the theme whatever the host chooses. Oh yeh I forgot to mention that each girl has to host it at their house. Well, this month it was my turn to host and the theme for gifts that I chose were scarves. We only get together once a month to play so needless to say we all look really forward to a much needed girl night.

Anyway, all the girls brought some really cute scarves and so we were all really excited about choosing our prize. The way we choose is whoever won the most bunko's, games, host, etc.

Here's a few pics of our fun night!

The display of our cute scarves that we all brought!

Me and my new scarf!

The Bunko group!

Thoughts on the flood

So Ish and I received a one year Bible for Christmas and so we've decided that we are going to try and read through the entire Bible in a year. It seems easy enough but it's actually really hard b/c I've personally already have struggled with being too tired to read one day and so it's very easy to get behind. With that said, I was reading the passage in Genesis about Noah and the flood. I have heard this story over and over as a kid and have read it many times but last night as I was reading something occured to me. I found it interesting that God decided to flood the earth because of the sin and wickedness of the world. It's just strange to think of how much sin there really was from when He created the world until Noah's day. Was it as bad as it is today? It's just bizarre to think that it had to be really bad for God to get so angry and destroy all that he had created. Gen 6:5-7 says that God regretted that He had made man on the earth and had grief in his heart. I never knew that God regretted creating man. Imagine how he must feel toward man today.
On a sidenote, Ish and I were watching the history chanel about a month ago and this woman was in this desert that had fossils of whales. Also the sand was formed like it had been under the water and she mentioned that as well. Anway, after reading the story of the flood it occured to me that the desert she was at and all the fossils she found was probably from the flood. Because God flood the whole earth the Bible said it took like 7 months for the water to go down. Imagine all the sea creatures that were in the flood that were probably spread all over the place and when the waters went down, some of them died b/c they weren't in the ocean. Anyway, that's my thought and not sure if it's correct but it definitely got me thinking. It also got me excited to keep reading more of God's word. I'm definitely looking forward to learning more things from scripture that I've read many times growing up. It's amazing what God will teach you.
well just thought I'd share my thoughts and would love to know your thoughts on this if you got any!