Work

We have been really lucky to have the job here in Bolivar.  Mike loves it, and the people he works with are awesome.  A and E love visiting Daddy at work.  A couple weeks ago, we decided to go visit Daddy.  It was Charlie's first time, and he loved it.

Here are some of his co-workers.  We went out to dinner at a place called the Metropolitan Grill in Springfield.  It was good, and it was fun to spend time with all of them.

Workin' at the Carwash

Mike and the kids washed the truck the other day.  He set up the sprinkler, and they had the best time. 

Emily was pretty diligent with her little sponge.  Charlie was very somber about the whole affair.  Andrew liked coming up with new ways to play in the sprinkler.  Emily didn't like getting pieces of wood and grass in her mouth.

He is getting so big.

She kept putting her finger in the water and then sucking it off.  She is seriously so cute.

Flawed but Fabulous

My friend Lisa lately said she would describe herself as "flawed but fabulous."  I LOVED that!  And man, have I been flawed this week.  It just hasn't been a stellar week for me.  I can't quite get anything done, I've felt defeated and frustrated, and there has been other things that just seem to keep getting in the way of me having a stress-free week.  But it's looking up.  So anyway, I haven't blogged in a while, so here are some pictures.

 

A hilarious picture of my newest nephew, Sawyer.  This picture made me laugh so hard.

My hair is doing something weird, and Charlie looks so serious here.

First time on a swing.  Guess what?  He liked it. :)

Emily would swing all day if she could.  But the real gem in this picture is Andrew in the corner.  Apparently he was feeling a bit lazy in his swinging.  Mike and I saw this and couldn't stop laughing.

There is no pain like having a Fischer Price Little People person shoved on your middle finger.  :)  But she was happy.  :)

Yep. She's Mine.

Growing up, my poor mother was in charge of washing my clothes.  I was the messiest kid ever.  I remember playing and looking down thinking, "How did all this mud get on me?"  And....I think I have gotten a little Mini Muddy Me.

 

A couple of days ago, the kids asked to go outside, and since it had only rained a little bit, and the puddles were very small, I consented.  I thought, "They can't get terribly messy in that little bit of water."

 

 Boy, was I wrong.

This picture cracks me up, first of all.  She looks like a muddy little puppy.

I checked on them, only to find my baby girl face down in a puddle licking the ground/puddle.  I made some sort of disgusted cry and she hopped up, rubbing her tummy and saying, "Mmmmm, num!  Want a gink, Mommy?"  No, Emily.  I think I'll pass on the drink.

The picture doesn't accurately show the amount of dirt all over her face and shirt.  I think I need to invest in Oxyclean stock.

Especially since this was just a couple of days before that.  Ah, well.

What's for Dinner?

Dinner lately has been (if I do say so myself) SO delicious lately.  For those who are interested, here's what we've had the last week or so.

 

Mike got a recipe for fettuccine alfredo from a lady at Filomena's restaurant in St. Louis.  It isn't the perfect alfredo, but definitely super tasty and ridiculously easy.

Filomena's Fettuccine Alfredo

 

1.  Cook 8 oz pasta.  Drain and return to pot.

2.  Add half a stick of butter until melted, then add 1/2 c. cream and 3/4 good grated parmesan cheese until all melted and smooth.

3.  Stir in one beaten egg yolk

 

I also added some roasted broccoli.  It was good, and both kids even ate it.  That makes it a miracle meal.

 

Mike and I like meat, but sparingly.  We eat probably 50/50 meat vs. non-meat meals and sometimes, especially during the summer, we like to go without meat more often.  Hence, my meatless-but-it-totally-tastes-like-it-has-meat-in-it spaghetti sauce. 

Karen's Meaty Non-Meaty Spaghetti Sauce

 

1.  In a large pot (I used my dutch oven heavy duty guy) cook 2 medium onions, 1 lb. baby bella mushrooms, zucchini and garlic in olive oil until soft and starting to brown (or you can let them brown- they'll be amazing either way). 

2.  Add 2 cans diced tomatoes and 2 cans tomato sauce.  Add your spices - I used salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and fresh basil.  Sorry, I don't have any measurements, I just kind of add some, and then adjust later if needed. 

3.There are two secrets to this sauce, though.  One is sugar.  If you add a couple tablespoons it will lessen the acidity.  I learned that from Mike's mom and grandma.  :)  The other secret is that I add some chopped up parmesan rinds.  Since it's harder than the rest of the block of cheese, it doesn't melt all the way, making it a really hearty sauce. 

4.After I cook it for at least 3 hours, I blend it up until my kids don't know there are vegetables in it.  And there you go.  It is really delicious.  

 

Mexican haystacks.  Um....yum.  It's basically a burrito on rice.  I've made it with white and brown rice, and both were good.  The idea for it came from Pinterest, and they used ground turkey, but we really like tofu, and it was cheaper, so I just chopped it up and added the taco seasoning to that.  I also made my own refried beans here.  I used the recipe for black bean hummus, but only used about 2 teaspoons or less of the vinegar and smashed the beans rather than blending them.  They were amazing.

 

 

And last but not least, open-faced egg salad sandwiches with bacon and avocado.  Yeah, that's it, but it was really tasty.  Andrew was NOT a fan of the egg salad, but Emmie went nuts and loved it.  So that was good.  :)  It's nice to have a kid who eats what we give her.

Eight is Great

Eight years ago, I married Michael Jacobs. 

 

Eight years of lots...

 

and lots...

and lots...

 

and lots...

 

and LOTS of laughs.

Happy Anniversary, honey!  I love you.



Feel Sorry For Me

We have an external hard drive where we back up all of our pictures.  Well, somehow we ended up backing up everything from Andrew's birth on, but nothing from the four years prior.

Yeah.

There are sometimes 3 or 4 copies of the same picture of Andrew eating peas, but we have lost all the pictures from the day after our wedding on. 

Our first Christmas together, vacations, our home life.  Everything we documented from August 2005 through June 2009.  And it's super sad.

I haven't cried like I thought I would, but I have sniffled a bit, and I definitely feel sorry for myself.  If anyone has pictures of us pre-kids that you want to share, that would be awesome. 

Yeah, so... feel sorry for me.

Six Months

Technically Charlie won't be 6 months old until Sunday, but I'm blogging now, so figured I would share some little gems with you.

 

First off, is this not the funniest picture ever?  You can see he is on his little knee.  Although not crawling yet, he is getting some good distance here lately.  And he is fast.  He mostly goes on his elbows and toes, but occasionally propels himself forward by rocking on his knees and elbows and then hurling himself forward.  Funny little guy.

Sweet little Charlie all dressed for church on Sunday.  He got his first tooth almost two weeks ago.  Since then he has been working on at least one more.  He's fussy, and yet the easiest baby to take care of usually.  He's just so cute.

 

 Although he doesn't take bottles all that often, he does sometimes and doesn't seem to have any problem with it.  Mike and I discovered last night that he can hold his own bottle.  I think he's growing up too fast!

Half a year old.  How is that possible?  I remember thinking how fun it would be to meet our tiny guy when I was still pregnant.  I had no idea how much I would love his company as time went on.  He's so sweet, so funny, and such a fun little guy.  He's such a snuggler, and loves to give kisses.  Luckily, I love that too. 

We love you, Charlie boy.

The Old Man is Snoring

Boy, oh boy has it been wet around here lately.  So much rain.  My kids don't seem to mind.  At all.

Andrew: "Yay!  Yahoo!  YES!"

Emily:  "Messy!  Yay!"

Not pictured:

1.  Andrew deciding he needed to go potty and getting buck naked running into the house.

2.  Emily lying facedown in the puddle, refusing to get out or go inside.

3.  Me carrying a struggling little girl into the house while she screams "I want my pubbles!  I want jump in pubbles!"

4.  A still naked Andrew sneaking outside to "wash" his towel in the puddle while I was distracted with the grass covered gal.

Attack!

Oh, hey, Mommy!  I love you so much, and I think you're.....you're....

 

 What is that?....it's shiny, and it's right there.

 

Oh, man.  I'm coming.  I HAVE to eat that.  *scooch scooch scooch*

 Victory. Is. Mine.

Roasted

One of our favorite dinners is a simple roasted vegetable meal.  The nice thing about it is that it is so versatile.  This time, we used carrots, onions, tomatoes, and zucchini (from our garden - yay).  All you need is a little olive oil, some spices, and then after it's cooked and caramelized how you want it, you just add parmesan.  We change it up by using pasta or couscous sometimes, but we usually make it with quinoa.  Mushrooms are incredible in there, as is squash, leeks, peppers, etc.
  It tastes amazing, is versatile, and is an easy leftover because you can eat it as is, or add it to spaghetti sauce, or in a quesadilla, etc.
  It's goooooooooood, and we like it.

Dinner

Are you looking for a good, new recipe for dinner?  We've tried out good new ones!

Savory Bean and Spinach Soup -

Didn't look like anything much, but it was so good!  Easy to make, too, since you make it in the crockpot.  It kind of reminded us of a fancier, heartier tomato soup.  Low calorie, meatless option.
http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/recipes/quick-recipes/dinner/seven-easy-slow-cooker-recipes/?page=2

Baked Falafels with Yogurt Cucumber Sauce-

Although the falafels were very dry, it was a really tasty meal.  It has you grill the romaine, which I didn't do, and we used tortillas instead of pita, because that's what we had.  It was really easy to make.  Andrew made most of the falafels, but wouldn't eat them.  :(  Emily did, though.  :)  Meatless option, although you could make this with grilled chicken instead of or including the falafels.
http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/main-courses/baked-falafels-with-cucumber-yogurt-sauce/

Zucchini Lasagna-

This was a really simple recipe, and although it didn't hold up like a lasagna should, the taste was incredible.  Next time, I will use less meat, but zucchini will definitely make its way into our lasagna in the future, and the simple sauce will make a comeback as well!!!
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2009/02/zucchini-lasagna.html

New Trick

While taking pictures of Charlie, Emmie decided to get in on the action.  Her latest thing is trying to figure out what is funny and what's not.  For instance, when she did this, she said, "Funny!  Mommy, funny?"

This is Charlie's newest trick.  He does it all the time, but he does it to make me laugh, too.  He'll get this mischevious look on his face, stick out his tongue, and then smile.  He does that until I crack up.  He's such a little sweetheart.

He also gives me a kiss on the cheek every morning when I get him out of his crib.  Yes, he is adorable.

My Old Rival

When I was a kid, my mom used to go grocery shopping with her friend Gail.  Those of us who were young enough not to be in school would go with them.  Having shopped with my own kids, I can only assume the tag team approach was so that if one mom wanted to leave her screaming, begging kids in the juice aisle due to their misbehavior, the other mom would be there to either a) back them up or b)talk them out of it.  Pure speculation.

 

Sometimes we would do other fun stuff with them like strawberry picking, or then there was the time we went to their house and I was too nervous to ask to go to the bathroom, so I peed my pants and didn't get out of the van, claiming I didn't want to play.  I liked going strawberry picking better.

 

I have a lot of good memories of riding around with the Parkers.  For some reason, anytime we were in our big blue van on an outing, we would invariably look out the window and yell that Mr. Peanut was chasing us, monocle, top hat, cane, and all.  In my crazy imagination, I would literally see him running alongside the road.  We would holler to our moms that they needed to step on it, because he was gaining on us.  My imagination was so good, in fact, that I kind of freaked myself out.  Imagine that.

 

Imagine my shock to see this little number in the magazine I was reading the other day.

If you can't read it, it says "Remember:  Life is a marathon, not a sprint.  And that I always win.  But second is still up for grabs.

 

...

 

This can only mean one thing, he's calling us out.  I also notice he has lost the cane.  Was it all a rouse to seem weak? (a la Johanna Mason for you Hunger Games fans out there)

 

I tried to look up this ad online and found THIS:

 

Jeanette, Aaron, Jared, and Audrey.

The time has come.

 

Also, how freaky was Mr. Peanut in his earliest days?

Was he a man, or a woman?  Or do walking/talking peanuts have gender?  We may never know.

 



I Seeeee You

It's really hard to get a picture of Charlie doing something other than just staring blankly at the camera.  As soon as he realizes it's there, all we get are those two baby blues.

Mike was reading a book to all three kids (I know, super cute, right?) and Charlie got the stares.  He held the book up for a second to try to catch his attention.

 So Charlie craned his neck up so she could see over the book. 

He is a total crack-up.

Creative

Our Andrew has become so creative lately.  We are so proud of him. 

 Here he is with one of his inventions.  "Stwings on a lotta stuff."  What have we done without this so far?

 He's really been onto this block kick lately.  Here is a car and a garage.  I'm so happy that he's started branching out to doing more than just towers. 

 He even added some windows.  You can't really see it in these pictures, but they're there. 

He started making letters, shapes, and then a birdhouse out of his pretzels and raisins. (Emmie did it too, but all of hers looked like 2 lines. :))

 He made a town out of blocks and tools, including a gas station, signs, and a stoplight.

Me: "Um....Andrew?"

Andrew:  "No, Mom.  It IS a good idea to put blocks in my underwear."

 

....

 

Sometimes creativity can go a little far.

 

:)  I love this little guy.