Snow day fun

In Oklahoma a snow day doesn't necessarily mean the ground is covered in snow. Rather, snow fell from the sky and the roads have become an icy mess which are undesirable to use for traveling in a car. None the less our church cancelled services this morning and we got to stay inside our cozy house all day.

I didn't think much of our activities from today until I saw a friend post on Facebook that they had used their snow day to bake cookies. We spent some time in our kitchen too. Actually it went something like this:

I made pumpkin spice waffles for breakfast.
My husband brewed a small batch of beer.
I made Hawaiian Roll Ham and Swiss sliders for lunch.
I made pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting.
My husband made pepperoni rolls for dinner.
I made pumpkin dip for a potluck for Bob's work tomorrow.
And Bob browned some hamburger meat to get ready for the taco soup he's taking to work in the morning.

Whew!!! I guess we both don't mind spending time in the kitchen. At least that's what we chose to do with our lazy day we had ahead of us.

What do you enjoy doing when you're stuck in the house on a "snow day"?

Life's Little Luxuries

Life has certainly changed with an active baby boy in the mix of things. It seems like I now take pleasure in simpler things than I used to, which I guess isn't a bad a thing at all. I just thought I'd share these simple things that have increased the quality of my life :)

The first one still surprises me, it's peanut butter! Not regular peanut butter, but White Chocolate Wonderful peanut butter! Oh, and it is wonderful! As an adult I haven't really cared for peanut butter maybe since junior high. I ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch almost every day in grade school when I would pack my own lunch. I just think I had my fill of peanut butter for a while, not necessarily an aversion. I found this stuff less than a month ago and I am now on my third jar!

 Mostly I eat it straight off of a spoon or spread it on a graham cracker. If I kept celery around I guess that would be a good idea too.

The second luxury I have recently discovered is a bath soak (not to be confused with bath salts). I usually shop at Bath and Body Works for their lotion, body sprays, sanitizers, and hand soaps. Shortly after Christmas I was reminded about the stress relief line of products from Bath and Body works when we stayed at a cabin with Bob's family over the holiday and the lady that owned it stocked the bathroom with some of stress relief  products. I guess she was trying to be conducive to a relaxing environment :) The next time I went to Bath and Body Works I checked out that section I had forgotten about and found a jar of bath soak and purchased it.

I was once told you are not supposed to put real bubble bath in a jetted tub. Is it true? I'm not sure, but I have been reluctant to put real bubble bath in my jetted tub, but I wanted something to use while taking a bath.Oh my goodness, this is the product! I use my jetted tub more frequently now that I have this. If you know someone who claims they don't use their jetted tub, it's because they don't know about this product :)

It is completely relaxing and the eucalyptus and spearmint fragrance is intoxicating. Running the jets also enhances the experience. Notice the picture is a full bottle, that is because it is on stand by for when my current bottle becomes empty, which will be very soon.

Those are just two of my new favorite discoveries from this year. Enjoy!

Family Night & Date Night

We had a lot of weekend of fun this past weekend.

Friday night Bob's medical group had family night at a Red Hawks baseball game. Normally, I think I would not have just decided: Hey, let's take a 9 month old to a baseball game at seven o'clock at night! Since Bob does have a little bit of a leadership position at work we decided to try it and show up for a bit.

Since we were headed to Bricktown and it has been a while since we've been there we decided to eat at Fuzzy's Taco right before the game. Blake is enjoying some beans and rice on the left. Then on the right you can see a nice lady behind us (in the gray shirt) photo bombing us! LOL! Bob says she must watch the Ellen show or something since they make photo bombing a sport.

Anyway, I think we only managed to stay through the 4th inning, but it was fun being in Bricktown on a Friday evening.

Saturday night we had a date night out while Mr. Blake went to bed for the night. We did actually pay a babysitter. It was nice to just go out and be the two of us again. We kept it simple and ate at a local sports bar, Louie's.

Then Sunday was Father's day and the two boys shared a nap on the couch. Overall a very enjoyable weekend.

Weekend Fun!

Last weekend Sesame Street Live came to Oklahoma City and since we have an Elmo fan in the house we took Blake.
 Here our little Elmo fan is watching me get ready before going to the show and sucking on his feet.





I realize people may wonder why we would take a less than 7 month old to such an event, but this little man is something else. Watching Sesame Street on television is one of the few times during the day when he is still and not restless. Initially, I guessed this would not be an age appropriate outing but, our little man made a concerted effort to stay awake without being grumpy. He watched the first half of the show and then fell asleep ten minutes into the second half after the intermission. Overall it went fairly well. Here he is after the show all tuckered out.

On the way home, Mommy and Daddy were hungry so we ate lunch at the Chick-fil-a by our house. Blake was happy to sit and play while we ate.

Then we made it home in time for him to play and take a nap.

It was such a beautiful day outside, that we decided to grill turkey burgers for dinner and let Blake play outside.

We even managed to go for a walk that evening.

Weekends are surely different for us than they were a year ago, but it has been a good change.

However, this weekend has been totally different. Our weather has reverted back to a wintery state and it has been cold and rainy. Plus the Easter bunny came to our house early. Both grandmas brought Blake his Easter baskets which allowed Mommy and Daddy to go out on a date alone.

We ate at the Mule which is a gastro pub like sandwich place in the Plaza district of OKC. Then on the way home we stopped for a yummy, sweet treat:

Thank you grandma for watching little Blake!

Hungry boy!

Blake will be turning 7 months old in about two weeks. That means he has been on solid foods for about a month now. Since everything I had read and researched said the order of introduction of solid foods does not matter, I decided to be "mean mommy" and start him out with green beans!

He would open his mouth and eat them, but he seemed very less than thrilled. On about the fourth day he started opening his mouth for more. After green beans he had squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, prunes, and pears. With each new flavor his first initial response would be a face of uncertainty, but then he would always open his mouth for more and finish the pack. Until...we got to the prunes. He really liked the prunes and did not make a face of disgust like he did with all the others. Silly boy!

Here is my little prune loving man.

 He has also been a very busy little boy lately getting into things. He's not fully crawling, but he sure does a good job getting over to the toy that he wants to play with. He gets on his knees and holds himself up with is arms and lunges toward where he wants to go.

And just for fun, here are additional pictures from a Thunder photo shoot the other day.
 

Happy Friday !

You won't Belize this (cont'd)

My favorite parts of our trip were enjoying the beach and eating fresh (well fresher than here in Oklahoma) sea food. I think I ate some kind of sea food each night at dinner.

Our trip actually fell on the town's annual Lobster Fest weekend.
Sunday night in the main part of San Pedro they had a big party. There was live music and lots of food vendors came out to sell their lobster inspired dishes. We had lobster pizza, lobster wraps, and fried jalapeno w/lobster inside.

Lobster Fest


We also went out on a boat one morning to go fishing. Our boat captain has fished on this island for over 45 years and he knew exactly where to take us. Mostly Bob and his Dad fished while his mom and I watched. They were having such an easy time I thought I would join in as well.







After fishing all morning we decided to take some of the fish back to cook for ourselves. Our boat captain took care of the messy work for us.


Then some seagulls got really interested in what was going on inside our boat.


So he fed them a snack.

Then we had a nice lunch.

It was some of tastiest fish I have ever eaten. You cannot get fresher than that!

since you've been gone

Two weeks ago I said goodbye to my fifth graders. I have been teaching them for two years and it was a little sad to see them go. I guess I am kind of attached to them. I took their picture on their awards day.


Since school has been out I have been one busy gal. My first weekend off I got to see a zebra, and no it was not at the zoo.


June first my hubby took me to Grapevine, TX. We did some wine tasting and got to enjoy some of the stores at the Grapevine Mills outlet mall.



On Saturday we got to go up to Tulsa to see a pharmacy friend get married. Here we are enjoying the reception on top of the Bank of America building.


Tulsa I hate the construction on your roadways, but we had a good time there in T-town.

So far, not a bad summer. We have hit the ground running and we'll be busy until hubby starts his rotations on July 1st. I'll try to keep this thing updated between here and there.

not quite Betty Crocker

This year for my mom's birthday I got the idea in my head that I was going to make a flip flop birthday cake for her. Sounds thoughtful doesn't it? Well, I guess I should have thought a bit more and considered that being creative and artistic is not my forte.

She found a picture of it in a magazine and mentioned she thought it was cute. I found a video online that gave step by step instructions on how to put it together. Without the video I'm not sure I would have attempted making it. This is not a strong talent for me at all. Here's how it turned out. (I'm not going to bother posting the Betty Crocker one, it's miles ahead of mine!)





It seemed to be a hit with the grandchildren, so that counts for something.



Happy Birthday Mom!

in the vineyard

While our little kitten was busy getting into trouble on Saturday (see previous post) we were headed to a vineyard in Norman.

Our good friend mentioned a wine making class to us and we decided to try it out.

First we got to pick grapes from the vine.






Once the buckets were filled



The grapes were ran through a machine




And then put through the wine press




We added yeast and other stuff to our juice and it will ferment for a while and after several months we will have our own wine that we picked the grapes for ourselves.

There won't be very more opportunities like this to pick the grapes to make our own wine, but I think we are now interested in using wine kits in the future. This was such a fun experience. Thank you Shyla for sparking our interest in this class.

Yo Quiero.... Tarahumara's???

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A small break from the usual blogger, Bob will now be filling in for Becky until April. I apologize for the break in Disney themed blog entry titles, Becky is awfully busy with her National Board Certification work and I’m afraid I’m just not that well versed in Disney Literature.

This entry was inspired by a recent visit to the website:

http://www.urbanspoon.com/lb/46/best-restaurants-Oklahoma-City

If you don’t feel like clicking on the link, I’ll just tell you that Tarahumara’s of Norman is the number 1 ranked restaurant in the OKC metro. While I was happy to see a Norman restaurant in the number 1 ranking, I was a little un-eased seeing that it was Tarahumara’s.

I should start by saying most of my pre-college memories where I was first introduced to Mexican cuisine come from a medium for Oklahoma sized town of Bartlesville. We really only had two Tex-Mex restaurants. One called Monterey’s and the other called Alfredo’s. Two years after I graduated the owners of Alfredo’s were arrested by the FBI on money laundering charges (no joke). People at church joked, “Oh that must have been why their food tasted so good,” I never got the joke, because I thought their food sucked. Monterey’s on the other hand was pretty good for a medium sized town Tex-Mex. The rice wasn’t dry and they had just enough spice to satisfy my taste. I mention Monterey’s (I think there’s three locations in Tulsa now) to say “I’ve had some decent Tex-Mex to compare to.”

So back to Tarahumara’s, to be fair, the last time I ate there was maybe 5-6 years ago, so maybe their recipes have changed, maybe my taste buds have matured, I don’t know, I just remember the last time I ate there thinking, “well, I guess this is ‘okay,’ Tex-Mex for Norman, man, I wish Monterey’s would opened up here.” Are they getting more hype than deserved because where else are you going to go in Norman for Mexican food? Or is my judgment too quick and too harsh for someone who hasn’t been back to Norman recently?

To be constructive, here’s a small list of some of our favorite places to eat for South OKC:

-Belle Isle Brewery*

-Lemongrass Asian Bistro

-Alvarado’s Mexican grill

-Bricktown Brewery*

-Sodapop’s (Not Pop’s, although Pop’s is good)

-Papa Murphy’s Pizza

-Dan McGuiness Irish Pub

-Louie’s

*I know, these are north of I-40 but I think they’re still worth the drive

I do think the great majority of the restaurants listed in the top 100 belong on that list, and if we haven’t been to one of them, it’s on our ‘to-visit,’ list.

But the #1 spot goes to Tarahumara’s… really?

every color in between

It has not been an ordinary week, and I mean that in a good way. And this will not be an ordinary post. I'll be summarizing the week and then back tracking to the end of last month.

Monday night I got to babysit the two most cutest nieces ever because grandma was out of town! We got to play games and watch movies together.
Tuesday night my husband and I went out to eat for our two year wedding anniversary. So far our tradition has been to go out to eat somewhere nice where we have not been before. Last year we went to Musashi's Japanese Steakhouse and this year we went to 1492 Latin Cuisine. When we get back we take our picture using the timer on the camera. Yes, I enjoy being cheesy!



For the holiday weekend we decided to paint the dining room. We painted most of the day on Friday. It took two coats of paint thanks to our textured walls. Luckily, my man is a skilled painter and he did a fabulous job.

Before:
After:

Soon we will be working on painting some of the walls in our living room. White walls just do not go with the color of our new couches. Stay tuned.

Also, here is the lime cheesecake I made for my father-in-law's birthday last month.


While the in-laws were here we got to play guitar hero together on the wii. Fun stuff!

"don't you just love showers!"

It's been a really busy week, which should have been expected after being on Spring Break for a whole week. I was busy doing something after school every night this week. I ended up being so tired that I did not mind that the snow storm on Saturday got overly exaggerated because that gave me the chance to stay at home and do nothing!

My cousin is pregnant with twin girls and I got to go to her shower today. It is so fun shopping for baby things, everything is so adorable! She is due at the end of June and her sister is getting married at the end of April. It is such a busy and happy time for their family. Here are some pictures from the shower.

This is one of my cousin's sons

My niece