Breakin' into Spring

We've started spring off perfectly.

Five days in Newport, having a blast.

We even had some wonderful Oregon coast weather.  (That doesn't happen all the time.  Especially in the spring.)

Levi's favorite part was probably digging in the sand.  Here's the sandcastle "we" built.  I built it.  Levi helped me decorate it.  And being a typical boy, he had to smash it.

We got to fly Levi's new Lightening kite.  This picture was taken just moments before the string snapped and the kite went sailing down the beach.  Gabe chased it and chased it.  Levi cried because Lightening was gone.  And we were lucky a little kid way down the beach was able to grab it and return it to us.  But, it won't be flown again...

We also got a chance to check out Yaquina Head Lighthouse.
And we couldn't pass up the amazing tide pools at Cobble Beach.

We really wanted to see some grey whales and went on a 2 hour wildlife boat cruise.  Unfortunately the conditions were pretty rough out on the open ocean.  So, we set crab traps and caught some lovely guys.  Levi wouldn't touch the crabs but he sure loved watching them!

And we did see these Steller Sea Lions trying to get up on a buoy in the rough conditions.

A trip to Newport isn't complete without spending a rainy morning at the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  We had a great time watching the sea otters get their breakfast.  Levi loved the jelly fish and the touch pool.  When we were exploring tide pools earlier in the week, he would have nothing to do with touching the sea anemones.  Well, he got brave at the aquarium and we couldn't tear him away from them.

It was a great spring get away.  Newport is a good Oregon coastal town to explore.  I feel like there's more to do when the weather is rainy and windy.  As it so often is...

The rest of the week Gabe and I are hoping to attack our downstairs guest bathroom.
We'll see how that goes.  After getting home this afternoon, all we got done was a quick trip to Target and Home Depot.  What did we come home with?  Paint and a shower curtain.  That was it!  Neither of us is being very decisive about our choice in tile and the new vanity.  Hopefully we'll get some ugly red tile and an old vanity ripped out of there bright and early in the morning.

Tex-Mex & Vegetarian

We invited my dear friend from college, Mindy and her husband (and also one of Gabe's co-workers) Mark, over for dinner tonight.

When accepting our invitation, Mindy warned me that they've recently decided to eat vegetarian and she hoped that wouldn't be too much trouble.  I assured her it was not.  Gabe and I have often discussed the heath benefits, and ecological benefits, of vegetarian eating.  But then I realize there is no way I could give up both sushi and bacon for the REST OF MY LIFE!

In thinking about what veggie dishes to make, I immediately thought of soup.  (That might be because it's almost spring and we had snow falling this week.  It might also be because I went to see Wicked with my mom and Becky this afternoon and I knew Gabe needed something easy to put together for dinner tonight.)  Well, Gabe convinced me that we should do something "Mexicanish".  Probably because we didn't make any other Mexican inspired meals this week and he's going through withdrawals! So, we compromised with Tex-Mex.  

I made corn bread from scratch this morning.  Which, I've never actually made before.  The Jiffy mixes are just too cheap, easy and yummy to bother with making it myself!  But I wanted to try something new so I tried out this recipe.  These veggies (along with corn) go into the bread.  It was great!

Gabe made his favorite vegetarian chili.  It's been made at Monday Guys Night on many occasions but I've been resistant to trying it because it just seems weird.  Oranges in chili just doesn't seem quite right.  But it's really yummy.  Especially for those who love things "sweet" like me!

It's always sad to say good-bye to the weekend...
But I only have 4 more days until SPRING BREAK!
I think I can do it.

-h (Gabe edited and uploaded pictures for me while I folded laundry!)

Better late than never

This week really got away from me.  So much for that promise to get back on here this week and share some photos (and stories) about Levi.

Levi's got lots of phrases he loves to use all the time.  Two of my favorites are...
"Watch this trick."  (Then he proceeds to do some thing that really isn't that tricky.)
and
"I have an idea." (Which he uses EVERY TIME he wants to do something.)

We had a two hour delay for school on Tuesday because of snow.
By the time we got out to play in it about 9am, it was pretty much gone.

But lets be honest, this is Levi's favorite part of playing in the snow any way.

And according to Levi the "warm" coco I make is "super duper yummy".  And tastes just "like a chocolate chip".

So here we are enjoying our weekend again.
We've started the weekend off right by celebrating St. Patty's day.

Had to have green blueberry pancakes this morning...just for the occasion.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

sunday suppers return

I feel like it's been forever since we've hosted our Sunday Supper and this is going to be quick.
(I'll have to stop by with pictures of Levi later this week for the Grandmother readers.)

We had Bryan and his girlfriend Jackie over for dinner tonight.
Gabe made this pork roast and gravy.  And I made these mashed sweet potatoes.  Both were super yummy.  I did modify the potatoes slightly by adding some heavy cream.  Heavy cream makes everything a bit yummier.  I think I also added too much rosemary.  Levi loves sweet potatoes but didn't really like them all fancy.  I think the rosemary was too much for him.  He had broccoli instead.

After dinner, Levi had fun showing off on his bike and building crazy Lego creations with our guests.  Once Levi was in bed we got out the game the Morrisons sent Gabe for his birthday gift.  We played it for the first time last night and I beat Gabe.  Tonight, Gabe was the victor.

I've got laundry to fold and a new book club book to start...

Birthday Trifecta

Happy Birthday Gabe, Tricia and Travis!

In celebration of the day he was born, Gabe and I have a birthday date for dinner tomorrow night.

Happy (early) 33rd Birthday Gabe!

little bit of everything...

Describes our weekend perfectly.

Gabe's dad and Joanne came up to visit/celebrate Gabe's birthday weekend.  They took us out for dinner to one of Gabe's favorite places.

Levi took the pedal car he got for Christmas from Grandpa Tom and Grammy Joey for it's inaugural spin.  The empty parking lot at the dairy was the perfect spot.  It was a great first ride.  Complete with mud puddles and all!

We decided to take a walk around the dairy and go check out the duck pond.  In the process, we met a 4-H girl and her mom walking the goats.  They took us back to the barn for the full 4-H tour.  We got to meet Daisy the pot bellied pig.  Feed carrots to the 2 miniature horses, 2 normal sized horses, and donkey.  Pet the two rabbits and find eggs in the chicken coop.  The final part of the impromptu "tour" was holding the 9 week old chicks.  Levi said that was his favorite part.

Everybody Read!

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday, today is National Read Across America day!

We celebrated the occasion.  

It was a great excuse to buy some new books.  And they had to be Dr. Seuss classics!

And then read them of course!

Hope everyone picked up a good book today!

supper(s) away

We didn't host a Sunday supper this week.  But that doesn't mean we didn't spend some great time with friends and family!  That really is the point of our weekly meal gathering after all.
On Saturday evening we had dinner with friends at the Freitas house.  Levi, Finn and Enzo had a great time playing together and chasing Taya around.  Here she is hiding from the boys (and the camera too).

 

Levi probably enjoyed baby Evan the most.  Evan will be 4 months next week and Levi loved making him smile and giggle.  Baby smiles are a wonderful thing!

 

Tonight we didn't host a supper at our house because we wanted to visit Tricia and Travis' new place.  They haven't been in their new town house long but they've already put a lot of work into it.  It was great to see them, enjoy a nice dinner and see their new home.  We're very happy for them and are looking forward to celebrating in June on their wedding day!

Next week we get to celebrate birthdays!  Gabe, Tricia and Travis all have their birthday in early March so the big party will be next week.
We will get back to hosting Sunday suppers after the March birthday celebration.  I'm looking forward to it!

Making "New" Crayons

I've been terrible about picking up the camera this month.
But here's our silly guy playing "fishing" with Jupiter.  Can you guess who the "fish" is?

Levi and I did a fun craft this morning.
I found it here (from Pinterest) and was able to gather enough broken crayons from school already to give it a try.  Pretty sure we'll be able to make a bunch more in June.

Together we took all the paper off the crayons.

Then I melted the crayons in tin cans in hot water on the stove.
I poured the melted wax into the race car molds I found at Michael's.  (On clearance!)
Finally, we let them cool in the fridge for as long as I could get Levi to wait.

Obviously, Levi's favorite crayon cars are the red ones cause they are Lightening.
And of course he made a race track around his table while I wasn't looking.

Then I got smart and covered the table with the biggest pieces of paper I could find around the house.  I think we'll need to invest in some butcher paper to keep that table covered.
Levi's having a blast with the new crayons, even though he's not really using them as crayons!  They're just more race cars to play with!

Long Weekend on the Mountain

We had a great long holiday weekend playing up on Mt. Hood.
I had a furlough day on Friday and Gabe has a new schedule so he has Friday afternoons off again, so we got to take off after lunch on Friday.
We spent a lot of the weekend playing in front of the fire.  (I spent most that time reading this.)
We went on a little nature walk down to the Salmon River.
But mostly we spent the weekend at Little John snow park.
Like this:

 That is the face Levi made most often as he was flying down the hill.  I love it!

Gabe and I had a blast too.  This is the run Gabe did from the very top of the hill.  He got going pretty fast and ended up with a face full of powder.

We discovered this sweet jump for Levi to go over.  He loved catching air over it.

But really, Levi's favorite thing was to just roll around in the snow.  He reminded me of a little puppy.  He was up to his knees in snow most of the time and just loved it!  He said playing in the snow was "super duper fun!"

And we have to include a video for the grandparents!

Baked Ziti

We made one of our favorite vegetarian meals tonight.  Our friend Jen is vegetarian and she LOVES cheese, so I knew this would be the perfect thing to make for her and her boyfriend Rich.
We use the Cook's Illustrated recipe.  They don't make their recipes available without a subscription so I'll share it with you:

Rescuing Baked Ziti
Ingredients:
1 pound whole mild or 1% cottage cheese
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 oz grated Parmesan (about 1 1/2 cups)
Salt
1 pound ziti (we can never find ziti at the grocery store so we use rigatoni.  Penne would also work well.  We could probably find ziti here but it's not really worth the extra trip for us.)
5 tablespoons olive oil
5 garlic cloves pressed through garlic press
1 (28oz) can of tomato sauce
1 (14.5 oz) can of diced tomatoes (we use the tomatoes we canned from our garden)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons chopped FRESH basil leaves
1 teaspoon sugar
Ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoons cornstarch
1 cup heavy cream (or whole milk but we ALWAYS use cream)
8 oz low-moisture mozzarella cut into 1/4 inch pieces (about 1 1/2 cups

1.  Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk cottage cheese, eggs, and 1 cup Parmesan together in medium bowl; set aside
Bring 4 quarts of water to boil in large dutch oven over high heat.
Stir in 1 tablespoon salt and pasta; cook, stirring occasionally, until pasta begins to soften but is not yet cooked through 5-7 minutes.
Drain pasta and leave in colander.
Do not wash dutch oven.

2.  Meanwhile, heat oil and garlic in a 12 in skillet over medium heat until garlic is fragrant but not brown, about 2 minutes.
Stir in tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and oregano; simmer until thickened, about 10 minutes.
Off heat, stir in 1/2 cup basil and sugar, then season with salt and pepper.

3.  Stir cornstarch into heavy cream in small bowl; transfer mixture to now-empty dutch oven set over medium heat.  Bring to a simmer and cook until thickened, 3-4 minutes.
Remove pot from head and add cottage cheese mixture, 1 cup tomato sauce and 3/4 cup mozzarella, then stir to combine.
Add pasta and stir to coat thoroughly with sauce.

4.  Transfer pasta mixture to 13X9 inch baking dish and spread remaining tomato sauce evenly over pasta.  Sprinkle remaining 3/4 cup mozzarella and remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan over the top.
Cover baking dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes.

5.  Remove foil and continue cooking until cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown, about 30 minutes longer.
Cool for 20 minutes.
Sprinkle with the rest of the basil.
ENJOY!!!

And just because these lovely tulips Jen and Rich brought for us made me long for spring, I'll share them with you.

Super Sunday Supper

That's what we call a Super Bowl feast!
Snacks, ribs and beer.
And of course friends and football.

Gabe's former co-worker Drew, and his wife Paula, came over today to watch the game and enjoy some good eats.  Gabe used this rib recipe.  He had the spice rub on the ribs last night and then braised them in the oven for more than two hours this afternoon.  They were awesome!  I just wish I wouldn't have eaten so many snacks...I would have had room for more ribs.
Levi sure did enjoy watching his first Super Bowl game!

Same Name!

Levi's been starting to notice that words have similar sounds.
When he notices it he says the two words have "the same name."
We told him earlier this week that when words sound the same that means they rhyme.
So the other day when I asked him to "promise" to follow his sleep rules at nap time with Grandma G, he said, "Promise sounds like Thomas.  They rhyme."  Now all sorts of things rhyme!  It's really cute.

Update on the new bed:
I appreciated my sister's advice.  But I was really hoping the toddler bed would work out because this is the next bed I want to buy Levi and I feel like double is too big for a 2 & 1/2 year old.
But (I think) we found the motivation he needed.  And I'm somewhat embarrassed by it.  More and more research is coming out about the negative effects screen time has on young children (especially those under 2).  So we've been careful to not have the TV on around Levi and not really make it a part of his life.  In his 2 & 1/2 years he's seen Cars three times and Bambi once.  Well, he's been asking us (and Grandma G) if he can watch "Lighting" (that's what he calls Cars) all week.  So we told him that if he follows his sleep rules he can watch "Lighting" on Saturday.  (I was desperate!)  I didn't think the delayed gratification would work on a kid this young but we remind him of the rules every time he lays down for nap and bedtime.  And we tell him if he follows the rules he'll get to watch "Lightening" later.  Seems to be working.  Or maybe he's just getting use to the bed.  Who knows!

Playing at the park this beautiful sunny (but cold) February morning!

No matter what, we love every moment we get with this cute little guy!

Big Boy Bed

Levi might be excited about the "new" bed he's been sleeping in all weekend, but Mommy and Daddy sure aren't!
It's really just his crib with the toddler bed side on it so he can get in and out of bed himself.  That's the problem.  The kid won't stay in bed.  Saturday night we heard him upstairs talking but we couldn't understand what he was saying.  Gabe went up there and Levi was in bed, covered up, laying down reading books in the dark.  He was saying "I can't see.  I can't see." over and over again.  Then Sunday night he was up countless times.  In fact he was still up when we climbed into bed at 10pm!  His favorite things to do instead of sleep?  Get up and turn the light on so he can lay in bed and read.  Fortunately he's not very sneaky and we can hear him turn the light on.

We thought being really clear about the rules might help.
Here are Levi's sleep rules:

The only problem is that he doesn't really care about following them.  Even the promise of a treat in the morning isn't helping.
So, Levi's been overtired and throwing tantrums since Saturday.  And Gabe and I really want our sweet, well rested little guy back.
I'm really hoping that the excitement will wear off this week and in a few days he'll be back to his normal self.  Either that or our kid will be sleeping in a crib until he goes to kindergarten.  (I'm kidding...sort of.)

Taste of India

We took a bit of an easy way out for supper tonight.

We bought a tub of Indian coconut curry simmer sauce at Costco last month and we put it to use tonight.  My sister Becky was invited to join us for dinner and I know she loves Indian food so it seemed like the perfect fit.  Easiest Sunday supper to date!  All we had to do was throw some cubed up chicken breast into the simmer sauce and let it do it's thing for 15 minutes.  The sauce was good.  I think we'll get it again and put lamb in it instead of chicken.

Gabe and I did want to try making an Indian side dish too.  So we made this.  It was good.  It was spicy.  And our version was missing the cilantro (I forgot to put it on the shopping list this morning).  I think next time we make it we'll do two eggplants instead of one.  As you can see from the picture, there's a lot of onion in it but not enough eggplant for our liking.

I guess I should also mention that Levi refused to eat both dishes.  So he had left over mac and cheese for Sunday Supper this week.  He's usually a really great eater but would have nothing to do with the chicken and rice.  Oh, well.  Maybe next time!

Guests Welcome

One of our goals this year is to put some much needed attention into the downstairs of our house.  Since we moved in less than three weeks before Levi was born (and we never really use the down stairs much) it's been the part of the house we've really neglected for the last two and 1/2 years.  It's always been a little bit embarrassing for me to have guests come and stay in such an unwelcoming space.  Well, we revamped the weird non-bedroom last year and converted it to a home gym.  And we've finally finished the guest bedroom too!  Actually, it's been mostly done for about a month.  We were just waiting on some canvas prints and other decorative pieces to come together.

Here's what the room looked like when we looked at the house:

The previous owners had a Red/Black/White theme going.  Not really our style and we were really not pleased that all the wood trim was painted black (just like in Levi's room).

This is what little decorating/effort we put into it when we moved in.  See what I mean...totally neglected.

This picture shows what we had to work with.  Not only was all the trim painted black.  It was painted black very messily (is that a real word?).  So if you ever think about painting wood trim black...remember this photo and please reconsider!

Here's our skilled painter "joyfully" priming all the black trim.  (This trim work, and repainting the closet doors, definitely consumed the most time on the project.)

Drum roll please...

Here's the finished room:

I call it our National Park guest room.  We bought the Pendleton blanket for our anniversary this year since it was our wool anniversary.  We decided on the Crater Lake blanket because it was the first National Park we visited together that first summer after we met.  (Plus it's the only National Park in Oregon.)
I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do on the window wall you can't see in the picture.  (That's why it's left out.)  I was thinking about painting a few of my own pieces of art but I'm not sure they'll really fit into the the mood of the space.  What I really want is a pair of mounted antlers.  Unfortunately, Gabe doesn't really hunt anymore so that's probably never going to happen...
The other part of the room you can't see very well in the picture is the orange tables over by the window and the little owl night light I absolutely LOVE!  I actually wanted to get it for Levi's room but I figure we'll be changing his room decor to cars or dinosaurs sometime in the next few years...not to cute woodland animals.

I'm happy to finally have a nice space for guests (grandparents) to stay.  Door's open!
(Hopefully we'll also have the bathroom downstairs looking better this year too!  That project will be A LOT more work though.)

No, Yugo

Oh, Portlandia, how can the truth hurt and be so funny at the same time?

An Old Classic

We made this for supper tonight.  It's a great chicken and rice casserole recipe, minus the can of cream of chicken soup.  Here's the finished product:

It was delicious!  Alexis and Eric (our guests this week) totally agreed.  Well, at least they said they did...

We did make a few small changes to the recipe.

We used long grain brown rice and had to increase the amount of stock we put in.  We also had to increase the cooking time another thirty minutes.  (So total cooking time was an hour and 15 minutes.)

I also made a some sautéed spinach.  Wasn't anything fancy but I thought it went well with the creamy chicken and rice.

Levi's spinach "snake tongue",

After dinner we had some fun playing Legos.

I'm really enjoying the restful, yet productive, weekends we've had so far this year.  As much as I enjoy the holidays, this is pretty nice too.