Sharing the love!

Beth at Laugh Until You Cry gave me a couple of awards a while ago. Thanks, Beth!
The rules:
1. Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
2. Pass the award on to 12 bloggers.
3. Link the nominees within your post.
4. Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.


The rules are:
1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award and insert a link to their blog.
2. Pass on the award to about 15 other bloggers who you recently discovered and think are great (in no particular order)!

My nominees (some new reads and some that I've been following for a while!):

1. Robyn at A Likelee Story
2. Samantha at Mom of 3 in VA
3. Tammy at Three Little Pixies
4. Teri at The Infertility Chronicles
5. Beth at The Angel Forever
6. Sandy at Pardon My Dust
7. Melissa at Life with Two
8. Low Expectations
9. Keesler Chaos

Air and Space Museum

This was a while ago, but I still wanted to share.....

During my husband's time off at Christmas, we took the boys to the Air and Space Museum. We've gone to the one in DC a lot of times, but had never been to the one in Chantilly. The boys had so much fun!!

Here are some pictures from our day.

Bringing Out the Big Guns....

Snow. We've got.....lots of it! Our community pays a guy with a plow on the front of his truck to clear our road. However, his poor pickup and plow just couldn't keep up in this last round of snow. We had to bring out the big guns to take care of the snow this time around. Today was day number 3 of them clearing the roads, parking spots, and sidewalks with bob cats and a front loader. People were working frantically to uncover their cars and toss the snow out for the front loader to pick up and haul away. Once they got their car uncovered, they would move it and the front loader would clear thier sidewalk. Hmmm. Maybe I should have just waited 2 weeks to shovel and saved myself the trouble of tossing all that snow into a pile that was taller than me. Let me tell you, that was HARD work!!

Anyway, good neighbor that I am :-), I went out and helped a neighbor clear off their car so they could move it. Then I helped another neighbor shovel the snow off the sidewalk and his car and toss it into the parking area. His car isn't working (it is the one almost completely covered in snow in the picture below), so he couldn't just move it and have the front loader clear his sidewalk.



And just because....here is another picture of the ice. This is running along our down spout on the back of our house.

Healthy blueberry banana muffins

Yesterday I decided to try my hand at coming up with some healthy muffins (as the vanilla loaf cake that my husband bought at Safeway for the boys was calling our name!). I think the results were tasty enough to share! These would have been even lower in fat without the flax seeds, but I decided to add them in for added fiber. I used egg whites and applesauce to keep them cholesterol free and agave nectar because it is low on the glycemic index.



1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 cup flax seeds
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. lemon zest
3 large ripe bananas
3/4 cup agave nectar
3 Tablespoons of liquid egg whites (can use 1 large egg, slightly beaten)
1/2 cup applesauce (can use 1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted)-----> I used pineapple sauce this time because I had some
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (if using frozen blueberries, do not thaw)
1 tbsp. all-purpose flour


1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line the muffin tray with paper cups.
2. Combine flour, oats, flax seeds, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Use a whisk to mix together and make a well in the center.
3. In another bowl, mash bananas; add agave nectar, egg and applesauce (or melted butter); mix well. Pour mixture into well. Mix batter until just moistened; do not over mix.
4. Toss blueberries with 1 tablespoon flour and gently fold into batter.
5. Fill prepared muffin cups about 3/4 full bake in the oven for 18-20 min or until its golden brown. Remove and cool on wire rack.

*Please note. These stick to the paper cups when warm, but once they cool completely they no longer stick.

Mmmm......toast!!

This morning when I looked out my kitchen window, I saw a partially eaten apple sitting on my fence. With the amount of squirrels I've seen running around back there, I knew one must have sat it there. A few days ago we saw a squirrel frantically digging in our yard and then it must have given up hope in ever finding its supply of hidden nuts. Well, I thought I'd try tossing a few nuts out there for it. However, they all just sank into the snow. The next morning we woke and our yard had been torn apart. The squirrels had been digging, but obviously not all the way to the ground....I guess they found the nuts I tossed out after all.

Back to today...I was sitting at the table and my husband was looking out the kitchen window.

Husband: "There is a squirrel sitting on our fence eating a piece of toast."

Me: "Toast?"

Husband: "Yes, toast."

This I had to see. Not only did I have to see it, I had to take pictures. The little guy ate almost the entire piece before being discovered by other squirrels. He had only a small piece left when he took off up the tree to try to gobble the rest of it down before the others got to him.

Got ice?

We've been battling icicles here. These are a few shots I got around the neighborhood. We've been opening our windows and knocking ours off with a wooden stick. Afterall, we don't want to have any icicle deaths here. "The television show "Mythbusters" even tackled the issue of icicle danger, determining that a four-pound icicle dropped from 15 feet could indeed be lethal."

We've had a few large ones that my husband has put in the bath tub. Logan enjoys checking on them to see if they have melted away....LOL!

The fun part...

The fun part about all this snow, is that the boys have been able to go sledding. It is also nice that after putting in so much work to set up the sledding area, it gets to be used more than once! The bad thing is that with this much snow, we found you couldn't simply just take them to a hill and let them go. No. In order to get to the hill, we had to dig a trail out. These pictures were taken on our second trip to the sledding hill, after the second round of snow. Poor daddy got to dig it all twice!

Then we had to compress the snow and dig a trail to get back up the hill.

The boys waiting patiently. In case you are wondering, that is how Lucas smiles. For some reason he thinks blinking his eyes is smiling. :-)
Alright, everything is finally ready!
And they're off! Logan was cracking me up because he was trying to smile for the camera the whole way down the hill!

That was fun!
Up next....Lucas! When we got our big snow in December, we sent him down on his own and he wasn't that fond of it. He liked going, but insisted that he go down with me. This time, that wasn't the case. As soon as you sat him on the sled, he would start rocking forward trying to go!

Lucas was a bit panicked here....his boot fell off on his way down the hill.
A few more of my favorites from the day (from the near 100 that I took...LOL)....










Now that we're done sledding, anyone want to go play on the slides? Anyone?

More pictures from Snowmageddon....

Tomorrow marks 4 days of the federal govt. being closed. My husband said this is the longest weekend ever!! If you care to know, closing the federal govt. for one day costs tax payers close to $100 million dollars!

Here are a few more pictures of what they are calling "Snowmageddon"!

The above picture is at the entrance of our neighborhood. The snow pile is halfway up to the traffic light!!
Sledding is fun! The aftermath left for momma to clean up....not so much!
This picture was taken on Tuesday (Feb.9th) night just as the snow was starting again. The above picture was taken on Wed. night (Feb. 10th) after the snow stopped and shoveling was done. The tree is in our neighbor's yard and the pile in our yard is now at least as tall as me (5'6"). Throwing snow onto the top of a pile as tall as you is NOT easy work! I don't think the tree liked me throwing snow at it. At one point, I threw a shovel full and the low limb on the left of the picture caught the snow and threw it back at me....hitting me right in the head.

Anyone care to guess when all this snow will be melted away??