Soccer Boys!

My sweet, soccer boys!  How I love them so!

Meals...

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.  Our freezers are packed, so I just need to make a plan!  Lucas does not eat these meals for the most part, but Logan does.  I do try to get Lucas to try what we are eating, but I have enough battles with him that I choose not to battle over meals.  :)

Monday-- falafel on chapati bread with hummus, tzatziki, lettuce, tomatoes

Tuesday--Hungarian cabbage and noodles with hamburger meat (I have cabbage and decided to try this recipe out), green beans

Wednesday--teriyaki chicken, egg rolls, stir fry veggies, rice

Thursday--breakfast burritos, fruit

Friday--roasted potatoes, browned hamburger meat with pork and beans, green beans.  I know this sounds like an odd combination, but you mix the cooked meat and beans and serve it over the potatoes.  I heard about it and tried it and I really liked it.  It has been a long time since we've had it, though.

On the weekends we typically eat up leftovers or have sandwiches.  This weekend will be a bit different because the boys don't have soccer since it is a holiday weekend.  We really don't have any plans either.

Next week:  baked chicken (using one of those new things from Kraft where you dampen the chicken then dip in bread crumbs and cheese....I had a coupon to get it for free), fire roasted veggies (from freezer section at Costco....it has potatoes in it, too)-------->  I originally had this planned for Friday, but then remembered that I had potatoes in the pantry that needed to be used.

Day at the zoo.....

This past Sunday, we met with my friend, Andria, and her family at the zoo. We had SUCH a great time! Later in the day, my friend, Laura, and her family joined us. I had not seen Laura since 10th grade (1996)! It was so great to see her and meet her lovely family. I love that we all went to school together in Texas and have now settled in this area. It's always nice to have friends from "home".

I took over 200 pictures, so it was very hard to narrow it down. Here are some of my favorites. By the way, Blogger changed the way to upload pictures and I can not get it to work right for me. I haven't looked into it. My pictures all overlap, but if you click on one of them, then you can scroll through them individually in full screen mode.

Another tooth bites the dust.....

He's becoming a pro!  Although, he either lost this one on the soccer field or swallowed it.  Ooops!  For the record, when he lost his first tooth, he was very excited that "his tooth came out like Papa's".  :-)

First!

I ran out to the farmer's market and Lowe's. When I got home, Lucas came straight to me and opened his mouth and wiggled his tooth. It has been loose forever, but I think today is the day he will lose his first tooth. 

About an hour later, we were sitting at the table and Lucas said, "Momma. My tooth came out!" as he sat his tooth on the table. :-)

More around the house

We got a few more projects done around the house. If you remember my post about putting the boys in the same room, you'll remember that I hadn't done anything in Lucas's old room yet. Well, we decided to do a reading/guest room. We got a new bookshelf (it is the darker shelf on the left) and loaded it with books and put a futon with a thicker mattress on it in there. It gives us a nice place to sit and read to the boys before bed and a place for guests to sleep, too! It is a very small room, so we couldn't do much in there, but I did the best I could. :-)  The red cabinet was in our hallway at the top of the stairs and it holds our extra blankets, towels, etc..  You may remember it from this post.

Logan often sneaks in here and closes the door. His brother doesn't find him here. I've seen him sneaking out of here after he's already supposed to be sleeping. One night I was headed up and he heard someone coming so was trying to sneak back to his room. Scared him to death when he walked out and saw me in the stair well. LOL!

We also did some work in our full bath. My husband put in a new light switch and outlet. We were putting up a new light fixture, but the only outlet in the bathroom was on the old light fixture. The easiest solution was to put an outlet right next to the light switch. We also put up the new light fixture, new medicine cabinet, new towel holders, and painted the wall and ceiling. I love the results! You can see some before and during pictures of the full bath here.

We chopped down the cherry tree!

Well, maybe we didn't actually do the chopping, but we did have it chopped down. We've planned on having it cut down for a while now. It's just that having such a large tree taken down isn't exactly the cheapest thing. But, it is done. The guy who did it for us said that it is very rare to see a cherry tree as large as ours was. I'll be honest, I was a bit sad to see it go (and before I even got to enjoy the pretty blossoms of it this spring), but it wasn't doing so great. After having it removed, we knew we did the right thing. There was a large amount of rot in the tree. It was starting to drop branches and it really was just a matter of time before a large portion of the tree could have fallen. Much better to just get it done than have to keep worrying when we get lots of rain or the wind picks up.

Here is a picture I took after the tree was down. I really was shocked to see how soft the center of the tree was!

Here is a picture to show how large it was. It towered over our three story town house. There is a ravine behind our house, so I couldn't back up far enough to get the whole tree in the picture (it is the one on the left), but you can see that it was much taller than our home (which is the one on the right)!
I had them cut some smaller pieces and I saved them to do crafts with the boys. :-)

Happy birthday, Lucas!

This past Sunday (Feb. 26), my sweet boy turned 6 years old. I really, truly can't believe it has been that long. We love you so much, Lucas!

His friend, Rowan, got a blue mustache while eating her cake, so he needed one, too.



And, I leave you with a little funny that I posted on FB the day before the big day:

I goofed! Tomorrow (today...dang it, I'm up late again!) my baby boy is turning 6 years old. After he was in bed, I went to get some balloons so that when he wakes, the house is decorated. The woman helping me was going through the drawer of balloons trying to find the Spider man one I asked for. It wasn't there. She thumbed through them asking if I saw a different one I liked. Yes....that one. It said happy birthday, it was blue (his favorite color), it had candles on a cake (since camping in Yellowstone he is obsessed with fire), and it even had 6 candles. Perfect!!! I got home and I sat them on the table. I look up to admire them. CRAP!! The balloon says "Happy Birthday Dad!". Ooooops! Baby boy can't read anyway, but I took out some paper, wrote Lucas on it, and taped it over dad. :-)

Finally finished the half bath!!

Yes, after almost 4 years, we have finally finished the remodel of our half bathroom (click here for some pics of the before and progress we had made)! Pretty sad, actually, if you consider that this whole time the only thing we had left to do was paint! The thing is, we had so many other projects that this just wasn't at the top of the list. Finally, though, finally it is done and I LOVE it! I'm very pleased with how it turned out. It is amazing to me how much just putting up a coat of paint can change the looks of a space. It truly is those finishing touches that completes the look!




I do have a couple of areas on the ceiling that I need to touch up because I got paint on it. What can I say, I'm not the best at painting! :-) The color we used is called pebble grey and I really think it looks nice with the tile. Yay! I'm just so happy! This weekend we will be doing some of the prep work for painting the upstairs bathroom so that we can finish that up, too!