Tuesday, May 31, 2011

CANOE TRIP!

We had an AWESOME day on Memorial Day! We drove up to North Richland Hills to borrow a really nice canoe from a lady Tyler works with. We then drove over to Lake Arlington and enjoyed the morning on the water. The wind was against us as we first started out, but after we got our muscles going it was great. We are definitely doing this again.

This is the new car we bought earlier this month. Just in time since it has roof racks. Looks pretty good with a canoe on top don't you think?
Getting everything loaded in. We hooked up Austin's chair so we could buckle him in. Not the safest thing if we capsized but it sure worked great.

Austin is trying to look back at Tyler for the picture. haha.
Such great smiles!
Don't mind the large belly. I am 34 weeks now! wahoo!
We stopped on a little island spot and ate our lunch. Again, the chair was great so we weren't having to worry about Austin running around the water while we ate.
Just give him a stick and he's good!
He was so tuckered out on the way home since he missed his morning nap! We ended the day with swimming at a neighbor's house and having a BBQ at a another friend's house. We were exhausted by the end of the day! All 3 of us.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

New Recipe!

For my birthday Tyler got me a new Recipe book called "Our Best Bites". It's got a lot of delicious, more basic recipes with basic ingredients, that are right up my alley of cooking. AND they have a beautiful picture with every recipe which I love! We were ambitious on Saturday and made this awesome meal.
~ SPINACH-CHICKEN STROMBOLI ~
You just make a basic Pizza or Breadstick recipe (called for 3.5 to 4 cups of flour) and roll it out into a 12" x 15" rectangle. Then brush with Olive Oil and sprinkle Italian Seasoning on the dough. Add fresh spinach, diced tomatoes, chicken and mozzarella cheese. Then roll it up like a cinnamon roll, brush top with olive oil and sprinkle Parmesan on the top. Bake 425 for 15-20 minutes. After it bakes you cut and serve. It goes best with a dipping sauce of your choice. We made Alfredo sauce from scratch(also a recipe from the book) or it would be good with marina sauce or something similar. It was enough for us for 2 meals. I LOVE LEFTOVERS!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Texas Rangers and Tornadoes

Before I get into our crazy night last night I wanted to post this picture. Austin in my lap with his sweet headrest(My belly). He better enjoy it while he can because it won't be there much longer :)

Tyler got some cheap tickets($5/person) for the Rangers game last night. In case you aren't familiar with this baseball team they WENT THE WORLD SERIES last year! This picture was taken after they kicked us out of the upper deck due to severe winds...awesome! We all got to go down to the lower seats. The sky doesn't look too bad yet! but 15 minutes later...
This was the start of the cool clouds moving above us. And they were MOVING!
It was pretty cool because when you looked straight up there were clouds going in 3 different directions at different levels in the sky.
You can see the upper deck is cleared, and still a ton of people at the game. The clouds were dark only on half the stadium for a while, but soon(10 minutes time) the entire sky was black and rain started pouring out of the sky
Here were some pretty cool clouds just on the edge of the dark ones. Reminds me of Mario Brothers clouds. Once it started raining we didn't get anymore pictures sadly...You'll just have to watch the news to see better footage.

Hopefully you can see, but the clouds were really moving fast in this video. It was so amazing we had a hard time focusing on the game and started cloud watching. A lot of people around us were too. After this video was taken it was probably 10-15 minutes before the sky was black and rain was pouring.

To finish off the story...Tyler brought some ponchos(Thankfully) so we put those on when it started lightly raining. In about 5 minutes the sky turned black and it POURED. We jumped out of our seats and called one of our friends to make sure the storm was here to stay. They confirmed tornadoes already touching down about 20 minutes from where we lived so we high-tailed it out of there! Thank goodness our baby sitter is has a nick-name of Meteorologist Lindsey and has about 5 or 6 weather apps on her phone so she knew everything going on and was doing great. She said Austin was still sound asleep.

As we headed home we had to stop under an overpass because the hail got so bad! I seriously thought our windshield was going to break. After about 10 minutes the hail cleared and we continued on. The tornado sirens had been going off in Fort Worth, but by the time we were about 15 minutes from home the rain stopped and the storm had already passed over us.

Thank goodness for friends and family who were keeping us updated the entire way home! It turned out that just after we left they evacuated everyone in the stadium to underground tunnels and when those got full, they piled people into the dugouts...and when those got full (not sure what they did with the rest of the people). I'm glad we got out of there and got home safely.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Just wanted to share a few pictures we've taken recently...

Chillin' on the lov sac withe his sippy...and yes, he loves to cross his legs
At the park, I was distracted momentarily while chatting with a friend and at that moment Austin fell down the stairs and landed right at my feet. He had an INSTANT goose egg that looked horrible. I felt so bad! But of course he wouldn't let me put anything cold on it and was fine in about 5 minutes and ran off to play again. This picture was taken maybe an hour and a half after the fall, so the swelling had already gone down.
He wouldn't hold still so this is the best shot I could get of how swollen it still was after an hour and a half or so.
Austin is finally understanding how to play with the cars on the racetrack quilt I made for him! So fun! And these are the wooden cars that Tyler's grandpa Al made for him.
I think he will be doing somersaults soon...
Look closely at his lips...he making car noises. cute!
Austin loves to play with wheels of any kind. He especially loves our double stroller wheels. He will sit here for a half hour or more just turning the wheels. I love the fact that he's sitting in a flattened soccerball too!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

CAMPING

This past weekend we drove an hour away to go camping at Mineral Wells State Park. We went with 3 other families in our ward and it turned out to be a BLAST! Each family had a child that was 18 months or younger so it was interesting during bedtime, but all turned out great. One of my friends brought her fly fishing gear so I got to witness my first UP CLOSE person fly fishing. I can now understand why people LOVE fly fishing. It was awesome to watch.

Another friend made some Australian bread that you cook on the end of a stick. It felt like playdough, and I can't remember the exact name of it, but that was fun to do along with the s'mores. We fell into bed around midnight and Austin woke up at 4AM and insisted on getting out of the tent. I coaxed him back in bed with me and only woke up one other baby(oops) but finally got him calmed down and back to sleep until 6:30. Not bad! I brought an egg carton foam pad and a thin mat to sleep on and it worked GREAT. I'm excited to go again in the next month - hopefully!

In the morning we went on a hike(walk) around the lake and then packed up to go home. Austin fell asleep instantly in the car which was around 2 PM and stayed asleep until 5 PM that evening. I think we tuckered him out. Sadly, I forgot my camera so I have nothing to show! Next time!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Happy Mother's Day!

I am so lucky to be the mother to this lil' guy. At 15 months, he is such a goof and is learning very rapidly at the moment! He just caught a ball that Tyler bounced to him off the bounce! And has continued to do this multiple times. I could not believe it. He loves throwing balls with both hands and then chasing after them. He does this ALL day. No wonder I never buy him toys!
He loves his books and makes animal noises for Bear, Dog, Cow, Horse, Duck, and Lion. He also makes noises for cars, trucks and jets (same noise)
He's still got Crazy Eyes! He loves to perform for people, although if he gets distracted he won't. Which doesn't take much :) He signs: more, all done, grapes, eat, drink, banana, orange, milk, please, thank you. He also knows where his nose, eyes, ears, hair, mouth, fingers, and toes are. I'm sure he would know a lot more if I taught him better. His two new words he loves to say are fan and jet and has started to say shoes.
And now to Mother's Day! Tyler actually brought me home flowers on Thursday and had me open my Mother's Day present on Saturday...He gets too anxious, and I knew my present had come in the mail a couple weeks ago so he was READY for me to open it. and you'll see why...
Yes! I was surprised! And so was Austin (make sure you take a good look at that face-I laugh every time I look at this picture). KILLER BUNNIES. We played it last night and it was really fun. It took a while to read through all the instructions and get the gist of the game, but once we got started we had a lot of fun. I HIGHLY recommend the game!
Tyler gave a great talk in church this Sunday on Mother's Day. And Austin did SO WELL sitting with me so thankfully I could listen to the entire talk. Aren't they both precious? :)

Thursday, May 5, 2011

What the Cake?

A few nights ago we were down to the last two pieces of cake. I was all cozy on the couch getting ready to watch a movie and so glad Tyler offered to go get the last of the cake for us. That way I didn't have to get my lazy bum off the couch. Isn't that so sweet of him? THEN, he came back with this!
My piece was twice as small as his and I was not happy. Especially since I seem to be ready for a second dinner every night at 8:00!