Today, In Pictures

I woke up this morning and decided I wanted to document the day, in pictures. 

the blurriness of this one captures how I feel when I first open my eyes

the first thing I see <3

gotta check my e-mail, and tweets of course

within minutes I hear a little voice talking and singing on the monitor and I go to find this little girl sitting up, waiting for me

and then #2 wakes up, and so begins the day with morning diaper changes

my first task every morning, hanging the diappies to dry from last night's wash

breakfast

...while holding a babe

we ventured OUTSIDE to the park, doesn't happen often because of the gosh darn heat

ezzy caught some z's

then I came home and made this amazing smoothie

it looked like poop, but tasted delicious AND it had like 2 cups of fresh spinach

then we had lunch

and ezzy went down for his morning nap, I swear he does more than sleep!

then me and cambria played puzzles and read books

pootie was then ready for her nappy too

 

1:16 and BOTH babes are napping--a rare occurrence!

thrilled to have some solid "clean time", notice the mess in the back

....here's a little close-up for ya. i have 2 under 2 so this mess ain't nothin'

a freak turn of events (someone cut a cord which shut down the computer system at Gulfstream) allowed kyle to get home early, let me just tell you, this has never happened

shortly after, this little guy woke with a smile

then kyle left to dump off cardboard and fix our car

and while feeding ezra I caught up on my blogs and discovered one of my favorite bloggers did the same "Our Day in Photos"  project today too!

then we played with his birdie with no legs

then aunt ambie stopped by after class

and cam girl had a snack

and ezra played with mr. giraffe

then we danced

i vacumed while cambria sat in fear on the couch

and aunt katie and tyler stopped by for a few minutes

so we waited on the front porch for daddy to get home

daddy got home and we ate some goldfish

then cambria did the most stereotypical childhood thing EVER, it was adorable

and because we've hardly left the house this week we went to get korean for dinner, deliciousness

*After dinner, we stopped by Laura and Miguel's BEAUTIFUL new house, and I forget to take a pic*

cambria got in her jammies when we got home and struck a few cute poses

and her day ended with her book of choice Go, Dog. Go! we've probably read this book 50 times in the last 3 weeks, literally

and then this little one got in his jammies too and it was off the bed for him as well

 That's a typical day for us--long, fun, exhausting, delicious, wonderful and lovely.
I gotta say, I do love this life. 
And now everyone is sleeping and I am blogging, typical. 

The Evil Eye

this is cambria's "evil eye" 

pretty evil, huh

Recent Recipes

I wanted to share a few things I (we) have made recently that have turned out delicious.

First, this Pasta with Butternut Squash, Sage, and Pine Nuts.  It's more of a winter/fall dish, but since we got some butternut squash in our veggie box from the co-op, I found this recipe online. I've never cooked with sage before and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor it brought to this dish. 

Kyle found this awesome vegetarian stuffed pepper recipe.  It had beans and quinoa, great for us vegetarians.  I paired it with this cole slaw recipe which was also tasty and different from your usual cole slaw because it had red pepper and apples. 

I made strawberry and banana Nutella crepes on Friday for breakfast.  Yummmmmmmy!!! Any crepe recipe will do and just add the rest to enjoy this DIVINE dish. 

And yesterday evening we used our new grill  to grill a few pizzas.  The Red, White, and Green pizza was burnt on the bottom and not done enough on top, but the Balsamic, Onion, and Goat cheese one turned out perfect.  If that combination is your style please give it a try, you will enjoy it. We used onions and a tomato from our garden, twas exciting!

Soooooo tasty.

The first tomato of many.

Cute onions, freshly picked.

 Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend!

Our Garden

 This was our garden on it's very first day of existence.

 And this is our garden today.

I've been wanting to blog about our garden for a while now, but have been putting it off for some reason.   And I had wanted Kyle to write this post since the garden has been completely his doing, but he wasn't into it.  Oh well, you'll just have to hear it from me! :)

It all started when Kyle bought this book on amazon called Square Foot Gardening.  The whole idea is basically using a lot less space for your garden by planting everything in a raised bed that is divided into 16 square foot boxes.  It uses less space and can be placed anywhere, even on a city balcony or porch, as long as the garden would get enough sunshine!  So after lots of talking about it, one Saturday we finally headed off to Home Depot to gather all the supplies. 

The first step was assembling the box. 

First he screwed 4-4 foot cedar boards together.

Then he screwed these 6 pieces of wood together to make the grid.

Pootie was a good little helper.

All finished!

It was then moved to the backyard.  And this spot was picked after lots and lots of discussion about where it should've gone..

The book explains how to create the perfect soil mixture: peat moss, vermiculite, and a few different types of compost.

He then mixed it all together on this tarp.

He lined the bottom of the box with weed-blocker-fabric and then filled it with the soil mixture.  And finally we (Kyle) got to plant everything!

The garden is filled with lots of yummy veggies: red (actually green) peppers, spinach that was replaced by corn because it was a FAIL, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce, more peppers, watermelon, basil, zucchini, more squash, and strawberries which also failed.  We also planted some marigolds to help keep the buggies away.

Baby Garden.

Now I'm gonna show you a few of the treasures that have started growing.  WARNING: I feel like a proud mother showing these photos, but if pictures of plants bore you, please do not proceed.

Our lettuce on the first day.

And the FREAK lettuce today.  It just keeps growing and growing!

Little baby basil and squash.

And the basil and squash today.  I've probably picked about 6 cups of basil off these already.  These squash have really only been successful at smothering all the plants surrounding it...

Eggplant and tomato plant.

Our b-e-a-utiful eggplant today! So proud of that thing, I think it may be my favorite :)  Kyle built a trellis to support and train the plants.

The tomatoes today.  One is even turning red!!!

Green pepper that should've been RED.  Those home depot peeps are liars.

The baby carrots today.  These started off as seeds, so this progress is very exciting.

Petite bell peppers today.

Zucchini today.

Our failure at life spinach that we recently replaced with corn.

Kyle LOVES this garden.  Everyday he comes home from work, says hello to us, and then heads out to tend to it.  What a good garden daddy he is!  I love it though because we all hang out outside for a while and Cambria has a blast watering the plants and helping Kyle.  She also likes to sneak up and steal tomotoes that aren't yet ready to be picked... But seriously, I love that she is (literally) getting down and dirty with dirt and is already able to realize where some of the food she eats actually comes from.  I know a lot of children will never have that opportunity, so I am very grateful my children can experience it. 

Cambria was feeding the garden dirt.

See :)

So far, we've eaten lettuce, basil, and onion.  Hopefully soon more of the goodness will be ready to be picked and eaten! The whole gardening thing seemed scary and intimidating at first, but it's really been fun.  Oh and we will be able to use this bed for a long time, as long as the wood holds up.  I think everyone should give gardening a try, even if it's one little plant, the satisfaction of seeing your work produce something feels fantastic!