Random

Here are a few random photos I took today.  

This morning when Josh went outside to water the plants he saw this...

An amazing web had be spun over night by that little guy in the middle.  Sonya kept calling it her spider.    Josh took the web down because it was not in a good spot, and when we went back outside she said, "Where is my spider?" 

Here was our dinner tonight.  

Chicken kabobs (off the kabob) and asparagus.

Thats all I got for today.

The Monday Manifest

Items I buy regularly from Trader Joe's

1. Pizza dough balls
2. Pizza sauce
3. Mozzarella cheese
4. Parmesan Cheese
5. Frozen berries (Very Berry Cherry)
6. Oatmeal
7. Chicken potstickers (Sonya's FAVORITE!!)
8. Chicken fried rice
9. Frozen Corn
10. Frozen green beans
11. Valencia butter with toasted flaxseed

My Concession

Edit:  I DID NOT mean to sound like a sore loser.  I was trying to be funny about all of those cute babies, and really good photos.  I agonized over what send in, and now I am curious to see what people think after all of my hard work.

I am going to have my own contest, on whether or not I submitted the best photo over at Fresh Art because I know I don't stand chance against a bunch of babies with my fruit bowl.  Here are the other photos I thought about submitting.   

These are all straight out of camera, no editing.

Pick your favorite. 

#1 Fresh Fruit (different version)

#2 Fresh Brussels

#3 Fresh Face

#4 Fresh Look

#5 Fresh Grapes

#6 Fresh Picked

# 7 reFresh

#8 Fresh Start

#9 Fresh Berries

What is your vote?

PLEASE VOTE FOR ME!!!!

Please go and vote for my photo at Fresh Art Photography

Number 2,

Please go VOTE!!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Breakfast

This morning for breakfast Teddy had

yogurt with

blueberries, cherries, raspberries, blackberries,

ground flaxseed and

Trader Joes Valencia Butter.

And as you can tell,

 he wanted to feed himself.

What did you have for breakfast?

Almost No Knead Bread

Do you want to eat this bread?

I know you do.

Well, you can.

Just follow this simple recipe.

You won't be sorry.

I promise.

Almost No-Knead Bread

(Courtesy of Cook’s Illustrated)

INGREDIENTS

3	cups unbleached all-purpose flour (15 ounces), plus additional for dusting work surface
1/4	teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
1	1/2 teaspoons table salt
3/4	cup plus 2 tablespoons water (7 ounces), at room temperature
1/4	cup plus 2 tablespoons Budweiser (3 ounces)
1	tablespoon white vinegar

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Whisk flour, yeast, and salt in large bowl. Add water, beer, and vinegar. Using rubber spatula, fold mixture, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until shaggy ball forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 18 hours. 
2. Lay 12- by 18-inch sheet of parchment paper inside 10-inch skillet and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and knead 10 to 15 times. Shape dough into ball by pulling edges into middle. Transfer dough, seam-side down, to parchment-lined skillet and spray surface of dough with nonstick cooking spray. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until dough has doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with finger, about 2 hours.
3. About 30 minutes before baking, adjust oven rack to lowest position, place 6- to 8-quart heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (with lid) on rack, and heat oven to 500 degrees. Lightly flour top of dough and, using razor blade or sharp knife, make one 6-inch-long, 1/2-inch-deep slit along top of dough. Carefully remove pot from oven and remove lid. Pick up dough by lifting parchment overhang and lower into pot (let any excess parchment hang over pot edge). Cover pot and place in oven. Reduce oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake covered for 30 minutes. 
4. Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown and instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers 210 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.  Or eat right away...like I do.

Monday Manifest

Different Names Sonya Likes to Call Me Through Out the Day

1. Prince
2. Prince Charming
3. Troy 
4. Gabriella
5. Sharpay
6. Shrek
7. Moses
8. Vagina (that was just today, and I corrected her on that one)

The Scorp

All Messy

So I have mentioned my rocky relationship with crafting, art projects, etc, but Sonya and I needed a project today.  So I pulled out a project we did last summer, that she loved, and I knew she wouldn't remember.  I got out two mixing bowls, 

shaving cream,

 food coloring,

 and spoons for a color mixing that turned in to messy play.


I read about this activity as way to learn about mixing two colors to make another color.
Red + Blue = Purple
Yellow + Blue = Green
Yellow + Red = Orange
That lasted all of two seconds because she just wanted to squeeze the food coloring.
Fail number one.  
So I just went with it and she squeezed away.

I did have her screw and unscrew the lids of the food coloring, to work on her fine motor skills.  She did a really good job.  
Success.  
Another way to do this activity would be put the shaving cream in a plastic bag, add the food coloring, and squish it around.  
A little less mess, but that is not how we roll.
The colors all swirled together are beautiful!!

I love the shapes the shaving cream makes when you spoon it out of the bowl.
This one looks like a bird to me or a scare crow to me.
What do you see?

Then Sonya decided to put her hands in the bowl.  I tried to to have her write some letters in the shaving cream in the counter.  

Fail number two.  

She just wanted to do this...

I think you know where this is headed.

I just threw her in the shower when we were all done, and scrubbed the counters with a magic eraser. 
 Two failures, one success, and all in all a fun time.

Wordless Wednesday

City Garden and House Rules

After coming home from our mini vacation, Josh and I could tell our babies needed some TLC that only come from mama and daddy.  Don't get me wrong, we had AWESOME babysitters, but Saturday was a little bit of a train wreck.  Josh described it as a day of whining and gnashing of teeth.  That being said we took Sunday morning to spend together as a family.

It is sad too say that we had not made it up to City Garden this summer, this was the perfect day to head up there.  Both the kids were a little unsure at first about all of the water.

Then they both really loved the water, especially Teddy.

Sonya loved swimming in the little pool, and then we moved over to the skipping rocks and waterfall.

(Josh took these two of Sonya skipping on the rocks)

It has been interesting to watch Sonya this summer and some of the fear she has developed as she has gotten older.  Last summer she was running across these rocks no problem, this summer she took them much more tentatively.  Same thing happened at the pool, she would not go down the slides at the pool.  Last summer and the summer before when she was like 14-16 months you couldn't keep her off the slide.  We'll see what happens as the months go on.
After City Garden we picked up some Pappy's BBQ since we were down town and we wanted to get the kids home for a nap/rest time since they were both up at 5:30am.  On the way home Sonya was talking to herself and singing, but at one point she said "Shut up."  We both turned around asked her what she said.  There was no response, so I turned around to look at her and she was just sitting there with her ears fingers plugged in her ears.  Josh and I were not pleased at all.  We told her there wold be consequences to her behavior when we got home, and we also decided to talk about our new "house rules" over lunch.  I got the rules from my friend Adrianne's blog and she got them from a friend, who got them from another friend.
The rules are as follows:
Show Love
Respect What God Gave Us
Tell the Truth
Josh and I have been talking about incorporating these rules into our house for a while, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to introduce them to Sonya and Teddy.  I love these rules because they cover everything and they are all of the things I want our family to be practicing.  Having very clear rules in the house will help us with the discipline with Sonya and Teddy because we can now sight an infraction of the rules when things get out of hand.
Example:
"Sonya, jumping on your brother like a trampoline is not showing him love."
"Teddy, throwing your food on the ground is not respecting what God gave us."
"Sonya, you need to tell me why your brother is crying.  What did you do?  Tell mama the truth."
 We have already started using the rules, and it has been going well.  
Hopefully that will continue.
Look, 
 showing love.