Meal Planning

I wanted to share this cool site that I found about meal planning - it's so fun! Click Here
to see it. The have a whole month of fun recipes laid out for you. I want to get better about planning out my menus a month at a time, so things aren't as crazy trying to figure out what is for dinner each week. There are some great ideas here to add to all of the favorites we already have. Tonight we made the homemade ice cream in a zip-lock bag and it was super yummy! Click on "quick dinners" for a lot of great ideas. Admittedly, I just found the site, so I have only tried the ice cream so far :-), but I have the crock pot mu-shu chicken wraps on my menu to try next week - yum! Enjoy, and if you try any of the recipes, let me know what you think!

Zip Line

I am sure Doug will just love me for sharing this!!! :-) In his defense though, the zip line is set up for 2 year olds, not grown adults. It gave us a good laugh. Noah has gone on it a few times with my help holding his hands on it, but he is really not much of a dare devil yet - he more likes to ride on the swings, climb the stairs on the fort and turn the steering wheel or be on look out pretending there are pirates. (Notice how the slide lands on to the trampoline, yes, of course that was my Dad's idea!)

Circus

We went to the circus this weekend with my parents and we had a great time. It was fun to watch Noah take everything in. He especially liked the elephants and tigers - and the popcorn! Doug and I thought the best thing was all of the motorcycles going around in the big metal cage - it was pretty crazy. Abigail seemed to be mesmerized by all of the lights and music. It was a bit different than I expected, I think I would have liked it better if the announcer wasn't singing everything - but that is just me. The part we really didn't like was all of the dancers trying to be sexy - hello - this is a family show!!! O.k., I will get off my soap box on that one, but it was disappointing. All in all we still had a great time!

Fireworks - Getting Started

Part 1 of 3. Here is our getting started with the fireworks - we had a lot of good laughs!!! Doug had a sinus infection and wasn't feeling up to going over to friends, so we just ended up hanging out at home, and we had a great time! I had to put this one on YouTube because it was too large for blogspot to host it. This is my first time doing it on YouTube, so hopefully it will work out. Enjoy!

Fireworks - Heather and Noah

Part 2 of 3. I think this was our first "flower blossom" firework. Notice how quickly Doug tells me "THROW IT!", as well as how the firework almost hits Mama Kitty - oops! Glad she was quick to get out of the way! :-)

Favelo Firework Finale!!!

Part 3 of 3. This is our "Grand Finale" at the Favelo's firework show. (The videos are taking so long to upload, and it keeps freezing, so I am going to upload 1 at a time so I don't lose them.) Enjoy!

Happy 4th!

Hope you all had a Happy 4th! We are SO blessed to live in such a wonderful country! We had a nice lunch at my Grandmothers, and then we just hung around home. Doug has a sinus infection, so didn't feel like doing much, but we ended up having a really nice time just the 4 of us. We barbecued and had dinner on the back patio, and then did our fireworks. It was so fun to see Noah's reaction! Here are a few pictures from yesterday, and I will upload some of the funny videos a little later. In this first picture Abigail is making her classic look of part concentration part scowl. :-)

Abigail talking to Daddy

Abigail was "talking" to Daddy - and hiccuping quite a bit too!

Buying beer

Noah and I rode our bike to the store yesterday to buy beer - for our beer bread. Now, I don't mind if other people drink, but we don't - and so since I have never bought beer before (well, except for the other times I have made beer bread) I felt really funny buying it... especially with my 2 year old there with me and with my bike helmet still on! I am sure we were quite a sight to behold, Noah and I buying beer at 9:30 in the morning. I was sure to tell the cashier that we were making beer bread - she probably thought that I was a nut case for making a big deal out of it. Oh well, the bread turned out fabulous! :-)

Butterflies, Babies, Bears and Bulldozers

Can you guess what letter we are studying this week?? ;-) We have made butterfly cookies, baked bread, went on a bug hunt, and had a Bible lesson and art project with baby Moses. Here is a little video that I took - Noah is such a joy and we are having so much fun.