Summer Update

Summers are always so incredibly busy.  This summer has been no exception.  In fact, it's been one of my busiest ever.  I haven't had a single free weekend yet.  We keep trying to get some things done around the house (like cleaning our basement, which has become a dumping ground), but every time we try to find some time on the weekends, it ends up booking up from Friday till Sunday before we know it.  I even wrote "Clean Basement!" in the calendar for this coming up weekend, but it has since been marked up with a child's birthday party, a swimming date with some friends and their kids and a meeting on Sunday with our new sitter who will be watching the munchkin while our current sitter is on maternity leave.  So naturally, blogging has been on the back burner.  Which sucks, because then I get behind and don't even know where to begin.

This past weekend was super crazy with a friend's wedding, in which Joe was a groomsman.  I have some pics to post of that later.   In the meantime, I have some pics I have had accumulating in a folder for posts that I might eventually get around to.  I figured I might as well throw them all together for an update or they may never make it on the blog.

I can't believe I haven't posted much this summer other then a few recipes!  Here's my mom hanging out with the girls on Father's Day.  The were swimming in her little baby pool and playing with the "fishing poles".

This little bikini just cracks me up.

We had some friends over for Joe's birthday party near the end of June.   Usually it's always hot for his birthday.  We got lucky this year.  It was beautiful outside.  In fact, I think it was the last nice weekend we have had.  It's been pretty much scorching hot ever since.  We hung out with some friends, drank some wine and even enjoyed a fire in the fire pit.

Here's me and my oldest and dearest friend Anna chillin in my garage.
Her baby is due in about a month!!

My sis Amy and I.

My  friend Gina breastfeeding her beautiful baby boy.
I just love this shot.

I have had great luck with my herbs this summer!  It's been so nice walking right out to the back deck to grab what I need to toss in with dinner.  I had been waiting until we moved again and could have an actual garden, but who knows when that will be.  Container herbs work just as well!!

Currently, I am growing basil, parsley, thyme, oregano and cilantro.

This little dude has been hanging out on our little deck for weeks now.  He's super cute and tiny (only about 3/4" long).  The munchkin points and yells "Froggy!! Ribbit! Ribbit!!"  She then proceeds to squat down and hop around like a frog.  It was so hard to get a decent pic, but I'll share anyway.

I just really can't believe it's August already.  I have started planning the Munchkin's 2 year birthday party with will be on Sept 10th.  Two Years!  I just can't believe it's been that long already.

She picks up so much new stuff all the time.  She's been talking in sentences now and uses words to describe things instead of only sticking to mostly nouns.  She can point out letters of the alphabet, colors, shapes, and can count to 12 all on her own.  I am sure this is all typical for her age, but to me she's a super genius! Only a year ago, she could barely talk at all!  It's just so crazy.

When she does something she wasn't supposed to, she'll say "sorry guys!",  even if it's only me.  She loves pointing to the food on my plate and saying things like "those are mommy's eggs" or to my seat, "that's mommy's seat".  Some parents count how many words their kids have, but I am too lazy for that.  I wouldn't even know where to begin.  Her vocabulary exploded so fast, I don't know if I could even guess within a decent range at this point.  She's definitely a talker.  She LOVES puzzles.  It's one of her favorite things to do.  She'll ask me to get them down for her and we'll sit at the kitchen table and put them all together.  She likes to hold up her cup and say "cheers" until you clank your drink with hers.  She is still only drinking water and milk and loves them both dearly.  She is a cheese freak, just like her momma.  She also loves her eggs.  Her other faves are, salmon, tacos (which is really just a bowl of seasoned grassfed ground beef, cheese, avocado, tomatoes and some sour cream), avocado, broccoli, pretty much any green vegetable, carrots, mushrooms, any she especially loves berries.  We got pretty lucky with this one actually, she'll eat just about anything I give to her.

I feel like she gets cuter and cuter every day.  How is that even possible?

I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer so far!

Float Trip!

This past weekend we went camping and saturday we did a 6 mile float on the Huzzah River.  We haven't been floating since before I was pregnant with the Munchkin and this was long overdue.  I am not much of a pool person (mostly public pools), but give me and river or a lake and I will hang out all day.  It always brings back so many fond memories of when we were kids.  We would pack up all of our stuff and head out to either my mom's parents property or my dad's parents to camp for the weekend.  We roughed it too.  We always stayed in tents and brought everything to cook our meals.  It was so much fun.  I am looking forward to taking the munchkin camping and bringing her up with the same traditions.  I will wait till she's a little older though.

So a few months ago, I sent out an evite, rounded up the troups and planned our adventure. We headed out Friday around 1:00 to embark on our 1.5 hour drive to our destination.  We were so excited when we got to our campsite.  It was literally right on the river!

Our Campsite right on the river!

Which was fantastic, since it was nearly 100 degrees.  We headed down earlier then everyone else with another couple, Kurt and Amber.  We set up our tents pretty quick, they set up theirs, then we wrestled with my sister and her husband's tent for about an hour.  This was the most ridiculous tent.  The instructions made no sense at all and we were all getting pretty frustrated with it.  Since they weren't coming down until after dark, she had asked if we would set it up for them.  She's so lucky she's my sister.  And you better believe we gave them some crap about it!

After we had everything set up, we were all pretty sweaty, so we changed into our suits and jumped into the river.  The water was crystal clear and felt so refreshing.  We hung out in the water for a couple of hours until other people started to show up.  We had an awesome group for the weekend, about 18 people and everyone got along fantastically.  Once everyone started arriving, we started to help some of them put up their tents and get settled.

For dinner we had steak kabobs.  Oh how I wish I had taken pictures of our food this weekend.  It was amazing.  Thursday night before we left, I marinated steaks in one bag and veggies (onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms) in another bag.  Friday night, I assembled everything onto the skewers and we cooked them on the grill.  It was amazing!!

It was a little hot for a fire, but we made one anyway.  What is camping without a fire?  Ofcourse, no one sat around it.  But we had a fire damnit.  We didn't stay up too late since we knew we would be up at the butt crack of dawn when the sun started beating down on our tent.

I think it was about 7:00am when we finally got out of bed.  I forgot my glasses and needed to wash my hands before I could put my contacts in so I woke up Joe and begged him to drive us down to the bathrooms since I couldn't see well enough to drive.  Not a good idea to drive when all you see is really fuzzy shapes infront of you.  One of these days I am totally getting lasik.  Figures the one thing I forgot is the one thing I couldn't buy while we were there.

For breakfast, I fried up some bacon and then made some scrambled eggs in the grease.  Yum!  Gotta stock up on that protein and healthy fats for a long day on the river!  Then we headed out about 10am.

My sister and me ready to head out!

I am not a big fan of beer and I wanted something refreshing and delicious for my beverage of the day.  I also wanted to stay plenty hydrated, so I came up with the perfect plan.  I took a huge 2 gallon jug, filled it with ice, raspberry vodka, water and lemon juice and brought it with me for the float.  It was fantastic!  Maybe too delicious and refreshing, because that jug was almost gone by the end of the float.  In my defense, I was sharing it with plenty of other people.  Especially towards the end.  Our float took 7 hours, longer then expected, and everyone else ran out of beer.

My girl Amber and me.

My sister Amy and her hubby Jeremy.

John and Jessica and their dogs, Sadie and Kenya.

Erin with her boombox, I can't believe it survived the entire float.

Me and my sisters!

We met some of the most interesting characters along the way.  I kid you not, it was like spring break.  There was an insane amount of people floating on the river that day.  Probably more then I have ever seen on a float before.  Floating is a pretty popular summer event in Missouri.  The rivers are beautiful and there are so many of them.  One guy was running around in his pink underwear.  It was pretty funny and really gross at the same time.  We kept seeing him and he was always standing up and waving his junk around.  As far as I know he kept it covered up.  But still.  Ewe.

A shot of the crazy amount of people on the river.

We picked up a couple of stragglers along the way.  These were people that had somehow lost their group and needed a ride.  I am not sure how we kept ending up with them.  They were all completely wasted and it wasn't too hard to figure out how they got lost.  We picked up one guy named Joe, who looked so much like my sister's ex-boyfriend, it was scary.  He completely freaked us out.  My sister's husband knew her ex-boyfriend too, so I am sure he loved having his look alike in our boat.

Joe, one of the stragglers we picked up along the way.

My youngest sister Erin's boyfriend, Chad, earned the nickname that day of super athlete.  It was nice having him along.  He was pretty much in charge of steering the boat and he would jump up into trees or leap out of the raft to get us unstuck and push us in the right direction.  Thanks to him, the other guys got to be a little bit lazy.

Chad, our super athlete, and Erin

We lost half of our group about half way through the float.  We had 8 people in our raft, two (and two dogs) were in a canoe, and the rest in another raft.  We kept stopping and waiting for them.  After a while, we wondered if they were actually ahead of us, since we had spent so much time waiting.  By the time we finished, they were still an hour behind us!

My favorite sisters.

This was a tricky bend in the river where rafts would pile up.

Our Baywatch photo shoot.

Amber and me.

At the end of the float, right before we got off the river, there was a big cliff that people were climbing up and jumping off of. We watched a few guys in our group jump off and I wanted to sooo bad!  There was a time when I would have done it in a heart beat.  For some reason, ever since I had a child, I am so much more careful about that kind of stuff.  Being a parent is the most wonderful thing in the world, but I definitely miss being reckless sometimes.

We dragged all of our stuff out of the river and onto shore to load onto the bus to head back to camp.  Our raft was absolutely disgusting.  There was piles of trash and who-knows-what all over the floor.  We had to clean it all up and put everything in trash cans.  After we climbed onto the bus, I sat down and left some room for Joe.  Right before he got to our seat, a woman sat right down next to me.  I tried to tell her that my husband was just getting ready to sit there, but she was actually deaf, so she couldn't hear me.  So whatda gonna do?  Joe found another spot and it was no big deal.  What did suck though, was that she smelled absolutely AWFUL and she was facing the isle, while I was crammed up against the window.  She kept leaning back into me and rubbing her back on me.  She was pretty drunk and I couldn't help wondering who was in charge of this poor woman.  Not cool.

We arrived back at our site and Joe and I headed immediately for the showers.  Being on the river all day and drinking somehow left me with a headache.  After the shower, I took some aspirin and laid down for about an hour. Then I was good to go again.

For dinner I had made chicken hobos.  In foil, I wrapped up some marinated red potatoes, onions, carrots, I laid a chicken breast over that, then topped that with pats of butter, seasonings and crumbled bacon (which I had already cooked).  It was so easy and always makes the perfect camping meal.  I pre-assembled them the Thursday night before we left, so all we had to do was take them out, throw them on the grill and eat them up.  They were delicious!  Joe and I couldn't finish them, so we gave our leftovers to Chad, my sister's boyfriend.  He was so funny, he kept thanking me and telling me how awesome I was.  He was pretty drunk. 

After dinner, we stayed up and hung out for a while.  I tried to hang as long as I could, but after getting up so early, and such a LONG day on the river, I was exhausted.  We ended up going to bed around 11:30pm.  About 5:00am I woke up to the sound of people yelling at their children.  I couldn't believe it!  They were literally cussing their children out, telling them to shut the f%#$ up.  Classy.  Didn't they know it was friggin 5 am!  I felt worse for the kids though then I did myself.  They didn't stop either and eventually we gave up and got out of bed around 6am.  We were eager to get packed up and get back home anyway.  I whipped up some coffee, made some more bacon and eggs, then we got to packin.  We always bring alot of shit.  It's awesome to have it all, but when it comes time to pack up and leave, we usually start first and finish last.  Which is fine, I like to take a walk around the site after everyone leaves and make sure that all the trash is picked up and everything is back to how we found it.  I can't help it, I feel bad leaving behind a bunch of our trash out in the wilderness.

So we headed out and headed home.  One thing is for sure, I missed the munchkin soooo bad!  This was the first time she had ever stayed the night away from both of us.  She stayed with my mom and apparently she had a blast and barely noticed we were gone.  My mom kept sending my pictures to my phone all weekend and updates, which helped, but I couldn't wait to get back home to see her!  It was an awesome weekend and it was alot of fun to get away for the weekend, but it was so good to get back  home!

I bought a kodak mini video camera for the trip.  I wanted something besides my nice camera, to take on adventures like these and to take video of the munchkin here and there.  It worked out good for the float since it was waterproof, but the pictures were pretty crappy (as you can see) and I ended up returning it.  Anyone know of a really cheap video/camera that still takes decent pics?!

A Birthday Party and Some Fun With the Cousins!

Last weekend we went to my friend Gina's son's bday party. The munchkin had a blast. I couldn't believe how much fun she was having! It was a big room with HUGE inflatable slides, bounce houses, animals, really just a bunch of stuff to run around on and jump in and on.

It was definitely her idea of the perfect party.

It was fun playing around in there with my new camera. The lighting was so weird due to all of the crazy colors reflecting off of everything and the fluorescent lights, but it's all a learning process.

On a side note, my new lens that I have been waiting for and that has been on backorder forever has finally shipped!! I should have it by Monday. Yay!!

Here she is peering into the entrance of one of the giant slides.

Crawling around checking things out.

She's always been a sucker for a ball pit.

It was fun for us too! We got to carry her up and slide down with her.

After a few times, she was even brave enough to climb up on her own.
We still slid down with her though.

Crawling through an obstacle course...

Here's Gina and her adorable little man G. Seriously, how cute are they?

The munchkin just loves to feed people.
Here she is sharing her crackers with another little girl.

Snuggling up with daddy.

She pulled some "food" out of Joe's shirt and fed it to Michele (that's her new thing).
I bet Michele loved eating whatever was found in Joe's shirt.

Feeding dad.

She was so wiped out after the party. We came home, ate lunch and she crashed. I think I thanked Gina and her hubs B for planning a party at 10:00am, several times. It might seem early to some but it really couldn't have been more perfect for us. The munchkin takes a nap like clockwork every day at 1:00. And girlfriend gets crabby if things are thrown off schedule. Seriously crabby. The party was from 10am-12pm, and after going home and eating lunch, she was down for her nap by 1:00.

Sunday my family came over for dinner. Both of my sisters came and brought their girls. My parents and my grandparents were in attendance as well. I love it when all of the girls get together. The munchkin has so much fun with them.

Here's her oldest cousin Aubrey. Isn't she sweet?

Starting from the back left, The Munchkin and her (6 weeks) younger cousin Q (Amy's daughter), then in the front Aubrey, who will be 4 in June and Alex, who just turned 2 in December (Erin's girls).



I am excited for the munchkin. She gets to grow up with all her cousins, so close in age and living so close by. Me and my sisters are pretty close with one another, so these kids are gonna be together alot!

It's amazing how much destruction four little girls can do to a house. By the end of the evening, it definitely looked as if a small tornado had made its way through our home! Ahhh to have that kind of energy again!

I am so glad it's Friday. It's been a long hellish week at work and I am so ready for the weekend. My bestie Anna has agreed to blow off work early and meet me for some retail therapy. I am really excited! I haven't seen her much lately and I miss her gobs. Plus she's pregnant and I need to rub her belly. We are going to head to the outlet mall to hit up Gap and Old Navy with our 30% off coupons. I haven't bought the munchkin clothes in a while either and poor girl is looking sad with her short pants and belly-showin-out-the-bottom shirts. We went to a friends house last night and I caught grief for her super short skirt. Yeah it was a 12 months skirt... I still thought it was cute. Ooops. Hopefully I can stock up on some new clothes for her this weekend!

Happy Friday Everyone!!

Superbowl Sunday

For Superbowl Sunday we had some friends over to watch the game. Ofcourse, being the sports fan that I am, I didn't even know who was playing until that day. But for me, it's not about the game. I just love getting together with my peeps and eating up some yummy food!

I made some homemade crackers (I subbed olive oil for the yucky canolo oil) and served them with cheese slices, Cremini mushrooms stuffed with grassfed beef and aged english cheddar, Dip consisting of cheese, rotel and pork sausage (the hubs nicknamed this crack dip years ago and that is now what everyone calls it), and ofcourse the Cake Pops. Everyone else brought food too, so we had quite a spread. Before everyone arrived I grabbed a photo of Joe and myself. I hardly have any pics of the two of us together. I need to work on that.



And ofcourse I had to take a pic of the munchkin too, who now says "cheese" really loud when she sees a camera and smiles really big. She's so awesome.


My girl Anna came over early. This was nice, we could sit and chat while I got the food ready and before everyone else arrived. She also helped entertain the munchkin for me.


A few of my girls, Anna, Brenda and Amber chatting around the table.


We welcomed everyone to bring their children, but only one playmate showed up. Rhys and the munchkin get along really well. He doesn't even mind all her girly toys and playing tea party with her.

Bachelorette Party Preview

More to come....

Where did November go?

I can't believe that November is almost over already. Figured I better throw up a few pics of the munchkin so everyone can see how big she is getting. How did this happen?!

We have been teaching her sign language and she has been picking it up really well. I can't believe how much she uses her signs for "eat" and "more" and "all done". It has really helped us to avoid some melt downs and to figure out what she needs much more quickly. She loves being able to communicate with us too. There has been numerous times that she has given me the sign for "eat" in times I would have never guessed she was hungry, and if she wasn't able to communicate it to me, and had to cry until I guessed, I might have just written it off as teething. I also can't believe how easy it is for her to pick it up and for her to use it. You don't need to spend lots of money on dvds or anything either, just buy a baby signs book, and show her how to use the signs, over and over until she gets it. The first one took a couple of months (she was just under a year old by the time it clicked), but once she learned one, the others were much quicker to pick up.

It just amazes me what little sponges they are! One of her favorite things to do now is read books. Whether she brings them to me or sits on her own and "reads" them herself. The other day, she sneaked out of the living room when I wasn't looking. I finally found her in her room. She had climbed up into the glider, grabbed a book off of the night stand, and was pretending to read it. It melted my heart. She's becoming so independent! I can't wait to take her to the library some day. I have the fondest memories of my mom taking us.

Her and her little cousin are so much fun together!

Sharing a book.

My friend Anna, along with her little boy met us up at the mall for some shopping/walking/eating/exploring. Here they are playing on some of the little coin operated rides.

Sitting in the backseat of the ice cream truck.

Learning how to drive from BBZ.

Uh oh! Looks like she's about to wreck... BBZ is jumping ship!

Not so impressed with the jeep I see...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Saturday is my birthday... again. Didn't I just have a birthday? It sure feels like it. Although last year for my birthday I had a baby with severe acid reflux and a night out, painting the town, just wasn't an option. This year, however, I am looking forward to some fun! Me and some girlfriends are meeting up for a sushi dinner, then we are all going to head back to my house, joined by the boys, for a little house party.

But before that happens, I am really looking forward to seeing all of the family for Thanksgiving. My family gathering is on Thursday, and we will be seeing Joe's family on Friday.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!