Boy or Girl

I'm counting the days... not that that will make my baby come any sooner... haha.. but I will say I'm super excited to meet this little baby. Since we wait to find out the gender till birth... I have lots of fun washing and folding, boy AND girl clothes. It's fun seeing a drawer full of cute small jammies... I'm surprised Ella hasn't discovered this whole new wardrobe for her babies. I'm not sure how much our sweet 25 month old understands about what is about to unfold, thought tonight as we were putting together the crib in her room, she said it was for the baby, when I asked her where the baby was she pointed to my belly! That was pretty cool!! Hurry up March!

Birthdays.

WOW. I am now 26. For some that still seems young, I understand. But it's kinda crazy, getting closer to 30. I have to be honest, birthdays aren't my favorite. Not because I afraid/don't like getting older... that's fine. I've enjoyed many childhood and adult birthday celebrations. As I've gotten older I think it's more mental. I don't like all the attention... yet I do want to celebrate.. I just haven't quite figured out the best way. The last few years haven't been the best.

2009 - we just moved to St. George, I didn't really have many friends. Phil had to work... so I sat home eating ice cream by myself

2010- super pregnant. 6 days overdue, with everyone saying, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE THAT BABY!!??

2011-I am super thankful that I was able to be in Salt Lake with my family, but most of the afternoon was spent in a cell phone store not at Ikea. Blah!

2012-

This year was different. Though, I'm not sure if it's because Phil had the day off, so we were together the whole day. Or because of my sweet friends, Kirsie and Zack who had us over for breakfast, then joined us for a kid free dinner and black light mini-golf (which phil is now obsessed with). Or that Phil let me sleep in AND take an afternoon nap...which made for a super relaxing day, low key with just enough celebration. Maybe it was because, even though I'm pregnant again, i'm not overdue, or that my sweet Ella wanted to sing "Happy Birthday Mommy" a hundred times that day and totally gave away what presents she and daddy got me...silly girl isn't even TWO yet!! No matter what, I am so very thankful for my amazing hubby, precious daughter and great friends.

Cheers to a great year! And more birthdays... which may or may not be as great as this one.

Christmas Tree.. a few days late

I love decorating for Christmas. Well.. I love decorating my tree. That's about all the Christmas decorating that that happens around the house. Thank you honey for the fire... makes for the perfect Christmas mood. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Newest baby gadget!

While looking around for reviews on the newest stroller that I want, I came upon BabyGizmo.com, what a cool sight, I love all her detailed review videos, though I do wonder if she ALWAYS wears sunglasses on her head :). As I was looking through the videos... My attention was drawn to this video on the BEABA BABYPOTE .... We had just bought Ella the baby food that comes in the squeeze packets and I thought they were awesome... but more $$ than I wanted to spend. This was one baby gadget that seemed like a pretty cool duplicate of those packets and saves $$, in the long run. The best price, $19.95 with FREE shipping, I found was at here at HealthCheckSystems.com. I ordered late Thursday night and it was in my mailbox TODAY! I think that's amazing. So right away I loaded it up with some applesauce and snapped away. I love it! Easy to load, Ella enjoyed sucking and squeezing away, then clean up was a breeze!I love that Ella can feed herself and it's not messy. Going to be great for outings, car rides, and fun for Ella too! I highly recommend... I'm even thinking about getting another one.....

Sad it's all gone...

Balancing Life

I love being a wife and mother, but whew! These last few months I have had much harder time balancing everything...most days I feel like I'm just swimming...

-housework

-bills

-laundry

-marriage with Phil

-errands

-working out

-motherhood with Ella

-cooking

-friends

-hair clients, St. George/SLC

-personal devotions

-yard work

-down time... wait.. what is that?!?!

(not necessarily in order of importance)

A few weeks ago I sat down and created a schedule so I could have some sort of routine and goals. Then life happened.....Here is just a rough draft of what i created... i still am fine tuning it.. like now one of my friend's and I are working out 2 mornings a week...

	MONDAY		TUESDAY		WEDNESDAY		THURSDAY		FRIDAY
	-ella	-mom	-ella	-mom	-ella	-mom	-ella	-mom	-ella	-mom
08:00:00 AM	Wake up		wake up		Wake up		Wake up		Wake up
08:30:00 AM				Laundry					Chill in mom and dad's bed
09:00:00 AM	Eat Breakfast		Eat Breakfast		Eat Breakfast		Eat Breakfast		Eat Breakfast
09:30:00 AM	Nap	Devotions	Nap	Devotions	Nap	Devotions	Nap	Devotions	Nap
10:00:00 AM	Nap	Nap	Nap	Nap	Nap	Nap	Nap	Nap	Nap
10:30:00 AM	Nap	Get Ready	Nap	Get Ready	Nap	Get Ready	Nap	Get Ready	Nap	CROCK POT!
11:00:00 AM	Free Play	CROK POT!	Free Play	Laundry	Sing and Dance		Craft Time
11:30:00 AM	Alone Play	Fix lunch	Alone Play	Fix Lunch	Alone Play		Alone Play
12:00:00 PM	Park/Lunch	Park/Lunch	Park/Lunch	Park/Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
12:30:00 PM						Errands
01:00:00 PM
01:30:00 PM
02:00:00 PM	Nap	Clean Kitchen	Nap	Laundry	Nap	Clean Master	Nap	Dust/Vacuum	Nap
02:30:00 PM	Nap	Paper work	Nap	Clean Baths	Nap		Nap	Organize	Nap
03:00:00 PM	Nap	mail cards	Nap	Laundry	Nap	Email	Nap		Nap
03:30:00 PM	Nap		Nap		Nap	Paperwork	Nap		Nap
04:00:00 PM	Milk/Snack. Reading		Milk/Snack Reading		Milk/Snack Alone Read		Milk/Snack Reading		Milk/Snack
04:30:00 PM	Alone Play	Make Dinner	Alone Play	Make Dinner	Go Outside		Go Outside
05:00:00 PM	Play w/ Dad		Play w/ Dad	Laundry	Play w/ Dad	Make Dinner	Play w/ Dad	Make Dinner
05:30:00 PM				Laundry
06:00:00 PM	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
06:30:00 PM	Family Time		Clean up dinner		Mom time	Phil church	Family Time
07:00:00 PM	Bath		Small Group	Small Group	Bath				Bath
07:30:00 PM	Bed				Bed		Bed		Bed
08:00:00 PM
08:30:00 PM
09:00:00 PM			Bed
09:30:00 PM
10:00:00 PM
MEALS	Monday	Crock pot	Tuesday	Pre-made	Wednesday	Homestyle	Thursday	Ethnic	Friday	Crock pot
craft time	color	paint	cook	puzzles	mirror
outside time	swing	walk	bike ride	sand/water table		catch ball	water play	park
family time	dance	walk	shower	bike ride	drive	play room	Hide & seek	park	fort building
daddy time

So.... I am wondering what my friend's are doing to keep on top of everything.

What systems do YOU have in place?

Please share!

Do you have a daily routine? Great meal planning tips? One day for laundry or a little every day? Mail filing system? I cannot stand my kitchen living room being cluttered... anytime... so most of the time the clutter ends up in our room... not so good

I did a few searches on trusty ol' google... and came up with a few cool ideas...

Here is a cool site on organizing mail and bills, 'wearenotmartha' had a few good ideas that i'm going to put in place... first things first... buy a cute organizer :)

Another neat meal planning site that I came across that seems to be published by Iowa State University got back to the basics... I liked their ideas for budget friendly entertaining. Also The focus on healthy meals

I haven't spent too much time looking at this site about setting up a cleaning routine.. but a site called 'household management 101' HAS to have some good ideas for me!

One more site i want o spend more time looking at and get some organizing ideas, Organized Home

Bath Time!!

Happy Birthday My Love

My dear hubby just turned 29. Crazy. I am so proud to be his wife, here are 29 reasons why:

1-Loves Jesus

2-Makes me laugh

3-Gets down and plays with Ella

4-Fixes all kinds of things

5-Always dreaming

6-Great Leader

7-Loves jeeping

8-Cares about others

9-Owns more vehicles then i want to admit

10-Gets super excited about new ideas

11-Takes Ella on fun adventures

12-Great hockey player

13-Watches silly shows with me

14-Shows me grace on a daily basis

15-Lets me cook crazy new food, and most of the time likes it

16-Does the dishes

17-Loves boating

18-Gives great kisses

19-Is great at his job

20-Pushes me to go and do outdoor stuff with him

21-Lets me decorate the house how I choose

22-Is okay with cereal for dinner, when I don't feel like cooking

23-Cannot stand/sit still when on the phone

24-Prays with Ella every night before bed

25-Is quite entertaining behind the boat

26-Is always willing to learn and grow

27-Rubs my back all the time, with out me asking

28-Enjoys my family

29-Prays for me

Cooking

I really do like to cook... but most of the time I don't put much effort into it....

Recently I found this sweet website www.allrecipes.com it has opened up a whole new world for me and Phil is grateful ;)

I wanted to share one recipe that I made last week. It was so tasty.

Black Bean Rice Burgers

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Black-Bean-Rice-Burgers/Detail.aspx

I pretty much followed the recipe... changes I made:

-suated the onions

-didn't add much salsa

-left off the sour cream, salsa, and lettuce

-buttered the wheat buns and toasted them in the oven

-garnished with avocado and tomatoes

I served the burgers with broccoli and 'Alexia' sweet potato fries from coscto

http://www.alexiafoods.com/alexia-products/alexia-sweet-potato.jsp?WT.mc_id=ALEXGOOG1021&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.srch=1

please let me know if you try this recipe, how you like it, and how you made it 'your own', or if you have any other winners from allrecipes!!

pictures

1-mixture

2-adding the cheese

3-the yummy avocado on toasted buns ;)