Silly Girl

Lindsey doesn't eat baby food anymore, but we have a few containers left of it so I decided to give her some yesterday. She still hasn't perfected using the utensils on her own, but I thought I'd let her be on her own. She was using it and got pretty messy. Then she started using her fingers:
At least she's still holding the spoon, right?
What Mom, it's too hard:
Oh forget it, this is too much work:
What a silly girl!

What's for Supper?

I sat down to make a meal list last week and realized I was tired of my go to meals and wanted to branch out. I got an email from allrecipes.com (I highly recommend playing around on this site, I love it) featuring a recipe for garlic cheddar chicken. Last night I made it and I was so impressed. The flavor was amazing and the chicken was super moist. I even got to use the garlic mincer that was a gift from my wedding for the first time! I love reading the reviews because people make good comments/changes. Here is a stock pic of the chicken, I forgot to take a picture yesterday:
I used Italian bread crumbs so I didn't have to add all the different seasonings. I also had almost gone bags of harvest cheddar sun chips and cheddar ruffles so I crushed those up and added to the mix. That's the beauty of the recipe, you could add anything you have. I paired it with mashed potatoes, but wasn't totally sold on that. I'm not sure what would be better, let me know if you use something different!

Birthday Time

Last week was Whitney's 3rd birthday. We had such a great day. We started off with the biggest surprise of the century...my mom came down to visit!!! She got in late the night before and I called her in the morning and she said she wanted to go to the zoo with us. :-) We all went to the zoo then dropped Ty off to school/work. We got to go to dinner with my mom then went back to the apartment for a family skype party. She got spoiled by everyone and we had so much fun with my mom. Thanks to everyone who helped make her day special!

We hung up decorations the night before and because of the humidity the crepe paper unfolded and was pretty droopy in the morning!
Her favorite part of the zoo is the petting zoo:She also loves the playground there:
Checking out its face "close-up":
She got to brush the pig:

They spelled her cake wrong:

Did somebody sprout antlers?
I'm so glad to have these amazing little spirits in my life. They are so much fun to watch grow, even if it's sad when you realize they are growing up too fast. Whitney makes me laugh and says some awesome things. Her mind boggles me. She had a really great birthday and is already talking about when she turns 4.

As a side note...Ty's birthday was last week also so we are done with family birthdays for the year!!!

Product Review: Tide Pods

One of my biggest complaints living in our apartment is the laundry situation. It is on site, but not ideal when you have two rugrats running around. I always buy tide and I almost always buy it from Costco. At first I would measure the tide and put it in a smaller container. But that was messy and I never could eyeball how much to put in each load. I started taking the entire container. That was heavy and still messy sometimes.
This month there is a coupon for tide so I was planning on getting the liquid tide there, like always. I went there and saw that they have the new Tide Pods. The regular price of the liquid and the pods is the same at $19.99. The liquid is for 81 loads, the pods for 90. Without the coupon the pods are a better deal. I decided to get the pods. I did 8 loads of laundry on Friday and I have to say I was impressed. The pods work as good as the liquid to clean and I think the clothes smelled better and were a bit brighter. The biggest plus is that I can just throw one pod into my basket of clothes and there is no mess or added weight. It's a huge blessing for me and I'm sure I will use them for as long as we are here.
I'm sure since it's a new product, you may be able to get a sample to try it for yourself.
Have you tried them? What do you think?

Leftovers

A few years ago my MIL got us this for Christmas:
It's this cool pottery thing that lets you cook whole chicken in the oven. You put liquid in the little cup (apple juice, chicken broth, even water) and put it in the oven for a couple hours. I've really been using this lately. The chicken is so moist you would not even believe it. Well, since our family is small, we don't quite finish the chicken. I really hate leftovers, and never really eat them. But this chicken was so good, I didn't want it to go to waste. I decided to be creative with leftovers for once. I had half a bag of spaghetti noodles, the chicken, and leftover cooked vegetables (I NEVER keep veggies so I was glad for once I did) I mixed in some alfredo sauce with the chicken and veggies and cooked the noodles. Voila a meal in about ten minutes that was super yummy:
It doesn't look amazing, but trust me it tasted good. We were left with empty plates and full bellies:

What creative things have you done with leftovers?

Seal Beach

**Since first posting this I have been researching and I think we may have actually seen sea lions? There are a few differences between them. Can anyone tell? Let me know if you can!!**

So I have found my favorite place in California. We had heard about seal beach from a couple different locals and decided to check it out. I thought there was no way we'd see many seals. Well, I was very wrong. They were everywhere! There must have over a hundred around the beach! Of course I took a ton of pictures. We also saw lots of birds, crabs, and mussels. It was so much fun and I can't wait til we can go back. Oh and the kids loved it also. :-)

Here are some baby seals:


It was such a gorgeous day:


There were tons of pelicans:

Visitors

Ty's mom and step-dad came down to visit last week. It was so great to have family down here and we had so much fun running around town with Grandma and Grandpa Jan.
We went to the Mormon Battalion historical site. The church has newly renovated it and it was a really cool experience. Ty got volunteered to dress up as one of the soldiers:
Horsing around with Grandpa:
She had to visit the water with him:
We went to the zoo on their last day here. We were low on time so we took the bus tour. It was so great to see the animals that way and we saw some that we hadn't seen before:
The polar bear was so awesome to see. It was huge! And it's always a plus when the bears aren't just laying down/sleeping:




What fun things have you guys been up to lately?

Day 29: Something You Are Listening To

The lovely Donny Osmond singing in Mulan