Fresh Feeling... Welcoming Summer

Love watching this chunky one play and learn and grow. She loves to sit with the basket full of baby toys and pull them out, until she falls face forward into the basket, that is.

And notice the guitar in the background? I've been playing/fiddlin' around on it lately, feels nice. Also just loving this room in our home. The kitchen-family room-dining room combo is fantastic. We spend most of our time here and it feels so perfectly good. Breakfast. I love breakfast. So I blogged last week about the oatmeal, and we have had many good versions of that over the last month. But then there has been more. Yesterday we had "fondue" and scrambled eggs. We discovered toddler fondue when M was sick last winter. When you're on the brat diet nothing is fun. She was on the brat diet for several days in a row, on day 2 I got desperate and made her "fondue". Bananas dipped in applesauce. Nothing fancy, nothing different, but give her a fondue fork and call it that and we are golden. Happy time.

And then fresh fruit. Thank you bountiful baskets for introducing M to so many fruits that I don't buy on a regular basis from the store - kiwi and mango are her favorites right now.

My kitchen looks like this all the time. I love it. I am loving this new enjoyment of cooking and baking and preparing of food that I have going. I've never been great at it but whether I am great now or not I am loving it. We are messy almost every day. And it gets cleaned up probably every 3rd day. So yeah, there's always dishes to be done. Always. But hey, we are enjoying ourselves (and eating pretty well I might add!) and I feel like that is what matters.

Cookie Dough Frosting. Also thanks to Pinterest for inspiring me to try new things. Didn't love this frosting but my SIL said it was good so it must have been okay at least! :)

I have been trying hard to feed E foods from a list of top ten baby foods I found somewhere. I always need help with babies since you don't want to just fall to whatever is easiest to prep or easiest for them to serve themselves. But I am trying to branch out, and cover every aspect of the health spectrum for her. Anyways, today that included blueberries. Man, I knew they'd be messy but for real? :) Purple hands, purple cheeks, purple thighs even. Maybe a stain on her cloth diaper too. Oh good times. She LOVEd them. Who wouldn't?

Oh my goodness. Speaking of diapers... I bought a diaper sprayer for myself this time around. I just installed it last week and I LOVE it! If you do cloth and you don't have one of these, go get one! It makes a world of difference in the yucky ones, a world. And get this... I attached it myself. I was so pleased, I kept making Jordan come look at it!

We don't have a back yard yet really. There isn't a fence around it, the grass is messy crunchy weed land, and it's small to begin with. But I am loving our backyard none-the-less. I love that you step right from the dining room out into fresh air. There's a little step to sit on and even though the grass is lame the cement pad back there rocks. Chalk, bike riding, running, playing. It works. One day it'll be even better. But for now it is perfect for after dinner popsicles. Plus - the back yard is shaded starting about 3pm, so very very nice. :)

Oh my. That face. Guess who just snuck a taste of that popsicle?

It's starting to get hot inside and outside. But even with the heat the days are good. The house is wonderful, we are loving the location, the layout, the size. We took a walk the other night for mother's day... a long walk, and it was beautiful, and fresh. There is a bit of a maze of trails around us and it's perfect for walking and biking. For mother's day I got some goo awesome-ness to fill in and fix my bike trailer tires, so excited to get that going to run around with M and E. We'll be able to go further, longer, it will be awesome. Happy Tuesday. Oops, it's a little late now... happy Wednesday!?

Living is for US

Living is what we do. And this is how we do it.

M picked out this outfit for E... actually she picks this skirt almost every day, but it only makes the cut every so often.

Homemade jingle-balls for a niece turning 1, happy birthday L.

Finally some art time makes it to the surface... actually, this day we had art time almost all day. Paint, glitter, card making, stamps, playdough, and chalk. It was a good day, obviously.

Oh. My. Goodness. Okay, so any of you that actually know me very well know that I am not exactly a chef in the kitchen. I have always loved oatmeal, but I have always been an instant oatmeal gal... or even 1-minute oatmeal... but the good old stuff? So. Much. Better. Hand down. This is a new thing for me. It's fabulous any old day, any old way, but throw in some brown sugar, fresh strawberries, and cream, yum.

Sisters. I know from experience that sisters are awesome. Love mine. Love these two girls. Hope and pray every day that they will feel that love forever.

Who doesn't love flyn ryder... is that how you spell his name? I love that movie. Best. Day. Ever. :)

Happy Saturday. Go have a fabulous one. And then some. I know I will.

corners of my home today

I looked around and realized that certain things were making me smile, making me swoon, and making me feel immense peace. And these are those things:

Especially G's smile there in the middle, surprising me every time I looked at the matching game box! :) When I begin to look around my own life and my own home I see the joy that I feel, or that I sometimes forget to feel for a moment until I remind myself by just looking and seeing. Love my life. Love life in general. Happy Thursday, again. :)

flickr love

I was looking tonight for something that I had bookmarked awhile ago and was flipping back through my flickr favorites. Oh my goodness. Sometimes I wish my life looked my flickr favorites. I love my life and every little thing in it, visual or not. But sometimes the visual inspiration of others just screams LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL! And it's true. Life is beautiful: mine, yours, and everyone's in between.

Sunshine. Happy Thursday. Be inspired.

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face...

...and show the world all the love in your heart.

It is a good morning here. Received a fabulous package from my husband's boss... the book I've been dying to read, yay, thank you Dave! Also, we made horchata for dinner and there's some left over, nothing like chocolate doughnut holes and horchata for breakfast. While looking at a glitter card from M that was presented to me with a "happy mother's day week" song suspiciously similar to a familiar happy birthday song. Happy Wednesday morning. So far, so good.

these days...

and then some...

Winter Walking

**This is another back post, these pics are all from December 2011** :)

Our new home is in a lovely little neighborhood, lots of houses, very crowded you could say, but we are so close to loveliness it doesn't even matter. There are trails that run along a river just one block from our front door. It's awesome. M, E, and I love to walk over there, especially meeting our cousins or friends, or on our way to the park.

Over the holidays E & G met up with us to try out the trail. We all bundled up in snow gear which we really didn't need (we haven't seemed to need that much this winter at all...) and then we headed out. Making a few snow angels on the way of course.



One of the trails takes you down to a bridge, where M loves to throw rocks and sticks in. Over the pioneer days in the summer they do a rubber duckie race here, we'll have to join in the fun this year!!




My sister, love her. She looks so stylin with her nice camera round her neck! :)


M and I have been trying out the rest of the trails and have been loving it. On nice days she takes her bike. Sometimes we take the stroller, or the little tikes wagon I got off of KSL for Christmas.


There's a trail that runs down between the backs of some of the houses, love that.





Then the trails head over into what they call the "urban forest". I am thinking that's another name for "land-too-swampy-to-build-houses-on-so-let's-leave-the-trees-there".


But who cares why the forest is there, I just like that it is. And literally 2 minutes from our house. It feels nice to disappear, to watch the water and play in the trees. We need to plant some trees in our yard I think.









We are loving all of this. Our home, our neighborhood, the great location of it all. We love to walk the trails, run the trails, meet friends on the trails. Life is good. So far, so good. I think we chose well on this lil house of ours, we are so very happy.