Valentines Day no.1

We had our first Valentines Day together this year! No distance or deployments! YAY! What a weird week though… first, ice storm that encases every tree branch, leaf, and blade of grass in about an INCH of ice! The weight of the ice caused the tree's to bend in half, touching the ground and their branches to snap!  This pic is of a branch that broke off into our parking space… a few HOURS after Danny got the impression to MOVE OUR CAR! Some people have made light of how much damage and chaos this storm caused. Let me tell you… i'm from Idaho ok. I KNOW SNOW. And wind, and biting cold, slush, black ice bla bla bla! THIS was different. This caused tons of damage to the area, tree's hanging from power lines, power line poles snapped in half, broken branches everywhere, tree's over roads and power outages for 4 DAYS for some! We found out the hard way we are not prepared for any kind of disaster.

So that happened. Then.. the day after we got our power back was Valentines Day. We were chatting after putting Rowan down when oh, the GROUND STARTED SHAKING! I was scared. I didn't know what was happening! Danny told me to go get in the bathtub, then I was worried about Rowan, he ran to get him, then he was yelling for me to get in the car… nothing else happened. We waited in the car for a  bit and then got bogo red velvet cream cheese frosting blizzards. Weird day. Week. 

Here's what I did for Danny for Valentines Day. Rowan gave him the pic and his little foot salt dough heart :) I made him a bouquet of duct tape, 6 black and 6 mustaches. I wanted to give him a dozen "manly" roses… but the bacon bouquets I saw on pinterest were disgusting. The metal container they are in was 1$ at target and I stood them in heart m&m's.  The gift bag is entitled the "It's Business Time" bag, flight of the Concords lol…. hehe.. he.. it had various "business time" items, along with "business socks" hahahahaha i'm awesome! 

I made red velvet sandwich cookies with cream cheese frosting.  They were delicious! And so festive :) 

 Here's my sweet baby! His red pants got here on Valentines day! Love him :) He got a little valentines day puppy!

We didn't have any plans on Valentines day. So we went to target to get a movie and decided on a whim to go buy a fish. First I wanted to look at puppies… we went to petco but there were no puppies! So I said I waned a love fish. I wanted two love fishes and one baby fish but instead we ended up with one killer beta fish… because it was the lowest maintenance. 

Danny ordered my Sherries Berries. They didn't come on time because of the weather… and then the card was wrong, not even from him. The card was from some guy named Christian Daniel who said he was the love of my life.  Sigh poor Danny! He was on top of it and it didn't work out. He got me roses and chocolates too :) The roses are blooming now and look so beautiful!

We had Saturday set up as our Valentine's Date Day! Someone in the ward was kind enough to take Rowan and we were able to go to the temple and do some sealings. This was our first visit to the temple in Columbia SC.  Afterwards we went to Fujiyama! My first time. It was fun and delicious. We had some awful people next to us but it was still a great time.

It's valentines so here's a kissy pic :) 

HAHAAAHAHAHA!

Thats my boy!

Seeing Rowan

I look at Rowan all day long. And sometimes more times at night than i'd like to. I look at his owies, his messy face, his chubby hands, the stain on his shirt… I look at his gums and check for teeth, at his bottom to check for rashes… in his mouth to fish out the bits of paper he ate from my shopping list...I look at Rowan ALL DAY LONG, but sometimes I don't see him. There are times when i'm going through our day and I realize i'm blankly staring at him munching his graham cracker while he is looking into my eyes with the BIGGEST grin on his face~ trying to connect and i'm totally vacant doing what I do every day. That's not to say I don't enjoy him, but I often seem to look past him while I wipe his face and load the dishwasher again. Or basically ignore him as I move him from one activity to the next, keeping him near me but not engaging him.  Or not paying attention to him while I watch a show and play on my phone and fold laundry all at the same time.  He's such a beautiful boy. His chubby cheeks, his lovely dark eyes with their long dark lashes and sandy hair.  I still cannot believe he is mine, part of me and my sweetheart. Our "us" personified. He has so much personality, is so independent and so curious about everything. And when I look at him, really look at him I am overwhelmed with love for this sweet individual I am lucky enough to raise.  We have been told that children are an heritage to the Lord, that we are given stewardship over these spirits, God's children to love and raise in righteousness. It never feels like enough or as though I'll ever "get it right". But as long as I can really SEE him, every day, i'll do ok. I'm going to try harder to share meaningful time with my son. Not just time. To read stories, to tickle, to sing songs, to LOOK at him and engage him, in conversation and play. I'm going to do my best to SEE ROWAN every day. 

First Coupon Steal- Post

Right now target has their large DiGiorno Pizza's on sale, 2 for $9. I had a buy two get one free manufactures coupon. Then I printed one of Targets 2$ off two pizza's coupon. Then at the register I used their cartwheel 20% off and then my 5% off red card! I got 3 pizza's for $5 bucks. Normally they are 5$ each!  Maybe i'm getting at the hang of this! We have done pretty good at not eating these very often but it was just too cheap not to :P 

Homemade Baby Food

Today Rowan and I made him some baby food! I've only done this a few times, not posting it cause i'm a pro or anything, mainly just because I was proud of myself :)

Today I did sweet potatoes! I have watched some video's on making baby food and most just boiled the vegetable, or fruit, and then purred it in a blender or food processor. For some reason one that I watched baked their potatoes though… I don't get why so I just peeled, chopped and boiled them as well. Then I blended them in my ninja along with the now nutrient filled water.

Little Row was my big helper :) 

 It purred really well. The green beans that I did I wasn't able to get this nice texture but they may not have cooked long enough. You can also steam your produce. Anyway, after getting this nice sweet potato pure I poorer them into an ice cube tray, freezed and bagged!

Georgia Aquarium

 Awwww here's my sweet little chubber! We went to the aquarium in Atlanta GA over a four day weekend Danny had for Martin Luther King Day.  It was nice to get out of town for a day and explore a little bit. One thing I would say… if you go don't go on a weekend, I had kids jabbing me in the ribs so that I would move so they could see it was so overcrowded. We learned our lesson. Oh, and eat before you go or take food, its a rip off and there's no where to put a cooler. Oh, or to breastfeed! I noticed so many women sitting on the floor feeding babies! Anyway.                                                      

Rowan couldn't have cared less about the fish haha! He was just wondering what the heck we were doing there and enjoyed chewing on his stroller strap. :) Gotta love him! I wasn't able to get many good shots, but because the jelly fish light up I got a pretty awesome one.

We tried to get a family pic in the tunnel under the giant aquarium buuuut it was kind of  hard with all of the crowds and the moving convayer belt.

 Sharks and sting ray!

Rowan was getting pretty cranky by the time we made it through all of the aquarium; and not gonna lie we were getting a little tired of wrestling him. We had tickets to the dolphin show, but it was three hours from starting. We decided to wait to see it and just he'd get a good nap before. Up to that point we weren't sure it had been worth the cost, especially with wrestling the crowds. Rowan fell asleep while we waited for the show to start and slept through some of it so that worked out and oh my heck it was AWESOME! Dolphins in a giant tank in front of a stage with awesome lights and sets and.. it was a musical.. anyway it was amazing. THAT made it totally worth it. So glad we waited!

Here's a … tiger shark I think?

Almost Clean Cherrio Bars

I know "almost" isn't really what most of us are looking for when we are searching for clean recipes but lets be honest, most of us can't live a life on 100% clean, organic, raw, whole foods diet. If you're like us you make your best effort every day to eat REAL healthy foods and move on with your life.  One of the biggest thing's i've been doing is trying to find mostly healthy substitutes for the thing I love. One being TREATS. I loooove treats! Growing up my mom would make these delicious peanut butter m&m cheerio bars. They were sweet, nutty, salty, chocolatey, chewy… ohhhh so good! And so fattening and horrible for you. They are loaded with butter, high fructose corn syrup, a full cup of sugar… you get it! :( I got some m&m's on sale, and with coupons last night and today I was determined to find SOMETHING I could make with them! I don't even have white sugar in the house so I knew I couldn't cave and make cookies… and i'm really hating the after taste of some of the substitute "fake" sugar sweeteners i've tried in a couple of things. So her's what I came up with…

Almost Clean Cherrio Treats 
1/2 C Honey
1/8 C Agave
1 tsp Vanilla
1/2 C Peanut Butter
1/2 C Nuts
3 C Cherrios
3/4 Cup M&M

Over medium heat combine agave and honey in sauce pan. Bring to boil (stirring constantly) and let boil for 1 min. Add peanut butter and vanilla and stir over heat for another min or two. (Sorry I wasn't timing :-/) Sir in Cherrios and nuts, then gently fold in M&M's. Press into greased baking sheet.

*To make it clean you can omit m&m's, or, use an organic high percentage of cocao bar chunked. You can find an organic cereal similar to cherries' too.