Finally

It's here!!!!! My broccoli is coming!


AND....My cabbage is enclosing itself. (Which means that the head of cabbage is coming!)


Jealous at how huge our garden is getting?


We just planted the others in the box today. Grow my little dears, grow!


We have some new friends! We have a black kitty that has decided to start hanging around but I have yet to get a picture of her. We like to call her Ethel. :)


Lastly, this past weekend, I made Grey a homemade Key Lime Pie for his birthday and he said, and I quote, "This is the best key lime pie ever!" :)


The funny part was that it called for 1/2 cup of lime juice. Only 1/2 a cup, right? From regular limes, you should have been able to juice 2-4 and get that amount. Since I was using Key Limes and they're TINY, I ended up having to juice 20 to get 1/2 a cup. I didn't have a juicer so after hand squeezing about 10 of them, I had to start taking breaks between every few. :) Next time - buy a freakin juicer.

5 more weeks till summer!
-B

An Award

And the "Most Awkward" Easter picture award goes to....



Yep. My exact words afterwards were, "Way to show people how much you love me Grey!"

:)Happy Easter!
-B

To the One who saves

"I heard an old, old story,
How a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary
To save a wretch like me;
I heard about His groaning,
Of His precious blood's atoning,
Then I repented of my sins
And won the victory.

Chorus
O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.

I heard about His healing,
Of His cleansing pow'r revealing.
How He made the lame to walk again
And caused the blind to see;
And then I cried, "Dear Jesus,
Come and heal my broken spirit,"
And somehow Jesus came and bro't
To me the victory.

I heard about a mansion
He has built for me in glory.
And I heard about the streets of gold
Beyond the crystal sea;
About the angels singing,
And the old redemption story,
And some sweet day I'll sing up there
The song of victory.

Chorus
O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood."

Happy Easter!

Spring Break

Spring Break '11 WOOOOOOOOOOO - this is long, beware!

*First dinner of spring break - marinated pork loin with rosemary, tomatoes and grilled asparagus with feta and balsamic vinegar, and grilled potatoes with garlic and rosemary.
I had already eaten the majority of my pork, don't worry. :)


*Grey celebrated his 23rd birthday! We went to the farm for the whole weekend and celebrated with his sister and his dad. Grey got to turkey hunt a little while he was up there.


*I went home for the first part of the weekend and got to hang out with Ms. Nora and the rest of the family!








Apparently we're talking about something intense? See Kristi's face?!


Need a blow up? Look at that stare!


Sisters! Missing Jen......


What parenting REALLY does to a person...


She's on the move!


*Our garden is growing like woah! The picture with my hand is for your size reference. We've now added cherry tomatoes, better boy tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, and cantaloupe to our garden!






We're almost done - KEEP HOLDING ON!
*Last night, I attempted to make my mom's famous chocolate zucchini bread. It's fabulously moist and chocolately and you can't see/taste the zucchini at all which is why I love it - I just KNOW that it has to count as a veggie serving.
The recipe called for grated zucchini so that means taking a zucchini and putting it to a cheese grater, right? Yours truly had a complete mental breakdown and decided to slice the zucchini. To explain how horrific this is, listen up. When you GRATE the zucchini, it disappears into the batter and you never see it again. When you SLICE the zucchini, you're left with these long THICK zucchini slices that DONT disappear in the batter. Ew. Gross. There are green things in my batter. See below?


So what we then tried to do was this:


Long story short, it didn't work. I (very annoyed at the time) threw the batter into the bread pans and put them in the oven. Ya know what happened? The zucchini actually disappeared in the batter! I have YET to see any green when cutting the finished zucchini bread. :)

*And last but not least, this is a very popular pose at our house these days.


Happy Spring Break!
-B

5 things

Just because I love making lists, here are 5 things I'm currently obsessed with/really into!

1. Cooking new recipes - I've only repeated two or three meals the entire time we've been married - woo yea! Go me. I love trying new things. This month, our featured recipes are coming from Eat Better America, Clean Eating Magazine, and Healthy Cooking magazine. Next month, we're cooking out of the Cooking Light comfort foods cookbook. About 90% of my recipes are coming from there for the month! During June, all of 'em will come from America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Cookbook!

2. Running/working out - we've signed up for our 3rd 5k at the beginning of May...I'm excited!

3. Sleep. I currently cannot get enough. I slept for 11 hours the other night and still was dead tired, took another nap in the afternoon, and then went to bed around 9 that night.

4. Gardening - I love growing things and seeing them change over night! Soon we'll have our own veggies to eat!

5. Grey :) My husband is wonderful! Today, he took me to chickfil cause I was craving it and cleaned up the entire kitchen!

This week

Survey: Are these massive spider casings or Caterpillar cocoons?



Our garden is growing!










Grey and I ran our 2nd 5k together - He ran it in under 22 minutes and I ran mine in under 28. We've got another one sceduled for the beginning of May. Ya know what? Check out the Greer Earth Day 5k stats - Grey came in FIRST for his age division and he was 10th over all! :) Aren't you proud?

Desperate Housewife

Currently, I do all of the house chores (dusting, vacuuming, laundry, and cleaning the kitchen) every weekend (Grey is in charge of the bathroom don't worry - that does get cleaned).

On the week days, I usually don't get home till 5:30-6ish and then I cook dinner, do my school work, and go to bed around 9:30 due to sheer exhaustion. I cook around 4 MAYBE 5 big dinner meals during the week and I cook meals for Grey to take to school for lunches over the weekend.

Here is my dilemma:
I have absolutely no time for myself. I really just want to exercise 3 or 4 times a week or take a bubble bath or read for longer than 15 minutes or cook something exciting like bread or brownies.

My school work takes up the majority of the week unless I some how manage to plan a little extra over the weekend and get ahead. Even on the weekends, I get so stressed out with everything that must get done that I never enjoy them. I just get frustrated the whole time and I spend from Saturday morning until Sunday at dinner time doing chores and school work. I hate going places over the weekend because I know (selfishly) that I'll have to play catch up and work harder when I get back.

Here are my questions and PLEASE answer honestly.
1. Am I being a little OCD by scrubbing the house from head to toe every week? Is that just unreasonable? Should I go for maybe twice a month or even once a month?
2. Should I try to not cook as involved meals as I'm cooking? (aka - get a freezer pizza and eat it once a week?)
3. Should I try and spread the chores out over the week and have one a night thus leaving the weekend for me to relax?

Thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

On the other hand, this happened to me the other night as I was getting into the car. Interesting right? Ow.


Also, a big thanks goes out to Cooks Country for teaching me how to make some of the best pancakes we've ever eaten!


-B