Guilty Pleasure...and other things.

I'm reading the Twilight series through for the 2nd time. I started book 3 this weekend. Every night when I crawl into bed after a long, hard day filled with children - I just smile and pull my book off my night stand and have a few minutes of happiness reading before I can't stay awake any longer...in general...10-15 minutes!! I don't know why but I really love those books and I'm not one who normally re-reads many books. I'm enjoying it even more the second time around.

How do you get a kid to stop licking their lips? Wilson does it all the time. No matter what time of year. Now that it is getting cooler, he's going to look like he's wearing lip gloss. We give him chapstick, I smear him with vaseline, and when I'm able to find the aquaphor I use that too. But the constant lip licking is what I need to remedy...

I may have posted this before. I want DVR. Television is the thing I've given up after having child #3 (well given it up after maternity leave ended!). If we had DVR I could have that set for the two shows I like to watch and then watch them whenever I have the opportunity. It's just not working for me to have to watch them when they are on. Plus I'm way behind from missing about the last 1/3 of last season. Andy's looking into cable because we're THOSE kind of people that still live in the dinosaur age without cable. It's just that we've not had it for the almost 9 years (NINE YEARS!!!) we've been married - so to add that to our budget, that's a big chunk o' money every month...how much is it after the promotions end?? Is it worth the $ when you don't watch a lot of TV?

And the winner is...

Forgot to flip - Andy's is on the bottom, mine is on the top.

Mine are on the left. Andy's are on the right. Can you tell who the perfectionist is in our family?!

Andy! His pretzels won the bake off! We had fun making our soft pretzels yesterday. Wilson and Luke couldn't choose between us, they gave us both 10's. Then we had Poppy swing by and he tasted them and voted. When my mom and Terry stopped by we had then taste the pretzels too! Terry chose mine and my mom's words were "but I don't know which one is yours!" She totally wasn't biased or anything...! She liked both but her vote went for Andy's. I also voted for Andy's but still like the ones that my recipe makes. His are more buttery - mine are better for you! I've already posted my recipe on the blog. You can find it here. Below is the recipe for the winning pretzels from our bake-off!

Almost Famous Soft Pretzels

1 cup milk

1 pkg instant active dry yeast

3 T light brown sugar, packed

2 1/4 cups flour, plus more for kneading

10 T unsalted butter, plus more for greasing

1 t. salt

1/3 cup baking soda

2 T coarse salt

1. Warm milk in a saucepan until it's about 110; pour into a medium bowl and sprinkle in yeast. Let the yeast soften, about 2 minutes; stir in the brown sugar and 1 cup flour with wooden spoon. Dice 2 T butter and soften; sitr into the mix. Add the remaining 1 1/4 cups flour and the teaspoon of salt to make a sticky dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding more flour if needed, until smooth but still slightly tacky, about 5 minutes. (Andy used my stand mixer with dough hook). Shape into ball, place in a lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap in a warm place until doubled in bulk. About 1 hour.

2. Preheat oven to 450 and grease a large baking sheet. Punch the dough to deflate it, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Roll and stretch each piece with the palms of your hands until you have a 30inch rope. Hold the ends and slap the middle of the rope on the counter as you stretch. Form into a pretzel shape.

3. Dissolve the baking soda in 3 cups of warm water in a shallow baking dish. Gently dip each pretzel in the soda solution, then arrange on baking sheet and sprinkle with coarse salt. Bake 10-12 minutes.

4. Melt the remaining 8 T of butter in a shallow dish. Dip the hot pretzels in the butter, turning to coat. Place on a wire rack and let excess butter drip off.

A Good Saturday

This morning I ran my first 5K race since college! I've been running the C25K and this was my goal- to run in the Race for the Cure. It was raining and pouring but I refused to give up! I ran the whole way and finished in 34 minutes. I was proud of myself! My feet were very soggy and I was soaked but it feels good to have accomplished my goal.

Before lunch Andy, Wilson and I worked on organizing the play room. Andy put up a new shelf to hold some of the rubbermaid tubs and toys. It looks great! Now the boys can actually play in there.

This afternoon Andy and I are going to have a pretzel bake off. I've made soft pretzels once that were deliccious and so has Andy. So we're each going to make our recipe and have a taste test! The boys are pretty excited about tasting the pretzels. It is so nice having today to do whatever we want! Looking forward to a nice afternoon!

Busy Days

5:15am- Alarm. Snooze.
5:30 (sometimes 5:45)- Get up, shower, start getting ready.
6:10- Breakfast, coffee, finish getting ready
6:50- Walk out the door with Wilson in tow to drive to school. Thankfully Andy gets up and gets Wilson dressed and gives him breakfast.
7:05- Rush into school
4:15- Leave school with Wilson to go home
4:30- get home and see my boys- hang out
5:15ish- make dinner, eat dinner, clean-up kitchen, few more minutes of play time for the boys
7:15- Wilson's shower
7:30- pj's for boys, bedtime routine, feed Tyler,
8:00- Make lunch, coffee, get ready for next day,
8:15- work around house, read small group book, go for a run, get on computer, hang out with Andy
9:15-get ready for bed, read, go to sleep around 10pm

Is it summer yet?

Consignment Sale

175 items.
A couple weeks ago I made a mountain of clothes size newborn- 12 months that we were finished using since Ty has outgrown 12 month clothes. Anything that was winter/fall went into the sale pile. Bottles, baby toys, the swing, socks, shoes, etc. Then, starting this past Saturday for each of these 175 items I have snapped all the snaps, buttoned all the buttons, put them on hangers facing just so. Pinned a tag on the upper right hand corner. Entered all the information into the computer so that the tags could be generated. Priced everything. Put non-clothing items in ziploc baggies. Labeled the baggies. Sorted by size. Somehow I started on Saturday and attached the last tags today at 5:20pm. Andy was working the set-up shift at 5:30 and taking all of our items in with him. I did it! I met the deadline. Thank you Andy for helping me last night! Thank you to my mom for getting all of the hangers! I couldn't have finished without your help. Hopefully many of our items will sell and this won't all be for nothing! :)

First Haircut

Before

This isn't really a happy face... :)

Little Tyler went for his first haircut today! He wasn't so sure about it at all - didn't like the cape, didn't like the scissors, and was quite wiggly! He looks so handsome with his haircut. What a big boy! He sat in my lap which made things better. Daddy pulled out the fruit puffs half way through to combat those wiggles!

Ty likes his new milk!

Tyler is really enjoying his whole milk now! He has figured out how to use a straw cup and a sippy cup. I am so glad he is transitioning so easily to his milk! I am working on cutting out a second feeding. Then it's just the bedtime feeding to cut. Yipee! So proud of our big boy! He is beginning to cruise around furniture. He is a big ham for the camera. As soon as Andy started to take a picture he pulled his cup out and smiled! His 5th tooth is almost through the gums. He is wearing 18 month clothes now and is such a handsome big boy!