Family Night

So yesterday I was trying to decide what to do for our family night and I was looking on facebook and came across a link to www.ldsfamilyfun.com. They offer tons of free family night lessons complete with a related activity and treat! They have an option for them to email you a free family night lesson every week or you can just go on their website and pick one and print it off. We had such a fun night! It has been a LONG time since we had Family Home Evening, and it is one of our goals to get into the habit of having it every Monday. I really liked this website because the lessons are easy to prepare and they are kind of geared towards younger kids. Our lesson last night was on preparing for an eternal family and it came with a game of Go Home (kinda like Go Fish) which we thought was pretty fun! So if anyone is struggling with FHE ideas, I definitely recommend going to that site!

No Sugar?

So, when I was younger (in my teens), I would go every other year without eating sugar and the date that I would start on was January 24th. Jacob and I were talking about it last night and kind of made a spur of the moment decision that we would try to do it together this year with a couple of exceptions. We are allowed to have something on birthdays and holidays. Also if we have an actual organized family home evening night than we are allowed to have a treat with that. I think it is good incentive to hold FHE, which is something we have been struggling with.I'm actually kind of excited to do this. Maybe it will help me lose some of this extra weight I've been hanging onto! I'm also excited that Jacob is doing it with me! It is a lot easier to go without sugar when you have someone doing it with you!

Today is my nephew Kimball's birthday. He is turning 6 today! I think one of the things I miss very most about being close to family, is my nieces and nephews! They grow and change so fast and I really miss being there to see that! I miss being there for their birthdays to celebrate how excited we are to have them in our family! I miss seeing all of the cute things they do and hearing all of the cute things they say! I think families are the best and I'm so glad that families are forever!

Two months old!

Wow, my little girl is two months old today! She is such a perfect little angel! We just love her so much! When I was pregnant with Rachel, I remember thinking about what a huge responsibility being a mom is. I was really worried about what it would be like taking care of a child 24/7. I was worried that I wouldn't know how to take care of her. I was worried that maybe I would get tired of taking care of her but wouldn't ever be able to take a break. I was worried how having that third little person would possibly change my relationship with Jacob. I was worried for nothing. Having this sweet little baby in our lives is such a huge blessing! Our lives definitely changed when Rachel was born, but they changed for the better. I definitely wouldn't go back to what it was before even if I had the choice. It is amazing to me just how much I love this little girl!

Some things about Rachel at two months:

She wears size 2 diapers.

She just started wearing size 3-6 month clothes.

She loves to go outside and will always stop crying as soon as we walk out the door with her.

She loves her bath time.

She is an awesome sleeper at night time usually only waking up oce or twice during the night to eat.

She has the most expressive face I've ever seen. She has the hugest smiles when she is happy but also the cutest sad and grumpy faces I've ever seen too!

She loves her binky but she also loves to suck on her hands too!

She loves to snuggle with mommy!

She snorts when she gets mad.

She absolutely loves her Daddy. Sometimes I can't even get her to look at me because she is so busy smiling and making eyes at her daddy.

We are so happy to have this little girl in our family!

Hummus!!

When I was in Southern Utah for Christmas my mom bought this awesome hummus from Costco! Ever since then I've really been wanting some, so yesterday I decided to try my hand at making some and it was a complete success! Our hummus was awesome! It was kind of a spur of the moment decision. I was driving home from visiting Jacob at lunch and I decided to go to one of the produce shops they have around here. I checked my wallet and counted out my change (I know, paying in change is kinda tacky, but it was all I had with me) and I found I had about 4 dollars. I bought a bunch of cilantro, 3 limes, 5 lemons, and some garlic for 3.71! (Can I tell you I just love the produce places around here?) I made two different batches of the hummus. The first was an avocado lime cilantro recipe and the other was a roasted red pepper recipe. After Jacob came home from work, we ate the entire bowl of the avocado one! Thank goodness hummus is a low calorie food! It helped that we were eating it with carrots! After it was gone I made the red pepper kind and it was delicious as well, but we were too full from the first batch to eat much of it. I guess we'll have it tonight instead! I think hummus is going to have to become a main staple around here!

Avocado Lime Cilantro Hummus

Ingredients:

1 ripe avacado
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
2 cups chickpeas
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp chopped garlic
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

In a food processor, combine the avacado, lime juice, olive oil, and cilantro. Pulse until all is combined and creamy.
Add the rinsed and drained chickpeas, salt, pepper and garlic. Pulse until creamy.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

Ingredients

• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
• 1/3 cup tahini (I used about 1 tbs of oil instead)
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup roasted red peppers (We didn't have any red peppers so I roasted a green bell pepper instead)
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• (I added about 1 tsp of crushed red peppers to make it more spicy and I also added about 1 tsp of cumin too)

• Directions

• 
  

• In an electric food processor, combine garlic, garbanzo beans, tahini, and lemon juice. Process until the mixture is smooth. Add roasted peppers and basil; process until the peppers are finely chopped. Transfer hummus to small bowl, cover and chill until you are ready to serve.

I hope everyone decides to try this because it is delicious! But if you don't want to make it, then you are invited to come to my house and I'll share some with you!

More Blessing Pictures

Here are some of the other pictures my sister took of our Rachel girl!

Firsts

This week has been a week of firsts at our house.

Buying our first stroller. I've been really wanting to take Rachel out and go on walks, but we haven't had a stroller, so on Friday we went to Target and found a cute little umbrella stroller to take our baby for walks in.

Going for a walk with the stroller. On Saturday we opened our new stroller and took Rachel for a walk to go get our mail. It is so nice to actually have a stroller to put her in instead of trying to hold her while I walk. I for one loved it.

Doesn't she look so cute all decked out and ready to go? Jacob picked out her entire outfit!

Making a pot roast. I've made it a goal to learn how to cook different types of meats. Usually we don't cook anything except for chicken and hamburger. So this week on Sunday I decided to cook a roast in my crock pot. I had it all ready to go and turned it on in the morning and when we came home from church I was expecting to smell it as we walked in the door. Well, I didn't. We came in and looked at the roast and it was cold. For some reason my crock pot never turned on. We decided to put it in the fridge and have a green smoothie and left over spaghetti for dinner instead. I ended up cooking it on Monday instead, and let me tell you, it was good!

Rachel's first bottle in church. So I decided that instead of trying to fight the crowd in the mother's lounge on Sunday (there are about a million babies in our ward) I would just pump a bottle and bring it to church with us. We've given Rachel a bottle a couple of times before but Jacob has always been the one to give it to her. The only time I gave her a bottle was when we were driving in the car. Well, Rachel was fine through most of church and didn't get hungry until about halfway through Relief Society. So I tried to give her the bottle and she drank a little bit, and then stopped eating and gave me a very confused look. She couldn't understand why I would be feeding her from a bottle. She kept letting go of the bottle and turning her face towards me to try and get me to feed her the right way. I got her to take enough of the bottle to tide her over til after church, but she didn't eat as much as she usually does. I thought it was sweet that she let me know she preferred her milk right from the source.

Making and trying pumpkin fudge. So before we moved, I bought all of the stuff to make a pumpkin fudge recipe I found. I brought all of the stuff to St. George with us, but when we were there everyone thought it sounded weird and no one wanted to try it so we brought all of the stuff back home with us. We decided to finally try making it on Monday night. It was definitely a success! We very much like it (Jacob especially) and will be making it again in the future.

Taking Jacob to school and bringing him lunch. So before Rachel was born, I would always take Jacob to school so that I would have the car and then I would bring him lunch in the middle of the day. Since Rachel came, Jacob has just been taking the car. Well Yesterday we decided that we would try doing things the way we used to. It was so fun to get to see him in the middle of the day again. The three of us loved it!

Driving to our house. So yesterday was my very first time driving to our new house. Ever since we moved in two weeks ago I haven't gone anywhere without Jacob, and when we are together he usually drives, so yesterday after I dropped him off at work, I drove home to our house with out him. I'm glad I didn't get lost!

Rachel's first bath in the bathtub. Also yesterday, I gave Rachel her first bath in the bathtub. Before that I always just put her in the sink for her bath or just took her in the shower with me. She absolutely loved being in the tub! She has always loved her bath time, but she was so happy when she realized she could just lay there and kick in the water! It was so cute to watch my little happy wiggly girl in the bathtub!

Jacob remembered to take our garbage cans out to the curb. This is the first place we have lived since we have been married that we have had to take our own trash cans out to the curb for the garbage man to come pick up. The first week we were here we had a big trailer in front of our house and there was no where to put the cans. Last week, I only just remembered because I heard the garbage truck on the next street over. This week, Jacob remembered last night and got them out so they would be ready for garbage day today.

Getting and paying our first (and last) hospital bill for Rachel's birth. We finally got our hospital bill for what our insurance wouldn't cover regarding Rachel's birth. Our total came to 39 dollars which covered 10 meals for Jacob while we were in the hospital. That is definitely one thing I love about being in the military!

I wonder what other firsts this week will bring!

Visiting Teachers

I am so grateful for visiting teachers, can I just tell you? Before just recently, I have never really had much experience with visiting teaching, either with the actual being visited or being a visiting teacher myself. For that matter, I really haven't had much experience with Relief Society because I was in the nursery til I got married and then it seems like I have spent most of the time since teaching in the Primary. I always kind of felt a little bugged when I got a visiting teaching assignment because it was always someone I didn't know, and usually I didn't know who my companion was either so I always had a hard time actually going out and getting it done. In October of this last year, a lady was called to be my visiting teacher and in the past few months she has brought dinner to our home twice, once when Rachel was born and again when we were moving, she has visited me in my home a couple of times, called frequently to check up on me, and has become a good friend. Her friendly and caring attitude towards me has given me a better understanding of the purpose of visiting teaching and has made me want to try to be a better visiting teacher and a friend to those I visit teach. We are all here on this earth together, we should try to make the most of it and make as many friends as we can and try to help anyone we can. Thank you Robin Genzel for being my visiting teacher and my friend and for showing me how much good a visiting teacher can do!