Eggs and Babes

I know, I know, this post is a few weeks late.  Meh, it happens.  My biggest excuse is that I returned to work and have spent my time restructuring our lives to accommodate the change. Now that I've excused my lack of timely posting, let's get on with it.

Our little town throws an Easter Egg hunt for all the kids on the Saturday before Easter.  This was our first year participating and we took full advantage of the festivities.  We dressed the kids up for the occasion and the weather was perfect for us to walk over. Upon arrival we were directed to our place for the 'hunt' (there was no actual hunting involved as it was just a bunch of goodie filled plastic eggs strewn all over a soccer field).  Miguel and the kids posed for some amazing pictures before the egg race began.  I decided to check out the few shots I snapped of Salem and Piper in their wagon and the family pics I had just taken when I was met with shock and horror; I HAD NO MEMORY CARD!!! Not one of my fantastic snapshots had actually ever existed.  Needless to say, my heart sank into my stomach and I was met with a wave of disappointment in myself.  I have missed quite a few priceless photo opportunities in my children's lives thus far and I was so excited to get some quality memories captured.  After a minute of self loathing, I took a deep breath and captured what I could with the camera on my phone.

Salem was so excited to get started he could hardly contain himself to stay behind the starting line.  When the organizer got on the megaphone and shouted for the kids to "GO!" , Salem took off like a rocket.  In the beginning, he had a nice path with little competition but that changed the closer he got to the opposite end of the field.  All of a sudden there were crazy parents getting a little too involved in the race and pushing the limit on acceptable behavior.  Luckily, Salem had quite a few eggs by that point so we called it quits and headed to the line for the special prizes (silly toys).  While Miguel and Salem waited, Piper and I retrieved our wagon.  Once all the goodies were received, we headed home where I snapped too many pictures of the kids and their loot (I had to compensate for my previous absentmindedness).

Salem couldn't take his eyes off his candy! Ha!

Miguel and I had planned to color eggs with the kids that night, but after his nap Salem informed me that he "had enough Easter" and didn't want to dye eggs.  Miguel was sleeping to prepare for his night shift so I decided to take Piper and Salem to my parents for the afternoon.  Salem loved telling Pop and Grams all about his successful egg hunt that morning.  We stayed for a while then headed home to make dinner and send Miguel off for the night.  As the kids slept, I couldn't stop thinking about hiding eggs around the house for Salem to find in the morning.  I had already boiled a dozen eggs and I figured I could hide the plastic shells from the other hunt too. When I awoke before Salem, the Easter bunny in me came out.  We didn't have a fancy basket with gifts to give Salem, but Miguel had stashed a few candy filled eggs from the day before and had a random hot wheels car in his glove box. plus I had a couple of honey sticks in the cupboard.  The bunny wrote the kid a quick note and as soon as Salem woke up the games began!

We are new to this whole celebrating holidays with children gig and are trying to figure it all out as we go.  In all honesty, we struggled with the idea of celebrating religious holidays when we aren't religious people.  After much discussion, we have ultimately decided to roll with the punches while they are young and when they are old enough to understand, we will explain/expose them to the origins/meanings of each holiday.  I think it would actually be fun to celebrate all the holidays on a given calendar, researching the traditions and customs then embracing them or adding a personal twist.  Imagine the things you would learn and the memories your family would create! 

How We Rock a Snow Day

Piper woke me up at 5:30am on Tuesday morning, which is pretty typical.  I decided that since we were awake and the boys were not, that we should get our grocery shopping done first thing.  I mistakenly assumed that Sprouts Market opened at 6:30am, so that's when we arrived.  In reality, the store didn't open until 7am and during that half hour that Piper and I waited in the parking lot, it began to snow.  By the time we finally checked out with our loot, it had snowed an inch. 

Miguel and Salem gleefully greeted us upon our return home and we all settled into our snow day.  Piper was exhausted after our eventful morning and fell deep asleep for her nap.  Salem was so excited about the new snack choices that he threw on his super hero cape and mask and "flew" around the house while munching.  My favorite part of super hero Salem is when he shouts the cutest mispronunciation of his super name, 'Stupid Man' and then makes flying sounds.  It makes my heart smiles every time.

Once he ate an entire container of blackberries and cherry tomatoes, Salem was ready to put on clothes and head outside.  We have a steep little incline in our backyard and with some help from Miguel, a nice mini sledding hill was built for Salem to try.  However, we don't own a sled so I was left to my creativity to come up with one.  I gave Salem a  piece of cardboard to try, but he kept digging into the snow.  After returning to the garage to examine our resources, I spotted my snowboard; what better instrument for sliding down a snowy hill than one that is meant for that exact reason?

Salem LOVED flying down the hill and Miguel continually erupted in laughter as he watched.  The boys played outside until their fingers were numb and then they came in to warm up. While Salem napped, I made a pineapple flax carrot cake with coconut and walnuts, which I served with homemade greek yogurt, blackberries and a drizzle of honey.  Yum!

Piper awoke after a two hour nap happy and hungry, which meant I was glued to the couch for quite a while. During the down time with my girl, I searched for something different and easy to whip up for supper.  I settled on chicken, veggies and noodles in a peanut sauce (using the peanut butter I made from scratch just after returning from the store in the morning).  As soon as I could break away from the famished babe, I prepared a delicious meal and enjoyed it with my family as we reminisced about our amazing snow day.

Govanni's First Birthday!

On Saturday, our nephew Govanni, turned 1!! My sis-in-law threw him a party at Chuck-E-Cheese and most of the family was in attendance.  Salem was crazy excited to see his cousins and to play games.  Piper was in good spirits considering she was running on very little sleep (as she does often) and almost made it to the end of the celebration before passing out. 

 Salem loves his cousins and we are so grateful that they get to grow up near one another. 

 Govanni was also a little tired but pushed through! He loved the little train by our tables and was not happy when it stopped moving.

Salem didn't want to quit playing for pizza but he did slow down when it was time for cake.  The birthday boy wasn't sure about the cake at first until he tasted the sweetness.

 Happy 1st Birthday Govanni!! 

I am a little afraid of the potential trouble they may get into with one another in their teenage years.

A Lifestyle Makeover

Sometime towards the end of 2012, I realized that I wasn't living my best life.  I had become complacent and wanted to make a change.  When I looked around the house, I noticed some areas that could use improvement.  I didn't like how much of our food was coming in a package of some sort.  I didn't like how much sugar our family was consuming.  I didn't like that we were using chemicals to "clean" our bodies and home.  I didn't like how high our electric/gas bill had gotten. I didn't like seeing how much water we were throwing down the drain.  I didn't like the person looking back at me in the mirror.  So I talked with Miguel and shared all of my fears for continuing to live an unconscious life.  I relayed the thought that I want to teach our children a better and healthier way to live so that they may have a solid foundation to build their lives upon.

With Miguel on board, I set out to research different ways of creating a more sustainable life for our family.  I figured we needed to start small as to not overwhelm ourselves into a panic*.  I started with food (since that is where I am most comfortable) and reduced our processed items greatly by making granola (instead of cereal), greek yogurt (Salem loves yogurt), bread, beans (dry instead of canned), and snacks from scratch. These items are just the beginning as I have a long to-do list in this department and will share my trials and tribulations as I knock off each new item. My end goal is to produce most everything under my roof using local resources for ingredients, which in turn reduces the amount of packaging and unwanted chemicals/sugar in our food.  Oh and we need to compost our kitchen scraps, then we would have barely any actual trash (since we recycle/reuse too).

Homemade granola and Greek yogurt

After reading a ton of blogs about sustainability and natural/simple living as well as discussing these topics with friends, we quit using shampoo/conditioner and replaced it with the baking soda/apple cider vinegar method. We moved away from chemical laden soaps in plastic containers and started using bars of ivory (which we also use in making detergents and such) instead.  We stopped using fancy 'no tears' baby wash and just use water and a wash rag now (Salem uses ivory when he's super dirty).  Coconut oil with a few drops of tea tree oil replaced our deodorant.  I'm still working on moisturizers since our skin is a bit dry, but we have been using coconut and olive oil when things get rough.  We use white vinegar as a fabric softener in the laundry as well as for cleaning;  we add it to saved citrus fruit peels to make citrus cleaner/degreaser.  In the very near future, I will be making laundry/dish/dishwasher detergents, hand soaps, body and face scrubs.

Brewing some citrus cleaner

Deodorant

I bought a drying rack for indoor line drying laundry and a programmable thermostat to regain control of heating/cooling our house.  We have been saving the cold start-up water (that first gallon or two of cold water before the hot water gets to the faucet) from the shower and leftover bath water then using that to flush the toilet.  We save the cold start-up water from the kitchen and use it to water the dog and plants as well as to soak Piper's dirty diapers.

After 3 weeks of line drying full time and using the programmable thermostat, our electric/gas bill was down $80 from the previous month

I started to workout regularly and changed my eating habits to reduce the amount of white sugars I consume.  I recently acquired the Insanity and P90X workout dvds from a friend and am finally in decent enough shape to attempt these programs.  For the first time in the last decade I feel in control of my life and cannot wait to share our progress towards a healthier and more conscious existence!

*Disclaimer: There are a few things that we were already doing that may have helped us transition easier, such as: Making most of our meals from scratch in the first place, limiting showers/baths to a few days a week, using more natural household cleansers, practicing the 'if it's yellow let it mellow, brown-flush it down' method for toilet flushing, etc.

Piper Rolls Over!

A few months ago someone asked me if Piper was rolling over yet and my response was, "I don't encourage that kind of behavior in my house".  Now don't get me wrong, I simply meant it as a humorous way of saying I wasn't ready for that major milestone yet.  After all, Piper is my last baby and I want to cherish in the moments of her infancy before she bolts into toddlerhood. With Salem, we were so excited to have him hit every milestone that we pushed him through games and exercises.  But we soon realized that babies do their own thing on their own time regardless of how much we encourage them.  Piper has been pretty content just laying back and watching life go by, without even attempting a roll over until this past Thursday (the day before she turned 7 months).  Although she had to try a few times before actually turning from her back to her belly, she managed to accomplish her goal! Before long our dear baby girl will be motoring about the house getting into trouble with her brother.  I need a nap just thinking about it!

Gaining momentum

Halfway break

Almost there!

She made it, drool and all!