Top 5 Reasons I Can't Wait for Summer

This keeps happening!

I know that I will miss the snow come Christmas, but right now I'm ready for some hot sun, shorts, and running around at the park. Livermore has a lot of bike trails, too, so we can go on family bike rides with Lucas in his bike trailer.

Jack in the Box!

I love Jack in the Box and I eat there pretty much every time I leave the state of Utah or go to Saint George. And now they have mint oreo shakes. Are you kidding me? I will be eating one every day for a week or so come July.

New furniture!

Ryan and I were blessed as newlyweds with a furnished apartment. We got a few book shelves and stuff, but none of the big things like beds, couches, or appliances. It was nice to not have to spend all that money when we were starting out. The stuff we have lived with for the last 4 years is kinda ghetto, though. I know you've seen our awful multi colored couches. And we've been using an empty diaper box to store Lucas's toys.

I'm excited to get some new stuff. Shopping always makes me happy. And I've been watching lots of HGTV so I'm ready to make our new place super cute!

San Francisco and Ghirardelli Square!

Ryan and I have been to San Francisco before and we're excited to be able to go on the weekends and do some sightseeing, and maybe get a sundae from Ghirardelli Square.

Graduation and moving on!

I'm excited for Ryan to graduate. I'm proud of him for doing so well, and getting a good education, and now a good job. I'm excited for him to be done with school and not have to keep writing papers into the middle of the night. I think I'm just excited to be starting this next phase of our life, and to be moving on. I know we're really going to miss Provo, and especially all our friends and family we'll be leaving behind here in Utah. Change is hard for me sometimes so I'm sure by the time June rolls around I'm going to be having a panic attack. But I'm anxious to see what's in store for us in the future and I can't wait to get it started.

Pasta and Smoothies

Lucas's vocabulary has been expanding exponentially lately. He says new words every day. His recent new word is also his recent favorite food. Pasta! He asks for pasta all day long. I started making this veggie pasta dish for him a few months ago and it is so easy. I just kinda threw stuff together and he loves it so I keep making it. I know people are always looking for ways to get vegetables in their kid's diets so I thought I'd share the recipe. It's not really a sneaky way to get kids to eat them, but Lucas literally asks to eat it all day, so I figured there might be some kids out there that would eat it even though you can see the veggies. Make sure to read through the recipe because there's more to it than just cooking pasta and adding veggies.

Veggies and Pasta

1/2 cup small bite sized pasta

1/2 cup chopped veggies (I've used just carrots or carrots with celery - you could use peas and corn, whatever your kids like)

Chicken, Beef, or Vegetable Broth - enough broth to just cover the pasta and veggies

Start by chopping up all the veggies, put them in a small pan and cover with chicken broth. Add a little extra for the pasta but not too much until you know how much you'll need. I never measure this part out and it always comes out just fine so don't worry too much about being precise. In fact, I never measure out the veggies or pasta either. Anyway, turn on the heat and let the broth come to a boil. Add the pasta and set the timer for what it says on the box. Make sure that there's enough liquid to just cover everything, if not add some more. You could use part water and part broth if you want, but the more broth the more flavor. As the pasta and the veggies cook, the liquid will be absorbed. Usually by the time the pasta is done cooking, the liquid will be almost completely gone. If you run out of liquid before the pasta is done cooking just add a bit more. Make sure you taste the pasta to see if it's done. It might take a bit longer than the package says because the liquid isn't covering the pasta the whole time. When it's done just let it cool a bit and then serve. I usually make a bigger batch than this and just refrigerate the leftovers. It reheats well and then I have lunch ready in 30 seconds.

Saying Prayers

Lucas has been pretty good at folding his arms lately. We get everything for dinner together and sit down and he instantly folds his arms cause he knows what's coming next.

Lucas's other favorite right now is a fruit smoothie. He gets pretty excited when I make them. And they are super easy too. Most kids like fruit, but this is still a good way to make sure they get their daily amount. I didn't really take this picture, but holy crap doesn't that look delicious?

Fruit Smoothies

3/4 - 1 cup frozen fruit

1 cup 100% fruit juice

1/4 cup plain or vanilla yogurt (optional, but I like to sneak as many healthy things into one dish as possible)

You could also throw in any fresh fruit you have lying around that you need to use up. I throw bananas in pretty often.

I buy the big bags of frozen fruit from Costco. It's just so much cheaper. And look how yummy it looks.

When measuring the fruit and juice, I usually just put the amount of fruit that looks good and then I cover it with juice. This way if you want to double or even just do a little bit extra, you don't have to measure everything out. I like to make extra for me too! And I usually just do this part in the blender.

Put everything into blender and blend. If you're having a hard time getting everything to blend like I do because I have a crappy blender, just add a bit more juice and that usually does the trick.

Sipping away at his breakfast smoothie. He doesn't quite have the hang of the word smoothie, but he's trying.

Livermore

Just in case anyone is confused...this is Ryan making today's post.

I have been working on my MS degree for almost 2 years now. A few months ago, it was time to make a decision.... "What PhD school should we go to?" Just kidding.

I did have a professor that suggested that I consider a PhD. I have taught labs here at BYU, and I really enjoy teaching. But, there's all that "publish or perish" pressure and I'm not 100% sure that I want to deal with that for the rest of my life. Or at least until tenure.

I started looking for jobs back in September at the University's career fair. I was pretty set on another employer, but one company was there that caught my eye: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"Where are you located?" I asked. "East bay - San Francisco," they replied. I thought to myself, "Psh...I can't afford that. No thanks."

But, I decided to interview with them. I went on-site in December and everything changed. I was very impressed with everything about both the job and the company and left California just hoping and praying that it would work out. And it did.

I officially accepted a job with LLNL. We will be moving to Livermore, CA in July of this year, just shorty after I graduate. We couldn't be more excited.

Here are just a few pictures of what to expect when you come to visit us in sunny California.

View of the lab from the perspective of a vineyard:

Another Livermore vineyard:

An aerial view of LLNL. The lab is 1.2 miles square and employs over 7,000 people.

We can't wait for July to come.

Beds and Cute Stuff

I was going through our recent pictures and found a bunch of funny pictures of Lucas. He's been climbing into the laundry hamper lately. He's thinks it's hilarious.

He loves to play with our Swiffer sweeper thing so I shortened it so he can handle it a little better. Now he mops the floor for me.

It snowed yesterday morning and Lucas was really excited about it. We had to stop and stare at it for a while before church.

I love how handsome he looks in his church clothes and with his hair parted.

I was making the bed today and Lucas decided he did not want the pillows to be straight. He's actually been playing on our bed and messing up the pillows a lot lately. He's such a scamp!

And speaking of beds, I've already made a couple quilts for Lucas's crib, but the other day I decided to use the left over scraps and make him matching pillowcases.

Isn't that little pillow so cute. I actually made the pillow too. I just took some plain white fabric, and basically made a pillowcase but stuffed it with batting and sewed it shut.

Lucas likes his pillow. He likes to climb into his crib and read every once in a while, too. He can't climb out, yet, but he'll figure it out soon enough and then we'll be in trouble.

Also, I didn't realize it when I snapped the picture, but that second picture where it looks like Lucas is praying... Lucas was saying hug. I thought he was praying so I asked him if he was praying and he said no, then pointed at the page, and wrapped his arms around himself and said "hug" very clearly. I don't know if you can tell but the dinosaur is hugging his mom in the picture. It's amazing what kids pick up on and understand.

And lastly, I've really been wanting a head board for our bed. I think it will make our room look so much better. But we've just put it off for so long now, that I'm debating if we should just wait till Ryan gets a job and we can afford a whole bedroom set, or should I just make a cheap one now that way we have something until we're rich enough to have a real room. I found this tutorial and I think I really want to make it. But I've never made anything out of wood before so I'm hesitant. I photoshopped it behind our bed to see what it would look like. Doesn't it look so good?

Happy Love Day

I'm a big fan of this holiday. I like being reminded of all the blessings that I have and the wonderful people I have in my life. The top two on the list... my wonderful husband and baby. These are my two favorite men in the world.

And these are sitting on my table right now.

I LOVE pink roses. Pink is my favorite color so any excuse to have extra pink around and wear pink is fine by me.

To celebrate valentine's day this year Lucas and I made some cute cards and passed them out to our friends. All of this was done on my silhouette. Another thing I LOVE on love day.

We made our traditional sugar cookies and we've pretty much eaten all the cookies already. And to continue the "healthy eating" we went to Tucanos for dinner tonight to celebrate. We took Lucas with us because a family valentine's date wouldn't be complete without him. And he was an angel! He's starting to be good a restaurants. Hopefully he keeps this up.

I hope you all enjoyed the day and spent time with the people you love.

Baby Book

I have a baby book for Lucas. I've actually been really good at filling it out and I'm so glad. I got it out today to update any "firsts" he's done that weren't in there yet, and add all of the "price of a gallon of milk" stuff that I was too lazy to do before. I decided to go back and read all of it from the beginning.

It was so much fun reading about when we first got to hear his heartbeat, when I first felt him move, and my first thoughts after he was born. I like being able to look back and see when he hit milestones, and when he started sleeping through the night and taking good naps. I really hope I keep this up for all my kids. Ryan asked me last night about that. He said all our other kids are probably going to be mad if Lucas has 10,000 pictures and videos of him and they get like 10 each. Hopefully I can do better than that. I'm really going to try anyway.

Cinnamon Rolls

I was checking out some blogs the other morning and I found a recipe for some quick and easy cinnamon rolls, so I decided to try them out. Delicious! The recipe is nice because you can make them the day of, and the dough only rises for 30 minutes, instead of all night long. Lucas and Ryan were both pretty happy with them. This is the first recipe I've made where the rolls were soft instead of hard and chewy.

You can find the recipe here. They also had a recipe for some fruit salsa. It looks so good. I really want to make this for something.

Where did you learn that?

We find ourselves saying this a lot lately. Lucas says and does things that we did not teach him. He has said words like balloon and sheep that he learned from TV. A little embarrassing, but still he is one smart cookie. We're always amazed at what a genius he is. Like today, I looked over and he was putting together a puzzle. I had no clue he knew how to do this.

He caught me filming him at one point so he gets sidetracked for a bit, but then he finishes. The movie is a little long so if you get bored you can just watch the last half.

Seriously, he's amazing!

New Background

Ryan told me that he hated the old blog background, he said it was too girly. So I made a new one today, and to be honest - I like this new background a lot more! Good job, me. Our TV stand is all decked out for Valentines day too.