New Bedroom Set

We finally got a bedroom set after all this time of being married.  We actually got it a couple months ago but I've been slow to take pictures.  I love having our room look all put together.

And this part isn't really part of the bedroom set, but we put up a family picture so I wanted to include that too.

We finally have bedside tables.  We've been using chairs, boxes, book shelves... whatever we had on hand for the last 5 years.

I made this cute quote thing to spruce up my table a bit.

Oh and there has been one more addition to the room.

My neighbor is letting us use their bassinet.  Isn't it so cute?  I can't wait to put our little baby girl in there.  And I love having a cute room for us in the mean time.

Lucas Turns 3

Lucas turned 3 last week.  He's been a little spoiled this birthday and all the birthday festivities have lasted a couple weeks because of Disneyland and then the various birthday parties.  He's going to be in for a shock when he realizes he doesn't get new presents every week.  The first birthday celebration was Disney.  Then we had a family dinner with my parents and my brother and his family.  We had it Sunday of last week because my parents had to leave the next day to go pick up my brother Joseph from his mission to Micronesia.  My dad has a really nice camera so I let him take all the pictures, and now they are all stuck halfway across the world.  Oh well, I'm sure he will get around to posting them on his blog when he's done visiting a tropical paradise.  I did get a picture of Lucas playing with his new train set when we got home.  It was well past bedtime but he just would not go to sleep until he had played with every last toy.  He even tried to run through his new sprinkler until he realized it was way too cold.

Then on Lucas's birthday we went to Fairyland.  Then the next day Ryan's parent's came in for a visit.  We opened more presents with them.  Lucas is wearing one of his birthday presents from John and Becky.  I love this shirt, I just have to figure out how to convince Lucas to unbotton the top button.

Lucas got a bunch of books from grandma and grandpa George.  He's really into the pigeon books by Mo Willems right now.

He also got this Iron Man action figure and he takes it everywhere.

Lucas isn't a huge fan of cake and ice cream, but he loves cookies so I made him some cookies and stuck candles in those for him to blow out.

The next day we took grandma and grandpa into the city to do a bit of sight seeing.  We went to the California Academy of Sciences.  They had some fun exhibits including a big aquarium section.  Fish are Lucas's favorites.  Here we are touching the starfish and sea urchins.

 They had a tunnel with fish swimming up and around you.  We stopped for a snack in the tunnel.  This isn't a great picture, but I love how huge that fish is swimming past Lucas.

We got a little bit more time in with grandma and grandpa before they had to leave the next day.  Lucas liked having them help him with his trains.  This is the one and only picture I have to prove that they were actually here.  I'm bad at taking pictures of anything besides Lucas sometimes.

And now things are getting back to normal for us.  Hopefully Lucas will get used to it not being his birthday anymore.

Stats for Lucas at age 3

Weight - 32 lbs
Height - 38 inches, just barely too small for any of the big rides at Disneyland
Favorite color - Red
Favorite animal - Dinosaurs (he answered this question himself)
Favorite foods - cheeseburgers, mac n cheese, or even better - cheeseburger mac
Favorite Pastimes - playing at the park, playing with cars and trains, running through the sprinkler, and reading books with mommy and daddy

His talking has really advanced lately, he's starting to use complete sentences instead of just getting the key words in there.  For instance, we've been talking at the dinner table and asking him about his day.  We ask him the favorite part of his day and he always responds,"The favorite part my day... playing park mommy."  Or something along those lines.  But just the other day he said, "The favorite part of my day was playing trains with daddy."  I couldn't believe how well he said it.  He has also started responding to questions with "sure do" instead of "yes".  It cracks me up every time.  We're having a lot of fun with this little kid of ours.  He is definitely not a baby anymore, which is really weird to us when we think about it, but we're getting used to it.  Happy Birthday, Lucas!

Fairyland

The mother's group in our ward went to the Children's Fairyland in Oakland last week.  It was actually on Lucas's birthday so I decided that would be the perfect activity for the day.  Fairyland has been around since 1950 so it's a little old, but it was a lot of fun for the kids.  It basically has a bunch of little climbing structures and play areas based on the different fairy tales.  There were a bunch of little twisty paths for the kids to run around on so it was hard to keep track of them, and they hardly ever stopped running long enough for me to get a picture, but I did manage to get a few.  We carpooled with our new friends the Coopers.  Lucas spent most of the day running around with Zach.  Here they are in a big shoe.

They rode the carousel together.

 Pretended to be pirates.

 And then rode this dragon.

We had a lot of fun and got in for half price so it was a good day!

DIY Canvas Shopping Bags

Okay, I am finally catching up on blogging so look forward to a bunch of posts for the next day or so.  I thought I should start with Mother's Day since it was like forever ago.  I saw a couple tutorials online for personalizing reusable shopping bags as an idea for a mother's day gift.  I thought it was a really good idea so I went to the store to grab a couple plain canvas bags to fancy up.  Every single one I found was too small, and made out of a really flimsy material.  I mean, they would work, but just weren't what I was imagining.  Luckily I got this mother's day present a little early and it had a pattern for making your own reusable shopping bags.  Score!  I bought some canvas and got to work

Here's the plain canvas bag all finished.  It took me about an hour to make, and that's with Lucas running around.  It was really easy.

 Next I got some fabric paint to personalize them.  I cut out a stencil using my silhouette and some vinyl.

The vinyl didn't stick that well, but it was good enough if I was careful with it.  I mixed some green and blue till I got the perfect shade.

 And then I painted the bag.

Then peel off the vinyl and let it dry for a day.

This one was for my mom.  I made one for my mother in law too...

And then had just enough fabric left over to make a mini one for Lucas.

He loves having a bag to put his toys and snacks in when we get in the car.  I need to go back and get some more fabric so I can make one for myself now.

Disneyland

We decided to take a trip to Disneyland last weekend as a family vacation / birthday present for Lucas before he turns 3 and we have to pay to get him in.  It was also on Mother's day weekend so it was a special Mother's day present for me too.  This was our first family trip to Disneyland and it was a great success.  We had so much fun, and Lucas enjoyed the rides and the park more than we were expecting so it actually turned out to be a lot of fun for everyone!

Here we are on our first day.  We're waiting in line to get into the park.

The first ride we rode was the carousel.  I wanted to do something I knew Lucas would like to start him off.  Our first day was also Mother's day.  They were handing out flowers to all the mothers so that's why I'm wearing that in this picture.  The flower didn't last long cause I'm not used to wearing stuff like that, but I appreciated the thought.

 Next up was Dumbo!

 And then Lucas wanted to go through the big whale.

Lucas loved all the outdoor rides.  Most of the indoor rides like Pinocchio and Snow White were a little too loud for him and surprisingly scary for little kid rides.  The tea cups were a big hit, though.  Ryan decided not to ride with us on this one.

Lucas really liked Toon Town and playing around in Mickey's house and with all the other stuff there.  We also got to see Mickey and Lucas was REALLY excited about it.  I didn't think he would care, and also thought he'd be scared because he doesn't like most people he doesn't know, but he was really anxious to say hi to Mickey and gave him like 6 high fives.

Another one of Lucas's favorite things was the gift shops.  He would run around and play with all the toys in there.  His favorite was a light up Buzz Lightyear toy.  He played with one every chance he got every day we were there.  Finally on the last day we caved and decided to get him one for his birthday.

Ryan got to ride a few of the adult rides and roller coasters on his own while Lucas and I went on kid rides and cooled off in gift shops.

Here we are having a snack and waiting for daddy to get off the Indiana Jones ride.  We were actually pretty lucky to have short lines while we were there so we usually only waited about 10-20 minutes to get on the rides.  The last day we waited like 5 minutes tops for each ride and basically walked on to Pirates and Astro Blasters 4 times in a row.  There was one exception, though, and that was the Toy Story Mania ride where we waited 40 minutes to get on.  Overall, not too bad and Lucas did really well in the lines as long as we kept him full of Twizzlers.

Speaking of Astro Blasters, this was Lucas's all time favorite ride.  We rode it 12 times.  He kept asking us if he could go and "defeat Zurg".

At first he would just sit and watch us shoot the guns, but after a while he decided he needed to play all by himself.  That's Lucas's score down there, not mine, just in case you were wondering.  Ryan got really good by the last day.

He also liked riding these rockets right outside the Buzz ride.

One of the days we were there we spent some time in Downtown Disney and looked around and the different shops they had there.  Lucas especially loved the Lego store.  It had this place where you could build Lego cars and send them down ramps.  It was a lot of fun.

 We really did have a fun time.  It was a great vacation and I can't wait till we get to go back again.

 And here is Lucas all tuckered out and cuddling with Buzz after a long day at Disneyland.  He's so cute!

Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries

Strawberry shortcake is my all time favorite spring/summer dessert.  It's quick and easy and delicious.  But you can really only bring strawberry shortcake to a dinner party so many times before they start to think that's the only thing you know how to make.  My parent's have a lemon tree in their backyard, it's like the most amazing thing in the world to be able to go out and pick lemons for free.  I stocked up on lemons when I went to visit last week so I decided I wanted to make something with lemons for dessert.  I had seen a few things on Pinterest lately and decided to mesh a bunch of them together.  It was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.  I LOVE lemon so of course it was a winner to me, but the people we had dinner with loved it and even Lucas and the other kid went back for seconds.  So here you go,  Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries!

Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries

Crust:
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 tablespoon ground cinnamon
9 graham crackers
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted

Cheesecake:
16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
2 lemons, zested and juiced
1/2 cup sugar

Lemon Curd:
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 egg


Directions: 
Crust: Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease the bottom of a 9 by 9-inch baking pan. In a food processor, process the sugar, cinnamon and graham crackers until you have the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add the melted butter and pulse a couple of times to fully incorporate. Pour into the baking pan and firmly pat down with the bottom of a glass. Bake for about 8-10 minutes, or until set.

Cheesecake: Add cream cheese, eggs, lemon zest (try to make as fine as possible), lemon juice, and sugar to the food processor and pulse until well combined. It should have a smooth consistency. Pour onto the cooked graham cracker base.  Bake in the oven for 35-45 minutes, or until the center only slightly jiggles. Remove from the oven and cool completely before Refrigerating for at least 3 hours.

Lemon Curd:  This is just the recipe for lemon curd that I used, but you could use any lemon curd recipe. Add zest and sugar to a food processor and pulse until the zest is very finely minced into the sugar. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Add the egg, and then add the lemon juice (about 2 -3 tablespoons). Mix until combined. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened (about 10 minutes), stirring constantly. The lemon curd will thicken at about 170 degrees F, or just below simmer. Remove from the heat and cool.

When the cheesecake is set and the lemon curd is cooled, pour the lemon curd over the top of the cheesecake.  Serve with sliced strawberries on top.  You can add a little sugar to the berries to sweeten them.  You could use any type of berries on top of this.  I might try raspberries or blueberries next time.

It's Summer!!

We've had some really hot days recently. Hot enough that we decided to break out the sprinkler. Lucas's swimsuit is a little small on him, but he's been wearing this same swimsuit for the last two summers so I'm amazed that he can still even get it on.  This will be his third summer but I'm thinking he may need a new one for his birthday.  Lucas loves being in water and running through the sprinkler.

He thought he was so funny sitting on the sprinkler.

It's nice to be outside in the warm sun again.  We're excited for summer.  Hopefully it doesn't get too hot for me and my pregnant belly.