February 9: Our Favorite Shoes

Back in 2009, the first year of this blog, we did a favorite things theme. There have been several blogging ideas that have popped into my mind lately revolving around some of our current favorite things. So, I think I will start an ongoing favorite things theme here, with occasional posts about some of the things we are loving right now.
For today: let's talk about my favorite shoes for the girls. Pedipeds!

My friend Kellie first introduced me to pedipeds. While I was initially intimidated by the high price tag, I eventually ordered a pair for Audrey and loved them. Here is Audrey in her first pair of pedipeds back in April of 2010.


Regarding the high price tag: there is rarely a reason to buy these shoes at full price. They regularly hold sales, and you can often find them for 50% off or more. That puts some of the shoes at the same price as Payless or somewhere, and these shoes are way better.

I don't buy pedipeds for every pair of the girls' shoes, but there are a few times when I think they are worth the extra money.

I especially think these are good shoes to buy for the early walking stages. They claim to help kids walk as if they are walking on bare feet, which is the best way to learn how to walk. Since Isla should be walking by this summer, I just got this pair for her (for only $13!):I also think they make good sandals for older kids. I have bought cheap sandals for Audrey before, and they give her blisters on her feet and just looked uncomfortable. The pediped sandals are super cushiony, and while I have never actually worn them, they look comfortable too. Here is the pair I got for Audrey this summer (for $23):(If you think those sandals look exactly like the sandals that Audrey wore last summer, you would be correct. I was late ordering in this sale, and these were the only sale pair of sandals left in Audrey's size. But we liked the sandals a lot last year, and I'm sure we will like them again this year too!)

February 8: Phone Pics of the Day

Super Audrey wore herself out trying to save the world today and crashed on the couch this afternoon. She doesn't nap very often, but when she does, it usually looks like this. She is out cold and very difficult to wake up. Why can't she sleep like this all night long?
Daniel and the girls have been playing catch the past couple of days (though it's really more like passing the ball to each other). Both girls love it, especially Isla who squeals and kicks her feet every time it is her turn to hold the ball.
Tonight, they were sitting like this and Audrey said, "Look, we are a Christmas tree!" Then she pointed to how they were sitting in a triangle shape. She comes up with the funniest things to say!

February 7: Ready for Florida!

We leave for our Florida vacation in less than a week! I am most definitely ready for some warmer weather. So far, the weather forecast in Florida is looking good. The first three days we are there, temps are supposed to be in the upper 70s. It is going to be hard to top the weather we had on last year's Florida vacation. It was in the 80s and sunny every single day. I am hoping for a repeat of that this year!

Audrey needed some warm weather clothing, so I bought her a few things this week. Everything is going to be a little baggy on her, because I want these clothes to fit her all the way through the summer. We tried everything on today, and she looks like she is ready for some fun in the sun!

She is such a goofball and insisted on a silly pose for each picture!
Now it's time to start packing. I don't like to pack and always wait until the last minute. I really don't want to do that this trip, so I need to start now. I may need to blog about our packing process just to motivate myself to get it done! =)

February 6: Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

This weekend I had a mini freezer cooking day. I always think it sounds like such a good idea to do one big cooking session, get a bunch of meals made and then freeze the food to eat later. I just don't get around to doing it very often.

On Saturday, I set out to make homemade spaghetti sauce and dinner rolls.
I started with this sauce recipe, but I ended up changing it quite a bit. I'm going to write down the recipe I used, so that I will remember it for the next time I want to make it. It was really good!

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

1/3 cup olive oil
3 onions, finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, finely grated
1/3 cup chopped spinach
4 cloves garlic
3 (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes
1 (12 oz) can tomato paste
2 T. basil
2 T. oregano
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup sugar
1 T. salt
1/2 t. black pepper

Heat oil in skillet on stove. Saute onions, pepper, carrots, spinach and garlic on medium heat until the veggies are tender.

In a large crockpot, mix together the sauted veggies along with the rest of the ingredients. Cook on low 2-3 hours, stirring frequently. Freeze in gallon zipper bags.

According to Daniel, it was the best spaghetti he has ever had. I don't know about that, but it was quite tasty. Next time, I might think about omitting or substituting something for the sugar. I also might try to sneak in some more spinach to trick the picky eaters in my house (aka ME!) into eating more veggies.

We had this for dinner on Saturday night, and then I had five more bags to put in the freezer. With this meal, I added ground turkey to the sauce, but we thought it would be really good as just a marinara sauce.

For the dinner rolls, I used this recipe with a couple of changes. I substituted sucanat for the sugar, and I replaced half of the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour. The rolls were also really good. I cooked a few for dinner on Saturday, and then put about 30 more rolls in the freezer.

It is fun to have a few homemade things in the freezer ready to go for future meals. But, by the end of the day, I was questioning if it was worth it. Saturday was a rough for day for our girls; they were both really fussy. Daniel and I both had work we needed to get done, and it was stressful to try to fit in all the cooking as well. This is what my kitchen looked like when I was done (and this was after I had cleaned up a lot of things!).On one hand, I really enjoy cooking from scratch and eating better quality, healthier foods. On the other hand, it's a lot of work! When I think about how much time we spend preparing, eating and cleaning up food, it is a big part of our day. All four of us eat pretty much every meal at home (with the exception of Sunday lunch when we always go out). That is a lot of food to prepare and clean up. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we just didn't have to eat at all! Think of how much more time we would have!

February 4: The Rest of Yesterday's Post

Here is the rest of yesterday's post. I am feeling much better tonight.

My friend Lindsey asked me on Wednesday if I would be willing to host a preschool book club at my house. Of course, I said yes...I'm always game for anything with "book" in the title. Lindsey was writing an article about fun things to do with little ones in the winter, and one of her ideas was a preschool book club. She thought she should actually try out a preschool book club before she wrote and told the world it was a fun activity.

So, she sent out some last minute invites and invited some friends over to my place. On Friday morning, we had eleven kids here for our book club. Hello, craziness!! Lindsey read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then the kids got to make a caterpillar craft, and then they had a snack (a fruit salad made with all the fruits the caterpillar ate in the book). It was a bit chaotic, but I think the kids had fun. Except for Audrey who does not do well in crowded, crazy groups of kids.It has been a rough week for me and Audrey. Normally, you go to bed and get refreshed and wake up with patience and energy to start a new day. Our nights this week were so rough with Audrey getting up that I used up all my patience and energy during the night. I woke up grumpy and exhausted and spent. So I was not in a good mood most of the week, and Audrey was grumpy too, partly because she was tired and partly because she was responding to my bad mood. It just wasn't a very good week.

SO...I thought Audrey and I needed a fun bonding activity. I took her to the store to pick out some fingernail polish. I have never painted her nails before, and I thought she would really like it. She got to pick out two colors (in the 99 cent section), one for her fingers and one for her toes. She picked out two different shades of purple.
She thought it was so much fun to have her nails painted. She did a great job sitting still and letting me paint them. But it was probably a mistake for me to choose the cheap nail polish. Next time we are going to use a quick dry kind, because it was really hard for her to be patient and wait for her nails to dry! She loved it though and has been talking all weekend about how she is going to show her beautiful nails to all her friends at church tomorrow.

February 3

I have some pictures and stuff to post, but I'm not feeling the greatest tonight. So it's going to have to wait until another day.

Just wanted to record that Audrey stayed in her bed all night long last night! She woke up around 11:30 and was crying, but she didn't get up. Daniel went in and talked to her for a minute, then she went back to sleep and slept until 6:00. Whoever thought I would be excited about her getting up at 6 am, but I was very excited today. 6:00 is early, but it is much better than 4:00 am!

We rewarded her with lots of praise. And M&Ms.

February 2: Preschool Decisions and Sleepless Nights

Tonight we went to an open house at the preschool Audrey is most likely going to attend this fall. Who knew that signing up for preschool was such a big deal?? The way you hear people talk about choosing a preschool you would think we were deciding Audrey's entire future based on the decision we make!

And now that we have picked the preschool, we have to decide on a time that we want and then hope there will be a spot for us. Morning or afternoon? Two days or three days? What will work best with Isla's schedule, even though it is kind of hard to predict what Isla's schedule will be in 7 months. Ugh, it is making me tired just thinking about it.

Actually, I think the real reason I'm tired is because I did not sleep much last night. Or the night before. Or the night before that. A certain soon-to-be preschooler is once again having a really hard time staying in her bed at night. As a result, she is keeping us all awake at all hours of the night.

She was doing better for a while. If she did get up, all we had to do was walk her back to bed, and then she would go to sleep. This week, she is not going back to sleep. She is getting up again and again. She is crying and yelling "help" at the top of her lungs and throwing fits and wanting to go potty and doing everything except for staying in her bed and sleeping.

Last night, Audrey woke Isla up. Then Audrey did finally go back to sleep, but Isla was up for over an hour. Isla is so sweet and chill when she's awake, but if you wake her up when she is sleeping, it is almost impossible to get her back to sleep. After 45 minutes of listening to Isla scream, we eventually fed her a bottle to get her back to sleep. It was about 3:30 am at that point, and I hate that we had to resort to a bottle. Isla has been done with a night time bottle for a while now, and reintroducing it does not seem like a good idea. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The problem is that our desperate times are starting to occur every night!

I really do not know what to do. We have tried everything and nothing works. And even if we did find a way to keep her asleep in her bed at night, everything is going to get all messed up again once we go to Florida in two weeks. In Florida, we will be sleeping in several different places, often with all four of us in the same room. Audrey is going to spend 12 nights sleeping with us, and I know for sure that it will ruin any kind of good sleep patterns that we are trying to establish right now.

I'm just rambling now. And the words are starting to swim in front of me on the screen. So tired. Must go to sleep now. Here's hoping for a better night.