The Beach

We went to the beach Saturday afternoon and it was so nice. It was sunny and warm, not quite hot enough to actually go in the water, but we enjoyed digging a giant hole and just playing around.
I guess they've been shipping in new sand so they had these HUGE mounds of sand along the coast. Teagan loved to climb them and then run back down with us. I think we enjoyed it quite a bit too.

I felt like a little kid again seeing how fast I could run to the top and then jumping off the huge heap. There is something about acting like a child that is so liberating. I love to just run and play with no worries. We got to forget the stress of school, tests, tutoring, babysitters, money and everything else that comes with life and just have some good FREE fun! Now we are pumped with optimism and ready to take on the new week. I love living by the beach!

Diane Packer ARt

Hey everyone, my mom just made a new blog for her art. She is pretty much awesome so you should check it out!

http://dianepackerart.blogspot.com

I'm a PC and I'm 23

Well I had a birthday yesterday and it was great. Thanks everyone for the phone calls, facebook messages and presents. It was such a great day. I got to hang out with my mom and Teagan all day and then Zac came home early and we had cake and ice cream and very homemade enchiladas (a post is to come about these).

Teagan wanted to sit on my lap when I was looking through the pics and movies and he just sat there. I got a brilliant idea to make a movie of my birthday. It only took like 10-15 minutes they are making computers pretty easy to use these days! I didn't add music because I knew it would take too long to pick out a good song, but enjoy my birthday video (mostly of Teagan since he does the cutest stuff!)

The only thing worse than cockroaches

I was wiping the counters today when a crab came crawling out from under a pan! At first I was disgusted, but then I saw an opportunity for business. I'm going to be selling crabs and their appendages as accents...

For the office:

and for the home:

Please let me know if you're interested. We will include the meat as a bonus when you buy two or more.

Don't want to Forgets

Teagan has been doing some cute and funny things that I don't want to forget so I'm journaling:

1. At night time when I rock Teagan I sing songs to him and he has been singing along with me lately. Sometimes he will have his eyes closed and just be singing SO loud. It takes everything in me to hold back from laughing and keep singing.

After I lay him down he talks to himself in bed for a while and the other night he kicked out one of the bars of his bed. Hopefully he doesn't figure out that he fits through the hole until we get his new bed!
2. Daddy's boy! Teagan is more than attached to Zac these days. If Zac is home, Teagan HAS to be right next to him. He won't come to me, even if I try to bribe him with his bubba. They have so much fun together. If Zac even moves towards the door without Teagan, Teagan drops everything and runs for Zac crying. It is a little challenging, because this prevents Zac from being able to study at home, which means he comes home less, which means Teagan gets more clingy...it's a vicious cycle.So handsome and matching (by accident) for church...they even both have drool on their fronts. :)

3. My big Helper. Teagan loves to help me. He loves to help take out the trash. I always get the kitchen garbage and he gets his diapers. He also enjoys mopping and sweeping, stirring, and folding laundry. He's mostly counterproductive at this point, but its fun to have his company so I don't mind refolding towels a few times.

4. Mr. Signs. Teagan is learning so fast these days. Yesterday he started consistenly signing "please" when he asks for something. About a week ago we started trying to teach the sign for please, but he got confused and when we said "say please" he would virgorously nod his head. When he really wanted something he would grab us and start nodding...so funny, but I love that he knows the actual sign now.

He also has learned the sign for "milk" really well. When ever he is thirsty he runs to the fridge and starts clenching his fist (that's the sign) until I give him his sippy. It is so nice to know what he wants.

He really likes putting food on his head, especially squishy food like peaches, pb&j and tonight's mushrooms. It is funny.

other items:

-he goes down the slide by himself and LOVES playgrounds in general

-he can identify his body parts (nose, belly button, toes, mouth, head/hair)

-he loves animals and their sounds and tries to make them. We will post a video soon

-he loves books. He has a firetruck book with lots of different things on each page so I say "where's the _______" and he points. he is entertained with that book for EVER.

-he is down to 1 nap :(

-He has 3 of his molars almost completely in

-he got super sick this week and had a fever of 103.8 at one point. He does NOT like cool baths he had a few. He has an ear infection and had a bad reaction to the antibiotics...he is currently on benedryl to make his polka dots go away. I am optimistic about this week, there is NO way it can be worse than last week :)

-Teagan misses his aunts, uncles, cousins, g-mas and g-pas and is excited for a visit soon!

High fever=too scary

I have to blog about my first adventure with a very sick baby. Teagan's molar's are all coming in so he has been extra fussy and tired lately. Today started off with Teagan getting up at 5, 6, 7, and finally 8am just to cry and fuss. He had a low grade fever and kept sticking his fingers in his mouth so I figured it was the molars.

I put him down for a nap super early at 10:15 and he slept the whole afternoon away. I had to leave to tutor at 2:3o and he was still asleep! I had appointments from 2:30-6:30. Early on my babysitter called and said he was really warm, I figured it was the same low grade fever and told her to give him tylenol.

When I got home I saw Teagan lying limp on the couch and when I touched him he was BURNING up. Mariela said he had thrown up a ton earlier and when I took his temperature it was 103.5! I was dying that I didn't come home earlier, I didn't realize how sick he was when mariela called!

Luckily my little sister used to get really high fevers and I remembered how to take care of fevers from watching my mom with Whitney. After a blessing from daddy, a 30 min luke warm bath, more tylenol, a cold wash cloth and lots of hugs it was down to 98.9 and he was tucked into bed.

I am kind of proud that I only freaked out a little bit and that I didn't have to rush him to the emergency room, but took care of it myself. Okay Zac was there to help the whole time and I called my mom. But still.

Now I'm excited to face the night of setting alarms to give him tylenol every 4 hours and checking his temperature.

Tips from the Kitchen of an unexperienced cook...

I feel that the last year my cooking has improved. I am just getting more of a feel for providing meals for the family. I am not there yet, but I'm working on it. I decided that I wanted to blog about a few of my favorite money and stress and saving ideas. Feel free to share any that you have. :)

1) I have a meal calendar on a white board in my kitchen where I plan out 6 weeks of meals. Zac and I pick 10-15 meals that we like and I arrange them on the calendar every 6 weeks. When I get ready to go grocery shopping I just look at the calendar and then at allrecipes.com to see what I need to buy. It is definately subject to change. But I love not worrying about what I should make, Zac likes knowing what is for dinner, and we waste a lot less food by planning the grocery list. Our goal is to spend $40 a week and I'm usually within $5 of that. When I don't plan out my week I spend 50 or 60. I am a HUGE believer in meal planning!

2) Fresh garlic is the only way to go. I have just started using it and it makes a HUGE difference. I get a 5 pack for $1 and it lasts about a month. I cut the garlic into tiny pieces, fry up the garlic with onions and butter for lots of meals like spaghetti, chicken pot pie, enchiladas, mexican chicken and pretty much everything we eat that I'd normally use garlic salt with. Everything tastes so much better with fresh garlic...and it's super cheap.

3) Chicken breasts (with the bones and skin) go on fabulous sales sometimes. Today I got a pack for $97 a pound. The bones and skin are kind of nasty to deal with, but if you just take an hour and deskin and debone them you can save a lot of money. Here is what I do: I take all the skins and fat off with my kitchen scissors, I use the scissors to cut the chicken off the bone in one big chunk. I of course don't get all the chicken, so I take all the bones that still have some chicken meat on them and boil them in water for 10-15 minutes. While the bones are boiling I cube the chicken breasts or put them in strips or leave them depending on what we are eating that week and put them in ziplocks and put them in the freezer. When the chicken on the bones is cooked I peel off all the chicken, shred it and freeze it. I usually get enough for two meals just from the bones. I spent $4.oo on chicken and got enough for 5 meals. It took some work, but it makes life easier later anyways.

Those are just a few things that i do that make life a little bit nicer. I seriously would love to hear any special little tidbits that you guys have about the kitchen.