Be back in a bit!

I've been MIA for no good reason other than this: I've started knitting again.  And, apparently, when I start I can. not. stop.  Seriously, you guys, I've done nothing besides knit (only when Eliza is asleep, that is).  I've always loved to knit, but I forgot about the addictive nature of knitting (and, of ME, apparently?).    So yeah, I could have been blogging, but instead I was knitting.

In case you were wondering.  :)

In other news, we are off tomorrow on a little girls-only vacation.  My mom, Eliza and I are heading to visit family in Washington state.  We're excited!  Eliza doesn't get much time to play with her cousins since they all live far away (a 3 hour drive or a 3 hour plane ride), so this will be really fun for her.  Be back on Tuesday.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

It started with cream cheese.

I wasn't going to do anything special for valentine's day.  It was turning out to be an average day in our house.  A homemade valentine's card for Dada from Eliza, sure, but nothing more than that.  

And then I remembered I had cream cheese in the fridge.  

Why did I have cream cheese?  Honestly, I can't remember.  We're not big cream cheese eaters around here... but for some reason I bought it the other day at the store.  I think I was thinking it would be a nice addition to a cream sauce?  Or something?  

Anyway, remembering the cream cheese, the thought of making a fruit tart popped into my head.  So, I made a fruit tart.  And then, seeing how fancy it looked, I decided I had to spruce up our dinner plans to match it.  So I made homemade red sauce and meatballs to serve with penne.  THEN, I looked at our table and decided to make it special, too.  Off I went, searching the house for every pink or red or heart shaped/themed thing in our house to decorate our valentine's day table (turns out I don't have a lot of that stuff...).  

It was fun, and made the evening feel really special as the three of us sat around the table to have dinner.

Hope everyone had a sweet day yesterday!

Wordless Wednesday: Dada's Home!

What She Was Offered

We're going to a friend's house...with...

{carrot sticks}

{applesauce}

{fruit leather}

{pretzels}

{homemade split pea soup}

{berries} 

4:00 snack

{fresh mango}

{blueberries}

{goldfish} 

{grandma's ciabatta + olive oil}

{lentils}

{uncured/nitrite free beef stick from our favorite farmer at the market}

{carrot + cauliflower sticks w/goat cheese and ketchup} 

{blueberries + fuji apples}

 {blueberries}

{fuji apples}

{cut up norwegian waffle w/peanut butter + homemade jelly}

Weekend Overfloweth

What a great weekend!

Saturday morning I got to sleep in until 8.  It would have been perfect except that I woke to the sound of a screeching toddler telling her Daddy "NO MAMA DOOOO IIIIIITTTTT!!!!".  Oh boy.  So I got up and tried to reason with her, explaining that, in fact, Dada CAN help her put her pants on - not just Mama.  Turns out, reasoning with a teenager 2 year old is pointless because they will just yell "NO!" and slam the door in your face.

Saturday afternoon/evening, while Eliza spent the better part of the day with her Grandma and Grandpa (and also fell asleep for them - WOOHOO!!), hubby and I went to dinner with my brother and SIL to a really cool new(ish) restaurant in our area.  It was, in a word, epic.  In every way - the FOUR HOUR WAIT for a table was epic (no reservations accepted - OMGZ PEOPLE), the 10-course chef's tasting menu was epic, the bottle of wine that we brought was epic, and the hour at which we got home - the latest since before Eliza was born - was epic.  I'll stop saying epic now.

Sunday morning, after 5 very interrupted hours of sleep, I woke up with the girl and we made coffee.  Well, actually she made me coffee.  She now knows how to work our k-cup machine.  WHAT THE?  Then Daddy woke up and we made breakfast.  My brother had given us some venison potato sausage that he made (like, from beginning to... er... end... let's not talk about it), so we cooked that up along with some Norwegian waffles.  I didn't know the Norwegians were big waffle people, but, apparently, I was very wrong.  And I'm glad, because those things were YUMMY.  We all helped - Eliza sat at the counter and took fistfuls of flour "for pizza dough" (?) and spread it on the countertop (wait did I say help?), Dada cooked up the sausage, and I womanned the waffle maker.

Later in the morning, I left Daddy and Daughter on their own (and in their pajamas) to go have lunch with a dear friend for her birthday.  There were four of us there, but I didn't know the other two women.  It was so delightful and... much needed (though I chastised myself on the way home for talking so much; I do that when I get nervous, I've realized).  The two women I didn't know turned out to be veteran mamas who had nursed toddlers, nightweaned/weaned them, and were on the other side.  It felt really good to ask them questions, find support and understanding in their experiences, and, honestly, just to be meeting new people!  It struck me that I don't do that often.  Remember when you were little and you made new friends easily, and all the time?  Anyway.  It was nice.

And then I came home and took a nap!

Sunday night, we took Eliza to her first musical!  It was a Children's Theater performance of Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We didn't know what to expect from Eliza during the show, being newly 2 and not known to sit still for 90 minutes at a time, but with $10 rush tickets, we didn't have much to lose.  But the minute that curtain rose, we knew we had nothing to worry about.  She was captivated.  She smiled, laughed, clapped, stared, and was completely in love with the entire experience.  I had an unexpected emotional mama moment when I saw her face as she watched the show - I actually teared up.  I know.  Come ON, Ella, it was HAROLD. AND THE FREAKING PURPLE CRAYON.  But something about the whole experience - the specialness (I know that is not a word OMG I just looked it up and it turns out it's a word), making such a fun memory together as a family of three, having it hit me that, yep, she IS big enough, old enough, READY for big kid things like this... it just alllllll hit me and made me cry a little bit right there while a slightly overweight (and 40-something) Harold was leaping and dancing across the stage in blue footie pajamas.  It was so much fun, and I didn't want it to end (It was the perfect length though, so I'm also glad it ended when it did!).  It was the cherry on top of a perfect weekend.

Without a doubt, this weekend delivered.  And once again, I asked myself how I got so lucky.

Wordless Wednesday: Reading with Dada

What She Was Offered

 {sliced red grapes}

{wild rice sticks + annie's cheddar bunnies}

{fruit leather}

{homemade turkey meatball + peas}

{sliced monterey jack cheese}

{peas}

{sliced monterey jack cheese}

{frozen blueberries}

{eggplant hummus + nut thins}

{kiwi} 

{avocado}

{sliced cherry tomato}

{jazz apples + pb}

{honey tangerine slices}

{dried blueberries}

{smoked salmon}

A Last Minute Party

Getting an invitation from good friends at the last minute is so much fun.  It turns an ordinary, normal day into something a little more special.  So we were excited to get invited to a little Super Bowl party at our friends' house last night.  I baked cookies and our talented host, Abby, created a fun mini pigs-in-a-blanket making activity for the kids, and also made fixings for homemade individual pizzas (Abby is quite the baker).

Eliza learned how to "put the pigs to sleep" in the blankets...

Then she and Vi got to work...

Then all three kids enjoyed a pre-dinner snack (so did the adults, because those things were YUMMY!).

After dinner, the kids did a little more playing, and then we headed home.  It was so sweet to see Eliza playing with her friends.  They are a little older than she is, and they are SO great with her.  They all seemed to have a ton of fun playing, and the adults had fun chatting and watching the Super Bowl (welllllll, two of the four adults, at least - some of us aren't as interested in football as others).

It was a fun evening!