A New Recipe :)

I try to make sure that Hayden gets the best nutrition possible. This includes avoiding most of the pre-packaged, processed food that they make for babies/toddlers. I am not saying that mothers who feed those foods to their children are wrong, I just personally prefer to keep Hayden's food as natural as possible & this means that I make a lot of his food. Don't get me wrong, I could do a LOT better with it, but I try to make sure he doesn't eat too much 'junk' since his little growing body needs all the nutrition it can get!

Anyway, my mom bought me this really neat cookbook for babies/toddlers. It has so many great recipes that I can't wait to try for Hayden. As I was looking through it, the recipe for Rösti Nests caught my eye. So, since it seemed simple enough, I decided to try it first. They were today's lunch :)

They didn't turn out exactly like the picture, but a little better than I expected...

I honestly don't know how they got theirs to look so perfect ;)

And...he loved them!

It didn't look like a 'nest' for long...

My favorite room

I have to say that Hayden's nursery is probably my favorite room in our house. And it should be...we put blood, sweat (on Jeff's part) & tears (on my part) into that room! Oh, and maybe not so much the blood part... But my point is, we worked really hard on that room & wanted to make it special for our little boy.

And though I already have big plans for Hayden's 'big boy room' and am itching to re-decorate with a nautical style (I'm not a 'theme' fan, so saying style makes me feel better) I still smile to myself when I look in his room. (And it'll be at least another year before the 'big boy room.')

Yes...he chewed on his $400 crib! :(

I decided I wanted this giant giraffe for the nursery if I was having a boy before I was even pregnant!

I love the little handmade blocks I got off etsy!

I love this saying above the crib, I searched long and hard for the perfect one! And Jeff did an amazing job free-handing the silhouette tree.

We added bead-board to the ceiling & crown moulding. The bead board was quite the undertaking!!!

I'm baaaaaaack!

Oh blog, how I have missed you! I'm sad to say that I have been neglecting you & I'm sorry. I just decided that if I was going to be on vacation, then my blog needed to be as well. But, I have returned & so will my silly little posts soon enough. I'm hoping to post about my amazing vacation soon. I am looking for my USB cord for my point & shoot camera that I hardly ever use. I used it to take some pics when we were in Gatlinburg this weekend (we went there with my parents after we got back from Fl) so I wouldn't have to lug around my DSLR, but that proved to be not the smartest idea. :-/

In the meantime, I will probably have a random post or two just for fun :)

I love summer :)

Today I took Hayden to play with his little buddies at the splash pad. It was a great way to cool off on this super hot day! I even had fun splashing in the water, too :)

The park that I took him to also has a Farmers Market on Thursdays. I normally don't have any cash, ever (because I will spend it!) So, I didn't let myself really look because I would have just saw things that I wanted. Well, as we were walking to the car, I spotted a booth selling plump, juicy blackberries. They were $3/carton. I then remembered that I had $3 in my purse from a refund that I had gotten the other day. I was happy! So, I got me some blackberries and we headed home and snacked on blackberries the whole way. It was the perfect summer day :)

I love his blackberry face!!!

♥

This little card always brings a smile to my face! You see, in college we had something called 'balloon time' in chapel where they gave out balloons to everyone who got one that day. If you wanted to give a balloon to someone, you would go to the bookstore and pick out a balloon (I think it was $1 ea. balloon) & card, write on the card and then in the next chapel service, you would be called up front to get your balloon(s).

Well, one day a couple months into my first semester at TTU, I saw 'Knox' (that is what people at school called Jeff) purchasing a birthday balloon for a friend. I had only met Jeff a few times at this point, but we would joke with each other a lot. I decided that I would tell him it was my birthday, too and see if he would get me a balloon. ;) Well, he did and it was the start of several months of flirting, silliness and drama before we officially became boyfriend and girlfriend.

Oh, and apparently he knew I was lying about the birthday thing...haha! And you will notice that he spelled my name Kierstin. That is what he used to call me. When we met and I told him my name, he said "I'm gonna call you Kierstin." Apparently that was easier to remember than Kristen? But that is what he called me for several months until it was just 'babe.' He still never calls me Kristen.

My New Read :)

Well, I'm sad to say that I haven't really been much of a reader lately. It seems my days are consumed with chasing toddlers around, cleaning, laundry, feedings, diapers (you get the picture.) I also am admittedly a Facebook addict. I check it several times a day from my laptop that I keep handy in the living room. And when the kids are napping (and I'm not napping with them, which I often do) I will waste time on the computer because it's 'quiet' instead of doing something constructive.

I am also embarrassed to admit that my prayer life is far from what it should be. I keep myself busy with other things during the day and at night I am so tired by the time I actually get in bed that I often neglect my prayers. It is something that I have known I needed to work on for a while, so when I decided to start reading again, the choice to read 'Prayer' by Philip Yancey was an easy one.

My grandma is a huge fan of his and is always talking about how much she enjoys his books. She is actually the one who gave me this book quite a while ago. But I never got around to reading it. Well, I have read two chapters so far and I am enjoying it! I hope that it will help me in my quest for a better prayer life.

A Treasure

While we were in Indiana this weekend my grandfather, who served in Korea, showed me this frame. He got it while in Korea and has had it all these years, but I never noticed it before. It is made from a shell casing of some sort and is very heavy. He used to have a photo of me and my brother in it, but recently decided to add Haydens photo. (The other photo is a picture of my cousin Bobby who is almost 26 now.) I thought it was such a neat treasure and decided that I would like to one day have it as a keepsake.

I thought my little man made a cute little addition to this unique frame :)

Independence Day Weekend!

We took a trip to Indiana over the holiday weekend (hence the little break from my blog--my parents have extremely slow internet because they live in the 'boonies' and since I have absolutely no patience, I decided that my beloved blogging would have to wait till I returned home to my no-patience-needed high-speed wireless internet!)

Anyhoo, back on the subject of our visit. We had a great time with my family! The favorite activity when me & my mom get together is...you guessed it--shopping! We left the guys (and little guy) at home saturday and had a great dinner and shopped at Metropolis. We came home with lots of loot!!!

Sunday was of course the 4th, so we had a cookout and fireworks! My dad insists on spending a fortune on a small arsenal of fireworks every year and me, Jeff & dad set them off while our spectators (mom & Hayden) looked on from the deck. That morning we went to church and afterwards went to see my grandparents for a nice visit.

Monday, my mom watched Hayden while me & Jeff had a little date. We went into town and stopped at a great flea market and a couple antique shops. It was a lot of fun! We found our little man the cutest wooden rocking horse at the flea market.

Here are some pics to highlight our activities in no specific order...

We were ready...

Our festive little cheesecake

The HUGE butterfly that was loving my mom's flowers!

He likes his rocking horse ;)

It was a great weekend and I hope you all had a wonderful one as well!

The only thing that can always make me smile even on my worst day...

I never knew I was capable of the amount of love I feel for this child. We adore this little boy!