Happy Spring

Happy Spring everyone!  It might not feel like it yet but I've decorated for it!

Every year Logan and I have "Birthday Week."  I try to plan lots of special things for us to do on the days that I'm off from work.  Usually I have some cleaning left to do but this year I had it done early-except for a little last minute outdoor cleaning I decided to do two hours before the party.  This year I had March 7-12 off so I had a couple of things planned.  I always let him pick a toy out-so off we went to Target in search of the perfect toy.  I think we went up and down the aisles for at least half an hour.  Every time he came to something he thought was really neat (everything) he'd say "Look!" in this really high pitched voice-so funny!  He finally decided on Mack the semi-truck from Cars. It's now one of his favorite toys.

Jared and I also took Logan to the Lincoln Children's Museum.  I think he had a good time-there were quite a few older kids there so it kind of made it more difficult for the smaller kids to do stuff.  I honestly don't know if we'll go back-once you've seen it it's not that big of a deal.

The peg wall

The other side of the peg wall with Logan's hand prints

Picking up moon rocks

Driving "Mack"

Driving a tractor

I also planned on taking him to the zoo but it doesn't open until April so we'll go then.  I'm so glad that I take this time off from work to enjoy "Birthday Week" and plan on doing it every year.

Logan's 3rd Birthday!

Logan turned 3 on March 11-I can't believe it!  It's so amazing to see this little person that couldn't do anything but sleep, eat and poop turn into such an intelligent, caring and funny person.  I've loved every minute of it so far and am excited to see what the next year will bring.

We celebrated on Saturday with family and close friends-it was a blast.  Logan received some awesome gifts-we're very blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.

The theme of the party this year was Cars (the movie).  I asked Logan way back in January what kind of party he wanted to have and all he said he wanted was a Mater cake.  Thus the theme was decided.

I really enjoy decorating the house for holidays and his birthday parties and sometimes go a little overboard.  Last year I found these awesome decals that you can put right on the wall so I decided to do that again this year-it turned out really cute.  I also found a book of cardboard cutouts of some of the characters from the movie that we placed on the tables-those were pretty fun too.

Logan seemed to really enjoy the party-especially the presents!  Among them were a train table (from both sets of Grandparents), a motorized Mater truck, a motorized digger, and lots of cars from the movie Cars.  Jared and I bought him a couple of new trains for his train table and Cars 2.  I think the movie was more of a gift to ourselves so we can watch something other than Cars-we pretty much have that memorized.
This years menu consisted of a pickle and olive tray, a veggie and cracker tray with garlic herb dip, hot and spicy mix, cake (yum!), cherry chews and lemon cookies.  Lots of good food!

The train table

More Snow

Well the first day of spring has come and gone and with it has come snow!  Not exactly what I expected.  The only good thing about snow in March is that it won't last long.  The weather is supposed to turn around and be around 50 degrees by the end of the week-yay!  I'm so excited for spring-the pretty flowers, nice weather and running outside.

This weekend was my Great Grandma's 93rd birthday party. She's still going strong and still cooking up a storm.  She makes these homemade noodles that are to die for.  We eat them over mashed potatoes--so good!

Saturday evening I was doing a little yarn browsing and came across some yarn that I'd been wanting forever for 50% off.  I couldn't pass it up.  I can't wait to start knitting with it.  It's a beautiful purple tweed.  The pattern I'm going to knit is called the Livingstone Cardigan.

That's it for tonight...off to bed with my knitting and what's left of my post-run smoothie.

Home Projects

Back in December for our anniversary (10 years together-5 of them married!) Jared bought me a giant pile of boards to start finishing the basement with.  A couple of weeks later he went and bought some more boards and some insulation.  I think he's made a total of three trips to Menard's-I have a feeling there will be many more to come!  So far almost all of the outer walls are framed and most of the room that's going to be our living space is even wired and insulated.  We had some help from Jack (Jared's dad) and a friend of the family who's helped on some of Jack's projects.

This picture is almost the same view of the first picture (above) but it's now insulated.

Another possible project that we have coming up is our front porch.  For some time now the porch has been sinking and it just keeps getting worse.  I've been in contact with our insurance company and we'll be having someone out to look at the damage and tell us what we need to start doing.  I'm very optimistic that it will go well.

My Favorite Things from February

1. My very own TREADMILL!!!!!  I'm so super excited to have my own treadmill.  I've been wanting one since I started running three years ago.  It just so happened that our Pastor was selling his on the cheap and we decided to buy it...my husband rocks!  It's nothing fancy but it does everything I need it to and it's quiet enough for me to watch TV while I'm running-perfecto!

2. Finishing my (almost) first pair of socks.

This might be confusing but stick with me.  My good friend and coworker was retiring in November and she LOVES socks.  I've never knitted socks before but I really wanted to try just for her.  In October I started knitting my very first sock (one of the socks in the picture above) just to see if I could do it.  I figured it out and it didn't seem to take me all that long so I decided to give it a go.  I put these socks aside and started knitting the socks for my coworker.  In all truth those are my first finished pair of socks but one of these socks is my very first sock ever knitted...get it?  I'm very proud :)  The colorway of these socks is called London 2012 in honor of the 2012 Olympics-every time I look at these socks I think of Michael Phelps, gymnastics, the song "Home" by Phillip Phillips and the song "Call Me Maybe" by what's her face. (If any of you watched the Olympics you'll get the last two references).

3.  Playing board games with Logan

We played Candy Land for the first time in February and although it was a little hard on my patience (I don't nearly have enough some days...just ask my husband) he acutally understood it and we had fun-he won!

4.  Valentine's Day

My husband is awesome all year round but I like to make sure he knows how much I appreciate him.  This year for V Day instead of buying him something (he's so picky!) I made an awesome dinner of Chicken Pot Pies ( I seem to make these a lot) and Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting-delicious!  He did very well in the gift buying department with the first season of Downton Abbey! and some delicious salted caramels...so good.

That's all for February-can't wait for spring!



My Logan (in January)

Story time

Children's time at church

Sitting in the saddle at Texas Roadhouse

Eating one of his favorite meals-salad!

Making a mess at GG's while I ran on the treadmill :)

Sitting in the "hole" in our couch-just like Don from Dinosaur Train

My Favorite Things from January

January was a really busy month (obviously since it's March and I'm just finally blogging about it now!) so there aren't a whole lot of things on the list, but here they are anyways!

1. New Year's Eve

I was all gung-ho about the holidays this year.  We don't go out and party we stay in and I cook, we eat, I knit and we watch the ball drop on TV.  It's a tradition that I make Chicken Pot Pies for our "fancy" supper on New Year's.  It's one of my favorite things to make but it's pretty labor intensive.  It involves me being in the kitchen for two or three hours from start to finish but the end result is sooooo good!  The recipe that I use is from Anne Burrell.  I tweak it a little since I'm dealing with a picky eater (Jared-not Logan) but it's still really delicious and of course high fat. :)

2. My very first Knit-a-long.  I've been a member of Ravelry for a couple of years now and had always seen people posting projects from Knit-a-longs (KALs) and never knew what it meant.  I finally figured it out and decided that I would try one.  I loved it!  It happened to be a themed KAL for one of my new favorite TV shows which just happens to be my next favorite thing.

3. Downton Abbey!!!!!

Totally in love with this show!  Season 3 was the first season I started watching but I did the whole recap on PBS that talked about all the important things that happened in season's 1 and 2 so I pretty much knew what was going on.  I'm hooked!

4. Running...again.  I started running on Jared's grandparent's treadmill.  I knew that I didn't want to wait until it was warm to start running (Hello! It's Nebraska and sometimes it takes forever to warm up) and they just happened to have a fancy treadmill that they were gracious enough to let me use (thanks GG!).

5. This tutu!  I made this for a coworker and it turned out so cute I had to post a picture of it!

6. Making and breaking my New Year's Resolution.  My resolution this year was to stop drinking so much soda-getting it down to one a week.  I failed miserably at this.  Soda is one of my weaknesses-I just love the bubbles.  I don't drink one everyday but it's more than one a week.  I do really well if I don't keep it in the house so that's what I'm going to have to do.  I never feel bad about crapping out on my resolution-I know I'm not alone.  I think around 80% or more of people do too!

7.  I almost forgot!  The Rainbow!!!

The most amazing vacuum I've ever seen!  We have a Dyson Animal-a vacuum that's supposed to be top of the line and I have a husband that loves to clean and vacuum.  They demonstrated the Rainbow in our house that's vacuumed at least once a week and it pulled so much stuff out of the carpet I was almost sick.  Since we've been using the Rainbow I've seen a noticeable difference in our carpet and the amount of dust in our house...yep it's an air purifier too!

That's it for the month of January!

My Favorite Things from December

Obviously I have been slacking....oops!  Here are some of my favorite things from December.

1. The Ninja

I started making smoothies last summer and the cheapo blender that I bought which worked great for a while started smelling like it was going to explode when I used it.  Needless to say I stopped making smoothies so much.  Jared bought me this awesome blender for Christmas and it's so awesome.  I'm no longer afraid of my blender exploding and getting a face full of fruit and yogurt.

2. My new Kitchen Aid mixing bowl

LOVE!  And it comes with a lid so it's super special.

3. Baking cookies with Logan.  I love cookies, he loves cookies...'nuff said.

4. Watching Logan open his Christmas presents.  I think this was the first year that he really cared about it so it was fun seeing him get excited about his presents.

5. This amazing little dinosaur egg.  This is an egg that you place in water and it "hatches" a dinosaur.  Logan loves all things dinosaur so he was totally into this.  We had to go and check on it everyday at least a couple of times to see if it had hatched yet.  (I love that when I'm cracking eggs he says "Mama they're hatching!")

6. Christmas in general this year was one of my favorite Christmases that I can remember.  I'm not sure why either I just really got into it.  Usually I'm so busy with work that by the time it's actually here I'm sick of it, but not this year.  Maybe it has something to do with decorating early it just got me in the spirit.

7. Last but not least-socks!

I don't know if I can actually call these a favorite or not but they have to be on the list for how hard I worked on them. I knitted these socks for a coworker of mine that retired in November.  I didn't actually finish them until December.  I think this project was one of the most difficult projects I've ever knitted.  I didn't end up having enough yarn (even though the pattern said I did) so I had to go back and rip out the top part of the sock thereby shortening it to get the extra yarn.  It's not an easy thing to do-it doesn't just unravel-it took me a month to do that.  Needless to say I was very happy to see these socks go!