Just over ten years ago, back before we were married and even when I was still in college, Steve and I drove about an hour to look at a litter of tiny Shih-Tzu puppies. We played with the puppies and listened to the very talkative breeder prattle on for a quite awhile, until we finally decided which puppy would be perfect for us. He wasn't old enough to leave his mom, so we had to wait a couple more weeks. I remember the day he was ready - it was a Friday, and Steve went and picked him up after he got off work for the weekend. I was SO excited, waiting for them to get home. Steve usually just let himself in, but that night he knocked. I ran to the door and threw it open, then squealed with delight when I saw the new puppy, nestled under Steve's coat.
We named him Jose, and soon pretty much our entire lives revolved around that little dog. We were absolutely enamored with him. I have an entire scrapbook from that time that consists mostly of pictures of Jose, adorned with little paw print stamps and bone-shaped paper punches.By the time we had two kids, I was much less enamored with Jose. I think it was right around the time that Noah was born that we didn't let him sleep in our bed anymore. For awhile - I think when I spent a ridiculous amount of my life trying to get babies to sleep and when barking used to wake up those sleeping babies - I was really indifferent towards him. Over that last few years though, he worked his way into my good graces, just by being his agreeable old self.

Probably my favorite thing about him, and I know I've written about this on here before, was that he immediately ate every crumb of food that ever even came close to hitting the floor. I think my second favorite thing about him was that - unless it was hot or too cold - he always rode with us in the car, wherever we went. When we arrived at our destination, he'd wait contentedly in the car until we came back, at which time he'd happily greet us with a cheerful wagging of his tail.

On Valentine's Day this year, Emma chose to go out to dinner to celebrate her birthday. When we came back to the car afterwards, Jose cheerfully greeted us, as always. Per Emma's request, we then drove to Peachwave to get some birthday frozen yogurt. All was well until we came back to our car, where I was completely shocked to find that poor Jose had died while we were at Peachwave. We were utterly blindsided by it, particularly since he had appeared perfectly fine twenty minutes earlier.

I was kind of surprised by how sad I felt about it -literally on the verge of tears for the next three days or so. I started crying about little things, such as when the UPS guy rang the doorbell and nobody barked. The kids like me to cut the crusts off their sandwiches, and I used to marvel at Jose's ability to rouse himself from wherever he was in the house by the nearly imperceptible sounds of crust-cutting, and run to the kitchen and wait patiently for me to give him the crusts. The morning after he died, no one came running for the crusts, and I burst into tears as I watched them disappear down the garbage disposal.We took Jose to a pet cremation place, then buried his ashes in our front flower bed, under a stepping stone that Emma and I made for him. Before we buried him, we all talked about our happy memories of him, and about how much he loved us all (well, except for maybe Allie) and how much we loved him. He was such a good little dog, and even even though we will not always feel so sad, I think we will always miss having him around.

When we looked at this house before we bought it, there was a pretty wreath on the front door. Once we moved in, I remembered how much I had liked that wreath so I wanted to get a wreath of our own right away. The one they had looked like it was store-bought, so I looked around at a few different stores, but didn't see anything very exciting.I turned to Pinterest, where I discovered this fabric rosette wreath. I thought something similar to that would be perfect, but I had some trouble picking out the colors for it. I wanted something that wouldn't clash with our red front door, but every color combination I could think of that would look okay with our red door and our grey house seemed way too 4th of July-ish. Once again, I consulted the internet, and happened upon this color combination. When I saw it at the time, I was looking at it on my phone, where the colors looked slightly different than they do now on my computer. I'm glad, because the colors that I see on my computer screen right now don't match quite as well. Anyway, I went to Joann's and used the image on my phone to pick out the exact colors that I needed.Making this wreath was fun, and super easy. Emma even made a few of the flowers for me, once she convinced me to let her use the glue gun. I love the end result, and I'm happy with how it looks on the red door.Speaking of looking good, little Allie has been really into the clothes she wears lately. She always wants her clothes to look pretty, which for her apparently means piling on as many layers as possible. Today after she dressed herself, she asked me to take her picture. I happily obliged, then showed her the resulting picture. "Awww," she cooed. "I look darling!" And, even though she looks a bit like a three year old bag lady, I agree.Moments after I took that picture, she grabbed a cup from the play kitchen/pretend microphone and announced in her deepest voice, "And now here is Mommy to do some singing for us!" When she gestured to me, I immediately started belting out the National Anthem. Right away she stopped me and suggested I sing something else. I guess because Whitney Houston has been in the news lately, I started to croon The Greatest Love of All. Before I even got to the chorus, she stopped me again, clearly displeased with my singing. "Mommy," she said disdainfully, "why don't you sing something good...like A,B,C,D!" Apparently her taste in music is not quite as refined as her taste in clothes!

Aaughhhh! Pinkeye is taking over our house! Noah had it last weekend, then Emma had it during the week, then I had it in my left eye towards the end of the week. We had to cancel plans with friends last weekend because of it, which was disappointing. Then this weekend, we were planning to have friends over tonight and, since we thought we were pretty much through the pinkeye mess, last night Emma and I made an icebox cake to have for tonight's guests. Except, this morning I woke up with pinkeye in my right eye! What the heck??? We had to cancel our plans again, which left us with a delicious-looking cake in the fridge and no one but our family to eat it. This is particularly unfortunate because that cake called for three cups of heavy cream, and I would not have made such a cake for just my own family to eat for no particular reason. It's also unfortunate because, after I knew our guests were no longer coming, I tried a bite of the delicious-looking cake, and it is absolutely every bit as delicious as it looks, if not more. Now I keep sneaking bites of the delicious, three-cups-of-heavy-cream cake and I wish someone would just take it out of my house so it would stop taunting me from the refrigerator!

Moving on...

So, the other day I mentioned that we moved out of our little house into a bigger house. All along, we did not want to move out of that house just for the sake of getting out of it, but we wanted to wait until we could move into the house where we could be happy living for the rest of our lives. I am so excited to say that we found that house, and every single day I am thrilled to be living here.There are a number of things that I particularly love about living in this new house:

1. Counter space! Hooray! After years of zero counter space, I now have this stretch of countertopand this island
and even this little bonus section. It's wonderful!2. We are so much closer to everywhere, particularly the kids' schools. Emma's school and Noah and Allie's preschool are right next to each other, but Emma's day starts and ends at 7:50 and 3:00 while the preschool day goes from 9:30-1:30, thus requiring separate trips. The YMCA, where we go on a regular basis, is also right next to the schools and we often have evening activities at one of those three places. Because of all this, I make the trip over there about four times a day. Our old house was 8.4 miles away and our new house is 1.8 miles away, which saves me over 250 miles a week of driving! That part is the best, but it's also wonderful that we are much closer to our favorite stores, restaurants, etc. I can't tell you how much I love being 1.4 miles away from Trader Joe's! Steve's work commute is about 1/3 of what it was before, which is nice for him as well.

3. Whenever my parents came to visit us in our old house, my dad slept on the couch and my mom slept in the bottom bunk, and the kids jumped on them and woke them up at the crack of dawn pretty much every single morning they were ever at our house. All seven of us also had to share the one bathroom. My parents are good sports and they never complained about this, but I think they are happy about the new house as well, because now they can have the whole basement to themselves - with a guest bedroom, a full bathroom, and a rec room with the TV and computer - whenever they stay with us. Since we have out-of-town family staying with us as often as we do, I'm so glad that we no longer have to make anybody sleep on the couch!

There are many more reasons why I love this house, but those are probably my top three. And now, if you'll excuse me, there is some icebox cake that is calling my name.

Probably the biggest news during my blogging hiatus is that we moved. For the last eight years, we've been living in a little 830 sq. ft. house, and for the majority of those eight years, I've been wishing fervently that we could move out of it. Often when I'd be complaining about where we lived, Steve would say, "Aren't we all happy? Don't we have a great family here in this house?" Which was true, of course, so then I would try to force myself not to hate it there and appreciate everything that we did have. Still, it was really hard for me to not begrudge my yard full of snakes and my complete lack of ANY counter space.

Still, looking back, that house did have it's good points. Out of necessity, I mastered the clean-as-you-go technique. I also became pretty ruthless when it came to decluttering because with five people and a dog in such a small space, it's easy to become overrun with clutter. Even though we have more space in our new house, I don't want to fall in the trap of accumulating more clutter, just because we have room for it.Another thing about that house was that our kids shared one room with one bunk bed. A bunk bed that all five of us would pile into every night - Emma on the top and me, Steve, Noah, and Allie on the bottom. We'd squeeze in there and Steve and I would read until the kids all fell asleep. We still all lay in a bunk bed together at night, but it's a bigger bunk bed. I'd be lying if I said I don't enjoy the freedom to move my arms and legs now, but I will always look back fondly on the days when our family of five would pack ourselves into this little bunk bed on a nightly basis.Probably the main reason that we will always feel an attachment to this house is that is that both Allie and Noah were born there, in our bedroom. I imagine we will drive by this house many times over the years and reminisce about the days that they were born, and also all the many happy times we had, growing our family in this little house.We've got the house on the market now, and despite my nostalgia over the years we lived there, we're really hoping someone buys it soon. Perhaps someone looking for an inexpensive little vacation getaway in Grandview (ha!) will see this little gem and snatch it up. We can hope, I guess!

Well, well... hello again.

I've been missing this old blog a little bit so I thought maybe I'd post an update or two.

Today was a snow day for all the kids, which was an unexpected, but lovely, surprise. We all went out and played in the snow, although I didn't last too long out there because honestly, playing in the (wet and freezing) snow is not something I really love to do. Still, I was glad I went out for a little bit because there is still snow falling and everything looks so pretty. Here is Emma next to the beginnings of a cute snowcat that she made on our front porch.We've been busy making Valentine's goodies around here, mostly thanks to ideas from Pinterest. Too many ideas, probably, because by the time we finished everything I was sick of making little Valentine's treats!

First, we made little Pretzel Buttons, which we then wrapped up and delivered to our neighbors.
For the kids' classmates, we bagged up little Teddy Grahams and leftover Peanut Butter M&Ms, and idea that I stole from here.Lastly, we made chocolate dipped Oreos for Emma to bring to school for her birthday treats this week.I think these are super cute, and I hope they are yummy too. I'm sure I would have tried one, but we had a frustrating issue with the Oreos falling off the sticks into the chocolate and after a number of ruined attempts, we had JUST enough for everyone in her class.

We went to the pumpkin patch last week and our goal was to buy 100 pounds of pumpkins, because if you get 100 pounds, then the price goes down to $0.25 per pound. One of Emma's friends was with us and all the kids walked around the patch, grabbing pumpkins of all shapes, colors, and sizes, declaring each one the "perfect pumpkin". I was pushing the pumpkins around in a wheelbarrow, and as the load got heavier and heavier, I had to tell the kids not to walk next to the wheelbarrow because I expected it to tip at some point and I didn't want to crush any young children with tumbling pumpkins. I think I said, "Okay, that's the last one," about ten times, but finally we made it back. It probably shouldn't have been too much of a surprise, then, when the people weighed our wheelbarrow and we had 180 pounds of pumpkins! Sheesh. So, we have a LOT of pumpkins this year. We tried to give away a bunch to Emma's friend, but were still left with a huge amount.Steve carved a cute little one right away, and ever since then Emma has been begging to carve her own pumpkin. I was kind of against it but Steve said he would get some safer tools for her to use. I felt slightly better knowing he wasn't going to be just handing her a big old butcher's knife, but still a little nervous.She worked very intently for about an hour - apparently the little tools are not only safer but slower as well. I only came in the kitchen long enough to take these pictures. I couldn't bring myself to watch her for much longer than that because I expected blood to start gushing from her limbs at any moment.
Emma's pumpkin is the one on the right, and the other two are the pumpkins that Steve carved for Noah and Allie.
We've had these jack-o-lanterns out for two nights now, and they are already pretty deteriorated, thanks to our squirrels. They ate the one Steve carved awhile back, and they are wasting no time with these new ones. We can't remember squirrels eating our pumpkins before, but they are sure into it this year. Almost every time we pull in our driveway, it seems like there is a squirrel gnawing on our pumpkins. Weird.Happy Halloween!

I have recently made three new cooking discoveries about which I am feeling kind of excited. It's very likely that no one else will be as excited as me about these things, but nevertheless, here they are:
1. Steve sometimes eats breakfast, but sometimes not, usually because he is in a hurry to get to work and doesn't have much time. I saw a really great way to make breakfast sandwiches on Pinterest a couple weeks ago, and thought they would be perfect for Steve (and anyone else who wants them) to have for breakfasts.
I used English muffins and bagel thins, but the bagel thins aren't quite as good as the English muffins. I only got them because initially I, for some unknown reason, only got one package of English muffins. When I went back to the store they were out of the whole wheat ones and I couldn't bring myself to by the white ones, so bagels it was. Ah well, live and learn. I also included sauteed spinach, eggs, soy "sausage", and white cheddar cheese. I wrapped and froze them all, and they are easy to thaw in the microwave for a quick breakfast or snack. They ended up being pretty delicious, and I will be making more of these for sure.
2. I have been seeing baked donuts on cooking blogs for awhile, and the idea seems pretty clever. However, I figured that most of the deliciousness of donuts comes from their being fried, so I did not rush out and purchase a donut pan. Eventually I couldn't resist anymore, and I decided that our first batch of donuts should be chocolate with chocolate icing. More "treat" than the donuts I will probably make most of the time, but I wanted the kids to warm up to these non-fried donuts, and also, I had half a carton of buttermilk in the fridge that I needed to use up.
Noah was so excited about making these donuts with me, and we both impatiently waited for Allie to wake up from her nap so we could all eat them together. Unfortunately, even though they were cute, these donuts were NOT good. I guess the buttermilk should have already been thrown out! We had to throw those donuts away, and I was starting to regret my donut pan purchase.
Luckily, I came across another delicious-sounding recipe for cider donuts and this one happened to also be much healthier than the first. These, thank goodness, were a hit! This afternoon we made our second batch of them in three days. Even though we just had them, the kiddos were pretty excited to have them again today - too excited, apparently, to let me take a picture!
If you ever try making donuts, it's a good idea to put the batter in a gallon Ziplock bag with a corner cut out and pipe it into the pans instead of trying to pour it in. I learned that the hard way. We also found out that, when sprinkling powdered sugar on the donuts, you should do it right before you eat them because if you do it on all of them at once, the sugar on the ones you don't eat right away will disappear. Then, of course, your children will insist that you add more powdered sugar before they eat those.3. There is a restaurant that opened up here a few months ago called Unforked. It's like a fast food place but with actual good food. They have this kale salad that is amazingly yummy, and sometimes we will go there mostly to get the kale salad. The other day I looked online to see if I could find that recipe anywhere, and voila! I tried it out at dinner last night, and it wasn't quite as delicious as the one at Unforked, but pretty darn close. I'm going to try to tweak it a little to see if I can get it to be exactly the same, but in any case, I see a lot of kale salad in my family's future!

I am pretty lucky, as far as cooking goes, that Steve and Emma will eat literally anything and Noah and Allie will eat most things. Even if something doesn't turn out very well, I know that Steve and Emma will still eat it, even if they are ("they" meaning Steve) making fun of it the whole time. In particular, I can think of a certain lentil casserole from a few years back that is still brought up around here from time to time. Still, even with his non-pickiness, Steve has always preferred to have meat at a meal rather than not.

Spicy African Peanut Stew served over Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread

Back on August 13th, Steve and I were having a discussion about how people in America eat so much more meat than anywhere else in the world, and Steve commented that maybe we could stop eating meat for six months, just to see what it's like. Because of his fondness for meat, I totally scoffed at him and said there was no way he would do it. I'm pretty sure that my skepticism encouraged him to do it even more, just to prove that he could. We were going to Waldo Pizza the next afternoon with my family, so we decided we'd still go and have our beloved Roasted Corn and Bacon Pizza there, but after that, no more. We did want to leave the option of fish in our diet, so for the next six months, Steve and I planned to become pescetarians.

Reuben

On our first meat-free day, we went to Blanc Burgers for lunch. I ordered the lentil burger because it's delicious and I order it regularly, but I was still in doubt that Steve would actually stick with it. I never thought I'd see the day when Steve would order a lentil burger, but he did, and now we are roughly seven weeks into it and neither one of us has had a bite of meat.

Broiled Tofu with Mmm Sauce and Veggies

So far, I really don't think it's hard at all and Steve says he is not missing meat, either. I've cooked lots of new things, most of which have really been delicious. I already had several vegetarian cookbooks, but I ordered this one for new ideas, and it's awesome. Really, really awesome. There are a number of things I've made from that book that the kids have asked to bring to school for lunch the next day, which is always a good sign. I wonder if they're the only kids at their school eating tempeh tacos for lunch!

Lentil Shepherd's Pie

We like to eat out quite a bit, and at first we thought that might be tricky, but it's really not at all. Of course, there are always fish options at restaurants, but most places we go have other delicious meat-free options as well. We've been eating Thai food a lot, because you can basically choose from the entire menu and just order tofu as the protein instead of meat or chicken, but that is certainly not a problem because we all love Thai food. We have been invited to a couple picnics/parties where we had to eat before we went, knowing the only options there were going to be hamburgers and hot dogs. Also, some friends invited us over for dinner one night, along with a couple other families, and we worried about feeling awkward if they served meat and we didn't eat any. They knew about our no-meat thing, and sweetly ended up calling us beforehand to make sure it would work for us if they made pasta with shrimp and scallops. Absolutely no issue - perfect!

Tempeh Tacos with Yogi Gracamole (from the Peas book but not online anywhere)

My grandma and my parents (and apparently some of their friends and co-workers!) are wondering what we could possibly be eating, so I've posted some pictures of recent meals to ease their minds. Contrary to what some people think, vegetarians do have other options besides macaroni and cheese and cheese pizza! It's usually getting pretty dark these days by the time we eat, so these pictures are not great, but you can at least get the idea.

Somehow, over the last month or two, the kids have suddenly become involved in many more activities than we have ever had before. I feel like a good chunk of my life these days is spent shuttling them back and forth to school and their various practices and classes. Right now we have Brownies, soccer, dance, and Karate, and next week we will be adding tumbling and Spanish as well! A number of these things are just at our YMCA, which is pretty low key, thank goodness!

Today is Noah's half birthday, so tonight we are going to take him out for ice cream to celebrate. It's hard to believe that tomorrow he will be closer to being five than three, when it seems like it was just yesterday that he was turning four. He is still as sweet as ever, but his interests have definitely changed over the past few months. After years of being a huge Thomas the Train fan, he moved onto a Star Wars obsession, and doesn't give Thomas a second thought now. He won't even wear his Thomas underwear anymore, which makes me a little sad.

Steve bought two lightsabers awhile ago, and he and Noah play with them constantly. Even though he never "wins", Noah never tires of the game. Steve drew this picture of himself and Noah, maybe to give Noah the impression that he is better than he actually is. I'm sure if Noah decided he was tired of the lightsabers, Steve would be pretty disappointed!A couple months ago, Noah saw a Storm Trooper gun at Target and begged and begged to get it. I still don't love the idea of playing with weapons so I told him that he could save up his own money to buy it, thinking there was no chance he'd be able to come up with the $20 price of the gun. He obviously had more faith in himself than I did, because he immediately set out to get $20. We told him that when we go out for ice cream, he could skip the ice cream and we'd give him $2 instead so he did that a few times, plus he did little jobs around the house and looked in all our nooks and crannies for money. One night he found $6 outside of Peach Wave, and another day he found $5 on the floor of Target, so both of those finds helped him quite a bit. We had a random plastic tube hanging around our house and he saved his money in there, calling it (for some unknown but charming reason) his "money carriage".Last week he finally had enough money so we all went to Target, with Noah proudly holding the money carriage. He picked out the gun, brought it to the check-out line, and purchased it all by himself.He has been playing with it a ton since then, and still seems very excited that he finally owns it. Even though I have always been opposed to toy guns, I don't begrudge him this one because he worked so hard for it and it makes him so happy. So far he has been following the rule of "no shooting Mommy", but if that changes at any time in the future, I may quickly decide otherwise!

I am so happy that September is here! Fall is absolutely my most favorite season. I am not the only around here who is excited looking forward to cooler temperatures, though. In the future, I should probably not buy Allie any fall clothes or a winter coat while it is still warm, because then I end up with a little girl who insists on either wearing long sleeves and pants when it is 98 degrees, or wearing a winter coat with nothing else.Allie and Noah started preschool a couple weeks ago and they both seem to love it. It's a four hour day, with Allie going two days a week and Noah going three. I thought Allie might cry the first day at least, but she barely glanced at Steve and me as we walked out the door. When I picked her up, I asked one of her teachers if Allie had been sad at all, and she said, "Not even for a minute!"
Several people have asked me if I felt sad, dropping my baby off at preschool. Although I certainly adore her and love spending time with her, I really wasn't a bit sad. It may be different when she starts kindergarten or something, but for now, the idea of having eight hours every single week all to myself is just too exciting for me to be sad. After more than seven and a half years of doing all our grocery shopping with the kids, I can now finally go grocery shopping all by myself! Huzzah!

My marathon training is going okay. The marathon is just over a month away at this point. Several weeks ago I ran 20 miles, my farthest so far, and it was rough. The last three miles were kind of on the miserable side, and I didn't do much but lay in bed for most of the day after I got back. Ever since then, I have been a little more nervous about the marathon. This weekend I will be going 22 miles, and I am definitely wishing it were already over. I ran a half marathon a couple weeks ago, which I really loved, although that's another thing that is making me more anxious about the marathon. While the half marathon was great, I didn't really want to turn around and run it again right away, you know? Anyway, Steve took this picture of me in the half, right before I crossed the finish line. I am the one in the purple shirt. I finished in two hours, six minutes, and six seconds.

Two days before Allie's birthday, Emma and Noah cooked up a plan to make her some type of present. They came to me to tell me about it, and started with, "Well, first we need you to sew her a dress...". I had to inform them that, while it was certainly a lovely idea, I was probably not going to sew her a dress in the next day, and that their plan should maybe involve more effort on their part, instead of all the effort on my part. Emma asked if they could give Allie a shirt instead, and if she could sew it herself.

My initial feeling was that I didn't trust Emma to use my sewing machine and that it would probably be better if they designed the shirt and I just sewed it myself. I then started to remember when I was a kid, probably just slightly older than Emma, and my grandma let me use her sewing machine all on my own to make whatever I wanted. For a long time, my little brother proudly wore a satin-y, red, sleeveless shirt with no hems that I had sewed for him, and I'm pretty sure the handle of my grandma's garage broom is still sporting a couple "broom covers" that I sewed. One time, my friend Nicki and I spent the night at my grandma's house and stayed up most of the night, sewing "pajamas" for ourselves. I use the term pajamas very loosely, considering that our "patterns" were made by laying on the fabric and tracing around our bodies with a marker. Still, I remember having a lot of fun sewing at my grandma's house, and I think it was awesome that she let me use her sewing machine when no one else trusted me enough to use theirs.Keeping all that in mind, I decided to let Emma sew the shirt herself (albeit with plenty of supervision). I helped her trace one of Allie's other shirts to make a pattern, and then once she had cut out all the pieces, I showed her how to use the sewing machine. With the exception of a small amount of sewing around the arm holes and ironing on the applique, she made the entire shirt by herself.
Allie was so excited when she opened it, and has worn it several times already. One time in particular, she wore it three days in a row, only finally taking it off when she managed to somehow drop a huge glob of guacamole down the inside of it. In the end, I'm glad that I let Emma sew the shirt because it's a cute present regardless, but definitely much more meaningful because she made it herself.