Easter Egg Hunt!

We had a wonderful Easter today.   YOU GUYS - the musical number in sacrament meeting was SO GOOD!  We are so spoiled/blessed to have the best musicians in our ward because they are all like doctoral students for piano/violin/opera performance.  Anyway, that was seriously one of my favorite parts of the day.

After church, we had an Easter egg hunt with all the kids in the ward.  Each family brought a few eggs and we just hid them in the nursery, and Violet had a great time.  She found tons of eggs!  My friend Brittany took great pictures, which I am grateful for because we are still camera-less!  

Also, I am totally in love with Violet's dress.  My mom gave it to her especially for Easter, and I've been so excited to finally see her in it!

As for dinner, I don't love ham, which I feel like is the only really traditional Easter dinner that we've ever had.  Therefore, I am always a little stumped as to what for make for Easter dinner.  Our friends told us that their tradition for Easter dinner is to have fish and honey, which is what Jesus ate after he was resurrected.   I loved that idea, so for dinner I made that tilapia I blogged about a few days ago.  It is marinated in honey, so I figured that was good enough!  It was delicious, and we all had Violet's Easter egg candy for dessert :).

NHM with Glenn!

Glenn's semester is winding down, and so he has had some free mornings or afternoons here and there. Yesterday afternoon he accompanied Violet and me to the natural history museum!  We have a membership, so we go a lot, and Glenn gets in for free since he is a student.

Also, we bought a new camera!  Our old one died a couple of months ago.  However, we ordered it online, so it isn't here yet, so here is at least one more post with my awful cell phone pics.

In that last picture, Violet is holding her present from Glenn, a new book.  I'm pretty sure Glenn is incapable of entering a gift shop without buying something for her :).

My Two Babies

I have two babies to take care of these days:  Violet and my basil plant!

(This was the face Violet made when Glenn said, "Say cheese!")

You may remember that I planted basil from seed last year.  It was wonderfully successful, and I harvested basil throughout the year until over Christmas break when something ate the whole plant.  This year I decided to take the easy route, and just bought a little basil plant and replanted it in my pot.  I also included a thyme plant, because that is an herb that I always feel like I need and I never want to buy.

Honey-Lime Tilapia

We tried this meal for the first time last week, and we LOVED it, so we had it again tonight!  The tilapia is so good, and amazingly easy.  I got the recipe here.  You basically just mix together lime juice and honey and marinate the fish all day.  Then you dip it in flour, and fry it in a skillet.  When Glenn took his first bite of it, he exclaimed, "THAT IS SOME GOOD FISH!".

Guess who else loves it??  Violet!  I'm so proud that she eats fish so enthusiastically.  She also had a big bite of the asparagus tonight at dinner!  Just one bite, but she didn't spit it out, so I'm calling it a success.

In other news, Violet had a good time playing with her friends during my institute class today.  

(love these girls)

Climber

We went to the park today.

When Violet got tired of playing in the sand, she amazed me once again with her climbing skills.  Look at her go!

What really impressed me was that she could it up the first step!  That first rung of the ladder is about at her nose when she is standing on the ground, so just getting starting took a lot of upper body strength!  It was smooth sailing from there, and she climbed it about 20 more times before we went home, of course :).

Pizza Friday - Part 4(?? I am losing track of how many times I've posted about our pizza...)

Remember how yesterday at the Farmers' Market I bought some things for our pizza?  And how it was beets and swiss chard, and I was nervous that it was going to be a really weird pizza?  Well, it was good!

Violet even gobbled it up, so you know it wasn't too bad.  We liked the beets, but didn't love them, and the swiss chard/garlic cream sauce mixture was delicious.  So there you go - you can really put just about anything on a pizza and it will be a hit.

Thursday

Here is what happened on Thursday:

Violet completed her daily ritual of communing with our neighbor's parakeets on the back porch.

We went to wic, and Violet had a little trouble sharing toys with the girl in this picture, but was otherwise well-behaved, as usual.

We went to our favorite farmer's market downtown, on the bus, with our friends, and I forgot to take pictures.  Also, I got beets and swiss chard for our pizza tomorrow.  Obviously it is going to be a very interesting pizza.

Happy Pi Day (3/14)!  To celebrate, I made this lemon-sour cream pie, and it was delicious.

Wednesday

Violet slept in until 8 o clock this morning!  It was so awesome.  She still hasn't quite adjusted to the time change with daylight savings, which is why she has been sleeping in the last couple of days.  I think she will be back on track by tomorrow, but it sure was nice getting to sleep in! 

We went to the park all morning, and Violet played with her friends Hannah and Sofia.  I should have taken a picture, because they are very cute together, but I forgot.

During Violet's nap, I made our lasagna that we had for dinner.  

After Violet's nap, she ate every last bit of cottage cheese for her snack.

After that, we went to Moscatel's (the craft store downtown) and got some things for Easter.  Violet was in love with the display of fountains, and stood in front of them repeating, "water!" for a good five minutes before I dragged her away.

Since Violet slept in so late, I didn't have time for a run (before my hunger won out and I ate breakfast and therefore could not go running, obviously).  So this afternoon, when we still had a couple of hours before Glenn was due home, we went running.  All the trees are in bloom here, and so beautiful, so I stopped to take a picture of one for you.

Tuesday

(You guys, I tried so hard to stick to my goal of posting every day this week, but technical difficulties kept me from posting this yesterday.  I wrote it yesterday, though, so I say it still counts)

I took pictures of everything again today!  My goal is to post every day this week even if nothing cool happens, so here it goes.

We colored this morning, as usual.

Violet insisted that I display her picture on the wall:

We went to story time.

At story time, Violet participated in the flannel board story!  She is usually so shy at story time, and today she wan't at all!  You can see her putting her flannel sheep on the board in this picture:

She also ran up to the front for the last song, If You're Happy and You Know it.  She did every single action, but my phone only videos 5 seconds at a time, so you'll have to just take my word for it that she was "wagging her tail".  You can kind of see it at the beginning.

While we were waiting for Glenn to get home, we did sidewalk chalk.

Dumplings for dinner!

You guys.  They were SO GOOD.

Monday

I know I have been neglecting my blog lately, and I also know that at least my parents are very sad when I don't post everyday.  So in an effort to get back in the habit, I have made a goal to post everyday this week, no matter how little happens in the day.  I am keeping my lame cell phone camera at the ready, so I can document even the least noteworthy of things!  Here is what happened today:

As soon as I turned off the shower this morning, Violet came barreling into the bathroom calling for me, obviously excited to show me what she had been working on in her room.  It was this:

(all of her toys in her crib)

We went to our institute class.  I take the class with two other moms, and we take turns watching the kids in the nursery.  It is always one of my favorite parts of the week!  Here are some of the kids doing somersaults (Violet is in the back, in the white shirt):

After Violet's nap, we went to the little park in our neighborhood, and our friends (who we hung out with in the morning at institute) met us there.  We had a great time as usual!

Violet, picking flowers instead of playing on the slides.  This was before her friends arrived.

Here is a video I took of Violet climbing the rock wall/arch thing-y at the park.  She had never tried it before today, so it surprised me when she climbed up with no problem!

(I missed the first part of her climb, but she did the whole thing by herself)

And to end the night, dipping Oreos in milk with dad:

A weekend of beach trips

We are having beautiful weather here (as usual, haha.  But seriously, even better than usual.)  To celebrate, we went to the beach on Friday with most of the other kids and moms in our ward (which equals two other moms besides me, and 4 other kids besides Violet).  I wish so much that I'd had my camera at the beach, because the kids had SO MUCH FUN.  They played in the water almost the whole time!  Aren't they brave?  Because let me tell you, the water is still very cold.  We went the the beach in the Marina, so there are no waves, and it is very shallow.  It is perfect water for the kids to play in.  There is also a playground on the beach.  We took a picnic, and it was just a really fun time.

On Friday night, we had a ward party where Violet got a kite as a gift in a white elephant exchange.  Glenn wanted to try it out right away, so we went out to Manhattan Beach for the afternoon on Saturday.  We haven't been to the beach in the afternoon much, so we were surprised how crowded it was.  We had a great time, but there wasn't enough of a breeze to get the kite up.  Oh well.  

(before the beach on Friday.  The hat and glasses lasted for about 3 seconds once we were at the beach)

(p.s. Cheeri - If you are reading this, I just wanted to tell you that Violet finally grew into that whale dress and this the first time she has worn it, and we got so many compliments on it.  Everyone wanted to know where I got it, and I just said, "It is a hand me down, and my sister in law has good taste.")

The end of veg month...

February is over!  I had a ham sandwich yesterday to celebrate.  I will share our menu for last week with you, to finish up the month (see week 1, week 2, week 3) but we didn't eat very many new meals.  

Sunday - we had breakfast with my family before they left to go home, and then I think we had cereal or something for dinner.  I didn't take a picture of breakfast, which is a shame, because it was beautiful. We had toast with avocado, queso fresco, and pickled red onions.  It is one of our family's favorites.

Monday - Black bean soup (see week 1)

Tuesday - Breakfast for dinner (pancakes)

Wednesday - Stuffed Bell Peppers

I didn't have  recipe for these, and I was afraid they wouldn't be good, but they were.  Glenn LOVED them.

Thursday - Tortilla soup (see week 2)

Friday - We ordered pizza because I forgot to make the dough before leaving to do the laundry.  

So for February, I planned a whole month of meals at one time.  It took me about an hour to do, but it was so nice for the rest of the month!  Usually on Saturday morning before we grocery shop, I try to plan the next week of meals and I hate it.  Having the whole month planned took away so much of the stress, and we saved a lot of money!   I want to stick with it, so I planned the whole month of March yesterday. 

Also, last night my dad made the stuffed poblanos that I made in week 2, and they looked much more beautiful than mine!  I wish I was there to eat with them! 

p.s.  I completed my NYR of eating veg for February, and I also am now 50 for 50 on writing in my journal everyday this year. (we are 50 days into this year already, can you believe it??)