Some Things We've Done

A couple Saturday nights ago, the girls spent the night with their friends and Rob and I headed out to see Jimmy Buffett and Jackson Brown in concert.  We had lots of fun.  It was our second time seeing Jimmy in concert and it's such a giant party.  A great way to just cut loose and have a fun night!

Glow in the dark shark fins!

Us! 

Mia (in blue and red) joined an FC Dallas indoor youth team,  It's coed and she really likes it.  I think playing against boys brings out a lot more aggression in her.  Aria always has fouls called on her, but Mia never did until this league haha. 

Victory taco! 

Aria played in a soccer tournament this weekend.  They played 5 games total and some required veerrry early wake up calls.  They shut out the first four teams that they played and had a great chance of winning first place, but in the last game they gave up a couple of goals.  They went home with silver though! It was a very full, tiring and very exciting weekend!

Aria has another tournament this weekend so we're going to rest up tonight so that she can hit the ground running tomorrow morning.  Today is actually our little Mia's 9th birthday too! So when the girls get home from school we'll do a little shopping and then quietly celebrate with pizza, a movie and a cake that Rob picked up for her last night.  He's such a good daddy.  He woke up really early this morning and went to get a bouquet of balloons so that the house would be festive before school.  We'll do the "big" celebration with a few friends next weekend!

Granbury Weekend

Last year, Rob and I found ourselves in need of a weekend away from all the obligations of our busy little family life to relax and reconnect. We didn't really care where we went, but saw that there was a wine walk going on in Granbury, Tx.  So we booked a hotel on the lake, walked around the streets sipping wine, sampling chocolate, cheese, local honeys and infused vinegars and fell in love with the town.  Last year we left the kids with my sister, but this year we took them with us.  The weather was perfect and the town was as charming as we remembered it. We stayed in the same hotel with the boardwalk that leads right into the little downtown and has the same view of the lake where we can watch the boats from our window.  I don't know if this will be a yearly trip for us or not, but I do know that we really enjoy our time out of the fast paced, hectic environment that we find fun, but sometimes a bit overwhelming. We really have to fight for down time these days and Granbury in the spring is a pretty good place to go once we've decided to quiet things for a couple of days.

 Breakfast at this little place.

I'd LOVE to see an opera at this opera house which was established when the town was still part of the American frontier.

There's history here too.  I think you can stay in this hotel and I love this building, but it seems a little creepy?

There's pretty art all over this town.

Sunday morning after breakfast, we went for a walk in the park.

Aria saw me pointing the camera at her and played the goofball card.

We stopped by the Ft. Worth Stockyards on our way home for pony rides

 and lunch. 

So that was our mini getaway last weekend.  Hope we make it back again next year!

homemade granola bars

Like lots of people, we are trying really hard to eat healthful and to know the ingredients that are going into our bodies.  We've stopped hanging around so many restaurants and are getting innovative at home instead.  I really want to sell baked goods for a living someday, but that's another topic for another time.  Did I ever mention the lady that sells cupcakes by the Texas sea shore out of a pink van and wears a Bob Dylan t shirt while doing it?  Well I met her and I have a theory that she may have been Future Kate showing me that my dream can be lived.  Anyways, until I find a way, I'll work on being a home baker.  Here's a recipe for granola bars that I made this weekend. I think they are tasty and a great way to get some good stuff in the body!

ingredients...
1 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup or 3oz quinoa 
1/3 cup or 3oz flax seed
1/3 cup or 3oz chopped almonds
1/3 cup or 3oz chopped pecans
1/2 oz butter, vegan butter or cooking spray
1 3/4 oz brown sugar
1/3 cup agave nectar
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
prep...
1. Preheat oven to 350. Coat 9” x 13” baking pan with cooking spray or butter.
2. Combine dry ingredients (oats, flax, quinoa, almonds, pecans). Spread on a baking sheet and toast for 15 minutes. Reduce oven to 300 when removed.
3. Combine wet ingredients and salt in large saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly until brown sugar is just dissolved. Remove from heat.
4. Add toasted grains and nuts to sugar mixture and mix well. Press into coated baking pan and press flat.
5. Bake at 300 for 20 to 25 minutes.
6. Allow to cool almost completely before cutting.

It only took a little time to have something great for the kids' lunch boxes and snacktime!

Just some things....

We had a pretty sweet little Easter.  Rob and the girls were home for a three day weekend.  I worked Friday and Saturday, but we managed to sneak in lots of fun time together!

Here are the girls on Easter morning before church.  They had already hunted around the house for eggs and eaten some candy!  Our church service was so beautiful and at the end, the kids had a massive indoor (it had poured earlier in the morning so it was muddy outside) egg hunt.

Some random bits....

Buddy getting some love before Aria heads off to school.

My two obnoxious dogs letting our neighbor know that they are not cool with him mowing his lawn. 

I have to remind Mia to wear her unicorn helmet when she's riding her bike, but she's nondiscriminatory with it otherwise.  Here she is going to her dad's office.

Oh and one more thing... I've discovered Vine.  Well, I knew about the app and even created an account a while back, but I just started using it.  And although I'm not good at creating cool posts yet, I'm working on it.  Here are a couple of my first attempts at these little 6 second stop motion thingies.

Weekend Snapshots

This weekend was great!  I often work Saturdays now and I had this one off.  I've grown to cherish two day weekends since they seem so long! On Saturday morning we headed out to Aria's soccer game only to get notified on the way there that it was rained out so we detoured to Starbucks and grabbed some drinks and then ran some errands.  We recently dropped all of our old HI-8 tapes off at a conversion store so that all of our family home videos would be on dvd instead of little outdated cassettes.  We've been meaning to do that forever and it's such a relief to know our older home videos are a little safer.  So we picked those up and then stopped by this amazing doll house store that the girls have been wanting to go into.  They had everything you could possibly want to put in a doll house.  They had from little persian rugs to Christmas decorations.  You can imagine an eight year old a ten year old little girl's reaction to a place like that.  After seeing it, they are full of plans haha.  After that, we stopped by Whole Foods to pick up some stuff for dinner. 

Here's Aria sampling some Dutch truffle cheese. There's this one restaurant we always go to where they have truffle fries and they're a family favorite so the taste of truffles wasn't weird to Aria.  The cheese was so good!

We were lucky to have this very helpful unicorn with us as well.  She's a great grocery buddy!

Later that afternoon, we went to Mia's soccer game. She is starting to like her team.  We were pretty sure this was going to be a one season adventure, but now she's starting to be really positive about it.  I still have questions about the influence of some of the parents.  One almost got into a fist fight with the opposing parents this weekend and the ref said he'd shut down the game if she tried that again.  It's such embarrassing behavior.  Ugh.  But the coach is great and the girls are all really sweet and Mia is really improving and gaining confidence.  That's hard to beat so we'll see if she wants to continue.  

After Mia's game, we were so chilled to the bone from being outside, that we went home and made soup.  We made some delicious tomato bisque.  I've never been much of a soup maker and I'm just starting to venture into it.  We're finding that it's easy, fun and healthy!

Sunday was Palm Sunday and the girls participated in a drama and a palm procession at church.  They also sang with the children's choir that they rehearse with every Sunday afternoon.  It was so beautiful! 

After church we went to one of our very favorite places to eat in Dallas.  It's called Kalachandji's and it's a vegetarian Indian restaurant inside of a temple.  It's so beautiful and the food is fresh and delicious and made right there.  We all get so excited whenever we eat there.

Just some little things....

This post is a bit late since it's been in process for about a week.  I just keep forgettting to come back and finish it.  I'm putting up another one right after this, but I did want to get these pictures up even though they aren't as recent.

The girls had their Spring break a couple of weeks ago.  Rob took the week off to hang out with the kids and do some projects around the house while I went to work most days.  Even though we didn't turn spring break into a trip, the girls still managed to have fun with their dad and lots of play time.  They each had a friend for a sleepover one night too.  It was exhausting since they of course wouldn't go to sleep, but they had tons of fun giving each other makeovers, eating snacks and watching movies!

Playing games.....

Eating pancakes the next morning....

For St. Patricks day, we made four leaf clovers out of sliced bell peppers and filled them with risotto.

This is a different meal, but I just love how exasperated Mia looks by not getting to leave the table until her green beans are gone.  It can be tough being a kid!

Yet another meal time... The girls have been having fun getting in the kitchen with Rob and I and helping.  It's fun to see them excited about cooking and learning!

More food!  Aria and Mia busted out our donut maker to make donuts for a giant garage sale we had.  The donuts were great, but I was way more excited about selling two couches, two tables, and a bunch of other space taking items.  We're clearing out all the non essentials so we can (hopefully) move soon. Yay! 

This is just a random picture, but I love it.  Mia usually crashes in Aria's room(the reason we're making them share a room in our next place) and I found her on Aria's futon as snuggled up as she possibly could be.  So sweet!

Aria Scores Some Goals

 

As I talk about quite a bit, Aria plays competitive soccer.  This means professional coach, training twice a week plus games on the weekends in competitive leagues and tournaments.  She loves it, but she also loves that because a couple of her friends play on a rec team, when they need an extra player on the field, they will call her, hand her a jersey and let her play with them.  It's so fun for her because the pressure is lower and she can really just have fun.  She played with them recently and scored a couple of goals.  I got them on iPhone video through the glass of an indoor arena so they aren't the best captures, but still fun to watch!