Paninis

If you've never had a panini it's better than sliced bread!

We were introduced to them while in London and Jordan LOVED them. A couple of years ago I got him a panini maker for his birthday. One of the best gifts I've ever given him. We use it all the time and I thought I'd share our favorite panini recipe (that we made up). It may be a little out there for some of you so I thought I'd let you know that a regular PB&J sandwich or turkey sandwich is also super yummy in the panini maker too.

In case you don't know what a panini maker I've put a picture below. I'm pretty sure this is a picture of the one we bought. It basically squishes your sandwich and grills on both sides. You could also use a grill pan with something heavy on top like a foil wrapped brick.


Yummiest panini ever:
Ciabatta Roll (we like the little square ones from Costco)
1 Red pepper that's been grilled and the skin taken off
1 Portabello mushroom that's been salt/peppered and grilled on both sides
Mozzarella cheese
Fresh basil (optional)
Pesto (or we've done olive oil too)

Brush the cut sides of the Ciabatta Roll with either olive oil or pesto. Layer the Red Pepper (it needs to lay flat so cut up one side), Portabello mushroom, Basil (optional), mozzarella cheese.

Quick trick for the red pepper. Once you've grilled it and it's pretty black on all sides put in a plastic bag right off the grill and seal it up for 10 min. The steam will make the skin come off super easy. I usually slit up one side, take out the insides and stem and then flip over and take off the skin. Works really well and grilled red peppers are really delicious. They can be expensive so we usually split one between the 2 of us or they were on sale the other day so we each ate one.

Put this in the panini maker until it's crisp. The flavors of the pesto, red pepper, mushroom and cheese blend perfectly together to make one yummy sandwich. We ate this the other day with a simple pasta salad that used up leftover vege's from the fridge. Super easy dinner and really filling. The most suprising part is that we've learned that Matthew likes mushrooms, at least Portabello ones. He surprises me all the time with what he'll actually eat.

Love you!

Just a quick shout out to Jordan who is an amazing husband and father. He's really been holding down the fort at home as my back kills me all the time and I don't have much energy to help around the house. Plus this bowling ball keeps getting in the way of doing small things like picking up toys, etc.

We took this picture of us in Costa Rica while on a bus tour that stopped at 3 different places. Definitely a highlight of our trip. My sister-in-law was nice enough to watch Matthew for the day while we were gone from sun up to sun down.

I just know this girl is going to be Daddy's girl and I'm excited to see how both of our relationships with her and Matthew change and evolve as she comes into our lives. I feel blessed and fortunate every day to have Jordan in my life and the love he shows me and our family.

And yes we did take this picture of ourselves with our own camera-pretty good huh!

Potty Training 101

How do you possibly potty train a boy who screams whenever you try and take him to the potty and clenches his legs together?

Granted he does have a rash on his tooshie from some yucky poops lately so I'm hoping maybe that's why. We'll try again next weekend.

I know he's smart and can do this I just need to convince him of that. I can't be changing diapers of 2 kids for the next 6 months. Please steer me in the right direction for some research or post what you did.

7 weeks from today...

We'll be welcoming our new little girl. I already have a c-section scheduled for April 10th at 8:30 am and my mom and dad will arrive on the 9th. I've been swelling like crazy and Jordan and Matthew are both sick so it isn't so fun right now around here.

Jordan finally went to the Dr. today and has strep so now we are pretty housebound for the weekend as he's contagious. I am going to go out soon and run some much needed errands. We are working on potty training Matthew and I'm going to get big boy underwear so wish us luck. He's also been opening up doors to the outside and our garage so I have to go get door knob covers to prevent him from going outside. He just doesn't understand what could happen.

I also feel the need to get a ton of layouts done of Matthew before this baby comes or I know that I'll be WAY behind. I had all of these cute sleeping pictures of Matthew stored and created a cute layout the other day and I had this great pic of Matthew at 3 months old. I can't wait to use flower paper and lots of pinks and purples on layouts. I do love the blues and greens for Matthew but am excited about scrapping our newest addition.




Matthew was always trying to get up on his knees at an early age and did great holding his head up high early on. It will be interesting to see how this girl is in comparison.

Matthew and his cousin Colby

I was 12 when my nephew Colby was born and 16 when my niece Taelor was born (same family). I've always had a fun relationship with both of them and Taelor about 4 years ago called me her best little big friend. Now that Matthew is getting older he really loves Colby and Taelor and Colby's girlfriend "TeeCee".

It's so fun to see them all playing together and Colby is so cute and will stay home on a weekend night when we are in town just to play with Matthew. Matthew had them all running around and playing funny games while we were in Utah a couple of weeks ago. I think they were pretty exhausted by the time we left. My sister just sent me some pics of Matthew, Colby, and TeeCee so I thought I'd share. Colby really wanted a mention on our blog so here's a shoutout to Colby!

Matthew saying "cheese"-I love his squinty eyes when he does this.


I think Matthew was coughing during this pic.

Cute of all 3 of them.

I need to make a page for Colby for this scrapbook (and ours) so be looking for that on our blog soon too.

We are almost done for the day at our event and I have a bit of a lull so I thought I'd post. I can't wait to head to the plane tomorrow at 3 pm. My back and ankles are killing me and I'm ready to see my family, be home in my nice comfortable bed, and eat a nice big bowl of homemade peanut butter ice cream w/chocolate syrup. Seriously some of the best ice cream we've made in awhile.....and it was made even with organic pb from Costco-yum!

I have a few things to do on Monday, but mostly I think I'll be taking it easy and resting my body and brain.

Happy Birthday Karin (and Dylan)

Karin shares a b-day (today) with our nephew Dylan (and, incidentally, I share a b-day with Dylan's dad). Matthew sang Karin a great "Happy Birthday" this morning before I took her to the airport, and then after work I got him on tape singing "Happy Birthday" to Dylan (who's the closest to Matthew's age on Karin's side of the family - Dylan turned 4). Unfortunately we don't live closer, so this is the best we could do.

Night #2

So Matthew didn't sleep all through the night last night. Around 3:30 am he came in our room calling Mama so I made the mistake of picking him up and putting him in our bed. Around 4 when I couldn't take the squirming and him kicking me (on accident) anymore I had Jordan take him back to his bed and lay down by him. Jordan came back about 10 min. later and then Matthew came trotting back about 10-15 min. after that (I knew he was going to do that because he couldn't have gotten into a deep sleep by then). I had to stifle a laugh because Matthew had brought everything with him-his pillow, blankets, and bear. That's a lot for a little kid to truck around the house.

I took him back to his bed and also noticed it was a bit cold. Of course the heat wasn't on and the house was at 72. We've found that if it's too cold it wakes Matthew up in the middle of the night. I turned the heat back on and laid down by Matthew. I put him under his covers and he went to sleep pretty easily and I tossed and turned in his bed until around 6:30 and finally headed back to our bed to get a little more shut eye.

I knew tonight was going to be tough because Matthew took a nap today with the babysitter. He finally had the lights turned out close to 10 pm (way too late) and Jordan laid by him for a bit before leaving his room as we don't want that to become a routine. He came out about 10 times and laid down by his door a couple of times. Finally I went in and tucked him under the covers and we turned his music on. That seemed to do the trick or maybe he was just tired because it was about 10:30 by then. Anyways, he's out and I'm making sure the heat is on before I go to bed because I really need some good shut eye tonight before I leave for out of town tomorrow.

One side note (I love my sidenotes):

I read my bookclub selection Sunday night. Super quick and easy read. It's called "The Invention of Hugo Cabret". It's a cute little story and looks thick but has tons of drawings and some pages are only 1/4 full. I think in total it took me about 2 hrs. I have bookclub on Tuesday after I get back so I wanted to get it done before I left. Just thought I'd share if any of you are looking for a good book to read. If nothing else it's a great read for your kids.

Night 1 of Big Boy Land

We got a mattress this weekend (pretty comfy) and strapped it to our roof and managed to get it home in one piece. I was pretty stressed out as I didn't trust Jordan's tie job (and he wasn't too confident in it either) and it had slid some by the time we got home. I was just worried it would pick up air and rip out of the straps and fly down the freeway.

We picked up some sheets on Saturday while doing errands and I washed them and got them ready today for the big night and Jordan put together the bed when he got home. We've really been talking up the big boy bed for the last several days so I was hoping he would be excited. He took a bath tonight and then was all over helping Daddy put together the bed. It was pretty cute! He loved playing with the drill (no bit). We did get some side rails from someone at work so one side is on so he doesn't fall off the bed in the middle of the night.

Of course the first thing he did was start jumping on the bed before we even had the sheets on. Such a typical 2 year old BOY! He thought that was super fun so I'm sure there will be nights of that ahead of us. He didn't take a nap today because 1-he went to bed late last night and woke up late this morning, 2-I wanted him tired for the big night and 3-I was washing his crib sheets to get ready for the baby since he was going to transition tonight anyways.

My plan worked pretty well. Once the bed was together and the sheets were on Jordan read him books in his bed and then it was time to go to sleep. He wanted Mommy and Daddy to lay by him and so Jordan went in there with him and laid down by him (there is no way I could get his pregnant body out of his bed once I got in-it's too low to the ground). He conked out in about 10 min. I could tell he was tired by the redness around his eyes.

So our first night was relatively easy, but I know it won't be like this every night. Poor Jordan is facing 4 nights on his own as I leave on Wednesday for San Francisco for 5 days for work. We'll see how it goes while I'm gone. He thinks I did it on purpose, but really I just want to get the baby's stuff in the room and ready once the walls are painted (should get done while I'm gone). I didn't want to be doing everything in one night and Matthew really needed to transition. His crib was starting to get confined.

I love this camera-it takes GREAT pics in the dark! Don't you love his little "pee-low". It's a little travel one we found for him that he just loves. He really isn't much of a cover kindof kid so we keep him in warm pj's at night.

2 sidenotes:

1-Matthew loves to take our pillows off our couch and make a big mound of them on the floor and snuggle up into them. He was looking so cute today so I took some pictures with our new camera. He of course wanted to see the pics and was like "so cute!". He then wanted to take some pictures so I helped him take a couple and then he wanted me to take pictures of his toys so I took a couple. Even if I get frustrated with some of the things he does, days like today when he's generally pretty good and does some fun things makes it worth it. Love my boy!

He likes to put some of our big pillows on top of himself. He's so funny!

Super snuggled in.

I just love this pic of Matthew and his smile and squeezable cheeks. So cute!

2-We've been having lots of problems with Matthew eating proper food and not just crackers or chips. I decided to draw a hard line and not let him snack in between meals. Yesterday he did pretty good, but today he did really well. He's not a big eater at breakfast and so by the time we ate our late lunch I think he was starving. He ate a hot dog (1st thing), some pudding, 1 1/2 bananas and then I let him have some crackers. He didn't eat many of those because by then he was pretty full. At dinner he wanted some chips but we told him he had to eat his quesadilla first. He ate most of it and then we gave him some chips. He ate a few but not a ton once again because he was pretty full. I guess I'm just going to have to be a meanie if we're going to get him to eat properly. I knew we had gotten into a bad habit of snacking but didn't realize how bad it had gotten. Just goes to show that if he's hungry enough maybe just maybe he'll eat the things I want him to.