first day of summer randomness

One.

I made deviled eggs yesterday and I am calling them homely eggs.  I boiled them and couldn't get the shells off.  It was a task!!  Just to de-shell the eggs.  They tasted GREAT though.  And I had one for breakfast.

Two.

I use !!!!  way too often.  I have an explanation point problem.

Three.

Hayden is obsessed with trash cans.  While we were in Waco this past weekend he went to the children's museum there.  Hayden found a trash can that he could touch.  He took the lid on and off and on and off.  He was in trash can heaven!

Four.

We have a million swimming pools at our house.

Hayden has his own.  He isn't really into swimming this year.  He mostly just puts sand and grass in his, and tries to hit golf balls into his.  Since he doesn't care to swim or splash around it makes it hard for me to take him and Layla to the big neighborhood swimming pool/splash park.

Layla, Gary and I enjoy a larger swimming pool.  It is perfect for Layla because she is just now getting comfortable under water.  She is swimming the length of this little pool, and doing it well.  She gets a bit intimidated at the 5 foot swimming pool here in the neighborhood.  So you will see many posts of us and all our pools.

Five.

Layla loves her goggles and thinks they are magnifying glasses.

Happy First Day of summer.  {fanning self with magazine}

Banana (greek yogurt) muffins

A couple of months ago I made a yummy banana bread.  It was so good, it was like cake.  I gave the credit to an accidentally purchased pint of Greek vanilla yogurt.  I liked the bread/cake so much that I still use the recipe.  I made muffins.  Muffins are perfect for summertime, easy to pack in picnic lunches, and my kids love to snack. If they don't eat all the muffins for breakfast they can grab one for a late morning snack.  When I saw that Jenn's weekly Bon Appetite blog carnival was muffins I got so excited to post this!

What you will need:


1/4 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas, mashed {mine were almost brown}
1 {16oz} container of Greek vanilla yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
2tsp baking soda
2 1/2 cups of flour

What to do:

Cream butter and sugar.
Mix in eggs and mashed bananas.
Add yogurt, vanilla and cinnamon.
Add baking soda and flour.
Stir like crazy.

Pour into muffin tins about 3/4 full with or without liners.
Sometimes I do paper muffin cups and sometimes I don't. 
When I am making muffins for my kids in the morning I skip the
cups, because they devour them so fast.  Hayden even ate the paper once.

Bake @ 300 for 1 hour and 5 minutes






Happy Monday everyone...I hope you all had a great Father's Day!!

{Feel} our Purpose

I look forward to my daily devotional. 
It arrives every weekday morning in my email inbox. 
I enjoy reading it while I have coffee, usually while the kids are eating breakfast. 
Sometimes the house is quiet and I get to ponder the message while the kids are stuffing their faces with breakfast.  Sometimes I have to check back and read it later. 
This one was from Wednesday. 
It real hit home and I decided to share it! 

Seek and be confident in who and what God has called you to be and do. Don't try to overcompensate by doing things that aren't part of what you're here for. That will just slow down progress and frustrate you and the people around you. You do your part, and let everyone else do theirs...
Romans 12:4-6a


Seek and be confident in who and what God has called you to be and do. Don't try to overcompensate by doing things that aren't part of what you're here for. That will just slow down progress and frustrate you and the people around you. You do your part, and let everyone else do theirs.
 
Sometimes I think we {as normal human beings} get so caught up in life we forget about ourselves and our place. 

This verse and the comments that follow remind me of my word for the year...FEEL!  I did a whole blog post about my word.  It is almost June and I needed the gentle reminder to keep it all in perspective!

I am trying to do my part as one of God's children.  I want to do my part to the best of my ability.  I try to give 100% in all I do.  My dad always said I did my best if I gave 100%.  As a mom I am doing the best job I can.  I can't compare myself to other moms.  I am just 'feeling' my way through!

Do you get a daily devotional? 
Do you recommend one I may not know about?
My current read is dailyverse.com.

Lions Tigers and Bears...

warning***photo overload***warning

We had an amazing time on our Thursday trip to the zoo.

We met Hollie, one of my life long friends, and her girls, Maddie & Kenzie.

We arrived when the zoo opened and almost shut it down. 

It was so great to hang out with Hollie!  She and I have been friends for so long. 

Our kids had so much fun together.  We have the four best kids ever.  

The girls were belly laughing at the gorilla.  The silly thing was sitting there eating his boogers.

 He put his finger right up inside his nose and ate it.  Uggh!!  So nasty. But super funny too.

I think feeding the birds was the highlight of the day.  It was so fun. 

We bought sticks with bird seed stuck to them.  The birds were so tame and just at the food right off the sticks.  The kids just went crazy...I did too...it was so fun!

Hayden was cracking up.  His giggles were so cute.

This bird just sat right on Maddie's arm while she fed it...I was amazed! 

During the end of the bird feeding adventure, Layla saw a boy step on a bird.  He killed it.  She was devastated.  She has talked about it non-stop.  Bless her heart.  She came home and reenacted it.  She said it squeaked when it died. Oh, bless her heart.  It's such a tough thing for a 4 year old to see.  But she is okay with it after a talk about death...just want I wanted to do after a hot day at the zoo.

Layla and Kenzie cheezin'!!

Hayden and Kenzie

Three pretty ladies!

By 4pm Hayden was DONE! 

He did so good considering he didn't get a nap all day long. 

Maddie, Hayden and Kenzie! 

kitchen fails

This week has been a rough week for me in the kitchen.

I have made tons of messes.

FAIL #1

This crazy, random recipe I found at Allrecipes.com is my first fail. 

 I knew I had a bad recipe coming. 

You can only cook so many good things until you just get a nasty one. 

This one is a breakfast casserole I tweeted about. 

 Some of the ingredients are eggs, turkey sausage, browned, 8 pieces of bread, cubed, cream of mushroom soup, too much milk and cheese.  I made it up on Saturday afternoon.  It was supposed to sit overnight in the fridge and then bake for 1 hour.   I was looking so forward to eating it, but had to bake in an extra hour.  BARF!  It was so bad I threw it away.  Lesson learned...breakfast casseroles can't contain cubed bread.  I don't like soggy.  If you have been reading my blog long you know that I don't like mushrooms.  I thought I was eating mushrooms.  It is a consistency thing and this moist bread was horrible! NastY with a capital Y!!

FAIL #2

Have you ever eaten lasagna chips? 

We had them the other night.  I made turkey and spinach lasagna. 

I burned the top layer for some reason.  I guess I did the last step ~broil~ for too long. 

The kids turned their noses up!

I just scooped the top layer off and laid it on a plate. 

Gary and I both looked at each other knowing what little gems we had discovered.

 So yes it was a fail, but not too bad if you like crispy lasagna noodles with burned cheese on top!

FAIL #3

After we ate the earlier mentioned lasagna I proceeded to put it in the fridge. 

It was all the way in the fridge and I realized that it had a touch of tomato sauce on the bottom of the Pyrex.  I JUST cleaned out my fridge...remember? 

So I grabbed a washcloth to wipe up the sauce and the whole thing fell out of my hands and hit the tile.  Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. 

 I CRIED!  Gary helped me clean it up.  I was so upset I forgot to take a picture until the very end. 

See the pic above.  My sweet husbands foot, lots of glass and the dustpan.  Boo!

FAIL #4

I was determined to make a fun breakfast meal.  So, I got up early one morning and tried a new Banana/chocolate chip muffin recipe.  They turned out 'ok'  Not my favorite recipe...they are sort a bland, but the kids like them.  Well, while mixing up all the ingredients TWO eggs rolled off the kitchen counter and hit the floor. (It just donned on me as I type this!  I never replaced the eggs in the recipe.  No wonder the muffins were so bad.)  Anyway, one of the eggs landed on one of my brand new red throw rugs. I just bought at Target.  I was so annoyed.  I bought 5 rugs.  My kitchen is big and open.  I have to have one at the sink, one in front of the fridge, one in front of the oven, one by the back door, and another under the dog food bowls.  If I wash one it will fade differently than the others.  But I had to wash them, it was raw egg. 

Any who...I washed rugs I'd had for less than a day.  HoHum.

So the rest of the week I am totally off kitchen duty! 

We are having simple things like pizza and sandwiches.

What have you been cooking lately?

falling down = grass in teeth