A Tale of Two Birthdays

This year Maddie got to celebrate her third birthday twice, once with my family while were in Boise and once on her actual birthday here in Montana. Of course she was spoiled by all her aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents and she loved every minute of it. Thanks everyone for making our little girl feel special. She's growing up so fast!

Glacier 2012

Last week we road tripped over to Kalispell to meet up with my brother and his family. Of course, no trip to the Kalispell area is complete without reveling in the glory of Glacier National Park, which we did for four days straight. LeeAnn and I also took advantage of the free babysitting services of an eager aunt, uncle and cousins and spent an evening together in Whitefish for sushi and pie. It was a great week. Here are some pics. If you've never been to Glacier you absolutely must put it on your bucket list!

A Beautiful Day for a Birthday II

On May 17, 2011 Josiah James Grissom joined our family. He is a joyful, curious, strong baby boy and we are thrilled that he is a part of our family. Yesterday we celebrated Si's first birthday, here are the highlights:

Fun in the Potato State (we call it that so the tourists won't come and ruin our spectacular places).

We spent last week in Idaho with my family and saw a lot of old friends too. It's always nice to go home, it's changed a lot since I left a decade ago, but it always feels comfortable and well, like home. The week was filled with cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents all of whom Maddie and Josiah enjoyed immensely. The weather was indeterminable as it always is in Boise this time of year, but we still managed to find a couple of nice afternoons for the zoo and park. Enjoy the pics.

Maddie is in a big girl bed

We purchased a twin bed for Maddie and she is ecstatic about her "big girl bed"! Our little girl is growing up and it is so much fun to watch.

30 Day Challenge, Day 24

Breakfast was inspired, once again, by Pinterest. The inspiration showed an avocado cut in half with an egg baked inside of it but our avocados are huge right now and I did not want that much. I cut up about a quarter of an avocado into a ramekin, seasoned it with a little salt and pepper, cracked an egg on top and baked it at 425 until the egg was cooked but the yoke was still runny. I added a little salsa and also ate half a grapefruit. Lunch was just random things, a Larabar, a handful of nuts, the last meatball leftover from a few days ago... and I do not even remember what else :)

Dinner was Ina Garten's Chicken Chili. This is a recipe that I have been making for years and is great just the way it is written but this time I used braised chicken thighs instead of breast meat. We garnished with chopped avocado, it was delicious. Also, I just make half of the recipe for my family and we still have some left over.

30 Day Challenge, Day 23

We ate these Fast Coconut Flour Pancakes for breakfast. I added a sliced banana to the batter and topped them off with leftover mango pineapple sauce from our buffalo wings. Maddie had a little bit of maple syrup on hers, she ate every bite including seconds. These were really good, there is still a little bit of an off texture but over all a great pancake!

The concept of cucumber being the bread for mini sandwiches was on Pinterest so I made these for lunch with tomato, bacon and mashed avocado which I seasoned with lemon juice, salt and garlic powder. I will make these again!

Dinner needed to be quick because the kids and I had to pick up Jeff from work. I just sauteed onions and bell peppers with leftover pork from Sunday and made it into an egg scramble. Sorry, no picture of dinner.

Another day done, only 7 to go. I am not anxiously counting down to day 30, Jeff and I are feeling good but there are a couple of small things we are really looking forward to, such as cream in our coffee. For the most part we are really enjoying eating this way!

30 Day Challenge, Day 19-22

I know I have been absent from sharing our 30 day challenge for a few days, I apologize. We have kept up the challenge but only have photos of a few meals. I have spent some of my blogging time on pinterest and some as a few extra minutes of quality time with my family but today I will catch up on the highlights of what we have been eating.

The supreme egg loaf lasted 3 mornings which I really enjoyed. Outside of that our breakfasts have been pretty simple, scrambles and a little bit of fruit. Lunches have mostly been leftovers, I do not think I have any epiphanies to share in that area right now :)

This was crock pot meatballs along with a chunky tomato sauce and spaghetti squash. I enjoyed this but I think the texture of the meatballs would have been better if I had seared them off and let them cook in some of the tomato sauce on the stovetop instead of using the crock pot. Here is the meatball recipe. I love all the veggies that went into the meat but be warned that this recipe leaves out good old salt and pepper. I seasoned the eggs before adding the veggies and I seasoned the meat before combining it all together.

I do not have a picture of our next dinner but the website's picture looks almost exactly like ours, I am sure you would rather see my sweet babies anyway ;) I made breakfast for dinner. Coconut flour biscuits, recipe found here, along with homemade turkey sausage and eggs over easy. I also rehydrated some preservative free prunes so that we could have "jam" with our biscuits. I have to say these biscuits were much better with the sweet than the savory. I look forward to trying them again when we can add honey into the batter.

One of the meals I planned was "fish with veggies"... I ended up buying Dover Sole, not a fish I am familiar with but it was caught wild instead of farmed so that is what I bought. It is a mild flavored white fish, I seasoned it with salt and pepper, pan-fried it in a little olive oil and finished it with lemon juice. I served it with blanched asparagus and oven roasted cauliflower. By the way, oven roasted cauliflower is AMAZING!!

Shopping off list is what brought this meal about. I try not to shop off list but the pork sirloin was buy one get one free so I decided not to pass it up. Jeff grilled off the steaks and cut up a salad of tomato, avocado and cucumber. I made another round of chipotle dressing, I am going to post this recipe because it is so so so good! I used a couple tablespoons of homemade mayo, but I am sure store bought would be good as well, to that I add lemon juice, adobo (from a can of chipotle peppers), salt and oil (salad oil of your choice, I used grapeseed). One of the things that has made it easy for Jeff to eat so much salad!

For our dinner on Super Bowl Sunday I chose to make "super bowl" food. These are chicken wings, recipe found here. I served them with sliced veggies and baked sweet potato fries. I think this meal gave us our "fix" of finger foods without breaking any rules.

Finally caught up! Hoping to keep up with it from here on out. Only 8 days to go!