Baby Sign Language

I know a lot of parents teach their little ones signs before the kids are able to talk in order to be able to communicate better.  Well, we are communicating just fine around here, thankyouverymuch!

This one, she is trouble, I tell you.

Home Tour: Kitchen and Dining Room

The second stop on the home tour features the kitchen and dining room.  I finally got up off the couch during nap time today and cleaned (okay, hid) the mess in my kitchen and dining room so I could take pictures to show y'all.  There is one counter in my kitchen that I am not going to show you, and it's because I am too lays to clear it off and it's a big pile of junk right now.

Standing at the big pile of junk, looking the other way.

The back door is just to my right in this picture.

That counter to the left of the fridge is the one with all the junk on it.

The fridge and pantry.  There is no way I'm going to show you the inside of either of them.

Looking toward the family room (standing in the dining room).

The "breakfast area".

Standing at the back door looking toward the garage (door on left), bathroom (door on right), and front hallway.

Looking back toward the kitchen from the garage door.

And now we will move on to the dining room, which is where I make care packages for hubby, and also store more junk and things on the dining room table most of the time.  This is the first time in months I've seen the top of the table!  Huzzah!

The wine rack back there used to have more wine in it, then I drank it all.  I'll send you my address if you send me more wine.

You can see a flat rate box peeking through the chairs there.  Also, that's the kitchen through that doorway.

I'm so creative with my decor in this room, aren't I?

I couldn't take a picture looking at the living room because that is where I put all the junk that was in this room so I could take pictures.

What?  I'm just trying to be honest here!  Also, that plant there?  It's indestructible.  My neighbor gave it to me when they moved this summer and I think I've watered it like three times in 6 months and it is still alive!

Anyway, there you have my eating areas.  There is only one more room left downstairs, and that is the playroom, it will be featured (maybe, if I feel motivated to put the toys away) with the bedrooms later this week.  Hope you enjoyed this portion of the home tour!

Home Tour: Family Room and Living Room

I'm joining a little home tour that Michelle is hosting this week.  Today we are showing y'all our living rooms and family rooms.  The schedule for the week looks like this:

11/18: Living Rooms and Family Rooms
11/19: Kitchen and Dining Area
11/20: Master Bedroom
11/21: Other Bedrooms (i.e. Guest Room, Kid's Room, Nursery)
11/22: Bathrooms

So, to get started, I'll show you my family and living rooms.  We have both in this house, which for military families I think is kind of rare.  The only problems are that a) we never use our living room, and b) we have a random mish-mash of furniture in there because we never use it (and I don't want to spend the money furnishing a room that may or may not exist in our future homes).

Our family room is in the back of the house.

Looking at our back staircase from the fireplace.

Standing in the corner, fireplace and kitchen are to my right.

Standing by the stairs, looking the other way.

Fireplace and mantle dressed up for Christmas.

The dog's chair (not really, but pretty much).

The whole room from the kitchen table.

And then we have the living room, which is in the front of the house.

Looking in from the front door/hallway.  That's the dining room to the right.  The little table at the bottom left is normally not in this room.

Looking back toward the hallway.  The kitchen is throught he doorway on the left behind the pillars.

Whole room view, from the dining room.

And I decided to show y'all the front hallway today as well because I have my big tree set up and it wasn't included in any other part of this series.

Looking from the front door.  The little table that is currently in the living room is usually located where the tree is.

From the living room.  The double doors are the playroom/extra bedroom.

Looking from the kitchen.  That is the living room on the right.

And one of my tree all lit up, because it's pretty.

Three Weeks

It always feels like my life is so hectic and busy, then I sit down to write about what we have been up to and I can't seem to come up with anything interesting or important to document here.  I guess the purpose of this blog is not necessarily to entertain y'all as much as it is to document our lives so I can look back and remember how things were.

AJ wanted to be a ghost for Halloween this year, so I decided to make her costume. I originally was going to go the whole "wear a sheet over your head" route, but we struggled a little with that and I thought maybe 3 was a little too young to be walking around essentially blind, so we went with plan b. I mean, who doesn't love a little girl (or two) in tulle?

Seriously, so cute!

We went to the trunk or treat at hubby's unit, which was okay.  It kind of sucked because only half of the guys are deployed, so some families were there together, while others were missing people.

After Halloween I got to take a little weekend trip on my own, which was really nice.  My parents came and watched the girls while I headed back to my alma mater for a little football, tailgating, beer drinking, and girl-gabbing.  All seven, (yes, seven) of my roommates from college were there and we had a great time catching up and just generally being overwhelming.

Crappy picture, but that is all of us together.

The last time we were all together was two years ago, so it was nice to catch up with everyone!

I came home bearing gifts, obviously, and someone had to pose for me.  Where does she get the attitude, I have no idea (wink, wink)!

In other news, my teeny tiny baby is getting bigger by the minute.

Here she is chewing on felt food.

And here she is being lazy like usual, and sticking her tongue out at me, also like usual.  I swear, she can sit up, but she prefers to lounge.  Tough life!

So that catches you up to the present day!  I feel like my life is just going to feel more and more chaotic as my girls get older and are in school, activities, etc.  I mean, we are only in twice a week preschool and I'm feeling overwhelmed!  Haha!

Catch Up Post

We took a little trip up to Baltimore a few weekends ago to visit a few of my cousins.  While we were there, my cousin and I took the girls to a local pumpkin patch and apple orchard.  Here are some of the pictures from the visit!

AJ's fave thing is when she gets to hold Amelia for pictures!

My little pumpkin all decked out in orange, including her hair!

Silly girl!

A little family pic minus hubby, of course!

AJ picked out her pumpkin!

Hayrides are serious business.

My big girl.

I may have carved a pumpkin with a power drill.  It was awesome!

Big girl posing with the pumpkins.

All lit up!

We had a great time and I really enjoyed seeing my cousins and spending time with humans other than my own two tiny creatures.

Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

The moms from AJ's preschool class are having a little potluck get-together tomorrow during school time.  I kind of forgot until tonight that I have to bring something so I hit Pinterest looking for something to make.  I knew I had a can of pumpkin in the pantry so I found a pumpkin bread recipe that sounded yummy.

Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

Adapted from:

http://www.kudoskitchenbyrenee.com/2013/10/cocoa-clove-pumpkin-bread-twelve-loaves.html#more

Prep Time: 10 minutes       Bake Time: 15-20 minutes

1 cup granulated sugar
 1/2 cup brown sugar
 1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
 2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
 1 teaspoon baking soda
 1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
 1- 15 ounce can pumpkin puree (not pie filling)

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare muffin pans with baking spray. Set aside.

-In a large bowl, blend the sugar, brown sugar, oil, vanilla extract and eggs.

-In a separate large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cloves.

-Blend the dry mixture into the wet mixture, in 1/3 increments making sure to blend well after each addition.

-Add in the pumpkin and mix well.

-Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pans. 

-Bake in a preheated oven for approximately 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

-Allow the muffins to cool on a rack for about 20 minutes and then remove them from the pans and allow them to cool completely.

I halved the original recipe and made a few tweaks and it still made 24 mini muffins and about 8 regular sized muffins.  These are fantastic!

Photo Dump

I've been slacking in the blog department again and it took me several weeks to finally upload all my pictures to my iPad, so I'm just now getting around to blogging these.  I figured it is easier to just make one big post with all the pictures instead of trying to write individual posts for a whole bunch of unimportant events.

Amelia wore her turkey shirt the other day because I'm pretty sure it isn't going to fit her once Thanksgiving finally rolls around.  AJ was always right on with her size matching her age, so I'm not exactly prepared now that I have a bigger baby.  It's not that she is bigger even, she just I shaped differently, and is wearing 9m clothes at 6 mos!

Crappy iPhone shot after bath the other night.  The good thing about crappy iPhone pictures is that you can't tell how gross and un-showered I actually look!  Lol

I got crazy when making lunch for AJ the other day.  I feel like she is always eating the same thing over an over again (or not eating, as the case may be) and I thought switching it up a bit might help.  Note: these are the same things she normally likes but will often refuse to eat on any given day, so I thought the hearts might entice her.  She ate half of it.  Clockwise from top left: shredded mozzarella cheese, goldfish, green peppers, apples, turkey sausage crumbles, mandarin oranges.

I went crazy on Pinterest and found some ideas for super-easy Halloween crafts and let AJ go to town last week.  She is very into gluing anything and everything, so one of the crafts was to glue mini marshmallows in the shape of a ghost.  She really liked this because she got to eat a lot of them, too!

These are all of the Halloween crafts she has made in the past two weeks.  The middle one is a candy corn, in case you can't tell.  The candy corn and the jack o lantern are basically just construction paper I cut into little pieces for her to glue to paper (or a paper plate).

Making funny faces during bath time.  She has obviously perfected the "duck lips" and it's only a matter of time before she starts snapping selfies, I fear.

She's looking especially wild in this one!

Looking pensive during her six-month photo shoot.

She thought eating the bug was more exciting than looking at the camera.

AJ and I made chocolate donut munchkins last week as well.  They look much better than they tasted. They weren't bad, I just had much higher hopes for them, I guess.  The recipe also made a ton, and since it's just me and AJ eating food in this house, we had a lot left after we ate our fill.

This is a pretty typical AJ pose lately.  She is so wild and crazy, it's a wonder I still have a shred of sanity left at the end of each day.  Send wine.

Ending with this one because I think she looks cute, and sometimes I need to be reminded that she is cute, like when she disables my phone for the second time in one week by repeatedly entering the wrong passcode.  Were you wondering how many time you had to enter the wrong passcode before your phone is disabled?  It's six.  Trust me.