Haircuts, rain and a cold free home!

I gave the kids hair cuts the other day. You can't see Lana's since she's all into a one ponytail hairdo right now. She was a little upset that I trimmed it because she likes having long hair like her Tutu, but when I showed her in the mirror that it was still very long, just not as straggly and stringy. She was okay with it.

Tanner always looks a little more grown up when I cut his hair. It makes me a little sad to do it. Since I am by no means a hair stylist, I buzz it.
A number 6.
All the way around.
And I still screw it up somewhere.
Sorry Tanner.
I do get better with every buzz though. I offered to cut Paul's hair, you know to save $15 bucks every 3 weeks. The word "no" came out of his mouth so fast, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't ever let me near his hair even if I got Tanner's hair right. I can't blame him.

Tanner officially has all his baby teeth in. (yay!!) The last 4 just poked their heads in.

(I just love Tanner's facial expressions don't you?)

Rain. I'm tired of rain. It's supposed to rain tomorrow. I got drenched in the rain on Thursday while picking up Lana from school. Woken up by the same said 3 year old who's scared of thunder on Thursday and Friday and watched as the drainage ditch next to our building transform into a raging river on Saturday during a Tornado warning. Fun times. Not.

In some good news we are finally sickness free after 4 weeks of snotty noses, coughing and sneezing. (Knock on wood) Yay! That's 4 weeks of Lana, Tanner, Me, Lana, and me again. Lana's second round lasted 16 days. Poor girl.

A yummy dessert

We had the elders over tonight for dinner. Paul wanted steak and potatoes and since grilling steak is Paul's domain, I thought I'd make a nice dessert. This recipe came from my Kraft Food and Family magazine. It's the dessert featured on the front cover. Click here for the online recipe and picture.

Layered Strawberry Cheesecake Bowl

3 cups sliced fresh strawberries
3 tbsp. sugar
2 - 8oz. pkgs Philadelphia Neufchatel Cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups cold mile
1 - 3.4oz Jello Vanilla Instant Pudding
2 cups thawed cool whip lite whipped topping divided (I just whipped up a pint of heavy whipping cream with a little sugar and vanilla to taste because I have a strong dislike for cool whip)
2 cups frozen pound cake cubes
1 square Baker's semi-sweet chocolate (I just melted a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips cause that's what I had on hand.)

Combine berries and sugar. Refrigerate until ready to use. Beat Neufchatel cheese with mixer until creamy. Gradually beat in milk. Add pudding mix; mix well. Blend in 1 1/2 cups cool whip (real whip cream). Spoon half of the mixture into 2 1/2 quart bowl. Top with cake, berries and remaining Neufchatel cheese mixture. Refrigerate 4 hours. Melt chocolate; drizzle over dessert. Top with remaining cool whip.

(My trifle bowl is wrapped up in a box somewhere in storage so I just used a 9x13 casserole dish and only did one layer of each. I put the cheese/pudding mix on the bottom, cubed pound cake on top of that, then the sliced strawberries, and then drizzled the melted chocolate on top. I kept the whipped cream separate so everyone could put on as much or as little as they wanted.)

This turned out much better than I thought it would. When I beat up the cheese/pudding mixture, it was a little lumpy. But after sitting in the fridge for 4 hours and combined with all the rest of the ingredients, it was really good! Poor Paul, he was complaining that I only make good food when we have guests over. (Um, hello...anyone recall those 21 key limes that I juiced???? No guests were present then or I'd have made them work for their food!!)

I don't poke my kids with scissors, really!

This morning Lana pooped in her panties. It doesn't happen often so I don't make a big deal out of it. Instead of trying to clean up the gross mess, I just snip off the panties and throw them in the garbage because I'd rather not deal with it. So I left her stripped down to her panties in the tub (to contain the possible damages) and went to get the scissors. As I walk in I am absentmindedly snipping the scissors in the air. Lana makes her eyes all wide and says, "Don't hurt me with those mom! Don't hurt me!" I said, Lana I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to snip off the panties. "Well, don't hurt me... And don't poke me!" Good grief. You'd think by her reaction that I walk around the house all day poking my children with scissors.

In other news, we are going on day 14 of snotty noses and coughing. Granted Lana is just about done. But now Tanner is teething. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned how horrible of a teether Tanner is. I'm anxious to have my happy children back and be able to venture out in public with no fear of a meltdown.

Cruising in the car

We finally got an offer on our house (yay!! finally!) but I think I'm going to continue holding my breath and crossing my fingers until we sign those papers at the end of April.




On Sunday we took a drive to the neighborhood that we decided we'd like to build in and Paul snapped this cute picture of Lana.

Key Lime Pie

Once upon a time Paul had a friend named Matt who loved Key Lime Pie. When we would all go out to eat he preferred places that had Key Lime Pie as a dessert. Now thanks to Matt, Paul prefers it at restaurants as well. Well, after almost 7 years of marriage I finally attempted to make a Key Lime Pie.

Did you know that Key Limes are not very big? And one lime does not yield much juice? And that I had to juice 21 limes by hand for enough juice for this pie?

The result? It was good! It kind of tasted like a lime sherbert.

Click here for Paula Deen's Key Lime Pie Recipe.

Tanner's bathroom fetish

This is Tanner plateaued on the side of the bathtub. And yes, I left him there long enough to run to grab the camera. And yes, I told Lana not to help him until I snapped a picture. Why you ask? Because this is not the first time this has occurred and quite frankly I find it really funny. I'm not sure why he doesn't swing his legs over the tub to get in, grab the toy, and then get out. I guess that just hasn't occurred to him yet but I'm sure it will.

Warning: Gross story ahead...Proceed at your own risk:

On Saturday as we're getting the kids ready to head out for the day, I'm sitting in the family room when all of the sudden I'm hearing splashing coming from the kids bathroom. My brain is trying to process what's going on because I know the tub is empty, Lana isn't playing in the sink because she's sitting next to me. The only thing I can conclude is that Tanner is splashing around in the toilet. After a really, really fast run down the hall my worst fears are confirmed. Tanner is splashing in the water. Pee water. Ew. Disgusting. Disturbing. Nasty. You name it, it went through my head. Thankfully he was merely splashing with his hands and none of it got on his face, body, etc. just hands and arms. After a severe scolding and multiple scrubbing down of arms and hands and a new shirt (just in case) he was set free only to run into our bathroom and do it again. At least it was clean toilet water this time around. Still high on the gross level for me.

Then on Sunday I heard slapping coming from the bathroom area. Slapping is a big no-no in our house. So go to investigate and I find Lana on the potty with Tanner standing next to her. I ask Lana why she hit Tanner. Apparently Tanner was trying to get to the toilet water while Lana was trying to pee. Luckily she hadn't peed yet. I probably would've done the same thing as Lana so I let that slapping incident slide.

I also feel like I should explain why there was pee water left in the kids bathroom. Our toilets in the apartment are really hard to flush. So hard that Lana can't do it, so whenever I pass by the bathroom during the day I flush for her, but I don't necessarily follow her every time she has to go potty (unless it's #2). So for the last couple days we have been working on reminding Lana to close the bathroom door when she goes potty and to also close the toilet lid when she's done so Tanner doesn't play in it. I don't remember Lana having this kind of bathroom fetish, but then she wouldn't go more than 3 feet away from me at all times when she was that age.

Lana's first primary talk

Picture taken today after she took her ponytail out...argh, a mother just can't win hoping for decent hair for pictures.

Lana gave her first talk in primary yesterday. She did such a great job! For such a shy girl, she repeated most of the words and even ended it all by herself. She wasn't too fond of hearing her voice in the microphone (honestly neither am I!). She loved giving her talk and gave it (in her own words) for Tutu when she called today.

This was my first experience writing a Sunbeam talk. I had completely forgotten all about it until Saturday afternoon. My first draft I read through it and had to remind myself that it was a 3 year old having to give this talk and I probably shouldn't use big vocabulary words. I wish I could've found better clip art and pictures for it, so if anyone knows a good place to find any let me know! It's times like these when I wish I had artistic capabilities.

I was going to make Paul get up there and help her so I could sit back and enjoy it, until I found out this week's theme was about Daddy responsibilities. I think it would've been a little humorous to have Paul up there prompting Lana to say things about himself.