Hey Old Friend
I hadn't posted in a while because I felt like my mom was the only person who read the blog...or who cared enough about the mundane details of life. Then I kept getting asked when I was going to update again. So I guess I will dabble in here once again every so often to let you know what we are all up to.
We've been doing well - Kyle is still doing great in school. He graduates in May and then takes his state exam on June 6th. He was so stressed when he started but has proven to himself that he can do it. The program started with 18 people and now they are down to 7 and he's been killing it. If you fail a test you are out of the program, and failing is 79% or below, so I'm very proud of him. He is back on nights as of a couple weeks ago, which makes it hard on the entire Wam Fam, but mostly on Kyle since he works until 7:00a.m. on Thursdays, goes straight to school until 12:30 and then has to sleep a couple hours to leave for work again at 6:00p.m. Once he finishes his program he will continue on through Fire and then on to Paramedic. I'm so excited for him!
We took a little family vacation at the end of March down to Louisville, Kentucky for a European Car show called Water by the Bridge, and we also surprised my nephew and kidnapped him for the weekend. The drive down was fun because we drove with about 20 - 30 cars, stopped along the way to pick up more people, and then hung out a bit. The weather for the car show was spectacular - 70's and sunny. While we were in Louisville we got to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum, Museum of Science, and we also had dinner with 2 different sets of my friends from my old Louisville hang out days when my brother lived there.
Nixon has been growing by leaps and bounds...sort of. He's still a midget, in 18 month clothes when he turns 2 in 4 days, but he has gotten taller. He is all boy, loves all things sports, blocks, cars, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Mickey Mouse. He has officially gotten his first shiner from being a goofball. He was spinning in circles until he was dizzy, then fell into a chair, got up, and kept spinning. He talks so much that I love being able to have a little pal to conversate with.
Nixon is also doing a great job on the potty. He determined a while ago he wanted to go on the potty. He has the cutest little super hero undies that he wears all weekend unless we go somewhere. He still struggles with potty training at day care, but he's so ahead of the curve I'm not going to push it. Probably this summer I'll hit it hard to make sure he's fully trained by the end of summer.
We are back in his music class and he's the total class clown. He loves all things music - drums, singing and dancing. It's so fun to sing and dance with him - finally an audience who thinks I'm talented!!!
I have been travelling a crazy amount at work. It's our busy line review (sales meeting) time. I will be in Grand Rapids, Michigan this week, then I'm home for a week, and then I'm in Las Vegas for 6 days...that will totally suck but I'll take that one for the team.
I have been doing a ton of cooking and baking which has been fun. I'm trying to cut down processed foods out of our diet so I've been digging into a lot of recipes. Kyle's even been learning a lot which is fun. He makes Nixon his waffles for the week every Monday, so it's nice to know that he's getting fresh, non-chemical added waffles every day for breakfast.
I've always been really good at making something out of nothing which is why being a member to a CSA always worked well for us. I love taking random items and making a meal and have it turn out really really good. Then the challenge is recreating it again in the future if it was amazing! Today I made one such recipe that I hope to be able to recreate in the future. I'm not sure what I'd call it, but it was kind of like a veggie quinoa casserole/quiche type thing.
I had asaparagus I needed to use up, along with some jalapeno havarti and plain goats cheese, so I decided to whip up a little something with that. My mind wandered through options, I could make fancy grilled cheese...but I only had wheat bread on-hand and I'd much rather have a sour dough or multi-grain from our favorite bakery Rocket Baby. Then I considered a macNcheese, but that seemed way too fattening and carb loaded. I recalled a "quinoa macNcheese" I had made a while ago via Pinterest that sucked, but figured I could use the principle of the recipe to make something significantly better.
I pre-heated the oven to 350 and sprayed about 1/2 a bunch of asparagus with olive oil and then drizzled some balsamic vinegar on it. I baked that for about 5 minutes until it was bright green and cooked through. While the oven was warming up I made 2/3c quinoa on the stove. I make my quinoa with home made vegetable stock instead of water and I also throw in some random spices to help give it more flavor, less of a dirt flavor quinoa can sometimes have.
I chopped up some red and green peppers, onion and spinach, and then I shredded 1/2 block of jalapeno havarti and crumbled 1/2 block of goats cheese. Once the asparagus was done I sliced them all lengthwise to make them thinner and then I sliced them diagonally into 1/2 - 1" pieces.
I have this awesome casserole pot called a bean pot I got from one of those in-home parties called Celebrate Home or something. I love this pot because I can make dishes like this one and only use this one pot instead of multiple pots. I cracked 3 eggs and whipped them up in this pot, then added all my veggies and cheese. Then I sprinkled in some italian seasonings, salt and pepper, and some onion chive seasonings. Once the quinoa was mostly cooked I put it all in my casserole pot, stirred it all up, put the lid on it and baked it at 350 for roughly 25 minutes, stirring halfway through. This was unbelievably good and I always feel so evil and awesome feeding my kid so many vegetables. It's dishes like this that make me question why we ever go out to eat since I can make something that's better than most things I get at restaurants for 1/4 of the price...then I remember that I'm a working mom to a toddler, with a husband who works nights and is in school and sometimes I just.don't.want.to.cook.
Anyway, I typed this like 3 weeks ago and meant to add pics and never did, so I'll just post and add pics laters.
We've been doing well - Kyle is still doing great in school. He graduates in May and then takes his state exam on June 6th. He was so stressed when he started but has proven to himself that he can do it. The program started with 18 people and now they are down to 7 and he's been killing it. If you fail a test you are out of the program, and failing is 79% or below, so I'm very proud of him. He is back on nights as of a couple weeks ago, which makes it hard on the entire Wam Fam, but mostly on Kyle since he works until 7:00a.m. on Thursdays, goes straight to school until 12:30 and then has to sleep a couple hours to leave for work again at 6:00p.m. Once he finishes his program he will continue on through Fire and then on to Paramedic. I'm so excited for him!
We took a little family vacation at the end of March down to Louisville, Kentucky for a European Car show called Water by the Bridge, and we also surprised my nephew and kidnapped him for the weekend. The drive down was fun because we drove with about 20 - 30 cars, stopped along the way to pick up more people, and then hung out a bit. The weather for the car show was spectacular - 70's and sunny. While we were in Louisville we got to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum, Museum of Science, and we also had dinner with 2 different sets of my friends from my old Louisville hang out days when my brother lived there.
Nixon has been growing by leaps and bounds...sort of. He's still a midget, in 18 month clothes when he turns 2 in 4 days, but he has gotten taller. He is all boy, loves all things sports, blocks, cars, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Mickey Mouse. He has officially gotten his first shiner from being a goofball. He was spinning in circles until he was dizzy, then fell into a chair, got up, and kept spinning. He talks so much that I love being able to have a little pal to conversate with.
Nixon is also doing a great job on the potty. He determined a while ago he wanted to go on the potty. He has the cutest little super hero undies that he wears all weekend unless we go somewhere. He still struggles with potty training at day care, but he's so ahead of the curve I'm not going to push it. Probably this summer I'll hit it hard to make sure he's fully trained by the end of summer.
We are back in his music class and he's the total class clown. He loves all things music - drums, singing and dancing. It's so fun to sing and dance with him - finally an audience who thinks I'm talented!!!
I have been travelling a crazy amount at work. It's our busy line review (sales meeting) time. I will be in Grand Rapids, Michigan this week, then I'm home for a week, and then I'm in Las Vegas for 6 days...that will totally suck but I'll take that one for the team.
I have been doing a ton of cooking and baking which has been fun. I'm trying to cut down processed foods out of our diet so I've been digging into a lot of recipes. Kyle's even been learning a lot which is fun. He makes Nixon his waffles for the week every Monday, so it's nice to know that he's getting fresh, non-chemical added waffles every day for breakfast.
I've always been really good at making something out of nothing which is why being a member to a CSA always worked well for us. I love taking random items and making a meal and have it turn out really really good. Then the challenge is recreating it again in the future if it was amazing! Today I made one such recipe that I hope to be able to recreate in the future. I'm not sure what I'd call it, but it was kind of like a veggie quinoa casserole/quiche type thing.
I had asaparagus I needed to use up, along with some jalapeno havarti and plain goats cheese, so I decided to whip up a little something with that. My mind wandered through options, I could make fancy grilled cheese...but I only had wheat bread on-hand and I'd much rather have a sour dough or multi-grain from our favorite bakery Rocket Baby. Then I considered a macNcheese, but that seemed way too fattening and carb loaded. I recalled a "quinoa macNcheese" I had made a while ago via Pinterest that sucked, but figured I could use the principle of the recipe to make something significantly better.
I pre-heated the oven to 350 and sprayed about 1/2 a bunch of asparagus with olive oil and then drizzled some balsamic vinegar on it. I baked that for about 5 minutes until it was bright green and cooked through. While the oven was warming up I made 2/3c quinoa on the stove. I make my quinoa with home made vegetable stock instead of water and I also throw in some random spices to help give it more flavor, less of a dirt flavor quinoa can sometimes have.
I chopped up some red and green peppers, onion and spinach, and then I shredded 1/2 block of jalapeno havarti and crumbled 1/2 block of goats cheese. Once the asparagus was done I sliced them all lengthwise to make them thinner and then I sliced them diagonally into 1/2 - 1" pieces.
I have this awesome casserole pot called a bean pot I got from one of those in-home parties called Celebrate Home or something. I love this pot because I can make dishes like this one and only use this one pot instead of multiple pots. I cracked 3 eggs and whipped them up in this pot, then added all my veggies and cheese. Then I sprinkled in some italian seasonings, salt and pepper, and some onion chive seasonings. Once the quinoa was mostly cooked I put it all in my casserole pot, stirred it all up, put the lid on it and baked it at 350 for roughly 25 minutes, stirring halfway through. This was unbelievably good and I always feel so evil and awesome feeding my kid so many vegetables. It's dishes like this that make me question why we ever go out to eat since I can make something that's better than most things I get at restaurants for 1/4 of the price...then I remember that I'm a working mom to a toddler, with a husband who works nights and is in school and sometimes I just.don't.want.to.cook.
Anyway, I typed this like 3 weeks ago and meant to add pics and never did, so I'll just post and add pics laters.
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