Search Results for: Week 16

We had another nice weekend at home. We all had Shabbat dinner together on Friday night, Lily too, and Logan spent the night with his Houston grandparents. I really like this picture above. It is so typical of us right now. I’m sitting on the floor, Lily is nervous and on my lap, Logan is standing and looking cute as usual.

Lily had a fun Halloween and enjoyed trick or treating in our new neighborhood.

On Saturday, we had a wedding that was very pretty! We were home by 11:15 p.m., which was nice since it was daylight savings and we anticipated an early wake-up call. Babies don’t understand the extra hour.

Fun to get dressed up!

I also planned our meals for the week. Since it is my favorite season and month for foods, I decided it’s time to try some holiday favorites like cranberry sauce, pumpkin loaf and stuffing. I made the pumpkin loaf on Friday, and hope to do the others this week.

• Monday: Sausage stuffing with Kale Chips and Cranberry Sauce
• Tuesday: Leftovers or something frozen from Trader Joe’s we already have
• Wednesday: Walnut crusted chicken from Rachael Ray Magazine with green salad
• Thursday: Jeffrey on own, Marci out

Someone is learning how to stand. So far, he hasn’t actually pulled himself up to standing, but if I prop him on the tuffet or holding onto the railings in his crib, he can stand on his own. Pretty impressive. Remember when he couldn’t even lift his body and flopped on his tummy?

He helped his dad with his work over the weekend. Logan says he did a good job and is billing his time too at three extra milk bottles per day.

Over the weekend, I spent some time cooking. On Friday, I planned a home cooked dinner for two. I went to the grocery, bought fresh shrimp for an Avocado Pesto pasta with shrimp a la Giada. We made it once before and both liked it. Then, Jeffrey didn’t come home until late, and I made the dinner for myself, ate alone, and cleaned it up alone. Oh well!

I also made these No-bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Balls that I can keep frozen, which I always write about as a way to have homemade sweets but not be tempted by them. They are too cute, and I think a Weight Watchers recipe. I found it in my big recipe binder. I’ll post the recipe soon. I really like them.

And to hold us accountable because I write about planning, we planned our week of dinners to make us eat at home more than not. Here’s what we planned:

• Sunday:  Turkey burgers with caramelized onions, Alexia fries, peas. Recipe from Everyday With Rachael Ray. I jazzed it up by buying Whole Foods guacamole and two cornbread muffins.
• Monday: Leftovers, plus green salad
• Tuesday: Trader Joe’s frozen meat lasagna
• Wednesday: Ina Garten frittata and green salad
• Thursday: pick up
• Friday: out to dinner
• Saturday: birthday party

I know I  have written before, but planning is really important to getting it right for the week. I do enjoy cooking, but I don’t enjoy figuring out what to make, especially if it’s going to take a long time and be messy at the end of the day. I also don’t enjoy grocery shopping multiple times each week, so I am trying to plan better.

I am also back on the breakfast bandwagon of hard boiled eggs (6 made on Sunday) and a muffin (from the freezer, made ahead) with fruit, all taken to work and prepped the night before.

What are your planning tricks and go-to meals to make at home? 

This weekend, we were in Dallas for a wedding and to visit my parents. Logan and I stayed until Tuesday because he and I are off school/work for Sukkot. On Saturday, it rained all.day.long. From the second we woke until the next day, it rained and rained. Luckily, it never thundered, so Lily wasn’t her crazy self. Also, the rain brought in some much cooler temps. Hooray for Fall! It is my favorite season of the year.

Logan even needed a little jacket for his walks. He still loves to be outside. We got all dressed up for a wedding. Pardon all the iPhone pics, it’s just so easy, and I didn’t bring my computer with me to upload.

End of the night pic. Little did we know that Logan would wake up when we got home after midnight for an hour, and then wake up at 5:16 a.m. for the day. He has been majorly teething, and it is really affecting his sleep! He cut two bottom teeth a few weeks ago, and now has three on top and we think one more on bottom coming in. Teething is no joke, it’s like a nonstop head cold with a runny nose, extra fussiness and pain.

Since he loves the outdoors and the temps were cooler, he took a few naps outside! They started in the car and then we moved him to the covered porch. At home, we would probably try to move him to his crib, but on vacation, we will allow a carseat nap.

In other news, I am really liking the Nike + Running app for iPhone. I know this is not new, but I think it’s accurate for distance and pace. I used to use a Garmin FR 60, but realized it was never calibrated correctly and I stopped using it. This app is free but you have to exercise with your phone. I walked one morning last week for 3 miles with Logan, and in Dallas I “wogged” for 3.4 miles in 45 minutes. It is definitely the furthest distance I have run post-baby. Yay for cooler temps. Hoping to work on my pace and distance when I can get out in cooler weather.

Back soon with pictures from the Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum.

We had a great weekend at home. We solved our sleep problem and all had some nice, restful nights. More on that later this week. I even baked some scones and we cooked dinner on Sunday night for friends. We took a family trip to Central Market on Saturday and Logan loved it. He is becoming less of a baby and more of a little boy. It’s a lot of fun now!

So glad I made some time for baking. I had no occasion for these, but just felt like cooking something sweet. It was this recipe, Orange Chocolate Chip Scones, that I last made almost a year ago in circle form this time instead of triangle. I also made some little raw chocolate chip bites to keep in the freezer for snacks or dessert.

On Saturday night, we went to the Kenny Chesney/Tim McGraw concert called Brothers of the Sun Tour. It was really fun and they are awesome entertainers.  They each played over 90 minutes separately and then a few songs together. Really cool. They are two of my favorite country stars and I remember listening to Tim’s CD in my Jeep when I was 16. Long time ago!

That is Kenny being lifted over the crowd to the stage. Amazing how no one uses real cameras anymore, just iPhones.

Hard to believe summer is about over! We have one more weekend trip this weekend and then I go back to work and Logan goes to school. I really can’t believe it’s been almost five months and the time has come to go back!