Being a fun mom.

Levis really been into Halloween this year and all of its "scariness".  We decorated a few things and bagged up our candy to hand out. 

We talked about halloween and its a fun "scary".

So I thought lets make "scary" cookies. Levi's loving all the halloween stuff. I knew it was going to be a lot of work but it'd be worth it cause Levi will have fun.

Being 2 must be really hard. All that emotion and not a able to fully express ones self. Baking cookies today we saw all the emotions. Thats what its like with a 2 year old around.

 Levi was loving it till I told him to stop throwing flour. Then he threw some up and it landed in his face. Didn't find it funny after that. That's when I ended up rolling, cutting and baking the last 6 dozen by myself.

 

The beautiful sprinkle work is done by bubbs.

 After decorating them we got them packaged up and hope to deliver them tomorrow!

Good bye fall, welcome winter!

 all ready to go!

 "Mom its nose!" (Levi calls snow, nose )

 What a good man shoveling all that snow!

 Levi digging out our pumpkins from all the snow!

 Dave showing Levi how to jump in the snow!

 He LOVED it!

 Standing in a drift!

 Levi threw the snow in his face, wasn't too impressed!

Love this picture! The runny nose and rosy cheeks show just how fun it was!

Levi played outside for 45mins this morning and I had to bribe with hot chocolate to get him inside. He's already wanting to go back out! We have a good 6" of snow and in some places 2ft drifts. Feeling a little more like Christmas then Halloween.

Baby Murray.

 This is our little baby murray. We found out the gender but want to keep it a secret, we will see how long we last.

The pictures aren't very clear and kind of alienish it but our little bamabino  wouldn't stop wiggling through this whole thing. I was more excited to make sure this kiddo was healthy then what the gender was. Seems that its healthy and no concerns.

Compromise. . .

Its what marriage is made up of.

So today it made a very hard decision for me, so simple.
I've gone back and forth and back again about finding out the gender on this baby. Tomorrows the ultrasound. I really want to try the surprise, because with Levi it wasn't. But I am also a control freak and not being as prepared would freak me out.
Dave wants to find out what were having.

So today he told me "since I don't let him put colored lights on the Christmas tree we are finding out what we are having". 
So that made the decision. and we had a little chuckle.  I only like white Christmas lights and wasn't gonna give that up this year.

2.25 yrs old

Levi seems to have learned so much since turning 2!

He talks alot and we get most of what he's saying so I need to share a few of these funny things.

-Levi saw me heading to the bathroom today and said "go potty, mom get sticker". Thanks kiddo!

- This weekend on our little adventure, the back roads we had been on had tons of cattle. So we'd have to stop often to honk and get them to move out of the way. Every time the herd of cows was gone levi would ask for more. As gross as this is we would tell him theres more poop (the road was covered) up ahead there will be more cows. So that's how levi learned to spot the cows. So today as were heading out the door to gymnastics  we saw poop on the road by our house and levi said "more cows? more poop on road." Nope bubb, no cows in bridge villa.

- When you ask levi how much he loves you, how excited he is, or how much he missed you he always answers the same. "this much." with his fingers about 2cm apart. "nooooo, this MUCH". With his arms spread out. Such a trickster!

- When we say "love ya" Levi always replies "love ya more" its my favourite thing each and every night.

Levi's learned:
 the difference between light/dark.
 the color yellow and blue
 how to sign "I love you"
 he's really good at tricking us that he has no arms (tucks them into his shirt)
 how to prolong bed time
 every part of his body
 how to give bear hugs
 the names of lots of pixar characters from his disney books
 to sing the alphabet
 to count to 10
 how to play hide and seek



        One thing I am most excited about is seeing him become a big brother. I don't think he grasps that I'm growing a baby but he does know mom has "baby murray" in her tummy. He talks about going on the bus ride with baby murray and that baby murray came to the calgary temple. He kisses my tummy and likes to say hi to baby murray. It just blows my mind how he thinks to include this baby that he's never met in to all of his activties. He asked today if baby murray was coming to gymnastics, and of course baby murray goes where I go for the time being.

Meal Planning/Recipes

Ive started meal planning and for us it really works well with our schedule. I give myself $80/week to plan all the meals, I try to plan 6 suppers with 4 lunch left overs and a few fancy breakfasts. Because I just started, doing a whole month seems overwhelming to me, plus being students/fruggle I find I save more knowing exactly what to buy for just one week. Instead of buying bulk and having food go bad in our house.

This is the what I print off and have on the fridge:

I don't know why but I always try new recipes, I rarely repeat the same meal. Not sure why, but I need to start making them over again so I can perfect them and get quicker at them! All the recipes I use are off of the internet, I have a fear of cookbooks. I like the internet because you can read comments on the blog of what people thought of it. Cookbooks you just don't have that reassurance that its gonna be a flop.

Here's some of the recipes I have tried lately:
(you'll notice I love the crock pot and 30min meals)

http://foodfamilyfinds.com/baked-apple-pie-pillsbury-crescents-rolls-recipe/

http://www.texascottageblog.com/2011/08/smore-cups.html

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Mozzarella-Stick?pmcode=IKLDC05S&_mid=838832&_rid=838832.650200.781355
(wonton wrappers are really cheap, $1.35 at the international store by costco)

http://sweet-verbena.blogspot.ca/2011/08/pumpkin-muffins.html
(tasted like cake! so yummy)

http://www.chef-in-training.com/2012/04/crock-pot-beef-and-broccoli/
(this actually tasted really good as left overs the next day)

http://dashingdish.com/recipe/lasagna-roll-ups/
(the only recipe i've repeated since meal planning, its that good)

http://pearls-handcuffs-happyhour.blogspot.ca/2011/01/get-your-thanksgiving-pants-ready.html
(this makes a huge batch!)

http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/194728/foil-pack-chicken-and-broccoli-dinner-15

http://madeitateitlovedit.blogspot.ca/2012/03/sweet-and-sour-chicken.html
(this way really good, a little more time consuming but we thought it was worth it)

http://www.chef-in-training.com/2012/01/crock-pot-chicken-parmesan/
(i added garlic croutons at the very end to give more flavor and a little crunch)

My go to meals:

Buffalo chicken:

3 chicken breasts
1 pkg ranch mix
1 bottle franks buffalo wing sauce

Mix and add to crock pot: low 6hrs or high 3hrs.
Shred and eat on toasted buns.
Feeds us 3, 3 meals

Sweet n sour meatballs:

1 box (64ct) of meatballs
1 jar of grape jelly
1 jar of chili sauce

Mix and add to crock pot: low 6hrs or high 3hrs.
Serve on rice.
Feeds us 3, 3 meals.

my doctor thinks he's funny.

18 week check up today and everything went smoothly!

cravings: salty and spicy
weight gain: 1lb
movement: still flutters and a few strong kicks
gender prediction: girl
heart beat: 148
maternity clothes: yep 3 weeks now!
sickness: occasionally
baby size: sweet potato
mood: happy!
wedding rings on/off: on
starting to show: yep, more then i'd like :)
looking forward to: ultrasound in a week!
names: so far just baby Murray

    When my DR started looking for the heartbeat he picked up one right away and said "oo there's baby's heartbeat, we will keep looking and make sure there's only one." Then he started to look for another "and this is baby #2's heartbeat." SAY WHAT?? Say it again please. After a swarm of thoughts and a mini anxiety attack he finally announces that he's joking and the second heartbeat is mine. He sure thought it was funny, and I give him credit cause he gave me a good scare.

 Everything is going smoothly and hard to believe I'm almost half way done already! We have the ultrasound next week to find out the gender, I am very excited! I really love the second trimester, all the baby movement and I feel so good. I still have headaches like crazy but I'll take that over the nausea!

our adventure.

When we were leaving Calgary and getting ready to head home, Dave asked if we wanted to take a detour. Little did we know it was gonna be an adventure. We headed towards Kananaskis country and it was gorgeous! 

 Gotta look cool during a tailgate bum change.

We ended up on a logging road, 79km of gravol road. After 30km we had been on the road for an hour already, and thankfully found a short cut heading towards pincher creek.

 I don't know if this shows high up we had gone into the mountains but we were up high!

We saw tons of cows on the road and Levi loved honking at them. He was pretty excited to see the sheep too!

When we got to pincher creek Dave joked we could just got straight to his parents house in mountain view and stay over the night. We headed over to there place to surprise everyone, and no one was home when we got there. So we waited around and after about an hour Dave's mom came home, and she had only been in the shop next door. We were sad we didn't get to see Rachel and Cub, hopefully we get to see them soon!

It was fun to be spontaneous and it sure made it easy that Levi is good at traveling!

Calgary Temple.

On Friday we got to go see the beautiful Calgary temple. It was a special trip for us because we had our own little tour guide with us. My mom worked there painting all last summer and I wish I could have taken pictures to show all the details that they painted. It was neat to hear moms stories along the way about the temple. We went at supper time with 3 kids 2years and younger, so needless to say by the time we snapped these pictures they were done!