Ee, 5

I taught preschool the other day to these cute kiddo's. We learned about the letter E and the number 5 and then the kids got to practice writing the numbers and letter's and then they got to do a craft. I don't know what is up with Lyla's angry face, but she was pretty determined NOT to smile for me. Oh well. This was taken right before we started lesson time.

** These placemat's are brilliant and the kids love finding their placemat's and sitting in their designated spots (on the floor for story time, table for lesson time or lunch, etc)! Thanks to Emily for making them!

Babysitting swap

Best idea ever. Everybody drops their kids off at the designated house for the week while they go on their weekly date. Then once every 4-5ish week's you get to be the couple to watch all the kiddo's. 3 hours of craziness in exchange for 4, 3-hour date nights with your hubby? Yes, please!!

Anyway, it was our turn turn to watch the kiddo's the other night and we had 9 kids age 3 and under!

Julia and Lyla blowing bubbles.

cute lyla

All 9 kids from the evening. We're missing one and we gained 2 that night.

We love babysitting swap!

It snowed!!!

A friend of mine texted me the other night and said "Enjoying the snow"? I had NO idea that it was snowing so I ran outside and saw this beauty!

We hadn't had snow this entire winter and I was pretty sure it would be our last. So, being the responsible mother than I am, I ran upstairs to wake up Lyla so she could see the snow. She was SOOO sleepy, but it was so worth it! She was smiling from ear to ear and since it was the first snow of the season we ate handfuls of clean snow :) It was so cold and Ly was shivering but even the next day she was still so excited about it. Totally worth it!

Ruby's crazy hair...

I just had to do a little post of Rube's crazy hair because it makes me laugh each morning and after every nap, and little times in between. Besides her hair getting so long, this girl has some SERIOUS body, which kind of makes her head look a lot bigger than it already is.

Good morning cute girl!

People always ask me if I tease Ruby's hair (which I do not) because it looks like she has a permanent BumpIt in. I think it does that because of her cowlick. The hair that has serious body to it naturally goes forward (would have been great for a boy head). But since her hair has become longer and heavier, it's starting to fall the right way along with her head, thus creating the BumpIt look.

Love that little poof!

Look at that natural body!

The full view from the back. Natural body and curls... lucky girl!

Happy, crazy, and mischievous girl!

And of course I had to get some pics of my cute Lyla...

Big, sweet eyes.

In this picture she was in the middle of telling me she tooted :)

Love my cute girls!

Field Trip to Marbles

So again, one of the greatest things about Duke is its program for the spouses/partners/families of the MBA students called Fuqua Partner's. A sub-group of that is Fuqua Families, which as I mentioned in my previous post, I am a co-chair for. We have a party every term, a field trip every month, and little activities in between, which are always so fun. The best part of being in charge is we get to choose what we do. Luckily the previous chair, Stacy, did an amazing job and we are pretty much copying everything she did :)

Anyway, so our first trip was to Marbles Kids Museum. This is an amazing museum for kids with SO much interactive play it just blows my mind. We had a great turn out and fun was had by all. So here are a few pics of my kiddo's there.

Ruby playing in the ambulance truck

Lyla was funny at the museum. She would just find a spot and just sort of sit there contentedly, whether it was a car or a boat. She just seems fine doing her own thing. Just another thing that she and Ruby are SO opposite on!

Lyla in the boat.

They have a section where you can shop for groceries with shopping carts and then buy it at the register, and the take it to this full blown kitchen. You have to see it to believe the amazingness of it.

The girls at the register.

My AMAZING co-chair, Haley, and her daughter Izzy. I love this picture!

Me and the Rubester

The girls on these balancing surfboards. Notice Lyla's extreme concentration...

Ruby is a bit mischievous and when she realized that I would quickly take her out of the basketball section where there are about 5-6 hoops in this small circle and a bunch of little kids trying to shoot basket's. I'm not a paranoid mom but when she stands under the basket and just laughs, she is asking for trouble! She kept returning to the danger zone despite my best efforts to keep her from them and so I finally embraced it and thought she would just have to learn on her own. Luckily, she didn't get hurt.

Rube with her "basketball".

Lyla and Izzy not sure how to cross each other on the steps.

Ruby had a great time being tickled by Izzy.

Overall, our field trip was a total success!!! Thanks to all who came!

Valentines Day Party

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but my friend Haley and I took on the daunting role of Fuqua Families Co-Chair. I am happy (and sort of surprised) to say that that it has gone pretty well so far!

Anyway, our first big event was our Valentines Day party, that we so graciously delegated to our good friend Laura :) She did NOT disappoint! She set up a Kissing/Photo Booth, as well as a Candy Walk (instead of cake). Everything was beautifully decorated and everyone there had so much fun. Thanks Laura!!

Laura and her cute family.

My co-chair Haley, and her family.

Good friends, Lyla and Izzy.

Lyla wanted to have a quick photoshoot for herself. Love my cute girl!

The Candy Walk

All the candies we happily filled our little bags up with

My sweet Ruby girl.

Lyla BEGGED for this cupcake and only ended up eating the frosting. The cupcake is the best part! Crazy girl!

And for our Valentines Day date, we put the girls to bed and cooked up some filet mignon, baked potatoes, and had a delicious caesar salad with sparkling cider. It was DE-LICIOUS! And for dessert we ate the candies we got each other while catching up on Parenthood. I got Nate a watch (which he doesn't really like, haha!) and he got me a Duke chip n' dip platter that I LOOOOVE! Perfect date night, if you ask me! I love my sexy man!

yummy yummy food

I'm not really one to post much about food on this blog. But I have just been eating so dang good lately, thanks to my new favorite food site, Our Best Bites. I've heard really great things about this site/blog, but I don't think I really understood until I started making some of their stuff. This may be a bad thing for my waist line :-/

We have all been a little under the weather here in our home and so we stayed home from church yesterday. Since it was Super Bowl Sunday, I decided that we just HAD to eat really good, even if we weren't in the company of other's. So yesterday morning we made crepes for the first time ever. They were SOOOO good! We served them with Nutella, banana's, strawberries, blueberries, and homemade whipped cream. Gosh, they were delightful. Here is the link for the recipe... Crepes. (sorry, no pics of them).

We were supposed to have the following dish for dinner last night (Super Bowl Sunday), but we had our big breakfast AND a big lunch, that we weren't even hungry by the time dinner rolled around. So we saved this recipe for tonight.

I am rarely pushed to the point of blogging about food, but this recipe set me over the edge and here I am, before dinner is even cleaned up in the kitchen. Who am I?

Orange Teriyaki Salmon (click link to see step-by-step instructions)

(pic of my leftovers)

This was simply mouth-watering! It was sweet, moist, just the right amount of fish taste, and had plenty of juices to spare so you can even use some as a sauce for rice if you'd like. Wild rice would taste great with this. Anyway, we served with baked potatoes, balsamic asparagus, bread, and salad. My tummy is so happy right now.

Eat up my friends, eat up :)

Durham friends, if any of you like salmon and want to partake of this deliciousness, let me know and I'll make this for you (you never know who like's fish)! I already have a nice fat salmon filet ready in my freezer. This will be made again soon. :)