Introducing....

So a couple of the other blogs I follow do something called Foodie Friday where they highlight a few of the things they cooked that week for lunch or dinner. I love reading these…. but Lord knows I have no ability in the kitchen other than baking or making finger foods for Dax. I also think it's really fun to hear/see what other people with little ones are feeding them and to share ideas with them. So from there, I've decided to do my own version of those oh so fun blog post. This week I'll actually list Dax's entire menu from the week so you can get a feel for how food works for us. But in the future, Foodie Friday will online highlight a few of the things I made that week.And if you have any questions on anything I listed please ask!! It will make my day :)
I've made Dax's baby food from the time he was 5 months old and have had so much fun doing it! But now that he's on finger foods I'm having even more fun coming up with fun combinations of food and watching him try them out. Despite the fun, I am constantly worrying about making sure Dax is getting all the vitamins and nutrients he needs (ok… so I may be a little obsessive with that… but it's not a bad thing right?). Daniel reassures me that I'm doing great and I'm starting to feel pretty confident in the foods I"m feeding him. So here goes nothing…. Foodie Friday: Toddler Edition

Saturday
Breakfast: Half of a whole wheat bagel thin with a really thin layer of low fat cream cheese cut into bite size pieces & sliced strawberries. This is probably Dax's favorite thing to have for breakfast!
Lunch: Butternut Squash
Dinner: Yogurt & Plums

Sunday
Breakfast: Bagel w/ mixed fruit
Lunch: Carrots & Cauliflower
Dinner: Pasta with hummus cut into bite size pieces. Dax loves pasta and we have a lot of hummus that needs used so I thought I would try it out. Dax loved it!

Monday
Breakfast: Oatmeal & papaya
Lunch: Pita with hummus and peas and bite size pieces of red bell pepper. I found mini whole wheat pitas at Target so I spread hummus over those. I also wanted to get another veggie in there so I spread pureed peas on the pita with the hummus. We also had some steamed red bell peppers left from making the hummus so we cut those into bite size pieces as well. He absolutely loved this meal!

yum yum yum... he loved it!

Dinner: Yogurt & applesauce

Tuesday
Breakfast: toast & pears, mango, & plum
Lunch: Butternut squash & apples
Dinner: Pasta w/ asparagus & parmesan. I had some whole wheat penne  and parmesan in the fridge but wanted to get a veggie in there somewhere so I mixed in  some pureed asparagus. Dax LOVED this and we'll def. be making it more!

Wednesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal w/ pears & papaya, strawberries
Lunch: Pita w/ hummus & chicken
Dinner: I wanted to get some dairy, fruit, and veggie in with dinner tonight so we tried something new. I have seen those premade pouches of baby food with things like spinach & pears on it, and I looked on the homemade baby food bible for things that mix well with yogurt and found that it suggest carrots & mango. I was out of mango so we went with a combination of yogurt, pears, & carrots. It was delicious (sort of tasted like a creamy sweet potato) and Dax loved it!

Thursday
Breakfast: Egg yolk & parmesan omelet. In one of my baby cookbooks it has a recipe for egg yolk, asparagus, and parmesan omelets that we've had before and Dax loved. We are out of asparagus so I just followed the recipe without the asparagus and make one for each of us for breakfast! Yum! And Dax gobbled it up really fast!
Lunch: Carrots, cauliflower, peas, & eggplant
Dinner: Yogurt w/ papaya & pear

Friday
Breakfast: Bagel w/ cream cheese and blueberries

The blueberries always leave quite the mess...

Lunch: Whole wheat pasta w/ parmesan, carrots & asparagus
Dinner: Yogurt & apple/strawberry sauce
 
And just a side note about Dax's meals. He still, at 11 months, doesn't have  a single tooth! So almost all of our finger foods are steamed so that they're super soft and pieces of bread and pasta and strawberries are cut small enough for him to gum and not choke on. We only feed him whole wheat/whole grain pasta and bread and we go by the dirty dozen on organic fruits and vegetables. We also usually give him yogurt at dinner which may seem weird, but yogurt has a ton of protein in it and your body uses that protein to help you grow most while you sleep so we figured it was a good time to give it to him. Our little man also has a pretty sensitive tummy, with a lot of things giving him gas. Because of that I try to give him something I know will be easy on his tummy before bedtime and we try all of our new things at breakfast or lunch. Snack usually consist of fresh fruit or veggies cut up and occasionally organic puffs, and he has a sippy of water out all day he can get a drink from as he needs it.

That's it for our first Foodie Friday! I know this one was super long but from now on it def. won't be! I'm excited.... and I hope you are too!

Birthday Cupcakes!

Well in a month from yesterday we'll be having our little boy's first birthday party!! Everything is about 90% done which is really exciting! This past weekend I decided to go ahead and try out a very yummy recipe that we'll be using for some of the cupcakes for the party. For Dax's smash cake we'll be using this banana cake recipe that my best friend used for her little boy with a substitution for the cinnamon... b/c apparently Dax is allergic to it (something I found out about 2 days ago). For everyone else we'll be doing a dozen regular, boxed cupcakes and then a dozen of these yummy goodies you're about to hear all about!  Introducing the low fat, about 80% organic Strawberry Banana cupcakes!
So here's what you need....

2 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup of firmly packed light brown sugar
2 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of chopped fresh strawberries
1 cup skim milk (we had 1% so I used that)
1/3 cup low fat banana yogurt (we had plain yogurt so that's what we used)
1 mashed banana
1 large egg lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla

Ok so this was absolutely delicious! I loved that it was low fat and used whole wheat flour. I used everything organic or all natural except the salt baking powder and vanilla. Here's where you go from there...

1. First, preheat the oven to 400 degree and spray or line the cupcake tin. This recipe made a total of 18 cupcakes for me.

2. In a large bowl combine the flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt. Once you get that mixed well stir in the strawberries.

3. In a small bowl combine milk, yogurt, banana, egg, and vanilla and mix well.

4. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.Then fill the cupcake tins about 2/3 full

5. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the tops are firm and golden (ok so the golden part is sort of hard since it's whole wheat flour...mine cooked for 16 minutes and were just perfect).

6. Let cool completely and then ice if you want. These would be great just plain (I was thinking for breakfast) but since we're serving them at the party we decided to put a thin layer of cream cheese icing on top.

These were a definite winner! They won't only be served at the party but I plan on making them here pretty often as well! We figured they're about 180 calories each which is really good for your typical cupcake which apparently are on average 300 calories each!  Winner for sure with the low fat strawberry banana cupcakes!

and the story goes from there...

To finish off my series on Daniel and I, I have a couple more special pictures to share...

While I was pregnant I was completing my last year at OU for Early Childhood Education and Daniel was completing his first year of medical school. It was a very, very busy and eventful year for us. We were both reaching a very big personal goal of ours while starting a brand new chapter in our lives as parents. One door was closing, while a million more were opening. Looking back I am so proud of both of us for remaining so dedicated and doing so well in school while having other big things on our mind (you know, like that little person growing inside of me). Without Daniel's love and strength and support there's no way I would have been able to do it. This picture was taken the day I graduated college, 6 months pregnant with our future little sooner <3 This little boy is 100% sooner born and bread.

And this my friends is our very first family picture. There are simply no words to express this moment. You can read my birth story here if you want to hear about this chapter of our lives. Who would have thought ten years ago, when we were only 14, that this is what the future had in store for us. Our story is far from being completed... but so far... I'd say we're on our way to our fairytale happy ending.

Happy three year anniversary love (yesterday). I love you more than words can express and I can't wait to see our what the next ten years has in store. 

Three years ago today, rehearsal was done, dinner with all the special people my life was over, and I was at my moms house with the best friends a girl could ask for trying to stay calm and rest up for the big day. That was nearly impossible, because I knew when I woke up in the morning I would be marrying the love of my life.

For our one year anniversary we went on a cruise with my brother and sister in law. It was the absolute funnest thing I had ever done! I had never been to the ocean before and neither of us had been on a cruise so this was a whole new, fun experience for us to share with each other. We ate way too much food, played BINGO with hundreds of other tourist, shopped, rode on a catamaran, snorkeled, laid by the pool, and watched the sun rise and fall together. It was 110% stress free and gave us time to really enjoy each others company before Daniel would start med school. We also knew that we would soon want to start a family so having a getaway like this was something we really wanted to do before then. It was the absolute best getaway possible.

A couple months after our cruise Daniel received his white coat and began his journey through medical school. Medical school was something that Daniel worked so hard for and seeing him start that journey was one of the proudest moments of my life.  This man surprises me everyday with how amazing he is and his love and compassion for people blows me away. He doesn't want to become a doctor because they make good money.... he wants to be a doctor so he can help the people who need it. If doctors got paid the same as teachers, there's no doubt in my mind that he would still do it. That is probably one of my favorite things about Daniel. How again did I get so lucky?

This picture is so, so special to me. This was taken Christmas Eve 2009, two nights before I found out I was pregnant. At this point we had been trying 6 months to conceive. I know that time is nothing compared to what many couples go through but it was still very hard for me. Month after month I "knew"  I was pregnant, but would end up being really disappointed each time. It was really, really tough. And this may be possible TMI, but we finally resorted to ovulation test in hopes that we would finally be able to start our family.  At the time this picture was taken I had a slight suspicion that I was pregnant simply because of the extreme exhaustion and headaches I was having... but tried hard not to get my hopes up again. Well the day after Christmas came and though I had originally wanted to wait a few more days before I took a test I just couldn't do it because this time something felt different. I woke up first thing in the morning, took a test... and waited patiently for what seemed like forever. When a faint line showed up I was ecstatic! I had planned out all these ways I wanted to tell Daniel but those all went out the window and I went and woke him up with the news. We were both really excited... but since the line was faint we wanted to make sure.... so I ended up taking two more test and sure enough they all had two lines. This was the day we had been waiting for and a day I will never forget. Our family of two was now a family of three.

Mr & Mrs

Day three... ready... set... go...

So Daniel grew up an OU fan and I an OSU fan (if you aren't from around here those are the two major universities in Oklahoma  and are huge rivals). In high school it was always fun on game day to watch and see who's team would win and then that person would rub in in the others face for an entire year, until the next game. Well when I started going to OU this boy quickly converted me into a die hard Sooner fan. For 4 years of our lives we spent every Saturday together during football season. We would walk to the stadium (about a 20 minute walk) four hours before the game started, sit in line for 2 hours to make sure we would get good seats, run to those seats once the gate opened with the rest of the sooner "cattle" running to stake their claim, and then would sit there in the elements (either 100 degree sunshine or 30 degree windchill) for two hours until the game started (if you've never been to an OU game in the student section it really is an event you MUST experience once... it's awesome). We would then stand for the entire game, about 4 hours, and yell and scream and high five as we watched our team win. It was always so much fun and I feel completed our college experience. It's another thing that will be really fun to tell our grand kids about one day.  OU football became such a big part of our lives that we actually decorated Dax's room in it.... complete with a mobile that sings Boomer Sooner :)

My family absolutely adores Daniel. He really is everything that I would hope my future daughter, cousins, and nieces find in a man and I think that's why my family loves him so much. My family loves going on trips together so because of that Daniel and I have had a lot of opportunities to go places together. One of my absolute favorite places to go is Crested Butte, Colorado. I've been there twice and have told Daniel that I would move there the day he says "go". This picture was taken on a family trip there where us and about 15 other family members rented a ski in/ski out condo and spent 5 days soaking up CB. It was so much fun getting to experience such a beautiful place with Daniel... and also a lot of fun watching each other bite it pretty hard a couple... okay maybe a lot, of times.

And then there was this. No doubt the second best day of my life, next to the day Dax was born. This was the day I married my best friend and showed all of our family and friends an outward expression of the love we had inside for the last 7 years.  It was absolutely perfect and everything I had hoped it would be. I always hear people talk about things they would have changed about their wedding.... but I can't think of one. I remember the doors to the chapel opening and seeing Daniel for the first time, and from there it's a blur until this exact moment in the picture. This was immediately after the preacher announced us husband and wife and was one of the happiest moments.ever. I remember looking around and seeing everyone that we love just as happy as us and feeling so lucky to share that moment with them. This picture is also really special to me because I feel like it really captures the feelings that we were both having at that very moment. Again, best.day.of.my.life.