Green Beans and a Burnt Finger

Cooked up some fresh green beans and they were mighty tasty. Never had fresh ones before, have grown up on canned home green beans. I picked some of my beans and realized afterwords that they were on the small side. I only had about a large handful, so I decided to look online for a recipe. I found one and cooked them up last night for dinner. They had just the right amount of crunch to them, and Rob even liked them, even though they were a little garlicky. Here is the recipe:
Green Beans
6 cups boiling water
1/4 cup sea salt (or regular salt)
Bunch Beans
When the water reaches a rolling boil, add the salt and then plop the beans in. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and place beans in an ice bath to stop the cooking process. While in the ice bath prepare other ingredients.
1 tsp. garlic-shallot puree (or 1 crushed clove garlic, this is what I used)
1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Preheat a skillet to just under medium heat, and add the olive oil and butter. Let that melt and then add your strained green beans and garlic. Stir them around and cook for no longer than 5 minutes(I only cooked them for about 3 minutes, my garlic was turning brown). Take off heat and add some salt and pepper.
Serve Immediately!

A lot of my beans were quite skinny and small, but they still had awesome flavor and a nice crunch. So excited and I am so excited to make these again. They looked beautiful too, with the little bits of slightly browned garlic.
Right now my garden is full of grasshoppers, I hate those things, especially when I am picking beans. I can handle the daddy long legs, but grasshoppers are just gross. They are medium size right now. I asked my mom if she would pick them, and she said yes. Thank you so much! So tonight, while I was mowing my lawn, my Mom and Dad came over and weeded and picked my beans, they were so kind and I am so grateful. They even watched Julie in the process. I didn't get very many beans still, but I got a good amount to cook up some more fresh beans. My Mom has never particularly like fresh beans, so I am going to have to make this recipe for them so they can try it out. While we were talking Julie was looking over the beans in bag. At first she was just picking them out and then putting them back into the bag, next thing I know I looked over there and she was chowing down on a bean, just taking little bites off. She probably ate about 3-4 full beans. She likes beans, but it was just funny to see her eating them right out of the bag. And right before I read her bedtime story, she was standing next to the chair signing green bean, and then saying "yummy" she was content with me telling her we would have some again tomorrow.

 And last night right at bedtime, Julie burnt the tip of her ring finger on her right hand touching the exhaust pipe on Robs motorcycle. He was trying to keep her away and I came out right as I saw her face after touching it. When she smashes her finger or gets hurt she will hold her mouth open and just not make any noise, until later. Well, she did this and then started crying, we couldn't see any white spots, but I ran her inside to put her hand under some running cold water. that helped, but then when it wasn't under the water, she would cry and rub her hand on her clothes. She has got a good blister, and it took a while to get her calmed down and asleep. Today, it hasn't seemed to bother her at all. You can definitely see the white blister, but she is her happy self. So grateful it was only her fingertip and it wasn't worse than that.

Scared and more updates!

Julie is scared of our front door, I was getting ready to leave the house the other day, and noticed a salesperson walking around our neighborhood. So, I turned out all the lights and was getting ready to leave, I didn't want to get caught talking to some salesperson when I needed to get out the door. So, I changed Julie and the doorbell rang, I must of scared Julie at that point because she started crying. I finished washing my hands and we left, but now she always looks at the front door and gets this worried look on her face. Instead of playing in the front room and watching her "baby signing time" while I get ready she has been playing in the hallway where the bathroom is.

 And I was sitting on the couch in the front room and she had to sit right in my lap, she wouldn't even get down to get her ball. She would just keep peeking at the door. Oh, Man. She is also scared of the garbage truck, since she can't see out our windows, she just gets scared every times she hears that truck come.

-While sitting on the couch, we were playing with her stacking rings, I found that she knows her colors when I would tell her which color ring would go on next. At first, she wouldn't tell me the color until I signed it. But then, eventually she got it. 

-I caught her signing the alphabet today. I was in the bathroom getting ready, and she was of course in the hallway facing away from me. I kept hearing her say "E", so I peeked out and saw both hands in the air with her fingers clenched in making the sign for "E". I was so excited, I started clapping and getting excited. She just smiled and showed me her "E". She can also do "A" and "B"(pretty close at least), I just love that she is doing it on her own, so fun.

-She wanted to wear her flip flops this morning, she even said flip flops, I didn't know she even knew what they were called. We got them for her awhile ago and she just didn't want to wear them. This morning she wore them for quite awhile, and whenever one would fall off or the back part would come off her heel, she would say "flip flop" until I fixed the problem. They still don't stay on very well, but her feet are fitting into them a lot easier than when we first got them.

-She is in an Off/On stage right now. She will say "light on" or "water off". We were outside and she kept turning the water valve on the house, while saying "water  off". She will also look out her bedroom window and see that there is no water on, and also say "water off". She has just been saying a lot of new things lately, like "open window", and she loves to close the doors in the house if they are open. 

-We also got her a bike, kind of a half birthday present, but it will be passed down. Since her birthday is right after Christmas, we thought we would get her something halfway. It is a Strider bike, it has no pedals, basically they just walk along with it and they learn how to balance, so they won't have to use training wheels. Here is what it looks like.

 We also took her to the store to try on helmets, and didn't mind wearing a helmet at all. Awesome!

 She is not quite sure of it right now, and doesn't always want to ride it, but she will get the hang of it eventually.

-And here is her new fashion statement, can you see them? Canning rings as bracelets, she wore these the whole times she ate lunch today!

 

Always something new at our house!

Four-Wheeling rides!

Julie loves to just sit on Rob's 4-wheelers and push all the buttons and she will point to the key hole and say,"key". She loves to do this, Rob also takes her on slow rides around the yard. She does not like it when Rob takes her off. She will play in the trailer while Rob is working on his 4-wheelers. She will grab onto the handlebars and start kind of rocking back and forth while making vroom noises.

 We will see if she is still as interested in it when she gets older. Rob may have passed his love of 4-wheeling onto his daughter.

18 months!

-We have been trying to get her to drink from a cup, so my mom gave us some small cups to use. We have been using them in the bathtub, and we just leave a little stream of water running. She will fill it up and then bring it to her chin and dump it. She has not figured out that it needs to go to her lips. We were trying to do this before she went to nursery, but learned that it wasn't going to happen. They use sippy cups in nursery anyways, so no huge deal. And we took her to nursery this last Sunday and she went right to playing, didn't even look back at me, and she made it the whole time. Yay, Julie, I really love the nursery teachers in there as well, they are so loving, the moment she walks in, they say "Hi, Julie" and they just are so involved with playing with them. Smooth sailing!
-"Where did dit do?" She says this all the time and it is so cute to hear.
-"Hold You", she just recently started saying this and I try to correct her with saying Hold Me. She does say Hold Me occasionally. We were watching my brother in law do some fireworks and she was kind of standing back, so I reached for her and she kept saying "Hold You", I just love those little words. Of course I will hold you.
-She loves to be scared, we will hide behind a chair or a wall around the corner and she will come looking for us and we will pop out and say "Boo", she gets so excited and giggles and starts to run. It is so funny to get her so excited. We love to chase her around the chair. She also loves to run, she will say "Run, run, run" and just start running. She will run into the kitchen and then come back into the living room, while I am on the couch and I just hear her feet running across the tile floor.
-We have a hole in our backyard from a puddle we found in the lawn. Rob dug this hole to see what was causing the puddle. We have a sprinkler pipe that is pretty much smushed flat from a tree branch. Not sure what to do, the hole has just sat there unfilled. Well, a few weeks ago Rob was working in his trailer with the 4-wheelers and I was watering the garden. Julie loves the 4-wheelers and being in the trailer, so I thought she was in the trailer with Rob. We heard her cry like she was hurt, so I came running from the garden to the trailer thinking she was in there, and Rob came running out of the trailer looking for her. We could not see her, and we found her plopped in the hold, completely under the ground level. She landed on her bum, but no scrapes other than a little nick on her arm and no bruises. It made us laugh afterwords.
-I love it when she will just sit with us and want me to read stories or I will ask her to say a name and she will repeat it. Sometimes in the morning after Rob leaves for work, I will sit on the couch and be lazy and just lay there, she just sits there or lies down right there with me, in my lap or right in front of where my stomach is. I love that she wants to just be close. She will have her toys, and just play. She did this for an hour today while I slept/laid there. She would lay with her body against mine and her head resting on my leg, she would change positions quite frequently  but remain on the couch. Love this!
-Loves to point out Jesus and wants to read and look at pictures of Jesus before bed. I have a few Christmas books that I keep up higher in Julie's room that are nicer and she always points up to them and wants me to read them to her. There is one about Christ, and has a bunch of pictures of Jesus when he was a baby until his Resurrection and when I ask her what story she wants me to read before bed, she will point up there and say "Jesus", and every page she will point to Jesus and say "Jesus". And on the ones where he is a baby, she will say "baby", and also "Mary", and "Joseph".
-Every morning I will make two sandwiches, one for Rob's lunch and one for me. After Rob goes to work and Julie and I have eaten I will eat my sandwich, and she always wants some, so I will break little pieces off and give them to her while I am eating. Although, whenever I fix her a sandwich for lunch, she won't hardly touch it. She refers to it as a "sammich".
-She loves the book "We're going on a Bear Hunt" and will say "0h, oh" at the right spot on every page.
-Whenever she sneezes or anyone else sneezes she will say, "Bless You". This was just learned by hearing me say it after she would sneeze. It is so cute. I also taught her "Thank You" and  "Please" in sign language. We don't have a DVD with these signs and I wanted her to learn them, so if she asked for something I would repeat it to her, and sign and say Please after. The other day she was asking for a cracker, and it was getting close to dinner so I told her no. The next thing I hear and see is her signing "cracker" and then "please" over and over. I just couldn't say no to that. And then afterwords I will say "What do you say" after I have given her the cracker, and she will sign and say "Thank You", to which I will say "You're Welcome", I love that she knows these words, it is so important to be polite.
-Tells me when she needs her diaper changed, and she usually is right. Says "diaper" and pulls at her diaper. I think this might have to do a lot with us using cloth diapers, where she can kind of realize what is going on and feel it a little more. We might have to get her a potty here soon. She will also say "poop". I have also asked her before "Do you need to poop" to which she will stoop down and grunt like she is trying.
-Likes cooked carrots, meat w/ flavor, grapes, watermelon, cheese(string cheese), macaroni and cheese.
-Reaches arm into cereal lid(no container hooked onto the lid) and will pretend to grab something, then pull her arm out and eat whatever it is she grabbed while saying yummmy.
-says "kay" after I tell her something. I love this, I will explain something to her or tell her we need to wait until later, and she will respond with "Kay".
-likes to stick her crayons in her ear, ever since I started using a cutip to very carefully dry her ears out after a bath, she has been starting to stick crayons in her ears. She will stick it in there and then just leave it hanging. So, the crayons are out of her reach for right now.
-We have started to see more tantrums, she will get mad and then stomp her feet and now she has added a squeal or yell in there as well. They don't get to me at all, I know it is part of growing up and we will deal with them.

Findlay Family Reunion

For our Findlay Family Reunion we go up to Paris, Idaho. We get about 60 people there, which is not bad at all. I have not stayed overnight in the past and decided to spend the night this time. Rob went up Wednesday night to go 4 wheeling with my Dad. And I went up Friday afternoon, and rode with Kerri and Ryan(cousin), We left around 5:00, and made it up there at 6:30, just in time for dinner. Dinner was awesome, we had dutch oven potatoes and chicken, and  a bunch of different salads. The chicken was awesome, and just so easy to cut. That was Julie's favorite part, she ate pretty much only the chicken, she also ate some tomatoes. After dinner, everyone set up tents, we visited, got a campfire going. We were going to sleep in the front room and so we had Julie's crib set up and when we wanted to lay her down, there was a lot of commotion and things going on that she just didn't want to fall asleep. So, after lots of crying and crying and trying to get her down, we finally just had to lay her down and let her cry herself to sleep. Oh boy, that was so not fun! So I was sleeping on the couch, and I was not tired at this point, I finally looked at the clock at 1:51a.m. and still had not slept, I did fall asleep sometime and then woke up and looked at the clock again, and it was only 4:44a.m., so I figure I only got 2 hours of sleep that night. Between not being tired and Julie just being restless all night, she kept tossing and turning and having an occasional cry, and also Rob kept turning over and moving, and in the sleeping bag he was in and the cot, he was super noisy. Man, that was one awful night and I finally got up around 6 or so to use the bathroom before others got up. Julie woke up and Rob got her to fall asleep on the cot for a little while. So, now it was breakfast time, it felt pretty nice outside, still a little cool, but once the sun came up it warmed up quite nicely. We had eggs, pancakes, bacon, and fruit for breakfast and then we just visited, very low key. Nothing really planed, there are ice caves and hikes around that some family went on. My cousin Nathan brought a 4-wheeler up with barrels in the back that the kids could sit in and go for a ride. Julie went on a ride, with Anna sitting with her. She wasn't so sure of it, but I think she liked it after they started going.

 In this one you can really see her face, she just looks like she is wanting out.

Rob, my Dad, Kerri, and Katie, and also my cousin Nathan went on a 4-wheeling ride. And a lot of other family went to the ice caves, and on a little hike. We finally had to start lunch without them, since it was already past 2:00p.m. We had hoagies and salads for lunch. Just before lunch, I gave Julie some lunch and went upstairs to one of the rooms to see if she would take a nap, and I was going to lay down also and take a rest. Well, as I laid there, Julie just stomped around in her port a crib and played. So, there was no nap for her. She had fun roaming around outside. We left around 6:00 I think, and before we even were out on the road a minute or two, Julie was out. She slept the whole way home. We had a good time, other than getting my sleep.

Yogurt

Julie loves Yogurt. She usually has yogurt during her afternoon snack. I will give her some fruit to eat, while I scoop the yogurt and feed it to her. She has a spoon and bowl that she loves to play with and stir with and then taste it, so I thought I would give her the yogurt and spoon to see if she would want to feed herself. Well, she moved the spoon up and down, and up and down, take the spoon out and the yogurt would drip all over, which she would point to and get concerned.

 She gets so excited also!

 She also got concerned that there was yogurt on her fingers, my clean kid hates getting food on her hands. When she is done eating she will sign "clean", meaning she is done and wants her hands washed.

 So, basically I end up getting another spoon and feed her the yogurt while she is stirring the yogurt. One of these days she will get it.

Julie Update!

-I love listening to her laugh while she plays, not sure what she is laughing at, but I love to just see her coloring or playing and then laughing. It makes me smile!

-She loves to have her back rubbed/scratched. If she just woke up and is just lying there in her crib, I will rub her back until she is ready to get out. Most of the time in the morning when we get her out of the crib, I will bring her into Rob on the bed and she will lay on his chest while he rubs her back, and she will stay there for quite a while. The other day, Rob brought her into me on the bed in the morning and she was on her back with her little lovey blankie while I rubbed/squeezed her legs which she then fell asleep. She turned over and her back was against my chest just so comfortable. We laid together for awhile until she woke up. Love moments like that! and then the random times when she will just snuggle with us while we rub her back.

-She has a thing about clean hands, if she is eating and she gets a kiwi seed on her hand or anything for that matter, she kind of freaks out, we have to wipe it off before she can continue to eat. Although when she eats macaroni and gets sauce all over her hands, she is fine with it. She can find the littlest thing on her hands or her sippy, even a tiny little hair. Sometimes this can drive me nuts! At the end of the day, if she doesn't have a bath, she will always say "Feet, feet", meaning she wants them washed. So we wash her hands and feet in the sink before getting pj's on.

-She has gotten picky at eating, like not eating foods that she used to love and eat a lot of(like kiwi, don't know if she just doesn't want to get those seeds on her fingers or what)
-She runs with her arms straight out behind her, very funny to watch. And the other day she was just walking around the house with her arms straight out and her palms up, behind her.
-She will sometimes rest her feet on the bumper pad before going to sleep or when she is just playing around in her crib when she wakes up. When we went in to check on her before going to bed, she had fallen asleep with her foot in the slats above her bumper pad.
-She has been loving music lately, she will want to turn my radio on in my bedroom, or she will sign music while eating her lunch. Well, she found her monitor and found out that there is a button that will play music. So, I will find her in there all the time, pressing the button over and over again. She has started to pull the plug out, and so we moved it out of her reach. She was not to happy about that. We also moved her mobile off of her crib, because she would pull on it wanting to twist it her self. So, Rob took that off(while she was watching) and she had a good cry over that one as well.
-She loves to walk around our little block, usually every day. Rob took her the other day and she held his finger the whole way around. I just thought that was cute.
-She is getting independent and won't obey what I say. When I ask her to come or do something, she just gets this mischievous smile and runs the other way or just continues what she is doing. Ahhh, drives me nuts, especially when I am trying to leave and I have to eventually just go grab her or pick her up.
She also has been starting to sneak around. When she is in the kitchen with me, she loves to get in all the drawers and there are a couple drawers that I just don't like her getting into. Well, she got out my strawberry corer and can opener and went over by the door in the corner, where I couldn't see her, so she could play with them. Sneaky, sneaky.
There is also a decorated piece of wood on my couch table in our front room that she likes to grab the wood off and run with it. Every time she does this I tell her "no" and have to put it back or she will put it back, but she does it while looking at me to see what I will do. She knows, but just does it anyways.
-After we put her in her sleep sack at nap time or night time, she will walk around with it on. The first time she did this, I just couldn't stop laughing. I don't laugh like I did, but it is still so cute to see.

 -We have a frame above her changing pad that has all her bows on it. She loves to play with the frame. I always take it off because I am afraid it is going to land on her. So then when it is on the floor and I put her down after her diaper change she will always grab something off of it and point to her head while saying, "hair, hair", so yesterday I finally put one in her hair, and she left it there. Looks like we will be able to wear some bows now. Now I just need to remember to put them on her.

-If we block her way from getting somewhere she will say,"beep, beep" until we move, I have no clue where she got this from, I just noticed it the other day. It is quite hillarious.
Kind of crazy the things she picks up!

Volunteer Pea Plant

Rob informed me that in our weed patch(where we didn't plant anything this year), there was a pea plant, with peas on it. So, I went out today and picked about 8 ripe pea pods off of it. Julie ate ALL of them, some while we were outside and the rest for lunch. There are still a few pea pods that are not quite ripe yet, so we shall get some more here soon. Kind of fun to get something that you were not expecting!

The one on the right was getting a bit old, but still tasted fine! I did snatch a few and they were quite tasty!

4th Molar and Piano!

 Julie got her 4th molar, this would be her right upper molar. We were at my parents house swinging, and Rob was getting her to giggle and saw a tooth poking through. I have tried to see if there was anything before, but it is hard to see, and hard to check. So she has four molars now, and she is still just a happy camper about it. Love that.

She loves to play the piano. At both of her grandparents houses, there are piano's. We will sit her up in the chair and she will have so much fun. She is pretty gentle about it too. She does not pound, she just seems to have that piano playing mode already, fingers and all. She will always want us to play with her, she will point to the lower keys or higher keys for us to play while she plays on the middle keys.

 She will have to learn how to play the piano when she gets older.

Happy 4th of July!

We celebrated the 4th on the 1st, since that was the day the city shot off the fireworks. It was kind of a spontaneous get together at my parents house. We roasted hot dogs(a couple of us had hamburgers), ate yummy food(man, everything was so good and I ate way to much), found out that I love the Kettle cooked Salt and pepper chips. So good. Then we roasted marshmallows and had smores.
Julie ate a cookies for smores and got dirty.

She loves to climb on things and slid off, so she kept climbing onto this cooler and sliding off, she also recently discovered the slide at my parents house and loves it.

Some of the gang played some badmitten.

Mostly we ate and visited.

Then we headed to a new spot for fireworks since our original spot has become not such a good spot since the trees have grown so high. We headed up to Hillcrest Elementary.

The fireworks show was awesome, lasted a lot longer, although since Diamond Rio was at the stadium the radio was not broadcasting the music for the fireworks, so it was pretty quiet while the fireworks were going off. Getting home after the fireworks was the worst. It took us 20 minutes to get from the University to 1400 N. It was insane. It was a great day and Julie sat very still through the whole fireworks show, I think she liked them. She promptly fell asleep on the ride home, but she stayed awake until then and she loved her glow stick she got.