Big Appetite!

So, for the last few months Lydia's appetite just hasn't been very big. She eats every meal and snacks in between but each time she would eat it would only consist of a few bites. (Of course after some coaxing from us she would eat a few more bites :) ). But recently her appetite has grown quite a bit. Just this morning, for example, I gave her 2 pieces of toast and a half bowl of oatmeal. She has never asked for more oatmeal before, but this morning she did. So I gave her the rest of the oatmeal and upon finishing it she asked for "more, again." Haha. The oatmeal was gone, so I suggested an orange and she got really excited. Well, she ate that whole orange all by herself. And then she found the little container filled with cheerios that we take to church and has been snacking on them for the last little bit. Now, she woke up at 9:00, so all this has happened in just the last couple of hours. I think she just might be going through a growth spurt, what do ya think ? ;)

Just some fun pics of our Lydi-bug

Lydia loves to play outside. And now that all the flowers and veggies are dead or harvested we let her play in the dirt. She takes that quite literally and just digs right in.

Today Lydia and I made a Princess crown for her. She did such a good job coloring it, huh? :)

Derek's family owns a wheat farm in Idaho. We were up there a few weeks ago during harvest, and I really wanted to take a few pictures of her standing in the wheat. I took TONS, but I only put a couple on here.

Lydia loves to play with her stuffed animals. She lined them up and decided to just chill with them for a while. :) The 2nd picture is of her sitting in her crib with some of her animals and reading a book. She will only play in her crib if I stay in the room otherwise she thinks she has to go to bed. Luckily I was cleaning her room, so she stayed in there for quite a while.

Well, there's just a few pictures of our little cutie. She is so much fun and talks so well. She can tell you just exactly what she needs and wants much of the time in sentences (no matter that those sentences only contain 2 or 3 words most of the time :) ). She loves to dance, read books, color, play with her toys, and get into just about everything she isn't supposed to. :) She keeps us on our toes, that's for sure!

Our Trip to Italy!!!

So... our 3 year anniversary was last Tuesday. I knew Derek was planning a surprise weekend for us - the surprise part being when we were going and what we were doing. I had a pretty good suspicion we would leave on a Friday, but that's basically all I knew. I've had a bag packed for 3 weeks! haha. Well, this past Friday was the day. I got back from my shift, and Derek took Lydia outside, which isn't abnormal. Well, he didn't bring her back. lol. He'd walked her over to his brother's house. He told me to grab anything else i thought I would need and said we were leaving. :D. As we were driving he handed me a couple of plane tickets - From Salt Lake to Rome! I was so confused (we are too poor to fly anywhere let alone Europe! haha). The confusion deepened when we drove all the way to the airport. But then we circled around and drove back out of the airport. That's when it clicked, and Derek confirmed it when he announced "Welcome to Rome!"

Here is a copy of my fake ticket. Pretty convincing, huh?! It's amazing what you can do on the internet. haha. P.S. nothing illegal was done to get these tickets. haha. they were printed on printer paper. (Sorry it's so small).

As we drove to Salt Lake City we played along. We were having a Italy-themed weekend! Such a great idea! So we drove from Rome to Venice. Venice was the theme of the hotel room we stayed in. We slept in a gondola! And yes, it was every bit as cool as it sounds! We had dinner at the Olive Garden (where else?! yummmm).

Here's a view of our room. You can see there is a bed and a couch set into a gondola.

Me lounging in my big boat :)

Derek trying to drink from the fountain that was in our room.

The next day was filled with a wonderful trip to the temple, strolling around the city, and a surprise shopping spree!! The whole weekend was surprise after surprise. And I'm pretty hard to surprise - I'm a natural detective even when I try not to be.. haha. It was a perfect two days! I love my husband, my best friend. :)

Suuuper Yummy!!!

I made the most wonderful sandwich today (compliments of Rachael Ray :) ). It is so good and figure friendly.

What you need:

2 pieces of bread

1 chicken breast

1 gala apple

One wedgde of Laughing Cow cheese or a slice of swiss cheese

olive oil/canola oil/etc. whatever you prefer.

Pound the chicken until pretty thin. Season chicken with a little salt and pepper. Cook it in a saute pan or grill it. Cut the apple into really thin slices. Saute the apple slices in oil, yes, that's right, saute it... trust me it's good. It seems to release the sugary taste and adds a wonderful sweet touch to the sandwich. Spread the laughing cow cheese on a slice of bread, scoop the apples on, add the chicken breast, add the other slice of bread. Then grill the sandwich in the same saute pan you cooked the apples in ( just like you would for grilled cheese). Hint: the bread won't sizzle like it would with butter, so you have to keep an eye on it. Remove from skillet and ENJOY!!! You'll love it! And feel a teensy bit of guilt for it either.

So I've been super curious about Laughing Cow cheese for a while now, and when I saw this recipe I used a coupon and went and got some. It's so creamy and there are only 50 calories a wedge. It's really good. But using regular swiss cheese would great too, I'm sure!!

Sugar!!

So, I seriously believe I am addicted to sugar. I purposely don't buy sugary things, because I end up craving it every single day. It's not the "good" sugar that I crave either.. it's the bad - candy, cookies, brownies - kind of sugar. And I try to ignore it, but it literally becomes annoying to ignore. It's like nagging me at the back of my mind that I have to have it. So, I'll find myself looking to see what I have in the pantry and luckily I rarely have anything on hand - it's usually mixes that I'm too lazy to make. Haha. But the annoying, nagging tendency to eat sugar is real for me. I think a lot of people have this.. at least that's what I've noticed (or maybe it's wishful thinking in hopes that I'm not alone :) ). My 2 biggest weaknesses are ice cream and chocolate chip cookies, so those are rare things that we keep in our house - I don't even like to have chocolate chips on hand because I'll probably end up making chocolate chip cookies. Does anyone have suggestions of how I can deal with this?? Help!! :D

Pavlov's Dog

I had an experience similar to this today. For those of you who aren't familiar with Pavlov's dog. This guy named Pavlov conducted an experiment with his dog. Every time he'd ring this bell he'd feed his dog. Ring the bell, feed the dog, ring the bell, feed the dog. It got to the point that the dog would begin to salivate at the sound of the bell.

Well, Lydia has really started loving this game we play with her. One of us will hide and crawl out and chase her and then tickle her. She loves it. She laughs and crawls to the other one in the room to save her. It's like we're "base" or something. Anyway, so she and I were sitting in her doctor's office today waiting for her doctor to come in. She was sitting in the middle of the room playing when all of sudden we heard thumping in the hallway (someone was walking.. rather loudly.. down the hall). To her it sounded like someone was crawling towards her.. haha. So, she stops playing, starts laughing and crawls to me as fast as she could. I picked her up and she stared at the door just waiting for daddy to crawl in and start tickling her. lol. She just stared at the door with a smile on her face. It was so funny. Of course, daddy never came in. It still makes me laugh thinking about it. She's so fun :)

Choices

We certainly don't have a lack of those. It's a totally different kind of trial. We find ourselves having to choose between 2 good things. Derek is currently working for Intermountain Healthcare. He's an assistant to an orthopedic surgeon. He (Derek) graduated from BYU with a degree in Athletic Training and also Exercise Science. This was a good call, because from here he can go a myriad of different directions. He can stay on the Athletic Training route, The Physical Therapy route, Physician Assistant route, Medical school route.. to name a few. We are currently looking into the last two on that list. It's so interesting because neither of them were even considerations until super recently. Working for a doctor of orthopedics has really struck something in Derek. He finds it so fascinating. And as he talks with the doctor and asks questions he likes it more and more. It's exciting to discover another possible future for us! The time and the money are 2 big deterants (is that a word?) for us though. So, we thought: what about PA school? They do a lot of the same things as doctors. It takes half the time (and of course pays half.. or less.. as much. which we're super fine with). There are so many advantages to both. For me, I have exactly the same number of pros and cons for both. The problem with PA school is what if he decides he wants to be a full blown doctor someday? PA seems like the perfect solution, but it has its limitations. It would be perfect if, after years and years of experience as a PA, there was a test you could take or just a couple more years of school to become an MD. But it doesn't work that way.. (oddly). You'd have to go back to Medical School.

Well, that's the boat we're in right now. We certainly are blessed to HAVE all these choices, but it seems to be a recurring trial for us. The Lord is leaving it up to us. But we just sometimes wish we could see the end from right here. We want to be able to look ahead 5, 10 years from now and see where we'd be. But that would take the fun out of life, wouldn't it? :)