Like Uncles Like Nephew

Zachariah has some of the coolest Uncles around. I dare you to find Uncles cooler than his. In fact, I triple dog dare you! Anyway, you get my point. They are some cool cats. And one day I may do a post on just how cool they are, but for now I am posting about tattoos.

Both my brother and Daniels brother have tattoo's on their arms and Zachariah loves looking at them. He talks about their tattoos all the time and then promptly tells me that he needs a tattoo. And I often give into his wishes. :)

Today's tattoo of choice was a fish. And a mighty cute fish at that! After we were done applying the fish he literally jumped for joy and said, " I got tattoo!!!!". Then he made up a song appropriately titled "I got tattoo" and sang it the rest of the morning.

Adorable. :)

Have a great weekend everyone! See you next week for quite a few cute Zachariah stories and long overdue vaccine post!

Chichen-itza Pizza!

Sorry. That is the name of one of The Backyardigans episodes that Zachariah has been watching here recently. Its kinda stuck in my head.

Ok, so we are a pizza loving family. We have pizza and movie night once a week and it is something that all of us have started looking forward to (Zachariah especially)! But we quickly found that frozen pizza's are just so dang expensive for such a small amount. And we aren't about to order pizza every week, because those are even MORE expensive. So we decided to make our own.

I call it our "almost homemade pizza". I think it is the closest thing to homemade pizza you will have without making your own dough. And I am going to do that sometime soon, but right now this does just fine.

You need a baking sheet. I use stoneware because it is pretty much the best thing ever. Everything cooks so perfectly. I have never ever had anything burn! I have a stoneware pizza stone, muffin pan, bar pan and a baking sheet. Ah-mazing.

Next comes the almost homemade dough. Pillsbury's pizza crust in a tube. I mean, it doesn't get any easier than this folks.

Then you will need pizza sauce (about 3/4 cup),

A handful of pepperoni's (or your topping of choice)

And a cup or two of shredded cheese.

From here on out you pretty much follow the directions on the Pillsbury can, so technically I could just stop the post now. But I am desperately needing to procrastinate some housework, so I think I will keep going, even though we have now reached the common sense stuff. :)

Roll out the dough onto the cookie sheet.

I like to roll the edges up a bit to create a crust around the whole pizza. I think I would be lost if I had to hold a piece of pizza without the outside crust.

Pop it in a preheated oven for five minutes. (The oven temperature will depend on the type of crust you have.) When you take it out it will be nice and puffy. Not browned at all, just puffy.

Now pour 1/2 a cup or so of sauce onto the warm pizza crust.

Spread it around and add more if necessary. I think I ended up using close to 3/4 cup of sauce, but that definitely depends on your preference.

Sprinkle some mozzarella cheese over the top of the sauce. We are a divided family. Z and I like mozzarella AND cheddar cheese on our pizza, but Daniel prefers straight up mozzarella. So we do both!

Now throw some pepperoni's on top of the cheese and you are set!

Pop it in the oven for 10-12 minutes

And pull it out when the crust is a nice golden brown and the cheese is completely melted.

Does this not look delish? Tastier pizza with less preservatives and for half the cost of a frozen pizza?

Yes, please. :)

TCBY

Last week Z and I met up with my friend Rachel and her daughter Eva. Since the temperature is in the 90's now, we decided to take the kids for a refreshing treat at TCBY!

They were both adorable and fun, but I noticed a few distinct differences between the two kids.

The most obvious difference (besides gender, obviously) would be their size. I mean, Zachariah looks huge compared to Eva's dainty little self! And seriously, could they be any cuter looking at the ice cream flavors?? I think not.

The next few differences aren't quite as obvious at first glance, but once you sit down and pay close attention I think you will be able to see them.

She licked her frozen yogurt sweetly and carefully

while he shoveled MASSIVE spoonfuls of ice cream into his mouth in record time.

She giggled because her face was messy (which was totally adorable by the way)

and he got a brain freeze.

She posed with her mommy for a cute picture

And he... well he didn't so much as pay the camera a lick of attention. (Yes, pun intended.) Maybe hanging out with Eva will get him out of his photographic rebellious stage he is in.

Despite his knack for ignoring the camera, we had fun. And I think the messy faces were a pretty good indication of that. :)

Herbs, with an "H".

Less than a month ago we planted some herbs. Since I have a bad track record when it comes to keeping plants (and pets) alive, we bought a little starter kit so I could, to quote The West Wing, "dangle my feet in the water".

Now I am kind of regretting not buying half a dozen pots and a lot more seeds, because I am totally loving this whole container gardening thing!

Random fact: I like to pronounce the silent "H" in the word "herbs". Don't ask me why, but I just do. I mean, its not like I go around pronouncing this word incorrectly in public... just in the privacy of my own home. For some reason I am under the impression that I am funny, and so I keep doing it just to crack myself up. And yes, I will understand if you never want to visit my blog again.

But for those of you who are sticking around, let me show you some up close and personal pictures of these cute little herbs!

This is the basil. These little suckers were the first of the herbs to pop up out of the soil. Basil takes up 1/3 of the container but I honestly expect it to take over the whole thing soon. This herb is quite the space hog.

Here are my chives. Luckily I planted them in the middle so that they can give basil a little bit more room. I don't use chives very often, but I kinda like the look of them. So if nothing else it is fun to watch them grow!

And last but not least we have the parsley. Besides our Italian seasoning, parsley is one of our favorite things to use when it comes to seasoning our food. It gets used quite a bit in this house, and because of that I probably should have just had a larger pot dedicated to parsley only. But I guess this will do for now!

So there you have it. My three herbs that I have not killed yet! Hurray for me! Now that I have dangled my feet a bit, I am kinda wishing I would have put on a swimsuit and waded in a little deeper this year. Alas, I am a bit of a chicken. But believe you me, I am going to be a gardening fool next go around! I could so get used to this whole growing my own food thing. :)

Do you have a green thumb? What is in your garden/containers this year? Help feed my curiosity! Its never to early for new ideas!! :)

Sleeping Babe

The other night, as we were starting to watch a movie, I told Daniel to pause it so I could go make sure Zachariah was asleep. (I heard a lot of ruckus coming from his room 15 minutes before hand, so I just wanted to make sure he wasn't laying under a pile of rubble before I got settled in for a 2 hour long movie.)

And good thing I went and checked on him...

Because if I hadn't, there would be a good chance that he would have had a major crick in his neck!!!

I don't know why, but for the past couple weeks Z has been falling asleep anywhere but his bed. Sometimes he falls asleep on the floor, sometimes in the closet, other times in the rocking chair. And its only at night. During his nap (when he takes one) he sleeps in his bed and ONLY his bed. But I guess he wants to change things up for bed time.

Crazy kid. Now he has us playing the "guess where Zachariah will be found sleeping tonight" game. Which is actually kinda fun! You should try it sometime! :)

Sibling Love

I am the oldest of four children. My mom had three kids in three years, had a seven year break and then had my youngest brother. So yeah. Me and my brother and sister are all VERY close in age. And I love that. The only bummer is that both of them have moved off.

My sister is working in Alabama and I only get to see her twice a year.

My brother is in the air force and last week he he left for Japan and will be there for two years. So unless I come into a lot of money that will allow me to go visit him in Japan, it will be quite a while before I see him again.

These pictures were taken a couple weeks ago when ALL of us siblings were in town together. I am super glad that we were able to spend some time together, but it really made me miss the good ole' days. You know, when we weren't grown ups living our separate lives. *sigh*

That being said... if anyone wants to start donating to the "Japanese Sibling Reunion" fund, that would be greatly appreciated. :)

I Think I Can

The other morning while I was cleaning up the house Z was playing quietly in his playroom. This almost never happens, so I decided to go see if everything was ok/what was keeping his attention for this long.

When I walked into the room I noticed he was building a train track. That may not seem like a big deal, but it really shocked me. You see, all he has is a beginners train track and it ONLY does a figure eight. You can not make it completely connect any other way. That being the case, Zachariah usually asks me to build the track for him and then he goes to town playing with it.

But this time he decided to start building it himself. When he saw me standing in the doorway he was more than halfway done and said, "Look Mama! I putting pieces together! I do it all by self!" He was so incredibly proud of himself. The cuteness was almost too much to bear. I couldn't stop smiling and praising him for the great job he was doing.

After he put whatever he considered the appropriate amount of pieces together, he let Thomas give the track a test run. I honestly thought he was going to get upset about the track being incomplete, but it didn't bother him one bit! He was just so proud of the fact that HE did it.

And I was proud of him to. Its funny how little things like this can make a a mommy so happy. I mean, technically its just a little ole' train track. But hearing the excitement in his voice and seeing the look on his face when he is able to do something new is just enough to make me giddy.

With that being said, I think I will go hug my little munchkin.

I hope everyone has a great Monday! :)

Candi Sushi

Last weekend we had a going away party for my brother who is in the Air Force. Since he is headed to Japan (Literally. As I type this he is on a plane headed over there) the party was Japanese themed and I had volunteered to bring candy sushi. I saw a recipe a year or so ago and bookmarked it because I thought it looked fun.

I was wrong.

I had originally planned to do a recipe post showing everyone how to make these cute little things, but they turned out to be the biggest pain in my butt. Since I was already throwing food against the wall, yelling and crying I decided not to add to my stress by taking pictures of the whole thing.

But IF you want to know how to make them, I will give you the recipe. Just take some Prozac first. It may help.

Its a rather simple recipe. You need 1 cup of Rice Krispies cereal, 4 fruit roll ups (preferably green, but any flavor will do), 4 red twizzlers, 8 large marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of butter.

Here's what ya do.

In a small saucepan, melt marshmallows with the butter over low heat. Add the rice cereal and stir to coat; let cool slightly. (And by slightly, it means slightly. Like, 2-3 min.)

Cut licorice to the length of the fruit roll-up. Unroll the fruit roll-up and peel off the plastic film.

Note: This is where I started cursing the world. I live in South Georgia. Its blasted hot and humid down here. So the fruit roll ups did not peel off the plastic film as much as they tore into 5 thousand little sticky shreds. So a word to the wise: Put the fruit roll ups in the fridge for 5-10 minutes prior to unrolling. It works SO much better that way!

Place about 1/4 of the rice cereal mixture on the edge of each roll-up. (Just eye ball it. Basically you need to make sure there is enough to cover 1/2 of the fruit roll up.)

Place (and push) the twizzler in the center of the rice mixture and roll up the candy sushi. Dip a knife in water to keep it from sticking and cut into 2-inch pieces.

Here is a visual. I wanted all of the fruit roll ups to be green, but NO ONE IN THIS GOSH AWFUL TOWN SOLD GREEN FRUIT ROLL UPS. *ahem* So I had to use a combination of Shrek tongue tattoo mini fruit roll ups and a multi colored pack. Which worked out fine in the long run, but during the whole process I was quite sure the world was ending.

Ok, so I may have some issues that need to be worked out. This candy sushi thing really messed with my psyche.

Here are all of the completed candy sushi. In order to make this many you need to quadruple the recipe or something.

And much to my surprise, the candy sushi really did taste pretty good. I mean, I expected it to be WAY to chewy, but it wasn't too bad! In fact, I would almost say that it was worth the 3 hours I spent in the kitchen.

Almost.

:)

Guess What?

Zachariah got his cast off!!!!

We went to the doctor on Tuesday for the cast removal and more x-rays to find out how his arm was doing. The doctor said that it is almost healed and there is no need to re-cast the arm, BUT the bone is still very weak so we need to restrict his play for 2 weeks. (Which is just mind boggling. I mean, how do you restrict a two year olds play?? Ah well. We will figure it out.)

Here is the first picture of Z without his cast. (Well, the first "real" picture. I have a couple cell phone pictures, but they are blurry. So they don't count.) After we got home Z sat with Dad and watched some tv while eating his sucker the nice people at the doctors office gave him. :)

As you can imagine Zachariah is beyond thrilled to have his arm back. :) He keeps walking around and rubbing it saying, "My cast off!". He is still not back to using his arm normally, but I think its going to take him a couple days to remember that he can use it.

Everyone is pleased as punch around here, and if we can keep him from re-braking it for the next two weeks we will be out of the woods completely!

Wish us luck!

Mothers Day

I am afraid I don't have a super sweet/sentimental belated mothers day post for you to read today. And I don't even have a ton of cute pictures ready to show you of me and Zachariah. But I do have two pictures of us that were taken yesterday... which is actually a pretty big deal when you take in consideration Z's camera phobia. :)

Even though being a mommy is more challenging than I ever could have imagined, it is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. Zachariah has made me one heck of a happy Mom for the past 2.5 years and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I hope all of you Mom's had a great Mothers Day! :)

One Picture; Three Thoughts

1) T-4 days until this cast comes off.

2) I love Z's shirt for many reasons, but the most recent is because it goes wonderfully with his cast.

3) I have the cutest kid in the entire world.

Life With a Cast

We have had quite some adjusting to do since this cast has been on Zachariah's arm. The first couple days were quite aggravating for him as he figured out that he could not do things quite as easily as before, but he adjusted quickly and has finally stopped asking me to cut the cast off with scissors. Which happens to be a great sign in my book!

Over the past week Zachariah has a few of his favorite "cast friendly" activities that he frequently does during the day, and so I thought I would share some of those with you. :)

Playing with the Tag Jr has proven to be a great one handed activity for him. And after a few tears of frustration he figured out how to prop his cast on the opposite page so the book wouldn't close on him!

Some of Z's friends stopped by the afternoon that he got his cast on. They were so incredibly thoughtful and brought by some Toy Story toys for him, and he LOVES them. That is pretty much all he played with that afternoon and they have been a big hit ever since.

Another friend gave Zachariah a Toy Story coloring book with those super cool markers that don't color on anything but the coloring book pages. Ingenious. This has been great for obvious reasons, but under normal circumstances I do NOT like him coloring with markers. With this I am able to give him some room to breathe while coloring and he is able to enjoy coloring his favorite Toy Story characters!!

Eating a banana is a great one handed activity that he has been enjoying as well. Well, eating any snack is a favorite activity of his, but I just happened to have the camera out for this one. As you can see the cast has not had an affect on his silliness. :)

Is this kid not the cutest thing ever? Gah. I just love him and his cute little cast!