Cooking Inspiration

I have been feeling inspired to cook more by Jamie Oliver's new show. I like how simple his ideas are. He just advocates using fresh ingredients instead of processed food. Lately I have really been trying to make the meals that I can instead of buying them. Like making chicken nuggets instead of buying them. (Jamie's demo on what goes into chicken nuggets was really gross.)

Another recent food inspiration came from a mom's night out I recently attended. One of the mothers said she did theme nights to make meal planning easier. For example, they always do a soup on Monday. I thought this was a cool idea. We started doing 3 theme nights a week. We have fish on Monday, soup on Wednesday and pizza on Friday.

Tonight we made a home made pizza. (We had dinner with Nonna and Poppi on Friday so we moved pizza from Friday to Saturday this week.) I bought tomato paste and cheese but we made the pizza crust from scratch. We took a special trip to the store for toppings. Each family member got to select a topping. I selected orange bell peppers, Daddy decided on pineapple, Kae choose green beans and Izee picked tomatoes. (We had to help Izee make his choice.) After careful consideration, Kae decided he didn't want his green beans on his pizza. Instead he wanted them beside his pizza. Dinner turned out great! The pineapple, pepper and tomato pizza was delicious! I'm really excited to continue the tradition of Pizza Friday. I think it could be really fun this summer when we go to the farmer's market to pick out fresh veggies for our toppings.

(our pizza about to go into the oven)

(our cooked pizza, fresh from the oven, with sauteed green beans right beside it)

Cuteness

This cuteness happened in the car on the way to the park today. My little guys LOVE to sing and dance!

Happy Easter

Easter Eve is Daddy's baptism birthday. We celebrated with cupcakes and lighting his candle. Kae also sang "This Little Light of Mine" for Daddy.
Easter morning started with church. We were the greeters for one of the services. Kae did great job saying, "Happy Easter" to everyone as walked in the door. He tried to shake hands with people too but I think some of the people were confused because he would hold out his left hand. The boys looked so handsome in their fancy Easter clothes!
After church we went to Nonna's and Poppi's house. The fun started with Easter baskets. The boys love peeps!
Then the boys hunted for Easter eggs in the back yard. They did a great job.
Next we posed for a family picture since we are all so dressed up.
After I got all my photo ops done we all changed and got into our play clothes. The boys decided to watch a movie and eat popcorn before they had to take a nap.
Since the weather was so nice, when the boys woke up we headed out to ride bikes. We had 3 bikes and 2 boys so Andrew and I got to ride too.It was such a fun day!

Painting Gifts

Last year I painted a coffee cup for Daddy and put the boys' hand prints on it. Daddy loved his cup but it got broken a few months ago while it was being washed. The other day I took the boys to paint a new coffee cup for Daddy. (Kae has been asking to do this since the other one broke.) They both painted the cup this year (no hand prints). They did such a great job and had a really fun time. They are going to give it to Daddy for his birthday on Thursday.

Big Boy Bike & Buzz

It was a pretty great weekend for Kae.

On Saturday he got a new big boy bike. Now he has a bike with a chain just like Mommy's and Daddy's. He is pretty fast already.
After Kae checked out his new bike he and Izee rode around in front of the house.

On Sunday we went to Nonna's and Poppi's house to visit. They had bought Kae Buzz Lightyear wings and gloves. (Kae LOVES Buzz right now.)

Kae decided to combine all this excitement and ride his bike in his new wings and gloves. He had so much fun riding up and down the street. He stopped to rest frequently and before restarting he would press the button on his wings that would say, "To Infinity and Beyond."

The tricycle has now been handed down to Izee. He really wants to ride it but he is still figuring out how the pedals work. He really loves it when someone pushes the bike for him while he rides it.

Sweet Izee

My sweet little fireman loves to drive his fire truck all over the house all the time. However, He has to have the hat before he can drive the truck. He will look all over the playroom to find his hat and then come up to one of us and sign hat so we will help him find it.

Izee also loves to help me in the kitchen. The other day I found him standing on his chair stirring the soapy water that was soaking in the dirty pot. It was so cute that I took a short video of his "cooking".

A Typical Evening

This is pretty typical for an evening at Casa de Howell:

After dinner the boys like to play. Kitchen is one of their favorite things to play. Kae really likes to make pudding and/or soup. Izee likes to carry his toys around in the shopping baskets.
They repeatedly bring us their creations for us to eat and drink. Eventually they boys usually end up tackling Daddy. If Daddy is on the floor then they all end up wrestling but if Daddy is on the sofa then it turns into a Daddy Pile.

Here is a short video of this evening's Daddy Pile:

I think the nightly pile-up might be starting to drive Daddy a little bit mad. :-)