Moving Craziness!

Well I haven't posted in a while because we've been a little... busy. We ended up moving into my inlaws' house for the time being while we plan to build next summer. Right now we're trying to finish prepping our old house for the new lease tenants. Hopefully we'll have all that figured out soon so I can start planning for the trip we're going on next week- home to California! And MAYBE when I get back from the trip I can start focusing on having this baby... I am in my third trimester now and all.

Needless to say moving takes a toll on pregnant women, and I've been feeling all the craziness. It doesn't help that even though Jax had a few days of his normal 3 hour nap, ever since he's had HORRIBLE naps. I know one of his molars is coming in, and with the changing environment... I don't know, it really wears me out. Sorry this post is so short, my kid just woke up from ANOTHER horribly short nap. ://///

Emily

Us Crazy Hippies

So remember how our plan was to pick up and move to San Francisco? Well after much prayer and research, and entertaining NUMEROUS scenarios, we've decided to build a house, probably in Summit County. This way Josh can attend either BYU or the U of U, and we can be in a permanent situation. Here's the kicker, we're building our home out of earthbags...

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Basically it's an extremely sustainable, durable, and efficient natural building method used all over the world. It's becoming more popular in the U.S. as building codes consider sustainable buildings.

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So we're moving in to my in-laws in two weeks and will be preparing ourselves to build this home ourselves next summer! Here's the plans we've decided on.

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The great thing about this plan is that it's designed to be extremely energy efficient. It utilizes passive solar energy and is extremely insulated. It's also geared to be totally ideal to convert to a completely solar house. Oh, did I mention these things are extremely cheap to build? And they're more stable, insulated, and weather resistant than traditional stick built homes. Awesome, right? Oh, and it takes a very low skill level to build these, which is great because we're doing it ourselves. Our friends and family may receive invitations to help next summer, we do have a building window before the snow comes... So right now I'm doing all kinds of research and budgeting, I figure the more I know the better. Some days I get really overwhelmed with it, but last night I felt a lot of reassurance from Heavenly Father. Hey, if He can help Nephi build a ship to cross the ocean, He can help Josh and I build an earthbag house in a summer, right? Right.

Footprints and Footsteps

I love baby feet, particularly my baby's feet.

When Jax was in my tummy, I would wake up with bruised ribs because he'd kick me in the night, so excited to get out.

When he was out, he'd kick his feet to show his excitement for living.

When he learned to crawl, his feet would paddle like a bike and he'd crawl like a charging baby rhinoceros.

Now that he walks, his feet show him the world one step at a time.

I know now I'm supposed to say something profound about footsteps for his future... But I guess all I can say is I hope he studies ours and makes his own.  I know his footsteps will be fleeting and I need to cherish every one.

Wheat Waffles and Waffle Wheels

We are a waffle-eating family. We never eat pancakes. Part of that is because during our last move my griddle got separated from its cord long enough to assume it was gone forever, and of course right after that got thrown our we found the cord! Isn't that always how that works? Anyways, I make a lot of waffles. In fact Jax eats a half of a Belgian Waffle EVERY morning for breakfast, with a half of fruit.

I love to make waffles, but not every day. So what I do is make a batch of Money Saving Mom's Freezer Friendly Waffles (I use her recipe exactly, though with all whole wheat flour), and keep frozen ones on hand. I LOVE these waffles! They're also great with whatever additions you'd add to waffles or pancakes.

On another note, when I was feeling the first trimester blues with this baby, I was pretty lazy with making Jax snacks, so I bought them... Yes I am ashamed my laziness was taken out on my child's nutrition... Anywho, I bought these Gerber Waffle Wheels...

Only to find out they were HUGE!!!

So I'm thinking - How am I going to fit these into Jax's mouth, much less by NOT shredding his gums to bits!?

Well he's big enough now that he can fit them in his mouth, without closing it... Which means that while he wanders around the house trying to soften the wheels enough to swallow, he's got waffle drool leaking from his partially opened mouth. I hate these Wheels. But Jax does look pretty funny eating them :)

And that's my waffle rant for today haha. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Scrum-diddly-umptious

This is Jax. He's 14 months old. He eats like a 10 year old.

Partly because he eats so much, I have a complex about giving him the processed, nil nutrition, completely artificial, "toddler snacks." I MUCH prefer to make all his food. However, it's quite exhausting spending so much time going through recipe after recipe and trying to find things that he likes. So I guess this post is devoted to those other moms who like to make food for their toddlers...

I love to cook. I'd love to cook even more if I had a dishwasher... Slowly but surely I've been adding recipes to my repertoire, mostly through trial in error. I go through cooking phases, for example right now I love to cook anything from Pioneer Woman  because everything I've cooked from her has been stellar. However recently I've been trying to cook more for Jax so I've been going through recipes from Weelicious. The thing is, so far the recipes from Weelicious have been either total hits or total misses, without anything in between. One of my friends has the cookbook and has been having the same issues, so we make sure to share the good ones and ones to avoid in an effort to cut out the bad trial in errors. That's kind of what I'm going to post about today. Here's my hits and misses!

1) Animal Crackers - AWESOME!
Yes I realize the picture below has star-shaped cookies, not animal shapes, but that's the smallest cookie cutter I had. These are so good though! We demolished a whole recipe in like two days. The good thing is, they're not too sweet, but sweet enough. And they're incredibly addicting. But they're the perfect "sweet" snack for toddlers, and Jax loved them.

2) Chocolate Zucchini Bread - Not so awesome...

My mom has a killer chocolate zucchini bread recipe but I really wanted to try this one because it's part whole wheat. Not great. It's way bitter and only like an inch tall. However, after making it I read the comments, and all of them were recommending to add a bunch of sugar and chocolate chips, which I just really don't want to add for Jax. I'll stick to the zucchini muffins.

3) Zucchini muffins - AWESOME!

I am always trying to find a way to get more veggies into Jax and this muffin recipe is a great solution.

4) Parmesan Zucchini Cakes - AWESOME!

Another great veggie alternative. All of us loved these.

5) Veggie Pancakes - Yuck.

Yup, that's all I have to say about them.

6) Sweet Potato Muffins - Meh.

Yup, that's all I have to say about them. 

7) Apple Banana Muffins - AWESOME!

These have now replaced my previously awesome banana muffin recipe.

8) Carrot Snack Sticks - Pretty good.

We actually really liked these, especially because of all the grated carrot in them!

These are the ones off the top of my head that I experimented with. I'm really grateful for the ones that came out good, more healthy snacks for Jax to choose from! Hope this helps those looking for healthy snack food for your family!

Emily

Second Chances and Big Changes

This is my second attempt at blogging. This first time around, I felt a little handicapped with the structure and vision Josh and I had created, since it was supposed to be "our blog," but I decided that I need a low-maintenance, purely "me" blog if it's going to go anywhere. Right now there's a bunch of changes in progress and I feel a need to document those changes somehow, in a semi-informal manner. And so here we go!

Random picture. This is Jax. I'm still in awe I have a little boy, not just a baby now. Proud mom moment lol!

So these big changes I'm talking all came about within the past few weeks, for the most part, and will get sorted our in the next few months, to change our lives for at least the next few years... Confused yet? Me too. Here's what's goin' on...

1) We're having our second baby!
This change came about... oh.... five months ago? But I only have a few more months 'til our little Lilian Eve is here, and I'm super scared for the 1 to 2 kid transition as a mom. She's due Oct 22nd so I have about 4 more months. With Jax I did the normal OB and hospital bit... But this time I'm having a midwife and a home birth. Crazy right? I'm so excited though! I'm going to give birth at my in-laws' house, actually, which is kinda weird but I think it'll work out nicely (and they agreed to it haha). In an effort to NOT spend a fortune on a little girl (though nearly impossible), I've gotten some material scraps and have been sewing little jumpers with matching head bows to fit over Jaxton's old onsies. That way I can basically use all the clothes we already have! So far I'm made two sets, though with the other HUGE changes going on (as you will see) I've slowed down being so productive in this arena.

This is the first dress/head thingy set I made.

2) We're moving!
This is the big change that hasn't quite figured itself out yet... So Josh and I have a house that we've lived in for just about 2 years now. We intended to stay in this house until we had too many kids to fit in it (there's 4 bedrooms so it'd be a while). However, after much prayer, Josh announced that he wanted to go get his Master's degree after he finishes up his Bachelor's in August... and that may include moving out of state. This wouldn't be a permanent move, and as soon as he'd be done with that degree we'd come back to Utah. Well so a couple of friend's in our ward have a contract at the local apartment complex that is expiring the beginning of August... So we decided that they can lease out our house while we're gone. The husband's going to go to grad school/medical school in 3 to 4 years to ideally the timing would work out with us being gone to get Josh's degree. So anywho, we're moving out of our house in about 3 weeks now. The issue is where we're moving then. For the time being, we're going to stay with Josh's parents, who live in the area, until we figure out where to go to school. Here's the hang up though, Josh's Master's is going to be in a different field of study than his Bachelor's, so he needs to complete prereqs, and out of state tuition is really expensive. So basically the plan is to apply to a ton of Property Manager positions around the country (near cities with school opportunities for Josh), accept the first acceptable position, move there, work for a year while Josh does prereqs and we get residency in that state, he'll apply for and attend grad school, then we're come back and Josh'll start his educational software company. Did you catch all that? So basically right now everything's on hold. And don't forget that I'm having a baby! So IDEALLY we'll find something local so I can continue with my midwife here and we can cut out that extra year for getting residency, OR Josh moves first and Jax and I follow after I have Lilian... Crazy right? I know. Needless to say we're praying a lot right now. But we know Heavenly Father wants us to do this move, we're just waiting for him to show us the next step in the plan...

Josh, on our way to his commencement ceremony.

3) ...

Ok well I guess there are actually only 2 major changes in the mix right now, but #2 is a really huge and complicated one! So I guess I feel like my life is only certain for 3 more weeks, then who knows. But I guess life is always like that to some extent. For me it's better if I just don't think about it and focus on things I can control... Like making banana muffins today for Jax... Or keeping my house clean... Best to just do that for now, the big stuff will figure itself out.