Sunday, February 28, 2010

what weekends are made for

Today was one of those perfect days, the kind where most of the plans you make happen and those that you didn't plan on work out equally as good if not better.

The plan was Cake Balls and meeting up with my family. I was up pretty early, early enough to go to the store and start on Cake Balls by 11am. Tricia and her sister were going to meet up with Jeremy at the Farmer's Market but those plans got nixed and the girls ended up at the mall. I was supposed to meet my family somewhere between 1-4, but by 12:30 my family was still in my sisters hood and Tricia and her sister were heading to our place to meet up with Jeremy. The next thing you know, Jeremy, Tricia, her sister and our boys were heading out for a walk/bike ride on one of the most beautiful days we've seen in a while. Off we went to the park and by this time I think meeting up with the family was not going to happen.

Jeremy & Espen got to the park before us slow-walkin', chatterboxin' girls arrived and we got there just in time for Time Out.

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The park is not place for Time Out. The park is for...

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Digging holes with Dad

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Standing in holes that your dad helped you dig

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Laughing at Aunt Tricia after she flings a shovel full of sand on her

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For taking naps in the sun

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Or discussing park appropriate attire (Jeremy's shirt sure is a hit at the park)

lovers

Or for taking tons of pictures of you and your lover


It was so gorgeous out that none of us wanted to head home, we wanted coffee!

We walked to Starbucks for our fix, we've lived here for a year and just realized how close the nearest Starbucks is to us and a pit stop at the park makes it feel even closer.

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{photo by Espen}


On the way home from getting coffee I got a hold of my mom just when she was trying to get a hold of me to let us know that they were on there way over and wanted to know if we wanted to go get some dinner. I was so happy, not only did I get to see Tricia and her man Jack again today, but we got to see her sister as well (These sister's are HILARIOUS)...I may not have been able to meet up with my sisters family but I did get a chance to see my parents still, FUN. My parents let me pick the restaurant since we were in my neighborhood but my dad said he was craving meat. My mom mentioned Mexican food and just like that, we were at Los Olivos. Ha.

We had a delicious meal and some hilarious conversations. And once again my dad and I realized even more things that we have in common. This time it was me suggesting that I won't be ordering food for Espen in restaurants anymore since half the time he doesn't eat it...just like my dad did to me on an infamous trip to Mami Leoni's in Little Italy NY when I was 9. Hahah! We also got a kick out of our sunglasses hooked on our shirts and our electronic cigarette that we had out after dinner.


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Can you believe I haven't smoked since January and my dad hasn't smoked since he got his E cig a couple of weeks ago. Amazing.

Oh, and one last thing about dinner, well 2 things. The same host from the night before sat us in the bar area again and I once again had to ask if we could sit in the restaurant side, duh! Our waitress heard me ask Espen if he wanted the same thing he had the night before so when we left she said 'thanks, see you soon' to my parents and 'see you tomorrow' to me. Ha!

Before Espen went to bed tonight we talked about how much fun we had today and said that now we are going to have to find something even better to do tomorrow, if it's possible.


**Disclaimer-I am dead tired and don't have the energy to proof read my ramblings tonight in case some of this does not make sense.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

cake balls

I decided to give Cake Balls a try this weekend and man, I am so glad I did. Who ever came up with the cake ball is a genius. Bakerella has an amazing site filled will all things sweet and delicious, her cake pops are freakin' adorable.

You couldn't get more simple when it comes to ingredients. You basically pick a cake mix, buy some frosting, mash it together and there. Cake Balls.

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Forgot to picture oil...but seriously, this was it.


While at the store this morning I bought Espen a Junior Chef Bake Set that was marked as clearance at Fry's. I kind of thought it may turn out to be a piece of junk but it was actually pretty cute. While I mixed up the Cake Ball ingredients Espen mixed up his own concoction which included flour, water and various sprinkles.

First he had to steal some of my water.

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Jeremy came out from the bedroom and saw this sitting on the stove and with much concern in his voice asked why the cake was broken! Ha. I just thought it would help it cool faster this way.

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While the cake was cooling Espen asked if we could bake what he had made. Sure, why not? It was greenish/black liquid, but let's stick it in the oven and see what happens. Well, this is what happens. You get speckled black rubber pads in your muffin tin.

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Espen wasn't sure what to make of them. They looked pretty gross, even to the 3 year old creator.

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But that didn't stop him from having fun with them.

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By this time the cake was cool and I was ready for the messy part. Mushing up the cake and icing and making little balls. FUN!

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I eventually ended up adding some yellow food coloring to the mix since we used a Lemon cake mix and went with White Chocolate.

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Not bad, not bad. It was after about 15 or so that I finally got the hang of rolling them in the melted chocolate so that they didn't turn out so lumpy. I had a weird little spoon shaking technique that ended up working really well. I should post a video, hilarious.

Espen wasn't too interested in coating the cake balls, he opted for chopping up a piece of chocolate bark in a mini skillet.

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What a fun dessert to make and man, we have plenty to share, I'll most likely be bringing some left overs to work with me on Monday, that is, if I don't eat them all first.

fabulous friday

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Friday night was amazing. Allison & I went to yoga after work and again I had a great time in class. Oh how I love Laura. By the time I got home Tricia, Michelle and there boys had just arrived. We were all starving so after waiting 15 minutes for me to find something to wear we walked over to Los Olivos. There were 6 of us and 3 kids (under 4) but the host sat us in the bar area. We sat at a crappy black table with basically metal folding chairs surrounded by cougars and gross dudes. We were cracking up, why would they sit us there?? I asked the host if we could maybe sit in the restaurant side and he said 'Oh ya, of course, follow me.', like it was no big deal. Duh dude, you should have sat us there first. Ha.

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It did not take long before 2 pitchers of margaritas hit our table followed by oh so yummy plates of fajitas, enchiladas and my favorite, chili relleno.

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I swear Tricia was at dinner with us but every picture I have of her is the side or back of her head, damn it. And although I didn't have any pictures of her I did get some good ones of her beautiful little son, Jack. He is unbelievably cute.

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Espen didn't last very long, it was super late so I am not surprised that he fell asleep in a really loud room filled with strangers yapping away, but that's okay, we all love to cuddle with him.

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{he loves his Aunt Allison}


I think it was about 10:30 by the time we got home and that was it for me. Espen & I both crashed within 10 minutes of being home. What a wonderful night.

Friday, February 26, 2010

easy to please

Jeremy knows how to keep me happy and I think I am pretty easy to please.

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Syrah + Gjetost = a smile on my face


Speaking of smiles on my face, how cute is this picture of Espen at the pet shop. His face kills me. I'm so happy it's the weekend so I can have fun with this little guy.

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Speaking of the weekend, it's Friday night and we should have a fun time tonight. Me and my lady friends are going to do some yoga, then afterwards head back to our place to change so we can walk across the street and stuff our faces at Los Olivos. So good!

I'm looking forward to making cake balls and hanging out with my family and I'm also looking forward to cleaning our home, it's a bit on the messy side...it doesn't take much to make 600 sq ft messy, so clean up should be a piece of cake balls. HA!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

wednesday date night

Date night with Espen was tons of fun. I took the afternoon off from work since my mom wasn't able to watch the dude today. (Hope you feel better, Mama) I tried to sneak a nap in but Espen was not having it. I was laying in bed while he ran around the bedroom and every time I would get restless and sit up Espen would ask 'Did you have good dreams?'. Ha. I kept telling him, 'Buddy, I haven't gone to sleep yet.', this happened at least 5 times. Every time, 'did you have good dreams?'

We were getting restless so we took a drive over to Chipotle for dinner. We ate outside since the weather was SO nice.
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I drive by Sprinkles twice a day and always tell myself that I need to stop in there some time for a cupcake but never have. When we pulled up to Chipotle we passed Sprinkles on the right and Yogurtland on the left. Espen immediately suggested Yogurtland but I had my heart set on a cupcake. We went in, took a look at the cupcakes that were available and I was pretty let down. Vanilla, Chocolate and Black & White was all they had left. We are making cake balls this weekend and we have a birthday party on Saturday so I asked Espen if he wanted cupcakes or ice cream, he screamed ICE CREAM, so I politely smiled at the Sprinkles girl, who was nice enough to give Espen a sticker even after he had voiced his preference for their competition across the driveway, and out the door we went.
In the end, he made the best decision. I love Yogurtland. Plain frozen yogurt, cheesecake bites, cap'n crunch, black berries, strawberries, kiwi, 3 gummy worms (two for Espen, one for me), yummers.

Hmmmm, what do I want, a spoonful of kiwi or a spoonful of cheesecake?
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After dinner we had to work off the burritos and frozen yogurt with a bike ride to the park. There were tons of people out tonight along the greenbelt. It was pretty late so the park was empty so Espen got to dig and dig and dig all he wanted and I was able to get in some yoga and fake rope jumping. I was jumping and bouncing around like a maniac, I'm not sure what I was doing but my legs are killing me today.

We stayed at the park for about an hour and then headed home. Espen was so sleepy, he picked out the Last Unicorn to watch and before the crazy theme song was even over he was sound asleep.

I'm not sure what I was thinking but I decided to make some coffee for our walk. The next thing you know, it's 1am and I have literally talked Jeremy's ear off about all things Aksel Lund Svindal...and bless Jeremy's heart for letting me talk his ear off about my new boyfriend, he even helped me download pictures of him so I could have a new screen saver for my phone. My alarm clock is my cell phone, I told Jeremy that when I wake up now and see an Olympic gold medal winner on my phone I have no excuse when it comes to sleeping in. I call it WWAD. Yes? No? I was trying to get Espen to say his name but he said he couldn't speak Spanish. I tried to explain to him that Aksel is Norwegian, like Espen, so if he can say Espen he should have no problem with Aksel. I asked him if he could say Ox which he could, so I said, there you go, say Aksel. Ox fox was all he would say and he thought it was hilarious so I heard Ox Fox about a 2 dozen times. Ha!

Just in case you haven't a clue who I am talking about, this is Ox Fox.
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Let's pretend we're on vacation

and have tons of money


cake balls are our weekend treat

Obviously, I'd love for our cake balls to turn out like the ones that Bakerella makes but if they don't, I can't imagine being too disapointed. Cake, icing and chocolate messes sound delicious.
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You can see more pictures of Bakerella's creations at her Flickr site.

I told Espen last night that we will be making these this weekend and the 2nd thing out of his mouth this morning was 'are we making cake balls now'?

workin hard

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out on a school night

Well, I was really the only one who had to wake up early the next morning since Tricia & George are both visiting from out of town and Jeremy doesn't work till late in the day.

We headed over to Tricia's last night to have dinner with her and her adorable son, Jack. He's 7 months old and freakin' cute. When we got there Tricia had just put him in his high chair so he was a tiny bit upset but Espen cheered him up with a quick game of peek-a-boo.

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It is so much fun to see Tricia when she's in town and its SO much fun to see her in mom mode.

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These guys have been friends since high school and I bet back then they never would've thought that they'd be watching a video of Tricia's son crawling for the first time.

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Tricia always has the best snacks for us when we come over. Brie, which Espen said tasted 'icky' and tomato with fresh mozzarella, melon wrapped in prosciutto and PIZZA!

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I love when people are in town to visit and this time was no exception, it was so nice staying up late with old friends. Tricia is here for a month, so there will be more Tricia and Jack fun times to be had.

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What do you think about this, inspiration for this years Christmas card?
faces

Monday, February 22, 2010

lazy weekend pt. 2

Sunday was an awful lot like Saturday. The weather was crappy and all I wanted to do was go play outside. Instead we stayed indoors most of the day, in and out of bed, watching the Olympics, spying on our new downstairs neighbors, chopping up veggies for the crock pot and coloring my hair.

Oh ya, in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday I ran over to Toni & Guy to have Christina fix a couple of stripes I found in the middle of my head and also to fix a couple of streaks in my bangs. I was in and out and the streaks were gone but the process left my hair a bit on the BRIGHT LIGHT BLONDE side, not quite the look I was going for but, nothing a box of toner from CVS couldn't fix. 15 minutes later, and bam, buttery blonde perfection. I kept pulling Espen's face up to mine to show Jeremy that Espen and I are little blonde twins again.

Here's a before and after:
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There are 2 things wrong with the picture on the left. One is obviously the color of my hair, kind of yellow, right? But please note under my eyes. While cutting onions for dinner my eyes began to tear up, thus leading to my mascara irritating my eyes. I rubbed a towel against my watering eyes yelling 'make it stop, make it stop' and you know what, it stopped. What I did not know is that for about an hour I had mascara smudged underneath my eye. When I finally saw myself in the mirror I was shocked! I ran out to Jeremy, pointing at my eyes, 'Babe, seriously, this whole time you've been talking to me you haven't once said to go fix my face!' He said he didn't notice. What the heck is he looking at? How could you NOT notice. Haha! There you have it, the picture on the right is me sans smudgy makeup and yellowy hair, not bad.

So, speaking of cutting onions, I was cutting onions, celery and other veggies for the Weight Watchers Hamburger cassarole recipe I found at LaaLoosh.

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It was okay, it was definitely hearty like the description says, but I would probably either leave out the potatoes or add some sort of chili pepper, it was a bit bland. I added salsa and cheese to mine and ate it with BBQ sauce today for lunch. I did skip the part of the instructions that says to spray the crock pot with cooking spray and now we have a crock pot soaking in the sink, hopefully it will clean up oaky with a bit of (Jeremy's) elbow grease.

Espen was in full on entertainment mode all day. I could here him making a ruckus in the bedroom and when we went in to see what he was up to we found this.

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How hilarious is this? He said his shark flip flops were tap shoes and he was dancing and squealing with his guitar. I need to edit the footage we got of him and upload it to show off his impressive dance moves.

Later that night he came running into the bedroom with 3D glasses on and a camera to take his own pictures. He was singing his own lyrics to the Spiderman TV show theme song, Jeremy and I were dying! Doesn't he look like the old guy from UP!

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When he wasn't goofing off Espen was playing with one of the best, time consuming, easy to clean, fun and creative toys that we have around the house, Moon Sand. I think he spent a good 2-3 hours squishing, building, molding and playing with this stuff. If you have kiddos, you need Moon Sand.

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What a wonderful weekend! I would have liked to have seen less rain and more sunshine, but in the meantime this will do.