Sunday, September 30, 2012

I return with Pumpkin Bread

It's been almost 5 months since I last blogged. I needed a good break away to decide if blogging was still for me. After much thought about it I have decided that I love this way of recording the lives of our littles. (Well little and not so little anymore.) I absolutely love sitting down and looking through old posts and seeing the things that we've been up to and how much they've grown.

I started this blog when Andon was 4. He will be turning 9 in a month! He has grown and changed so much in that short time. So have I.. I remember when I first began blogging, I was so uncomfortable with the idea of putting information out there. I set it all up and Jared wrote the first post for me. My sweet encourager. I was also in a completely different place. Not that I am any where near having it all together now. I just know more of who I am now. That makes a big difference.

I thought I'd share a simple Pumpkin Bread recipe on here for anyone interested. Fall is my favorite time of year. So even though we live in Fl and it was smoking hot on the first day of Fall I had to stake my claim on that day!! I made this yummy bread and big pot of chili. And we sat in the AC pretending there was crisp cool air outside and the leaves were turning all sorts of reds, and oranges and yellows..

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This recipe comes from my friend's hubby Mat. I only changed a few things about it and you can do the same based on what you have.

First Bowl~

3 1/2 C Flour
2 1/2 C Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Ground Nutmeg

Second Bowl~

1 Can Canned Pumpkin
1 C Corn Oil
2/3 C Water
4 Eggs one at a time

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour your pan/pans. I used a bundt pan but you could use 2 9x5x3 bread pans. Mix/Stir the ingredients in both bowls. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the pumpkin mixture. Stir it just until the flour is moistened and pour into your pan. Bake for one hour.

This bread was so moist and delish. Too bad or maybe not so bad i'm the only one in my house who likes anything that has to do with pumpkin. I served it to company, ate my fair share and froze the rest. If you try it i'd love to hear how it turned out!

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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Today...

Today a sweet friend kept our kiddos so Jared and I could get mucho business taken care of!

We signed this guy up for school next year. A two day a week private school that we are very excited to be sending him to. We will still be homeschooling on the other three days.

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I was wishing I was laying by the pool under this beautiful tree but I wasn't.

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I was sitting in one appointment after another with my love. Actually, I really enjoyed being with him all alone for those few hours. We even snuck in a quick bite at Chick-Fil-A.

Right now I am sitting on the couch with my boy who is supposed to be in Karate at the moment but has a major headache. :( So we are watching a movie together instead.

I have so many great things to be blogging about. Such as..

Adelyn turning 2 last month.

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Our trip to Georgia last week to watch our nephew, Kyle, graduate from the Army.

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And.. Jared, Andon and I all getting baptized together 2 weeks ago. It was amazing!!

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And I plan to but not tonight.

Gotta get off the computer and hang with my boy. :)

Friday, April 13, 2012

I Left My Heart in San Francisco...

Last month Jared and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. March 9th to be exact. Our anniversary is very special to us so we always try to do something memorable. We take turns being the one who plans everything. It's just something we've done from the very beginning and it's been a really fun tradition. I like being the one to plan but I love being the one who just gets to celebrate. For some reason, every year it's my turn I get a little stage freight and have a hard time planning. I feel like it has to top the year before. I absolutely know that is not what it is about but I fall into it every time. It never fails that a month before I am asking Jared can this be the year that we plan together!! Oh my. But thankfully he never agrees to it. :) I digress..

For our 10 year I wanted to do something big. And being that Jared works from home now and we homeschool I knew a trip away sans the littles was just what we needed.

I've always wanted to go to California. There are so many cities that I know we would love over there so I chose San Francisco.

Our first flight was a 4 and half hour flight to Denver.. not too bad. Here's the beautiful view once we got over Colorado. I think at this point I started to miss Andon and Adelyn! ha! The next flight from Denver to San Fran was a quick 2 hours.

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Riding the BART from the San Francisco airport to downtown. I love my man...

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By the time we got checked in and settled (we had a few issues back home with the babysitter, no need to mention here but everything worked out) we were completely exhausted. We got quick showers and went and grabbed a bite and came back to our room and crashed. Thankfully, the beds in our hotel were amazing!

The next morning we were up bright and early. Well, I was.. 3:00 in the morning to be exact! I am so used to getting up early at home that my internal clock felt it was time. Heck to the no, I made myself stay in bed and rest until it was 6:00 California time and 9:00 Florida time. Every day that we were there I got up an hour later. But still, even on the last day I was up at 6:00am Cali time!! :)

The first day there I think we walked 100 blocks and there are some steep streets! Mama must have burned a ton of calories!

Thank goodness because the food there was amazing. Our first stop (right after breakfast:)) was the fisherman's wharf. We saw the sea lions playing (more like fighting) on the decks. Then we headed over and got some delish clam chowder and a beer from a street vendor. It was so fresh and loaded with clams. yum! From there we just kept walking and exploring. It was so great to just walk the streets with my babe. The weather was perfect. High 60's to low 70's during the day with the sun shining. Love it!

Some of the different sights..

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Jared and I riding a cable car.

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The Bay bridge.

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One of the nights we just took dinner back to the room and watched movies. Perfect.

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The day before we went home we planned a trip to Napa and Sonoma Valleys. I can't say enough about how amazing this day was. We were picked up at our hotel in the morning and dropped back off in the evening.

My babe, catching up on a few emails before we left that morning.

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Before we went to wine country we stopped off at Muir Woods National Monument. It was a beautiful park with some of the tallest redwood trees in the world.

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Then we headed to Sonoma Valley first to a sparkling wine tasting. The valleys looked just like you would picture. So beautiful!

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And last but not least. A stop at the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so beautiful. I don't know why but it was something that I had to see and was so happy when I did.

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We flew out early the next morning and didn't get home to our babes until late that night.

It really was such a romantic trip. We packed a ton into 4 days but it still felt relaxing and fun.

Happy 10 Year Anniversary babe. Looking forward to what you have in store for our 11th!! :)

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Christmas in March

Merry Christmas friends! ;) Christmas was so amazing this year and not for any reason in particular. We stayed home (which we always do now.) Jared and I used to always go to my parents for Christmas morning but since Andon was small we started to stay home and then go visit our families Christmas afternoon.

I don't exactly know what it is but every year I tell Jared 'this was my favorite Christmas.'

And really, 2011 really was.

All the Christmas traditions seemed so exciting and special this year. More so than ever.

Going to pick out our tree and decorating it...

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Making a gingerbread house.. Andon loves to do these. Neither Jared or I help make it. (I help hold the walls together at first so it doesn't fall apart but that's it.) We let the kids go crazy with the decorating so we usually have some pretty awesome gingey houses!! :))

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Going to see Santa!

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We added a new tradition this year. Our sweet little elf on the shelf "Pix"!

He did all kinds of fun things like hang candy canes all over the tree and climb to the top for the kids to find him in the morning. One night he cut out lots and lots and lots of snowflakes and hung them all over the ceiling outside of Andon's room. That was his best trick! :) He wrote his name in cereal and Santa in legos and hid in many places all over the house.

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Baking and eating lots of chocolate chip cookies.. I'm sure I baked cookies a half dozen times during the month of December! Growing up my Mom always made them around Christmas so whenever I make them I think of it. Love that.

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Going to watch Andon in his Christmas program at church. Such a sweet thing but sometimes these tend to be more funny to me. All the different little personality's up there. So cute!

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And opening gifts on Christmas morning. This was the first year that we had a child come into our room at an absurd time of the morning or I should say night. We put Andon to bed around 8:30, his usual bed time. Then Jared and I got to work putting together a gifts and things. We had got into bed around 11:30 and sometime right after that Andon came walking in asking if it was time to get up! No way child.. Jared took him back to bed only to have him show up again around 2:30 am. Poor guy just couldn't rest with all the excitement! I took him to bed this time and he didn't wake up until around 6:30 or so. I can handle that! :)

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I'm sure it sounds crazy to be posting about Christmas in March but this is my blog and it's what I do. Not really, just this year. ;) Blogging has not come easy for me in the last few months. I love love love to document these things for my littles and myself to look back on so that's why i'm posting about Christmas now. Boo! But better late than never! It's only March right! Wow though, can you believe it's March!? We were just all hopped up on New Year's Resolution's and now it's halfway through March. Time is a flyin'.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Today

1. I have one coming out of sickness...

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2. And another coming into it.

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3. I have gone to the grocery store twice before 11 am. (needed lentils for a soup i'm making for dinner and forgot the 1st time).

4. I have sang Twinkle Twinkle little star approx. 100 times. :) My littlest loves it.

5. Adelyn got new socks at Target this morning.

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6. I have posted at least 5 pics on Instagram. A little trigger happy. :)

7. I plan on cleaning my house. I should be doing that now because Adelyn's asleep and Andon is resting. hmmm

8. I don't have to run. It's a rest day on my 12 week half marathon training schedule. yay!

9. I actually remembered to put my wedding rings on before I left to run errands this am. I usually forget.

10. I plan to get lots of snuggles with my boy. I really hate it when my kids are sick. Something feels unsettled in me until they are better.

Happy Wednesday!

p.s i joined Bloglovin today. A fun sites where you can follow all of your favorite blogs.

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Friday, January 27, 2012

Changes in the Works!!

I hope you can tell that I am making a few changes here on the ole site! :) I certainly wish I knew more about coding and all that fun behind the scenes stuff!! But maybe someday I can hire someone to make it look the way I want it to. The biggest change is the URL.. I had been wanting to change it from jaredjenandandon for a long time but just wouldn't make the jump. So last week I bought the URL jenmirabile.com and I am so happy that I finally did! You shouldn't have any problems coming here from the old address ( i'm pretty sure it defers to this one but if there are any troubles please let me know so i can (try) to figure it out. :))

8th Birthday

In November our sweet Andon turned 8. We wanted to do something totally different for him this year.

We got a babysitter for Adelyn and took him to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure for the day. We had a blast running through the park jumping on any ride he wanted to (except the big roller coasters, he was still 2 in. too short..bummer).

We hung out in the arcade for an hour or so playing shooting games and motorcycle riding games. Waited in line to meet the real spider man. And went on one of the scariest rides I have ever been on... Tower of Terror!!! I had never been on it before and neither had Andon so we didn't know what to expect but as soon as they fastened my seat belt and the floor dropped out I had a sinking feeling. Sure enough, it shoots you straight into the air and once you get to the top you have that terrible feeling in your stomach.. OHHH I hate that feeling!! I looked through the arm restraint to see Andon's face and that made it worse! Poor guy was so scared, as soon as we hit the ground we both said we'd never do it again!

We filled up on pizza, candy, soda and popcorn which equals perfection to my guy!

The day was long and full and Andon loved every bit of turning 8!!

We certainly missed our girl but it was nice to spend the day focused on him. :)

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Legoland and Best Friends

Ok, so I lied. I thought the next post would be Christmas but while going through all my pics I came across our pics from Legoland.

My cousin Heather is a school teacher and her school was going on a field trip there. As are all the schools in Florida this year! But since we homeschool we weren't going to get the awesome price of 5.00 per child to get in! So when she called and invited us to go with her school we jumped at the chance.

I have to be honest, I didn't have much of an expectation of Legoland. Being that we live in Orlando and have Disney World, Universal Studios, Seaworld and lots more theme parks right in our back yard. But was still looking forward to taking Andon who is a major Lego fan. And I have to say that I was totally surprised. There was so much to do there!! So many rides that we didn't get to ride them all. Fun rides for the kids as well as the adults. Even Adelyn was able to ride a couple. They had great little areas for her to play and not feel overwhelmed by big kids and of course TONS for the big guys to do.

There were amazing sculptures made out of Legos. Full cities!! I think that was my favorite part. Walking through Las Vegas, New York City, Miami and lots more all made of LEGOS. So neat! Must have taken forever to build. There was even a full size SUV built out of Legos.

Andon brought along his best buddy Jordan who is also homeschooled. These two seriously crack me up. They were pretending to be brothers all day. They really are the best of friends who get along so well and have a lot of fun together.

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We did everything we possibly could before they closed at 6pm but didn't get to do it all. So eventually i'm sure we'll be making a trip back! :)

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Happy New Year {but we gotta go back}

Happy New Year! We are 3 days into the new year and you can feel the excitement of the potential of what is to come! I left my little blog back in November :( so I have much to catch up on. I can't just skip right to where we are now!!

Last year (had to do it :) Jared and Andon were training to run their first race. They worked hard and were ready to run the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. It really is such a fun way to start Thanksgiving Day! Well, the day before the race, Jared was unloading the dishwasher and literally fell to the floor! I was just standing there asking if there was something I should or could do!?! He threw out his back!! He laid there until he could manage to move to the couch and that is where he pretty much stayed all day. He kept saying I still might be able to run but by evening time it was obvious he wasn't going to be able to. He called Andon in and said he wasn't gonna be able to run so Mommy would have to run it with him. Andon's reply... "ok." Not the brokenhearted answer we were both looking for. :) No big, he's 8 and was just ready to run baby. With or without either one of us!

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These pics are from before the race. We were very serious about stretching out and thankfully Jared was able to come and watch along with Adelyn and Papa.

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These are all iphone pics - insert New Year's resolution - use my darn camera's more! I have two great Nikon cameras and this year I am gonna learn all that I can about them and start using them. It's just been so easy to whip out my phone and take pics (especially since Instragram, i LOVE it) but I am really gonna start to take more and better photos this year! :)

After we stretched out and said goodbye, Andon and I headed to the start line. It was such a precious time standing there with my son waiting to run a race together. He seemed a little nervous but i'm pretty sure he was just ready to get this whole thing done because all of his cousins were coming to the house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Once the gun shot we slowly started to move. After about 3-4 minutes we got going on our pace. We talked the whole time about breathing, staying focused, some of the crazy people wearing turkey costumes (among other things) where Daddy and Adelyn were going to be when we were done and lots more. I was beaming with joy running with my boy. He is the most precious little guy. He has changed our lives in so many ways and we are continually thankful for the gift God has given us in Andon.

Just after we passed the 2 and 1/2 mile mark we were both pumped. Ready to see the finish line! Once it was in site I was looking everywhere for Jared and sure enough right before we crossed at 36 minutes and 4 seconds there they were. Screaming "GO ANDON, GOOOOO!!" As we crossed the finish line Andon screams out "I was born this way!" Trust me it was all very exciting and kind of emotional at the same time. Andon then looked and me and said "Daddy is so proud of me" and he was. When we got to him the tears were running down his face. Jared was beyond proud of the accomplishment for Andon and Andon had a permanent smile the whole way home.

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Once we got home and showered all of our guests started arriving. Thankfully my father in law and I did most of the prep work the night before because there was still much to be done. This was only my 3rd time holding a dinner for that many people (we had 17 this year!) Whew!!

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And that's it for Thanksgiving pics because Mama was in the kitchen ALL day! But loving every minute of it. :)

Next up - Christmas 2010!!