Meal Planning & recap

Last week's meals were delicious and turned out as well as hoped.
Highlights:

• Elk burgers were very good, though I'd recommend making five patties instead of six.
• Leslie's Butternut Squash Soup is going into my recipe rotation. It was easy, delicious and SO filling. If you're cooking for two, I'd suggest cutting the recipe in half because you'll have a lot left over since it fills you up.
• Sam the Cooking Guy's Fish Stick Tacos were good, but the best part about them is that they're easy and fast.

This week's meals:

• Monday: Pesto Pasta (I have left-over pesto from the grilled cheese I made last week) and salad
• Tuesday: Teriyaki Pork and Mushroom Lo Mein and cabbage
• Wednesday: Johnny Marzetti with a recipe from the Wild Game Cookbook given to John by his brother-in-law and salad
• Thursday: Quinoa-stuffed Peppers with leftover Johnny Marzetti
• Friday: Individual Pizzas - This is one of my favorite entrees for the end of the week so we can use up any extra meat and veggies I didn't need this week.

Yay for Meal Planning and actually blogging lately!

Windblown

The Santa Ana winds have shown up in force lately and Johnny loves to spend time outside in his little backyard pen to feel the wind on face.

Cute, right?

The Halfway Point

Remember when I said I was pregnant with the next baby? Yeah, well, I'm HALFWAY THERE! Holy-freaking-moly. 20 weeks along and 20 more to go. 20 more weeks and I'll be a mother of 2. How is that possible?!

I had the "big" ultrasound last week, where John and I got to see the baby and I have to say it was unreal. I don't feel particularly pregnant and it's weird that I'll be having another child when I already have one at home... weird. We aren't finding out the sex this time, just so everyone knows. We enjoyed it being a last-minute surprise with Johnny, so we're looking forward to it again with this baby. Sorry, no buying gender-specific baby clothes before the big event! Or maybe you can just get girl clothes since we have PLENTY of boy clothes between Lisa's baby and Johnny. :)

Wordless Wednesday: He strikes again.

Meal Planning!

I have become a pretty religious meal planner. I sit down on Sunday afternoon/night with John and plan out what we will be eating for dinner the entire week. Then on Monday, Johnny and I go out and get our groceries for the week including snack stuff, possible breakfast items, etc. It's awesome. I only have to drag Johnny to the store once a week, sometimes more than that if I forgot something. PLUS it makes it easier to incorporate vegetables into our meals since I plan to include them. And it makes to try new recipes every week so that I can widen my repertoire of meals to choose from. And it relieves that stress I get around 3:30pm when I stop and think, "Uh oh, what am I making for dinner?!" Basically, I love meal planning and there are some other bloggers I read that do the same thing, so I'm going to try to keep this up every week and let you know how my new recipes turn out... and you can always give me new things to try!

Monday: Sam the Cooking Guy's Fish Stick Tacos and refried beans (I have yoga in the evening so dinner has to be quick and easy)
Tuesday: Elk burgers and corn on the cob (John is hosting poker, so dinner has to be quick and easy again)
Wednesday: Spinach Quiche and salad
Thursday: Leslie's Butternut Squash Soup and Sam the Cooking Guy's Pesto Grilled Cheese
Friday: Honey Nut Chicken (my own modified recipe) and salad

Professional Photos

So now that everyone (should) have received our New Year's card, I thought I'd share some of my favorite pictures from the shoot. I purchased a one-hour photo shoot and 40 images on a CD from a site called "Buy With Me" for a company called Mel and Tim Photography for only $40! Mel was really great and tried all kinds of things to get Johnny to smile, since it was nap time and he was a little cranky. She was timely in getting photos to us and Photoshopped everything beautifully. Overall, I'm really pleased with our results and Mel's professionalism. If you're in San Diego and looking for a photographer for whatever reason, they were awesome!

Johnny's favorite cabinet

Readers, meet the Tupperware cabinet. This is where I house my myriad sizes and types of storage containers since I'm crazy about making large amounts of food for dinner so that we can eat leftovers the next day for lunch. Anyway. The point is, this is a large cabinet filled with harmless plastic containers, so of course Johnny loves it. Not only because it's filled with child-safe items that we can throw all over the floor, but also because of this:

Ha! Here I am! It's funny because he'll close himself in and then start crying because he can't get out... so I have to free him from the evil cabinet. And then he'll just climb right back in with a gigantic smile on his face like this is the best game EVER! I'm inclined to agree because it doesn't entail pulling my nose off my face or poking me in the eye.

First steps

I guess the biggest event of our east coast trip for the holidays (besides Christmas itself, of course) was that Johnny took his first steps the day after Christmas.

We were snowed in at John's Aunt Carol's house (yay snow!) and so we had spent the day lounging around, eating leftovers and trying to keep Johnny entertained. That night he was standing at the coffee table playing with an empty plastic bottle and a few plastic cups. He was trying to put the cups on top of the plastic bottle, when I took the bottle and moved a few feet away. With arms outstretched, a cup in one hand, Johnny let go of the table and took two steps on his own before falling into my arms. Everyone in the room started cheering and in my hormonal state I started crying.

I am so happy that walked to me first. If it had been anyone else (except for John, of course) it would have been heartbreaking for me. It seems Johnny knew that because despite every one else trying to him to walk to them first, he took his first steps toward his Mommy.

And now, he walks more frequently (especially when he's not thinking about it), but it's still not the preferred method of movement.

Apologies

I feel like I need to apologize for the sporadic nature of the blog these days. I'd like to say that it's going to change... but I think everyone who has more than one child knows better. :) Having an active one-year-old and feeling the fatigue of pregnancy has really made updating with regularity difficult. I've got a goal of one post a week though, and so far I'm doing that... maybe February will bring two posts a week! Anyway, I just wanted to say sorry for the lack of fun things going on here. Maybe a cute picture of John and Johnny will make up for that.

Christmas Day

Obviously, Christmas was a big event for us because we made an 8-day trip to the east coast to visit John's extended family. However, I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow account because, let's face it, everyone reading this blog was either there or has heard the whole story already.

So, on to more important things, like Johnny in his Christmas suit!!

 Adorable, right? He was quite the little gentleman in his suit and tie. Then we took some family shots.. or at least tried.

Four generations of John Dursos

By the time we got around to taking a picture of the three of us, it was past Johnny's nap time and he was none too pleased... obviously:

Oh yes, the agony!!! Poor little guy didn't sleep very well while we were on our trip, so when he was ready for a nap, he was READY. After being home for almost a week now, we have nearly returned to our regular napping/sleeping schedule... still have to work out those 4am wake ups though.