Happy Father's Day

We had a nice weekend celebrating Ben and both of our dads. We are always thankful that we live so close to family, but being able to see both of our dads on Fathers Day is a great reminder of how lucky we truly are. I'm so thankful Lucy will grow up knowing both of her grandfathers.

We did some shopping on Saturday and had planned on going for a picnic, but after a full day of rain we decided to stay in, so Ben picked KFC as his Father's Day Eve meal of choice. A few pics from us playing around this weekend:

Shopping at Target, Lucy decided to ride on the front of the cart...


Ben wanted to have a day of fun in a box leftover from a chair we bought...


Lucy did not like this idea...


So Ben had some fun on his own...


On Sunday we had Ben's family over for brunch and my family over for dinner. I forgot to snag a pic with Ben's dad, but here's a picture after dinner on Sunday night with my sister and my dad... not the best quality, but I'm still glad we grabbed it!

Baby 2 - 16 Weeks Update

I'm a little over 16 weeks now and feeling great! Once I hit 12 weeks my body has been feeling almost normal, besides my growing belly and being a little more prone to headaches. This is again, just like Lucy - fortunately I remembered getting headaches in the beginning, but not the entire time, so I'm hoping my almost daily headaches will go away soon. Baby is healthy so far, and we get to find out the sex of the baby on July 6th!

Dancing in the Street

I have not been good about taking my camera with me lately, as I mentioned before, my iPhone has such a good camera on it so I usually just end up taking pictures with that... although it's not as good as our regular camera, so I should really start carrying around our camera more often! Anyway, all that to say, we did a lot of fun things this past weekend, but I didn't really get any pictures of them besides a couple with my iPhone that I wanted to include here... but I also figured I'd write down what we did because I do have such a bad memory and I want to remember what keeps us so busy!

Friday night Ben played softball so Lucy and I went to watch and played with some of the other kids that came to watch their dads. On Saturday we didn't have much planned besides me volunteering at Shepard in the morning, so after getting some chores done we had our day wide open in front of us. We stopped by Ben's parents house to go to their neighborhood pool for a bit and then decided to take a walk on the Monon and eat dinner at Bazbeaux. Much to our surprise, when we pulled up to the Monon the street was blocked off and there was a festival taking place in downtown Carmel! We had such a fun time walking through the festival, still made it to the monon and Bazbeaux and got a funnel cake for dessert on our walk back through the festival to our car.

There was a band playing so we stopped to enjoy the funnel cake and let Lucy out of her stroller for a bit, and it turns out, give everyone around us a show- Lucy was the life of the party, showing off her dancing skills to all of Carmel:

Tons of people kept stopping and saying how cute she was and how fun it was that she was dancing... we agreed!

First taste of a carnival food (and loving it)...


The night ended up being a blast, and I was so glad that we have enough space and time in our lives right now to stumble upon random carnivals and enjoy time as a family!

And although I don't have any pictures, I must include that Sunday was a great day as well- Ben watched Lucy and I got to begin some birthday festivities by going out with Beth and Courtney on Beth's boat and then going out to dinner with my mom and sister at Ruth's Chris... both things were a wonderful way to start my birthday week!

Summer Time!

We are in the full swing of summer here and I am loving it! Lucy and I spend most of our days outside, but take some breaks from the heat since it's been 90+ degrees lately!

Here's a glimpse of some of our summer activities...

Swinging in the front yard (sometimes baby gets to swing too)


Going to the zoo with Drew (this was the Lafayette Zoo, but hopefully Erin and I will make it to the Indy zoo sometime this summer too!)


Bike rides with dad




Ok, this one's random, but lately Lucy loves to play in the car - I have no idea why, but every time we go to the garage she asks to get up in the car, usually by pointing and yelling "mamamamama!" or sometimes I get a "peas" (please). So I just let her do her thing!


Playing in the sprinkler (this is not really a hit, I think maybe it's a little scary for Lucy, but she likes to watch Ruthie run through and drink the sprinkler water)


Backyard pool and waterslide!


Hanging out in just a diaper

I like the above picture because I love how tiny Lucy looks in our back yard, I love that she actually let me leave her side! (we've been having some progress in the clinginess department) and it reminded me of all the backyard issues we've already had this summer: 3 snakes, a dead bird in our dryer vent, and a tree knocked over one of our fence posts (note the missing fence post in the back)... ready for a little peace and quiet at our house!

Recipes - Week of June 6

This week we had dinner plans with some friends and went downtown for the Celebrity Indians Game, so I only planned for 2 dinners, but made a couple other meals for Lucy during the day...

Dinners:
Jimmy Johns-like Subs- this isn't really a recipe, but I have been craving Jimmy Johns so much that I decided to buy some french bread and make myself a veggie sub and Ben a turkey sub. Definitely a make again, this was super easy and really filling, next time I'd probably make half the loaf so we don't waste so much.

Veggie Sub:
Avocado spread (basically quacamole)
Tomato
Cucumber
Lettuce
Provolone Cheese
Low Fat Mayo

Turkey Sub:
Turkey
Tomato (although Ben doesn't like tomatoes, so I left it off)
Lettuce
Mustard
Low Fat Mayo

*no sprouts bc I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to eat them when you're prego

Taco Salad- this is a staple at our house, I think it's pretty healthy (we use low fat ground beef and low fat sour cream) and Ben loves it, so it's one of the few recipes we are both happy with! I just throw lettuce (romaine if I'm feeling really healthy), ground beef, tomato, cheese, salsa, low fat sour cream, and a couple chips in a bowl and it's ready to go!

*these two meals work well together because I could use leftover lettuce and tomato in the salad and didn't have to waste any fresh veggies!

Carrot and Broccoli Orzo- Erin gave me this recipe to try out for Lucy and it was definitely a hit, I will definitely make this again, but maybe add a little more broccoli and a little less carrots (for my own personal taste preference).

Banana Nut Bread- Make Again. I did part whole wheat flour and part regular, and also added some walnuts. This was a hit with Ben and I, but Lucy didn't really seem to like it (which is who I was really making it for!)

Tiramisu Cake- Made this for our dinner with friends... we were in charge of dessert and it was Italian night! This was is a maybe, it took a lot of time to prepare and was kind of a mess to put together, so I'd probably only make it if someone had a birthday that really liked tiramisu.

Maybe I'll get fancy and add actually take some pictures of what I make in the future... we'll see