Can you believe it?!

So I haven't had creamer in my coffee for over two weeks.  This is huge!  Just skim milk.  Not surprisingly my coffee consumption has been cut in half.  Not sure if I'll stick with it because coffe without my delicious coffee mate just isn't the same.  *this lack of cream does not extent to Starbucks coffee.*. Although I've only had one coffee at Starbucks in the past 2 weeks.  Progress!

The kiddos had another 'ice day' on Tuesday. 

Hot chocolate!

It's supposed to be 74 degrees here tomorrow!

 Brian headed in to work early just as the 'wintry mix' was starting and apparently barely made it.  Almost 300 wrecks!  It was fine by the drive home.  Nice bonus was the lack of traffic.  Check this out:

Usually at 5:30pm that would be mostly red and black!

Brian continues to work incredibly long hours.  He got an hour and a half of sleep  Tuesday night.  I guess he was awake and on a roll so after a nap from 10-11pm he worked until 4:30am.  And then I woke him up to get to my 5:30am spin class.  Oops.  I think he needs the weekend to catch up on sleep.

Kids are doing fine.  Isabel has show and tell today.  We also got little red envelopes, fake coins and stickers to pass out at school for Chinese New Year.   Izzy stuffed the envelopes herself!

There is a 'frozen' sing along this weekend that we might take Isabel to.  She knows all of the words to all of the songs.  It's pretty cute.  I need to take some video.

California Visitors

This weekend Uncle Matt and Aunt Lindsay came into town.  They arrived from Houston Saturday afternoon and we packed up and went to the Black Star Coop.  A beer coop with some good food.  I had a delicious chicken sandwich and Logan had some yummy Mac and cheese. I brought Izzy's food and she was totally fine with that.  I'm much more comfortable bringing her food to places we've never eaten at before.  The kids were very pleasant and it was a low key dinner.  

Saturday we got up and went to the Architects of Air Exhibit downtown.  We tried going for the past 3 years with no luck.  Either the lines are too long or it was sold out.  This year we did it!  Only about an 80 minute wait.  Luckily the weather was beautiful so the kids ran around while we waited in line.  Not really sure I would go again.  It was cool, but no way I would wait the 4-5 hours people waited last year.  Logan did ok but it was clear he was on sensory overload.  We weren't in there too long when he said he wanted to leave and started covering his ears.  He was having a hard time.

Can you believe I was all set with the new camera to take pictures and my battery died?!  So annoying!  These are fromy phone. Sure wish I had the nice camera!

Waiting to go in.

All of the light inside is natural light.  There aren't any lightbulbs or anything.  Pretty cool!

After that we headed over to Jester King Brewery.  Such a gorgeous day!  Once again I packed food for Izzy (and Logan). Just easier than dealing with calling ahead, etc.  This place is sort of in the middle of nowhere so I wanted to be extra careful with the food.  Luckily Izzy couldn't care less about food at this point.  It sure was family day at the brewery.  Almost everyone had kids and the place was packed!  Such a change from 2 years ago when I went last.

Special treat-Izze's!

My thumb photo bombed the pictue!

When we got home Logan was on total exhaustion overload.  He was totally wired.  It was crazy.  Matt and Lindsay took off (I'm sure they were more than reasy to say bye to the kids!) and I immediately got the kids bathed and ready for bed.  Put Logan down at 6:30pm and izzy followed shortly after.  Izzy woke up a few times during the night  (just wouldn't be normal of we did t get women up at least 3xs with someone needing something) bit Logan slept until 7:00am!!!!  He must have been totally exhausted!

Tomorrow school is on a 2 hour delay.  I have a feeling it might be cancelled again. (It was cancelled last Friday).  We just can't handle sleet and snow in Texas!  And I mean that not in a 'oh you guys are pansies' way but in a 'we had almost 300 wrecks on Friday because of ice' way.  Our cars, roads, and emergency crew just can't handle winter weather.  We don't know how to drive on it either!  No shame there!

I've had better days

I am so glad that today will be over with in about 90 minutes.  It was a very very bad day.  Logan was not regulated at all and was sensory seeking to the extreme all day.  He now gets dropped off 1st off of the bus rather than last. That means 30 less minutes of kid free time on Tuesday and Thursday.  I think he was taking a cat nap on the bus and the bus driver and aide were thinking it would be beneficial to me to not have him sleep on the bus so that he could take a longer nap at home. Since he won't nap at home now he doesn't get any nap.  Not a huge deal, but today was ROUGH.  He was screaming or crying or both almost the entire day.  I haven't had a day like that since he was totally non verbal.  Brutal.  

Isabel had a good day, despite having a couple of tough days herself this week.  There has been a sort of fight to get the alpha female's attention at preschool lately and I think it has left izzy feeling self conscious and her self esteem has taken a little hit.  There have even been tears at drop off.  Her teacher is the best and has really been helping her and wrote me a very sweet email today.

I had bunco tonight with the moms group.  Our moms group merged with another one so things are a little strange right now.  Lots of new friends, policies and procedures.  I wasn't really looking forward to tonight, but it was actually a lot of fun.

It is currently sleeting with a 60% chance of SNOW!  I'm sure AISD will be on a 2 hour delay tomorrow but they like to wait until 5am to announce it.  Logan still has 1 hour of preschool.  So stupid.  I would much rather keep him home, but now that he's in the school district I have to have an excuse for his absences and the last time he was delayed I kept him home for a 'cold.'  Might look suspicious if I did it again.  :)

Matt and Lindsay are coming this weekend for a visit!  Yay!  Now we need to clean.  My plans for cleaning were totally thwarted by Logan's extreme behavior today.  Hopefully I can get some things done tomorrow, but I'm supposed to have Maddie over to play.  Fingers crossed.  The weather is supposed to warm up and be beautiful saturday and Sunday.

Stay warm everyone!  It's almost Friday!!!

New Tires

Wednesdays are our on the go days.  They are a little crazy.  Today was going as normal when I heard a loud sound above the very loud Logan screaming.  I pulled over and got out of the car to check it out.  I heard the lovely hiss of air coming out of our tire.  The same tire we had patched a couple of months ago.  Awesome. So I called Brian.  He was going to come put the spare in.  I decided to scratch therapy for Logan.  Which resulted in a meltdown by him.  Totally warranted because I said we were going to therapy approximately 50 times trying to get everyone out the door.  I called Brian back telling him I thought I could pick Izzy's BFF up from school and then head over to the tire place on the leaky tire.  He said no.  So I picked up the BFF (tire looked ok).  Picked up the mail (tire low, but still ok) and came home 0.18 miles later and the tire was 100 % flat.  Glad Brian was on his way home.  Brian got the spare on and looked online for tire prices.  Found the ones he wanted (honestly we are a couple thousand miles overdue on new tires) and drive over with Logan to get them installed.  The tire actually had a completely new issue .  Somehow a very large pin type of thing was lodged through the tire and went out through the tire side wall.  Crazy!

This left me with enough time to get Izzy's BFF's mom a lasagna (pioneer woman-soooo good) and take the girls to dance.  Since I didn't have Logan with me I was able to watch a little.  So cute.

New Camera and the Allergist

I haven't had a ton of time to play with my awesome new camera that I got for Christmas, but I have taken a few pictures.  I LOVE it!  Here are a few pictures that I snapped.

We had Isabel's 3 months follow up with her allergist last week.  It went really well.  Her asthma is under control as are her environmental allergens.  I did some (limited) research on whether or not we should get the uKnow test.  The test is a pretty good indicator of whether or not a peanut allergic patient is likely to go into anaphylactic shock if they ever have accidental ingestion of a peanut containing product.  Because Isabel's IgE numbers are so incredibly high for peanut I opted to not do the test.  The test is $200 out of pocket and I'm sure it would have shown that she is likely to be anaphylactic to peanuts.  I haven't found anyone who has such high IgE numbers and had a negative uKnow.  And if we did for some reason come back with a low uKnow number we would still have strict avoidance of nut containing food.  So I didn't really see the point.  My allergist agreed.  I did ask her if she has ever had a patient with such high numbers outgrow the nut allergy.  Peanut allergies are not outgrown 85% of the time.  She had a couple of interesting examples. She is seeing twins and one of the twins with high IgE numbers did outgrow the nut allergy.  She had another patient who was severely allergic to all nuts (like Isabel) and did allergy shots for environmental allergens and she passed her tree nut challenge (not peanut.)  We talked about allergy shots briefly, but Isabel is too young for them (in our doctor's opinion) and her environmental allergies seem to be very well controlled at this time.  Brian, on the other hand, is having a terrible time with Cedar Fever.  The Cedar count is at record high levels this year.  It's crazy.

So we will basically continue to do what we're doing.  Having the electronic peak flow meter is the best thing I've ever done in regards to her asthma.  I still am baffled as to why her old doctor didn't recommend or even suggest peak flow monitoring.  I can see a potential problem with low peak flows and knock it out with a higher dose of inhaled steroids before it becomes a major problem (ie she ends up in the pediatric ICU again).  It's worked really really well so far.  She started having alarmingly low peak flows right around Christmas time and I immediately increased her inhaled steroid dosage and gave her her rescue inhalers and she was back in her usual peak flows withing a few days.

Lazy Saturday

Last night a good friend came over and we had dinner and chatted.  Brian was home by 6:30pm!  After solo bath times and Brian seeing the kids for a total of like an hour all week it was nice to have him back!  Nice to chat and relax with a friend while someone else deals with bath/bed!

Today we've done a bunch of nothing.  Brian took the kids to the park and I should really clean, but I just want to read a little.  I used to read all the time, but the last few years I've been turning to TV at night to unwind.  I love TV.

On another random note I can barely walk today.  My calves are so darn sore from doing an Insanity video on Thursday.  I took an Epsom soak today to try and get some relief.

I pre ordered this on Amazon.

Someone is going to be very happy in March!  They don't charge you until the order ships and there is a low price guarantee.  Love Amazon!

I had to do a lash shot of Izzy since I did one of Logan.  They have ridiculous lashes.

Trying to hula hoop.

Egg Muffins

I made these egg muffins the other day and they were a big hit.  Logan has been calling them cupcakes.  Fine by me!  Sure, you can have a cupcake.  I modified a few different recipes (can't find the links!) and have made a couple of batches fiddling around with ingredients.

Egg muffins

Makes approximately 12

6 eggs

1c liquid egg whites

Turkey sausage fully cooked (or bacon or ham or whatever you feel like). 4 links

Green onions - 2 diced

Sharp cheddar cheese - about 1/2 cup.

These are approximately 110 calories each depending on how much cheese you use.

Wisk the eggs and add in egg whites.  Dice the sausage or whatever meat you're using (can also omit meat).  Be sure the meat is cooked thoroughly.  I bought precooked turkey sausage to make it super easy.  I used enough for 2 servings.  Dice the green onions.

Spray baking cups with cooking spray.  I used silicon baking cups and put them on a cookie sheet.  So much cleaner and easier then filling muffin pans.  I got some on amazon for like $5, but I've seen them at the grocery store too.  Of you can use a regular muffin pan.  Put some of the diced meat in each cup.  Then put the green onions.  Then sprinkle a little cheese and finally pour egg mix to almost fill muffins.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes.  I popped them out of the baking cups when they cooled.  I tried storing them in the freezer and microwaving when needed, but it didn't turn out well.  I store them in the fridge and microwave for 17 seconds.  Yummy!  They've only lasted a couple of days in our house so I'm not sure how long they will keep in the fridge.

I used 1/2 a diced bell pepper in this batch, but I prefer the green onion.

And some picture of the kids...because , well, they're cute.  Despite waking up 6 times last night.  SIX!!!

He needs a bike!

Those boots!

Logan with the girlies.

Lounging.

The Best Lasagna

Ok,  I've made a lot of lasagnas.  It's one of my favorite foods.  I've made simple lasagnas and lasagnas that took hours with complicated sauces.  This lasagna has very simple ingredients and is very very easy to make.  I was really blown away by how tasty it was.  I made it for a dinner party last month and everyone seemed to really like it.  I made a double batch and just reheated the leftovers tonight's for dinner.  Isabel had 3rds!  It's definitely a special treat.  Not something to put in your weekly rotation because it is very indulgent on the fat and calorie content.  A perfect dish to send to a new mom or a hurting family who needs some good 'ole comfort food.

It's from the Pioneer Woman.  Here is a link with complete ingredients and instructions.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/the_best_lasagn/

I just realized that this link isn't clickable.  Sorry!  If you google 'Pioneer woman best lasagna ever' it should bring you right to the recipe.

Bandits

Brian was traveling for work this week so Gramma came to the rescue!  She came in Wednesday and stayed until this morning.  Some much appreciated help. We did a lot while she was here.  We hit up a bounce house place and the new Austin Children's Museum, Thinkery.  I bought a membership so was excited to check it out.

But first.  Check out this forecast Tuesday morning!

I really wanted to get an outdoor run on so this is me in 4 layers on top.

It was a little too much.  Could have shed at least one layer about 3 miles in.

Here we are getting treated to a nice dinner from gramma after bounce house fun.  Logan went to town on that calamari!

Here are some pictures from the Thinkery.

Gig 'em!  That's me and Izzy'a frozen shadow.

That is some happiness on Logan's face!  And Izzy and Gramma.

Gramma put the kids to bed (by herself!!!) while Brian and I saw 'Lone Survivor' last night.  So good.  I never cry at movies and I was pretty choked up at the end right before the credits.  Great acting.

This morning I went to pick up our mail and found this:

Yep, we were the only mail box hit.  The bandits did try and pry open 3 of the outgoing mailboxes.  What jerks.  I'm going to contact the HOA on Monday and request camera monitoring.  After taking to other neighbors I guess the outgoing mailboxes have been tampers with before.  Don't they know that this is a felony?!