Raw energy

If there is one thing that is true about the Hirsts, it’s that we’re always late. Always. But that doesn’t make for a very interesting blog entry, so moving on to the second thing that is true about Team Hirst: we like to snack. A lot. And one of our favorite snacks is a LARABAR. Unfortunately, we would have to remortgage our house in order to regularly snack on them, so we reserve them as a special treat for Ellie…and an even more special treat for Damian or me. But I stumbled upon a video showing how to make raw energy bars similar to LARABARS. After googling a few more recipes/methods, we decided to give it a try yesterday and I have to say, they are DELISH! And oh-so-easy to make. In less than an hour, we made four batches: (1) dates, blueberries, flax seed, and pecans; (2) dates, cranberries, flax seed, and walnuts; (3) dates, figs, flax seed, and pecans; and (4) dates, apples, raisins, flax seed, pecans, and walnuts.

In case you’re interested, here’s how we did it.

1. We put 1.5 cups of whole dates, pitted and roughly chopped, and 1.5 cups of other dried fruit (cranberries, blueberries, etc.) in the food processor and blended it to a paste.

2. We added 2 cups of nuts and 1/4 cup of flax seed (which we had milled to a fine powder in the blender) and blended thoroughly. Damian preferred to put the nuts in the blender first so they completely blended into the dates mixture – I like to see/taste little bits of nuts, so putting them in the food processor worked great for me.

3. We dumped the mixture onto a parchment paper-lined bar pan, folded in the edges of the parchment paper and pressed down firmly. Then we cut them into bars and (large) bite-sized pieces.

4. Put them all in Ziploc bags and into the freezer they went! Couldn’t be easier than that!

Now we can just pull out a few the night before, stick them in the fridge and have delicious, relatively inexpensive, raw energy bars everyday!

Even Charlie has discovered that they’re pretty tasty…and he’s still generally suspicious of finger foods. We can’t wait to try other flavor combinations – I think a tropical fruit and lime bar might be next on my list!

Whadacado

I forgot that Ellie has no concept of time and made the mistake of telling her that we're going to Colorado next week. She now asks me several times a day if it's time to go in the plane to "Whadacado."

Ha, ha, very funny

Okay, apparently I tempted fate when I said “you don’t see that everyday.”  This was what I discovered during Ellie’s nap today:

You don't see that everyday, Part II

This is what I found after Ellie's non-nap today:

You don't see that everyday

Damian and I were eating breakfast this morning and looked over and saw this:

Ms. Nemo

Little Ellie has turned into quite a fish! She's always loved the water, but she hasn't felt confident enough to be in the water without someone holding on to her...until today! We put a little ring around her and off she went. She jumped right in and paddled around until we were finally able to drag her out. It was so fun to see her so proud of herself!

A very belated "thank you"

Damian and I have been enjoying more date nights lately (not that we weren't enjoying them previously...we just weren't having them) thanks to Jay and Jessica. Jay has watched the kiddos a couple times, including on our anniversary:

Ellie just loves Jay and gets SO excited when he comes to play with her. For weeks after his last visit, she would go running into the front yard calling "Jay? Jay?" and try to convince me that he was coming -- we just had to wait.

We've also been swapping date nights with Jessica (Cain's sweet mom). And Ellie absolutely adores her too! In fact, the last two times that Jess has watched her, she has woken up the next morning and cried (literally!) when she discovered that Jess was gone and she was stuck with us. Even a little bribery with her favorite morning milk wouldn't stop the "I want Cain's mommy!" cries. So the good news is that the date nights are great for our marriage...the bad news is that they're terrible for my self-confidence. ;-)

We're so lucky to have such great friends -- thank you guys!

Hhm

The other day, Damian heard Ellie calling for help. This is what he found:

We have no idea how she got into this predicament, but like a good father, Damian made sure to take a picture before helping her get down.

Hirsts at the Aquarium

We had a great day of family fun at the Dallas World Aquarium (thanks to very sweet birthday gift for Damian from the Baxters and the Galyons). The term "aquarium" really doesn't do this place justice! In addition to absolutely amazing aquariums (including a shark tank that you walk through/under, and several smaller tanks that allow you to come nose-to-nose with manatees, otters, etc.), the DWA has a huge indoor rain forest complete with parrots, flamingos, monkeys, alligators, etc. We had such a wonderful time exploring it all and Ellie was in heaven! We could hardly get her to come inside the DWA because she was so interested in the little fairy penguins at the entrance, and she LOVED the sea otters:

Despite a very short morning nap, Charlie was so happy in the rain forest. I think he really liked the sound of the waterfall, which could be heard throughout the area.

This is a terrible family picture, but since we take so few, I thought I should post it...plus it shows Charlie's beloved waterfall:

I couldn't get any good pictures, but both kids enjoyed the huge aquarium with manatees, huge turtles and enormous (and really weird looking) fish. It was so sweet to see both kids practically nose-to-nose with the manatee.

Little Bruiser

Charlie has officially entered the “bruised and battered” phase of life!  Yesterday, he busted open the gums above one of his top teeth (and has a nice blood blister to show for it), and then today, he pulled up on Ellie’s little refrigerator and it toppled down on top of him. :-(  I felt horrible since I was sitting just a few feet away and still couldn’t prevent it!  And I know that it’s just a part of childhood (Ellie constantly has bruises and skinned knees), but it’s so sad to see his sweet little face all covered in bruises.

Don't mess with Ellie!

Tonight during dinner, Damian was antagonizing Ellie with the age old I'm-going-to-eat-your-[blank] trick in an effort to get Ellie to finish her dinner (in this case, it was Ellie's bell pepper that was the source of trouble). Every time Damian threatened to eat her food, she would scream "NOOOO!" or "NO! I SAID NO!" and throw herself over her plate to protect the pepper. Damian eventually followed through on the threat and ate a piece of the pepper; at which point, Ellie started crying and screamed "NOOOO! SPIT IT OUT, DADDY!" I guess she's serious about not sharing her food...even if she doesn't actually want to eat it herself.

Finally a picture to illustrate why sometimes my answer to “what do you want to do this weekend?” is simply: “pee in private!”

Just a few random things...

I love about my hubs:

1. He loves spending time with his family and is fiercely protective of quality time with us. He doesn't do anything that regularly takes time away from us and we practically have to kick him out the door in order to get him to do anything for himself.

2. He will happily take his daughter to a birthday party (and buy the birthday present!) when I'm out of town or being a wimp about being out in the heat.

3. His "allergies" still get him and make him tear up on a regular basis when his kids do something new or particularly cute.

4. He works so incredibly hard, during countless hours, to allow me to stay home with the kids

5. He lets me sleep in every Saturday and Sunday. Seriously, this makes the top 5! And what's even more impressive is that he gets the kids up and ready, feeds them breakfast, and enjoys the time with them.



I love about Ellie:

1. She's so social that she talks to inanimate objects ("Hi house, what are you doing?" "Bye foot" (as it goes into her shoe) "I gotcha, milky, gotcha")

2. She's learning to negotiate ("play for just a bit?" after finishing dinner; "just one?" "No." "just two?"; "I'm gonna need some milky." -- that last one isn't really a negotiating tactic, but it does crack me up every time she's "gonna need" something, so it does make it hard to say 'no'!)

3. She's so sweet to Charlie...when no one is looking. She'll give Charlie a toy before climbing into her own carseat, she reassures him when he's upset, and she walks around the house saying "handsome boy, handsome boy" (I might have had something to do with that).

4. She's never met a stranger (they're just friends that she hasn't met yet) and she assumes that everyone can't wait to be her friend. If we're at a restaurant, she'll say "hi" to everyone around us and if they don't answer/acknowledge her, she will stare them down, saying "hi, hi, hi, hi, hi" until they do.

5. She couldn't be more enthusiastic about life if she tried! Everything is exciting and warrants squeals, dancing, and singing...at high volumes.



I love about Charlie:

1. He saves his biggest smiles and laughs for us. He's actually sort of a serious baby when other people are around, but when it's just us, he's silly and smiley and full of awesome belly laughs. I will never tire of the huge grin he gives me whenever I walk into his room to pick him up from his crib.

2. He's my cuddle-bug -- he loves to be held and cuddled. Ellie never slowed down long enough to be cuddled, so I just love it when Charlie lays his head on my chest or holds on to my arm while I'm carrying him.

3. He has a great sense of humor already. Just looking at him with a mock-serious expression makes him crack up.

4. He absolutely adores Ellie! He follows her all over the house with a big smile (even when Ellie is screaming like a wild animal "NO! THAT'S MINE! GO AWAY!"). And in the afternoon, when he wakes up before she does, he's whiny and fussy until his constant companion is up from her nap.

5. He's just so sweet! There is no other way to describe his personality. I know he's still just a baby, but I can just tell that he has a sweet, sweet nature. He doesn't demand attention (good thing -- he knows he wouldn't stand a chance with Ellie around), but is just happy to be with you...preferably in your arms.

Pillowcase dress, take 2

Here’s my second attempt at a pillowcase dress.  The colors don’t look quite right in the pictures – it’s sort of a lime green, with bright pink ribbon.

Cruisin'

Charlie has started cruising, "talking" up a storm, and doing other strange, but adorable and funny things.

Happy 4th of July!

Dropping like toddlers

We’ve relaxed the “if you get out of bed, you have to sleep in the pack ‘n play” rule a bit.  Generally, Ellie does very well at staying in bed, but occasionally, she’ll get out to get a book or check out her drawers and then she gets back in bed.  This afternoon, she didn’t quite make it back into bed before dropping from exhaustion…or possibly before being tackled by a rubber ducky.

That’s her bedroom door that you see at the bottom of the picture.

Charlie

I feel like I haven’t done a very good job of posting pictures of Charlie lately, so here are a few random ones.

Charlie in his first baseball cap:

Loving his little tunnel:

Charlie has started cruising, but still isn’t great at sitting down. Oh well. He’ll figure it out eventually.

Yep, he’s mine

Charlie has discovered that goat cheese is delicious!  In general, he’s still not a huge fan of finger food, but he does love cheerios, puffs, and now goat cheese!

A little help from a friend

While Damian was in the process of getting Charlie’s breakfast the other day, Ellie was kind enough to get Charlie a *little* appetizer: