Yum!

I love to cook. My mom was not the one who taught me how to cook, in fact, I think she's just learning herself. Sad but true, I learned how to cook by watching TV. The Food Network Channel taught me a lot about cooking. I don't take pictures of the food I make very often, but I might start and keep sort of a food blog. We'll see how far that goes. Anyway ...

As a vegetarian, I've eaten my fair share of vegetables. Some people focus more on the meats they eat than on their vegetables and their vegetables are very very bland. I focus a lot on vegetables because who wants to eat bland vegetables for 8 years? Not me. Anyway, this is one of my favorite salads. It has also become quite a favorite in my household as well so I make it quite often.

Kelsie's awesomely amazing grilled Italian salad.


Ingredients:
Romaine hearts
Kosher salt
Fresh cracked pepper
Olive oil
Homemade Italian dressing (or a really really good store bought)

Take as many romaine hearts as you want and cut them in half. Drizzle olive oil over the inside and sprinkle with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Then drizzle with homemade Italian dressing. Put on grill and leave there until warm all the way through and until the lettuce has char marks on it. (over cooking it doesn't taste bad, but I like mine better crunchy). When the lettuce is done on both sides cut into pieces and toss with more dressing to taste. Yum!


P.S. I'm usually very VERY secretive about my recipes, so I am a little surprised I'm sharing this with everybody. :)

Random Pictures

I am a camera fanatic, what else can I say? I have thousands of pictures of my sweet baby boy and always just think I should post several pictures every day. So, here is a blog full of random pictures of my baby.

We have finally found a movie that Ethan will sit down and watch for more than 5 minutes. Tarzan. My mom thinks that maybe it's because he's loud like Tarzan, who knows. Here is a picture of him watching Tarzan before he got bored.



Mama loving on her baby





Aunt Ber loves to play with Ethan, they are playing with the lion bubble machine.




Nanan and Grandad came to visit us right after General Conference and they had never met Ethan. They are Martin's mom's parents. (She passed away when he was very little) They didn't get the opportunity to meet him because they were on their 4th mission ... yep you heard me...4th! Crazy grandparents, they might be heading back out next August for their 5th.
They are very cute and very British. Ethan kept looking at them strange because they talked different than we do. He warmed up to both of them and loved having them around.

Here is Grandad looking at a book with Ethan.



Here is Nanan loving on him.

They sure loved him, I'm really glad they finally got to meet him. :)



Here is Aunt Kacean and Ethan. He loves having her around again and is glad she moved back home! In fact, he even learned how to say "Kace" the other day. She was so excited you could tell.



And here is Ethan again enjoying some snacks while watching ... Tarzan!


I had made him a little bed to sit on in the living room so he was more comfortable than just sitting on the floor. He got really tired and ended up taking his afternoon nap on the floor instead of in his crib. Sweet baby. I sure love him.

Bath time

I know I've said this before, but Ethan really loves to take baths! These made me laugh so I wanted to share them with you.

The water was taking way to long to fill up the tub, so Ethan just decided to try and climb over the sides instead.

Reminder

Just a reminder, I'm going to be making my blog private in the next few days and just am making sure I have everybody's email addresses. If you haven't sent it to me, let me know as soon as you can. You can leave your email in a comment or email it to me at kelsie@bridgernet.com

Thanks

Giggles

Ethan goes in spurts where certain things make him laugh really really hard for just a couple of minutes and then it goes away and he never laughs that hard at that particular thing again. Tonight during dinner it happened to be Martin pounding his fist on the counter and yelling "Boom!" Ethan thought it was so funny.

After a few minutes of laughing really hard, he started to catch on to what Martin was doing and rather than laugh at it he started to copy him. I can't believe how big he's getting and how quickly he catches on to things people are doing!

Easter

Well today was Ethan's second Easter. Last year wasn't really much fun as he was only about 3 months old and couldn't do anything yet. This year was a different story. He really loves balls so we decided that he would probably like to find Easter eggs. Today was so beautiful outside so we scattered them all over the front yard and sent him to go find them. He loved finding the eggs! He was so funny, he would try and carry them all at the same time and would lean over for another one and one or two would fall out of his arms. He then spent several minutes trying to pick them all back up and arrange them against his chest so they wouldn't fall again. I gave him a basket and that helped a bit. He would go find one and run it back to the basket. Once he had found them all, he threw them back onto the grass so he could pick them back up again.

This was when he was torn between carrying all of them in his arms or putting them in the basket.

Wicked

Last night I had the opportunity to go see Wicked on opening night in Salt Lake City. I have been wanting to see Wicked for a couple of years now so I was really really excited. I've read the book, read the Grimmerie (a detailed book on the play itself like costumes, behind the scenes make up, characters, bits and pieces of the script, etc.), I listen to the music all the time and watch clips on Youtube. I bit obsessive, I know ... Anyway, this is the first time Wicked has come to Utah and I was going to go if I could. Back in November my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her Wicked tickets. Well, December 12 came and went (the day tickets went on sale) and I hadn't heard anything so I made the assumption that she couldn't get tickets. I heard that they were completely sold out within 45 minutes. While we were in California for Disneyland, she gave my brothers, my sister in law, Martin and me an envelope and told us all happy birthday. She had bought all of us a ticket to go see Wicked together for all of our birthdays! My mom and Debi stayed home to watch the girls and Ethan and they are going to go next week. Thanks mom!

So, Happy Birthday to me ... a few months late!


This is us at dinner before we left for Salt Lake.

From left to right: Ethan, Martin, Me, Ty, Trevor, Amy, Kylie, my mom and Katie. (Debi is taking the picture)


Debie and Ethan.


While we were eating, Ethan drank out of a straw for the first time! My baby boy is growing up!
(He hasn't done it since though ... )

You probably can't tell, but I'm bursting with excitment to finally be there!


Here is a picture of the set when you walk in, we were getting in trouble because I guess the set is copyrighted and there are no pictures allowed ... The dragon was awesome, it would move every now and again.


Okay, so we didn't have the best seats but it was awesome anyway! I've never sat so close to the ceiling but i would go again in a heartbeat, even if I had to sit in the same spot.


It was awesome. I almost cried ... but sitting inbetween Ty and Martin who would harrass me if I did kept the tears inside. :) They didn't even know why I would have cried, they don't like it quite as much as I do. Martin did say it was good enough that he would go with me again. That's a good sign.


If any of you get the opportunity to go, I would highly recommend it! It was very very good.

The park...again

What can I say? We like going and playing outside when the weather is nice. Today the weather was awesome! We couldn't resist, so we packed up Ethan and the dogs and Mart, Ber and I headed to the park.


My baby is getting so big!


This was Ethan's first time on the swings. I'm a slacker, I know. I just hate the snow and pretty much refuse to go outside until spring.


He also really likes the slide. He used to not like it at all, but loves them now! (Especially with his mom and dad)





Here is a video of him having fun at the park and going down the slide all by himself. What a cute little turkey.

I sure love this baby, I'm very excited it's warming up and we can get out and play a lot more often now! Hope everyone had a wonderful, beautiful Conference Sunday. We did. :)

Going Private

I have recently decided that due to some pretty severe family issues on Martin's side, I am going to be making my blog private to control who has an inside look to my sweet little family. Let me know if you would like to continue viewing my blog. I think I'm going to make it private within the next week, so let me know as soon as possible. You can email me your email to kelsie@bridgernet.com or just leave a comment.

Hanging Out

It's been a while since my last post, we've just been hanging out.

About two years ago, Martin's Granddad made him a giant treasure chest to hold all of his toys. He brought it to us right before they left for their mission in June 2007, but it wasn't stained and didn't have any hardware on it. They left it for Martin to finish in the color he wanted. Well they are coming to meet sweet Ethan on Monday and Mart thought he should probably finish the chest before they get here. He got it finished the other day and we all decided to play in it for a few minutes. The chest is so huge, I can sit it in without crouching over and you can shut the lid. The greatest treasure in my life isn't gold, it's my little family!




I cannot believe this weather, it keeps getting my hopes up and then draining them back to the ground. We are so ready for the spring! The other day when the sun had melted the snow, we took advantage of the beautiful afternoon and took sandwiches and the dogs to a park behind a church and threw tennis balls for Kya and Stella and just got to hang out outside for a little while. It was really nice to get out of my house for a few hours.


Ethan loved helping throw tennis balls!


Then he thought he needed all the balls and started hogging them.


Our family picture with a timer and a camera with a smudge on the lens ... sorry they're a little blurry.



Martin and Ethan throwing more tennis balls.


Me and my kids. I love them all

Here is a little video of Ethan helping, he was so cute! I can't wait to be able to take him to the park and play.