In other news

You know when you buy food in bulk from the grocery store?

I decided to buy some farro - my new favorite grain - and saw it in the bulk food section. Hurray I said to myself.

Poured my farro into the bag, did the scale, printed the bar code and off to the register I went.

I did it, guys!

I made myself a delicious farro and stir fried veggies casserole thing with the recipe that I made up in my very own head. I ate it and it was delicious. A few days later I was like, "you know what? I still have some of that delicious farro. I'm going to make me up some more of that casserole that I had the other day because it was both delicious AND nutritious!"

LA DE DA - I'm going to the kitchen to make more food. Nothing bad will happen!

To prepare farro, you cook with 2 parts water or vegetable stock (vegetable stock/bouillon cubes is the way to go) and 1 part farro. Last time I poured 2 cups of farro into 4 pots boiling water and cooked that stuff right up.

How much farro do I have? I need to know this so I know how much water to boil?

I poured the remaining farro into a measuring cup and it was as if the lord blessed that bowl and said "you shall have exactly one cup for easy math to know how much water to boil"

And it was done. 

Well I have some time, I should start cutting my veggies.

What's this? Husband is calling? Well I should certainly answer.

"BLAH BLAH BLAH" says the husband
"Is that right?" says me, "hey's what's that?"

Oh gross, I saw a bug in the bowl. Must have flown from somewhere in the room to enjoy my nice bowl of farro. Understandable. I'll shoo it away.

What the mother fucking fuck is this?

CAN YOU SEE THIS?

My farro was INFESTED.

The insect is a granary weevil. My food was INFESTED. I could easily see 5 from looking at the bowl without much inspection. They were just crawling all around.

AND I FREAKING ATE THEM A FEW DAYS BEFORE.

Lesson:
Check your bulk food before preparing it. ALWAYS.

Lesson:
Farro is still delicious, folks. I definitely recommend it. But just... make sure the bugs aren't with it.

Adventure Weekend

This weekend I definitely wanted out of the house. After months of snow and cold I finally was greeted with some nice weather that happened to coincide with a weekend. We've had our blips here and there, but I feel like our spring weather might actually be here to stay.

When we first woke up Nolan was having his usual "let's stay home and watch videos" mentality. So I told him that we were going to go "on an adventure" and he perked right up. Now, admittedly, my idea before leaving was just to get this kid some new shoes because his old ones have seen better days. That's no way to start an adventure! So as we were driving I improvised that we would go to a new park that he'd never been to before. It's close by my house, but we just haven't swung by the place. It's a new playground for a nearby elementary school.

I parked in the teacher lot in front of the building and told Nolan we were going to explore, as if I hadn't known there's a park behind the building. It was really fun because as we were exploring he just lit up and said, "It's a PLAYGROUND" and he ran towards the equipment.

We played for about an hour, and according to my fitbit, I moved quite a bit too. I was playing on the stuff almost just as much as he was. The kids today have it AWESOME.

After literally swinging on every swing in the playground (one right after another) we went for lunch, just Nolan and myself, to The Cafe. For the first time ever I tried their famous mac and cheese and it was scrumtrulescent. Nolan and I shared the order as I figured it would be quite rich. The Cafe did a great job splitting our orders and giving him fresh fruit and yogurt too... which ended up being the only thing he really had.

photos never give the food credit for how tasty it is. 

 And because I'm a pushover, we also had cake for dessert.

We didn't finish the cake at the restaurant. Thank goodness!

We did finish off our adventure by going shoe shopping. He got some Nikes and I bought some sandals for Maxwell. With my "coups" the shoes were somewhat reasonably priced. For both pairs it was less than $50.

Side note: I'm a bit of a shoe snob for my kids. They're very often better dressed than I am.

After getting home and then taking a nap with Nolan. Literally snuggling with him while I napped too. I took Maxwell to the park (a different one).

I put him on the swing and that was a mistake. But then I tried him on the slide and I think I found a winner.

The next day as a family we went to the Des Moines Zoo and decided to become members. And because of their reciprocity program, we're now able to visit the Omaha Zoo for free as well as hundreds of other zoos around the country. The membership was a duel program with the local science museum so we can also go to science museums too INCLUDING the Field Museum in Chicago which is one of my favorite museums ever.

I ended the weekend with a 6 mile bike ride where I pulled a very sleepy Nolan in the very windy weather. Needless to say, I slept well Sunday night!

Time Travel

Dang, it's been a while since my last blog. Probably the longest in between blogs that I've had since starting this whole blogger thing. And a brief glance at my most recent blog tells me that a lot has happened since then.

First of all, I'm sleeping WAY better.

KNOCK ON ALL THE WOOD.

Maxwell was definitely having issues STTN until extremely recently. I don't know if he just grew out of it, or if it's because he had been in to his 1 year appt and they saw that he had an ear infection that I wasn't aware of. He was on cefdiner when he started to get a fever and we got a call to take him home from daycare. So I picked him up and got him into the doc that day and the pedi said that not only his ear infection wasn't going away after about 6 days on the antibiotics but he likely had RSV.

Side note: take your full course of antibiotics, people...

Anyways, they had to put him on a rocefin (sp?) injection regimen in order to really kick the ear infection's butt. But there's literally nothing they could do for the RSV. So I took a few days off of work AND THEN Nolan got sick. I would have thought it would be RSV but the pedi (a different one, our normal one is part time) thought it was the flu.

My poor babies!

So yeah, I was already on sleep deprivation but then added on two very sick kiddos made it really hard. Plus we took a ton of days off. Had my mom come up to help cover our butts to keep us from having to take an extra 2 days of sick leave to be with the kids.

Ultimately, when the rocefin ran it's course, I think it helped Maxwell sleep through the night which has been a real life saver.

But enough of the sick update (cuz I could go on and on) and here are some photos!

Friends reunited

Showing Maxwell around the butterfly wint

This is about as still of a photo as you'll get of him...

... unless he's sleeping with a balloon

Maxwell with Grandma!

Nolan with his famous positive demeanor and lunch of pb&j, cheese, and yogurt

Maxwell chill with his hair in a man bun

Maxwell digging into the cupboards

Siblings and cousins (meeting Logan the first time!)

These kids love each other!

Mr. Ham

Nolan having "so much fun"

I think Maxwell's officially a toddler and is now starting to express his dissatisfaction with whatever is just out of reach or when I don't give him food fast enough. He's also getting more verbal pointing at things asking "that?" [da?] requesting "baba" [baba] and "ball" [ba].

Nolan is really good friends with a few kids at daycare which is really fun to see. Just instant friends with one in particular. We had him and his family over to the house this weekend for pizza and play time. They got along until they didn't and then they were ticked. When they realized that it was almost time for them to leave then both kiddos started acting like besties again.

I'm also back on "project: me" wherein I put my health a priority. I suppose an update for that is in order but so far so good! I'm focusing more on how I feel and how I treat my body by the fuel (ie food) I put into it and making the 10,000 steps/day goal a reality.

But this is all I can literally write today. I can't seem to remember much or have any focus or direction other than the brief synopsis above :)