Our 4th on July the 4th

My bathing beauties and I

The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. It brings back fond memories of cookouts at my Aunt Nancy and Uncle George's house, playing in their metal pool, as well as going to the VP Fair in St. Louis (now named Fair St. Louis) and maybe even seeing a parade. Of course, my favorite part was the end of the evening watching the fireworks.

Four years ago, the 4th took on a whole new special meaning for me. On that day, in 2009, I married my best friend, Chris. It took me a long time to find "the One," and I couldn't wait to be married to him. Saying yes was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

In the past four years since we've been married, we have bought a house, gone through 5 pregnancies, had two beautiful daughters, dealt with family drama, attended the funeral of my fantastic and fabulous Aunt Nancy, traveled quite a bit to visit friends and family, and even, just recently, bought a minivan.  We've been busy.

Each year, I look forward to another 4th of July, another anniversary to celebrate. My husband's job as a meteorologist for the NWS does have a tendency to limit our celebrations since it is likely he will have to work on the holiday. In fact, the last time he had the holiday off was in 2011 (oh, and the only reason he had it off in 2009 was because he requested it off). We don't let his schedule stop our celebrations, but it usually means we don't go to see fireworks.

This year, my wonderful DH actually had the 4th off, kind of. (I'll explain the "kind of" in a bit.) We all slept in until 8 a.m., a shocking, yet pleasant surprise. My husband and I exchanged cards in the morning, but no gifts. When we discovered that the traditional gift for the 4th is flowers, we figured we'd come up with something different. And we did. We gave each other an ice cream maker attachment for our KitchenAid Stand Mixer. I can't wait for it to arrive so I can try it out.

After breakfast with our girls, we hung out in our living room watching them play while we relaxed. I had hoped to take Ginny and Grace to see a parade, but there were none near me. That shocked me. I'm used to there being parades wherever I have lived on the 4th. So, my girls had fun playing instead. Who knows, they may have preferred that anyway. Then we made our way out to lunch. Of course, our fave place to eat, a local place called Darcy's Pint, was closed for the holiday (good for them) so we ended up eating at Chili's.

Playing in the pool

We got home, put our children down for their naps and watched baseball. Once our girls woke from their naps, we went to play in the back yard. I had recently bought a wading pool. So the girls and I played in the pool for 15 to 20 minutes. We might have stayed out longer, but I didn't want my little red-head, my baby, to get too much sun.

Ginny kicking back in the mini-tent I got for the girls.

DH and I got the girls dried off and rediapered and headed back inside, out of the sun. Ginny was greatly disappointed at the prospect of returning inside. She wanted to continue playing outside and in the pool! I let her know we would play in there again someday soon. I don't think her two-year-old mind was able to grasp that because she wanted to go out "now". She cried and threw a fit in classic toddler style. What aggravated things more is that DH went back outside to grill. Ginny felt she should be outside with Daddy too. He tried allowing her to be with him, but she was desperate to get off the deck and back into the wading pool, so she was sent inside. Luckily, it didn't take long for my husband to grill up the steaks for dinner. We ate and enjoyed our meal together as a family.

Soon after dinner, though, our day came to an end. As soon as our girls were sleeping, Chris said goodnight to me as he headed to bed. Last night/this morning, he started a string of seven Midnight to 8 a.m. shifts. He needed to take a nap before leaving for his first shift. So, although he did have our anniversary off, it was only in part. Oh well. Maybe next year. Until then, I really enjoyed our day as a family and celebrating my time married to my awesome spouse!

Mouthgasm!

The mouthgasmic dish
(see my lovely hand model? Thanks, hone!)

Fewer things make me happier than strawberries! They are my absolute favorite food! Usually, I pass up any recipes that involve strawberries. I generally love strawberries, the best, in one of the following forms: fresh, cut up & sugared, and in or on ice cream. There is no need to bake it in a pie or any such thing. (Although, I'm starting to consider doing just that some day soon.)

A couple of months ago on Pinterest, I saw a recipe with strawberries that looked interesting so I pinned it. I left it sitting on one of my food boards for a while. Lately, strawberries have been on sale non-stop where I live. I decided I might as well take advantage of the situation and pulled out the Fruit Salsa recipe I had pinned.

The recipe itself does take quite a bit of prep work. Don't let that dissuade you. It is beyond worth it!  For this fabulous sweet dessert, I did make a couple of small changes. Not because I thought it needed changing, but rather the changes were made out of necessity.

All the fruit waiting to be prepped

The first thing you need is your fruit for the salsa. I used 2 Golden Delicious apples, 2 kiwis, between 16-20 ounces of strawberries, and approximately 4 ounces of blueberries. The blueberries were not part of the original recipe, raspberries were. However, my husband hates raspberries so I worked with what I had. I would have added a few more blueberries, but some had turned so...back to the salsa dish.

Strawberries being sliced

Now it is time to prep the fruit, the most time-consuming part of this recipe.  I had to "wing it" a bit because I forgot that our peeler had broken, and we had yet to replace it. I'm okay with a knife, but not when it comes to peeling apples. I feel like I get less apple than I should had I used a peeler. So, I did not peel the two apples. Having the peel on the apples worked for this dish!

You will want to core then dice your 2 apples. My apple pieces ended up in various sizes from small to a bit larger than I would have preferred. I blame my baby girl for that. She was fussing, so I held her as I diced. Not the best way to dice apples, but hey, sometimes as a mom you must roll with it. You will need to peel and dice up your kiwi then add it to the bowl with the apples. Add the blueberries (no need to cut them up, but you can if you want).

Last, but certainly not least, you will need to hull and slice up your strawberries to add to the fruit mix. I'm pretty quick with the strawberries. Probably due to being such a strawberry lover and eating them a lot. I also once worked in the winter strawberry capital of the world, Plant City, Florida. Every March, strawberries would become available in vast quantities. I was able to buy a flat of strawberries for $5-$7. Being single, there was no way I could eat all of that at once so I would slice them up and freeze them for future use. So, I'm quite quick with it.

All the fruit mixed up

Once you have all the fruit prepped, go ahead and give it a quick stir to jumble things up. Then, add 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 1 Tbsp white sugar, and 2 Tbsp jelly. Any flavor will do, I imagine. I used the blueberry preserves I had on hand.  Give the fruit and another stir or two until the sugars have dissolved and coated the fruit.

Fruit with the sugars thoroughly mixed.

Go ahead and put the fruit in fridge until you are ready to serve it.  I did this a few hours before I served it as a dessert to my husband one evening this week. When we were ready to eat it, I got the special cinnamon chips ready. These were super easy, and perhaps even my favorite part of this whole dessert.

You will need some flour tortillas and cinnamon sugar (1 cup of sugar mixed with 3 Tbsp cinnamon). I had a pack of 20 small tortillas. Since it was just Chris and I, I only pulled out 5 tortillas. I spread melted butter on one side of each tortilla then added the cinnamon sugar on top. I cut each tortilla into slices and then placed them on a cookie sheet into a 350 degree oven. They baked for 8 minutes then cooled for 10 minutes before serving them.

Honestly, I wish I had known how good tortillas with cinnamon sugar tasted before now. It may be my new favorite quick snack. Mmmm.....I even have a new recipe idea I plan on testing out soon using them.

After your chips are ready, just serve them with the salsa. Scoop that salsa onto your chip and enjoy. It is truly mouthgasmic! Not to be missed!

My Little Helper: Doing Diapers

Welcome to the third post in a series called My Little Helper. I hope you enjoy it!

Doing Diapers

About a year ago, my darling toddler was not a helper. Completely normal. At times she was the complete opposite of helper--a destroyer. Being a "destroyer" was particularly evident on what I call diaper days (the days I wash diapers).

When I would need to wash the cloth diapers, I would have to wait until Ginny was distracted before I could load the washer or hang the diapers on the drying rack. The latter proved to be a particular challenge on bad weather days when the rack had to stay inside. Ginny would seek out the rack on those days so she could remove the wet diapers from the rack. If we weren't paying attention, we would look and see wet diapers every where from the kitchen to the living room. In order to avoid any more issues, we would put the drying rack in our bedroom, with the door closed, on bad weather days.

Not long ago, a switch in her little head was made. I don't know what prompted it, but Ginny stopped removing the diapers. She would leave them alone. The poor diapers could dry in peace.

Helping Daddy put the diapers on the drying rack

Recently, Ginny has decided to help us with diapers. She helps DH and me in a few ways. When we remove the diapers from the washer and put them on the rack, she wants to help place them on the rack. It is incredibly cute. At times, this can be very sweet and nice. Other times, not so much because if she doesn't help as much as she likes, she may have a "terrible two" meltdown. I appreciate her efforts though.

Another way Ginny helps us with diapers is when it is time to change diapers for her sister. As I leave the room with Grace, I will let Ginny know that I'm off to change Grace's diaper. Ginny will then shout out, "Coming!" and race to the nursery. She will wait at the changing table until I get there with her baby sister. I then open the drawer filled with the cloth diapers, and Ginny picks out the diaper for Grace to wear. Such a sweet and helpful big sister my toddler has become!

I'm grateful to have a little one so willing to help out! At times, it proves more work and patience for me, but the end result of the pride in her smile makes it worth it.

**To read the others in this series, just click the following links:
Bath Time for Grace
Closing the Doors