Five Favorites

Linking up with Grace for Five Favorites. Good luck with your deadlines, Hallie!

The finished product was gone too quickly after it was made to take a photo. Oops. 

1. A new-to-me macaroni and cheese recipe. We all know that I love mac and cheese. Remember when Pinterest started a couple years ago and you couldn't scroll two times without seeing the cake mix + can of pumpkin muffin recipe and the macaroni and cheese recipe where you boiled the pasta in milk? Well, I finally tried the one pot wonder mac and cheese recipe. And it was delicious. It was so creamy and rich, which is just my style. I only had medium sized shells and they cooked just fine even though the comments warned against them. I think the key was stirring the pot very frequently to keep them separated. I used 2% milk and then 3/4 of a cup or sharp cheddar and 1/4 of a cup of grated Parmesan. Delicious! The recipe definitely doesn't make enough for my tastes though so next time I will be doubling it. 

2. Yepp Mini Bike Seat. I have sang  its praises before on this blog, but really ... I LOVE it. All-caps, bolded and italicized. We are definitely getting our money's worth out of it. I use it every day to bike to campus. It is so easy to balance, and Ryan adores it. He is big into sequences lately like, "Ceiling! Angels! Church! Heaven!" (of course you have to imagine all of that with the pronunciation of someone with a peanut butter full mouth or something). When I say we are going on the bike, the sequence that follows is normally, "Bike! Helmet! Church! Quiet! Shhhh!" Which makes me feel like I might be doing at least something okay in this whole parenting endeavor amid the ups and downs of sharing meltdowns and I-shit exclamations. One of the best parts is that we can switch it from my bike to Chris' in maybe five seconds tops.  If you are thinking about a child bike seat ... yepp, yepp, I recommend the Mini. 

Source

3. Baking soda. Yesterday I made a berry smoothie and some of it spilled on to the counter. By the time I cleaned it up, I noticed that the berry color was not coming off of the counter. Very berry bad. Out came Google, and then out came the baking soda. I mixed baking soda and a little bit of water until the mixture looked like yogurt. Then I smeared it on the stain and covered it in plastic wrap. I waited a couple of hours maybe and then peeked to see if the stain was fading. It was gone! 

I feel a linkup coming about neat cleaning tricks. 

4. Tamales. The local Mexican grocery store sells homemade tamales and most of the time I go, they are sold out! However, the past two times there have been tamales just waiting to be bought. Tamales for lunch every day over here. 

5. A question for you ... what were your favorite maternity leggings? Or leggings in general. I'm looking for some that are not see-through and hold their shape. Thanks in advance! Although will I even need them with the way the weather has been lately? 

Five Favorites

Finally linking up again with Hallie for Five Favorites! Hop on over for the link-up's half birthday edition.

I guess these aren't really my five favorites for the week, but more so five favorites in the past month since I have been a slow blogger. 

1. My boys. 
This two-wheeled pack camel came cycling up our driveway at 9am after I slept in last Saturday morning. They had a boys morning and came home with groceries for Oreo dessert, donuts and flowers. You know it has been a good day when you find leftover donut glaze on your arm later in the afternoon. 

(I had started to take Ryan out of his seat so that is why his straps are down and his feet are out of the stirrups!)

2. Google Maps app
This was my best friend for the 38 hours I spent in the car in one week spanning ten states. I can't stand the regular Maps app that comes on the phone, but for some reason,  I didn't download this amazingly helpful and free app until now. I wonder what other apps I am missing out on ... 

3. The diaper look

Hi, my name is Katrina, and I rarely dress my son. I snapped this photo right after we met the new family that moved in next door. I thought I should document their great first impression of my parenting. 

4. Italian family.

Remember when I wrote about the family that invited us over and forever ruined other Italian food for us forever? Chris casually mentioned on Saturday that we were invited to their annual wine party the next day and if I wanted to go. Silly question. 

There were three food tents: one that dished out Italian beef and their homemade Italian sausage (I asked for both on the same sandwich, and the lady working the tent said I was the first one brave enough to ask for that ... if she thinks pregnancy nonchalant eating is brave, then I like her) AND fresh pizza straight out of a pizza oven, one tent for the goodness shown directly above and then one tent for desserts that people brought and probably one hundred bottles of wine! And that was the wine that was out when we were there. As we left, I spotted a whole lamb roasting. They know how to throw a party. 

5. Adorable pregnancy announcement.
Is this not a clever and cute announcement? I love it. I was scrolling through Facebook not really paying attention to it on Sunday when I did a furious back scroll up when I realized I had read the word "announcement" in the photo caption of my friend, Sara. Then I shrieked with excitement. The label is even in their wedding colors. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but this creepy friend remembers that detail. Congratulations to Sara and John! Can't wait for our babies to cheer on the Irish together.  

7 Quick Takes

Linking up with Jen, no surprise.

1. Search keywords.

I thought this set of how people clicked on my blog entertaining. I am in fact barefoot and pregnant as I write this post, but luckily, my son's conehead has vanished.

 

2. Chris is always right. Well, third time is the charm. After reading many reviews, confidently purchasing and then sadly returning two child bike seats because neither fit my female bike (side note: after the second seat didn't work after the box proudly proclaimed, "fits almost all bikes!" I joked that this was the first time that I was frustrated to be a woman. Come on bike seat makers!), we finally went with the one that Chris had been pulling for from the beginning of our search at the end of May. He said it was an investment, but I stubbornly hemmed and hawed at the price. Now, I looooooooove this bike seat so much that I don't even care that Chris was right, and I was wrong. I am not off balance at all; it is like Ryan isn't even on the bike. And - barefoot-and-pregnant-mama-plus! There is tons of room for my growing belly. Yepp Mini, you are the bee's knees. Note: no worries, we adjusted the strap to fit Ryan right after Chris snapped this photo in our driveway and before we biked anywhere.

3. Thank you to everyone who has linked up to my Womb Service link-up! I think cravings are so fascinating, and you ladies have made me laugh with all of your crying stories. Makes me feel not alone in this crazy craving world. The link-up will be open for a week and a few more days so if you would like to share, please do! I'm craving more links, so don't make me cry. 

4.  We spent our 4th of July at Chris' best friend's family's house for a huge college graduation/high school graduation/ 8th grade graduation/4th of July party. Chris (same name, no wonder they are best friends) is the oldest of ten, and we adore visiting them. Ryan was obsessed with their playground. He kept insisting on going down the slide on his belly until finally riding down upright. It was one giant slide for Ryankind. Then he went on to eat too many cookies to count. 

5. There were numerous badminton, volleyball, soccer and frisbee games played throughout the party. Ryan had his watchful eye on his father. 

You can see how intense of an ultimate frisbee spectator Ryan is in this video. Yelling, biting his lip and all.

animated-frisbee-spectator from Katrina on Vimeo.

6. Ryan tolerated the Indiana fireworks that graced this Illinois party. Lots of commotion and screaming toddler girls created a clinging toddler in my arms saying, "Carry. Carry. Carry," even when he was already being carried. When a firework would go off, he would raise his head from under his crossed arms, look up at the sky, whisper, "Wow," with a little exasperated sigh and then bury his head again til the next one.

7. PSA: Mulan is on Netflix. I haven't been happy with Netflix since they removed Tangled so they have now redeemed themselves. Off to search for a lucky cricket.