Mmmmm, squash!

Nate is now 4 months old! We had his check-up yesterday and the doctor said to go ahead and try feeding him some food!  Well, I've been excited about this ever since he was born, so I jumped on it! We tried rice cereal and he totally rejected it.  So...I thought, "I love squash, maybe he will too." 

I'm hoping Nate is just surprised by taste and texture and not disliking it all together.  I love his facial expressions.  I also love how I'm completely ignoring his funny faces and pretending that he loves it.  

We'll keep trying the rice cereal and squash this week.

Haha, I love this little man!

And I'll throw in a couple new pictures of the guy:

Dinner differences

Back in the day of my single life I ate one of 6 options for dinner:

• Sandwich (tuna, turkey, or grilled cheese),
• Chicken cooked on George Foreman grill,
• Pasta,
• Quesadillas, 
• Rice-a-roni, or
• a plate full of broccoli, zucchini, or carrots

I was never good at have a balanced meal.  It was 2 sandwiches or a pot full of rice, or a plate full of veggies (smothered in cheese of course), or anything else that I could whip up real quick.  

Since then I am proud to say I try and make actual meals.  I'm blessed to have a husband that likes everything and never gets tired of the same old stuff.  But I really have enjoyed making MEALS.  And I've realized that cooking really isn't even that hard!  Just go to cooks.com or allrecipes.com, browse, buy ingredients, follow directions, and ta-da: a masterpiece!

The reason I'm writing this is because here I am sitting on the floor next to a sleeping baby at 7:15 pm eating a tuna fish sandwich with cottage cheese and apple sauce.  Steve has a dinner thing at school today with some law firm interested in potential intellectual property guys (like Steve). So, here I am reminiscing my dinners from back then.  And you know what...the tuna sandwich tastes AWESOME!

What we've been up to...

Here's a list of the random happenings over the past little while...

Steve got grades back from his first semester of law school.  And he did really well!  Hooray!

Steve signed up for a Mock Trial competition and I get to be a witness...  I'm nervous, but excited.  I did Mock trial back in high school, so it'll be fun.  The competition is next Saturday.

I did a craft!  And I'm proud of it :)  I can change what's inside the jar depending on what season/holiday it is.  

We celebrated Valentine's Day with Tomato Pie, one of our favorites.  And Steve got me those pretty flowers.

I have now started the 5th Harry Potter book.  

Nate has learned a new trick.

He's also rolling over a ton now.

We've both been playing basketball in a stake tournament.

That's all I can really think of right now...

We are still as happy as can be!

Soups

I am falling in love with soup.  Seriously, I love making soup because it's easy.  I love eating soup because it's warm.  I love cleaning up soup because it's just a big pot.  I love soup because it's super healthy (unless it's a creamy soup which is so good who cares if it's not healthy). I love soup because it makes my house smell like I've just made something amazing.  I just really like soup. 

So, I decided to try a new recipe yesterday and we made lentil soup.  It turned out really good.  I have never cooked with lentils before and I love them!  It's like beans that cook really fast instead of having to soak them overnight :)  Cool.  Plus the only unhealthy thing in there is salt.  So, if you're looking for a good winter meal, try it. It's good.  And I put way more spinach in there than it called for and I'm SO glad I did.  YUM!

Reading with a baby

So I've been trying to have a better study of my scriptures lately.  I found something that works better than anything I've ever tried before :)  Reading out loud has really helped me to keep my mind focused on the scriptures.  I actually have tried it before, but I was completely alone...so I kind of felt awkward in front of myself, just reading out loud alone.  But I've been reading out loud to Nate and it's been awesome.  I know he's a baby and doesn't really understand, but I've been reading the scriptures and then applying it to his life.  Silly, you may say?  Maybe. But it helps ME too!  And I figure it'll only do good for Nate and at some point he'll begin understanding.  

Just simple things like today we read about the Liahona in the Book of Mormon.  It was guiding the people to the Promised Land and lo and behold...Laman and Lemuel decide to be disobedient and it stops working.  It doesn't start working until they humble themselves and repent.  As I'm sitting here on the floor explaining to Nate I realized how much we actually do that to ourselves. Sometimes I think I'm so familiar with the story or the concept that I forget to ACTUALLY apply it to myself. If I had been reading in my head, I probably would have just thought, "oh yeah, I remember this story; don't be wicked; don't murmur; we won't be guided if we are wicked....heard it before."  BUT...reading it and teaching Nate made me think about the principle here and why we need to be reminded of that principle over and over again.  

So, anyways, the scriptures are wonderful.  And I will keep reading out loud because it helps me :)