kennedy grace is 4

Seriously, if there is one thing that people will tell you about having children is 'how fast the time flies'. This has proven to be absolutely accurate. Telling Kennedy happy birthday for the fourth time yesterday seemed impossible. The days are long, but the years fly by. 

October 18, 2015: "Can we take a picture with this around my head?"

The third year was a really fun one. Great speaking skills, reasoning skills are coming into the picture and understanding rules, her memory was a little TOO good if you ask me, and you really get a feel for their personality. It's great to see that recognition in their eyes when you can see them processing a joke (or making one) and understand something like humor and being funny; getting laughs not solely by dropping an F bomb during dinner, which is only funny the first five times. And no, I don't only value my kid being a comedian but it was a really cool thing to witness her working it out in her brain to be funny.

OF COURSE I didn't wrap her presents til the morning of her birthday (or make her a birthday cake: bad mom point #1), but I'm glad I didn't. This way they stayed hidden in our closest and she couldn't beg me to let her open them for days on end. I hired Piper to help with the wrapping, but she was much more interested in trying to wrap herself up than actually helping me. Guh, toddlers! You mean, you can't hold the tape for me and rip it off when I'm ready?

Piper stealing the thunder with this hand-me-down shirt for the day.

Eventually we got the job done and I literally cannot tell you how many times Kennedy asked to open them. Brendon and I picked out really practical things for her since toys were the major item given at her party (yes, I didn't even order her gifts until Sunday 10/18 for her birthday on Thursday 10/22). Some winter clothes, shiny silvery ankle boots (tip about Old Navy/Gap: if you are shopping online and they aren't running a sale, check back in a day or two. I refuse to buy anything full price because of how frequently they have 30-40% off sales), and two really awesome wooden puzzles.

For her birthday dinner she requested hot dogs and a Coca-Cola all to herself. Pop is her current obsession and she is really convincing when she tells you Orange Crush isn't pop, "it's wemonade." Whatever helps you sleep at night, but it ain't working on me. Initially we planned on taking her to Mongolian BBQ a.k.a. the tiny corn on the cob place (baby corn is Kennedy's favorite thing to load up on there but does anyone else find baby corn creepy? WHY DO YOU EAT THE COB?! You aren't supposed to eat the cob. Creeps me out. Rant over, sorry.) to have a double celebration for her and my sister who's birthday was on October 20 since it's her favorite, but everyone sort of decided we were too pooped and hey, she did ask for hot dogs anyway. *insert bad mom happy dance*

I bought these to try them out because when I saw they were 'fast food fries' I actually scoffed in the frozen aisle. LIES! Nothing store bought could be as good as fast food fries. I was happily mistaken and I will forever keep these on hand. Score one for Ore-Ida!

 

 When I went out to get the fixin's for chili dogs I picked up a platter of mini cakes. I was a little upset with myself for not making her a cake for her actual birthday but she looooved these and I would never be able to decorate a cake like this. On occasion I may try something cool with frosting or dye the cake itself with food coloring, but colored white chocolate shavings on top of a maple pumpkin cake? Nope.

Act like a cat by sitting in the window? Sure, even if it's only long enough so I can get a picture and then proceed to yell at you to get down. MOM POWERS ACTIVATE!

Then for her final birthday wish she asked if she could stay up late and watch the hockey game with dad. I'll be damned if he didn't shed a tear over this. She even fell asleep snuggled up to him without her blanket which is basically unheard of. So, all in all I think she had a great time turning 4 but she keeps asking me if she'll still be 4 tomorrow and why will her birthday always be in October.

Here's to 364 more days of 4.

Leia

mid-week meal share: apple roses

Guess what! It's a breakfast or dessert recipe! Apple roses! One thing I love about food groups is that things that are sweet and fruity can be devoured in the early morning hours with some juice or coffee or as a sweet treat after dinner.

I made them for Kennedy's classroom to celebrate her birthday and it seemed like they were going to be a huge hit when I dropped her off with them in hand at 9:00am!

*enter Kennedy*
Mrs. Miller: Oh my gosh, Kennedy! Are those apple tarts?!
Kennedy: Nope. But I can tell you what they are.
Mrs. M: Oh, well please tell me!
K: They are rooooses!

They aren't smothered with frosting and most of the sugar that is in the recipe is natural and not added. I'm hoping her teachers were appreciative that they weren't going to have nineteen 3-4 year old kids hopped up on sugar like a gang of tiny crackheads. 

Cost effective: yes (~$16 for 2 dozen, and this will leave you with leftover apples, cinnamon, and powdered sugar)

Easy to concoct: difficult if you don't have proper utensils
Nutritious: they aren't the worst choice

What you will need to pull this one off (for 2 dozen):

Poor lighting in the kitchen at 9:30pm.. WHO KNEW?!

6-8 apples
1 lemon (which I forgot)
6 tbsp apricot (or other fruit) jelly mixed with 4 tbsp water
2 packages puff pastry
Cinnamon (I used cinnamon sugar)
Powdered sugar

 And do you see this lovely cutting board Brendon surprised me with?! He thought it would be a cool addition to the blog! My husband thinks my blog is neat! Am I dead?

1. Set out puff pastry to thaw, they will need approximately 40 minutes depending on room temperature. The directions explicitly stated, "NO MORE THAN 40 MINUTES". Mine were out for an hour or so and they seemed just fine to me! Oh, we don't have an apple corer? Fabulous, this will only take 3 hours longer than anticipated.
2. Preheat oven to 375°F.
3. Prepare your apples! Hopefully you have an apple corer and this task will be exponentially easier than my attempt. Core each apple, cut in half (top to bottom), and slice in thin strips from left to right. The thinner, the better. Rolling the more thick cut slices caused the slices to crack in the middle. Great cooking terms right? If I was an actually food blogger I would have thought to show pictures, but hey! My recipe link included a video!
 4. Fill a microwave safe bowl with water and juice from one lemon (FYI if you forget the lemon like me, rest assured they seem to have turned out just fine), pile in your apple slices, and microwave for 3 minutes. Once you get those baby's in the microwave, roll out and cut your puff pastries into 6 strips.
5. Spread the apricot (or flavor of your choosing) jelly mix onto the puff pastry. I used two level spoonfuls to cover the entire surface.
6. Layer apples across the top half of the pastry so you have room to fold them into a 'sandwich'. *I used 6 slices per strip of pastry but in the video much more are used. Sprinkle with your cinnamon or cinnamon sugar and fold excess pastry.

7. Roll them up like a cinnamon roll and place into a greased muffin tray.
8. Bake in oven for 35-45 minutes.
 9. Enjoy!

For the most part this recipe was easy to pull off. Even without having an apple corer I still fared pretty nicely but it was definitely more time consuming. The difficulties I ran into were with my tray's. I first found this recipe on Facebook and the video had been shared alone on my feed and it did not specify to grease or prep the pan and like a good little sheep it didn't cross my mind to do something different than the recipe called for. Needless to say.. I had to scrape the first batch out of the tray. They still looked decent and weren't necessarily burnt. So!, now that my muffin tray is covered in crusty remnants from the first batch I decided that I would bake the second batch in a cake pan the same way you traditionally bake cinnamon rolls. HAHA, jokes on me because now none of them are cooking all the way through. I'm now forced to wash the muffin tray so I can separate these damn things and get them finished. Joy.

In the end, they all turned out. Well, at least visually. I didn't try one before sending them on their way because I didn't know the exact number in Kennedy's class since of course I wouldn't think to ask. I did ask if there were any allergies/intolerance's, though so I think that's redemption enough.



Apple bottom jeannsssss, boots with the furrrrr!
Leia

it's a 4th birthday party!

Yahoo! We've got ourselves an almost 4 year old and we made the cake to celebrate! With Piper's birthday party one month prior, cold and almost flu season upon us, and a delay from Snapfish getting the invitations out, there was lower attendance than normal which I was honestly happy about. I have been extremely stressed from school and trying to balance every piece of my life has me on my last leg almost every day.

Without fail, I plan all my events with a three hour time frame (I also prepare the same three food options as pointed out by my sister. Meatballs, taco salad, pasta salad, Jimmy John's party platter, and/or chicken bacon ranch pasta). This gives you the perfect amount of time to hang out with friends and family along with buying time for stragglers. Is this mean? I like to think that this is absolutely normal and everyone budgets time for this phenomena. 

All around this party snuck up on me. Not just in the sense of a month flying by, but the morning escaped and I was no where near prepared for the 1pm start time. When the first guests arrived I was still trying to get the balloons filled with helium. Queue my cold ass coffee trying to make a comeback.

In addition to running around the house like a mad woman, it was clear to me that I did even worse at planning for polka dots than I had originally stated. I blew up three balloons that had polka dots and had a polka dot tutu for Ken. GO ME. Did Kennedy complain about this? No, she loved every second and that's when I feel okay with myself, because even though I felt disappointed and that I could have done more for her, she did not feel that she had gotten the shaft.

October 18, 2015: derpy doodles never gives me a real smile.

OMFG PRESENTZ! This is something that always throws me off. 8/10 people ask, "is there anything she needs?" Well she doesn't need anything, we provide her with everything she needs. I then find myself telling people a range of things that I've been looking at for her or things she has specifically mentioned that she would like, 'from christmas'.  The running list had been: puzzles, legos, art supplies, and anything cat oriented. I would say 'low and behold' but since there were less than 10 separate party goers present, the odds should have been slim for duplicate gifts, so instead I'll say: WHAM-O! Two people had purchased the same LEGO set for her and the reaction was priceless. "Wait a second.. what da heck!"

Twice the LEGOS = Twice the mine field that will become our entire house.

The biggest hits for her came from the 218 pairs of socks she got from my mom/granny and the rocking horse she got from my dad/papa and stepmom/gramma Sandy. They had given Piper a tiny rocking horse for her birthday and Kennedy went absolutely crazy for it and promptly informed them that she would like the same one for her birthday. 

I have been picking up socks hourly and have not been able to get the 'clippity-clop' song that this (and Piper's) horse sings since these photos were taken.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for cake (because I forgot to buy ice cream for the party: bad mom point #1?)! Here is the unfrosted Funfetti cake we concocted:

Yeah, it's not so horrible. Not my best work, not my worst. It looks so much more sloppy than the Pinterest cake, but I think that's just par for the course, eh? There were zero complaints from Kennedy. In fact, she asked if she could have it for breakfast that morning!

And that's a wrap.

For, fore, four, 4.

Leia

oh muh gahd

Kennedy's birthday party happened today and it was an overall success! More on that later.

Right meow I'm currently stressed and exhausted by school. Chemistry exam two weeks ago, an anatomy lab exam last Monday, math exam last Thursday, and this Tuesday I have my second anatomy lecture exam.

MRW I take a look at my calendar and try to get my shit organized.

Joints and tendons and ligaments, OH MY.

Leia

it's almost a 4th birthday party

Twelve hours from now we'll have friends and family gathered to celebrate Miss Kennedy Grace turning four years old (today we celebrated my dad, Papa Jeff turning 55!). Honestly, I don't know how these four years have come and gone so quickly - I still have four days left until it's official, though. Yes, so stereotypical but it's the absolute truth.

This evening after the devastating loss Michigan suffered, Kennedy and I started to get her birthday cake in order. Initially she told me that she would like to have a Hello Kitty cake for her party; the theme of which she selected as 'dot', which I translated to polka dots and then poorly executed in the end. Well, it hasn't fully been executed yet, but I have an idea. Bad mom point #1, when I ordered her '4' shirt for the party, I inadvertently had it shipped to our old address. Since the address is forwarded via the USPS the package didn't get delivered today. It will promptly arrive on our doorstep Monday morning. Just in time to be one day late for her party!

ANYHOO, back to cake making. I picked out some ideas from Pinterest that I thought I could pull off and let her make the ultimate decision. We ended up picking an unfrosted edge cake. Less sugar inhalation?! Let's roll with it!

Unfrosted Edge Funfetti Cake

One of the main reasons I was excited to try this out was because I am not 100% used to the oven at our new house, and so far I have over cooked almost everything I have put in the damn thing, and if I burned the crust of the cake no one would know since it's gettin' peeled of anyways! 

October 17, 2015: boxed Funfetti and 'canned' cream cheese frosting. No special tips and tricks or family recipes to be found in this post.

Hooray! We're well on our way to make a delicious three layered Funfetti cake! Little did we know that trouble was lurking right around the corner.

Guys, no sooner than putting two cake pans in the oven did Piper choose to make a huge mess. A huge mess of macaroni on the floor? No, but that's what I would have expected and that's why I was cautious getting her out of her high chair. Here I was expecting a sticky face and hands with noodles hanging onto her clothes. Instead I was faced with a baby who had poop creeping up her back. Daaaammmmmmnittttttt. 

Emergency bath in the kitchen? 120% necessary.

I tried to be courteous and blur out the affected area.

I could not believe it. OF COURSE this would happen precisely at this moment. Brendon and I tag teamed the situation though, and had a clean baby in under ten minutes. A clean baby who in no way alerted to us that she had even pooped in her diaper, let alone exploded out of it, and proceeded to laugh and giggle through her entire hosing off.

After the poop fiasco, it was just about time to get the first two cake pans out of the oven and prepare a third. Bad mom point #2, the first two cakes did get burnt on the crust so, thank you Universe for Kennedy's selected cake idea. Once the third pan was out of the oven, and all three were steady cooling it was time to get Kennedy in the tub and send both of them off to sleepy town. Now all three layers are cooled, cut, and frosted; more to come on that in the 'it's a 4th birthday party' post because frankly I have exerted all the extra energy I had preparing the pasta salad while I dumped sprinkles on the top of the cake with the finesse of a.. well, four year old. I should have just let Kennedy stay up late to finish it for me.

*tooting party horn emoji*

Leia

mid-week meal share: pizza ring

So, one of my favorite places to go on the internet is Buzzfeed and when I discovered they had an entire section on food my life only became more awesome. Recently the Buzzfeed Food Facebook page has been sharing amazing recipes that use Pillsbury crescent rolls in non-traditional ways. The temptation finally became TOO MUCH and my friend Adam and I decided to try some out. 

This particular recipe is for a 'Pizza Ring' and combined with instructions from Kiss My Apron we created a delicious masterpiece that everyone was happy with!

Cost effective: yes (~$11 to make with listed 'toppings' and the cheese and sauce could be used multiple times).

Easy to concoct: yes.

Nutritious: depends on what you fill it with.

For a pepperoni pizza ring you will need:

2 rolls of original crescent rolls (they make actual pizza dough, but I went with what was used between both recipes), 1 jar of pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella, and pepperoni. We also added garlic salt and Italian herb seasoning.

1. Preheat oven to 425°F (I would recommend 375°F if you have a double oven and are using the smaller oven).

2. Unroll crescent rolls, but do not separate into triangles.

3. Place onto wax/parchment paper (would recommend highly; placing on aluminum foil caused slight burning on the bottom of ours) as pictured in video - I cannot find the words to describe the shape it makes. Flower?

4. Place the ingredients of your choosing onto the inner half of the crescent rolls.

5. Fold excess crescent roll over ingredients.

6. Place in oven for 15-18 minutes.

7. Enjoy!

Bad lighting makes this looks entirely burnt but only the bottom was crispy.

The only issue we really experienced was the bottom getting slightly burnt and some of the inner crescents were not was well done from more layers placed in more spots. This recipe was extremely simple and quick to throw together. The next time we try this our goal is to create a breakfast masterpiece.



Yaassss Pillsbury pizza!
Leia

sunday, funday

Today, I am stuck at work all day. One aspect of my job that I am fortunate for is the ability to pick up extra hours when you are trying to save or make a large purchase. With Piper's birthday having just passed, Kennedy's birthday right around the corner, Halloween, and Christmas fast approaching, this is ever so helpful and my wallet tends to stay on the happy side of the spectrum. Another thing I really love about my job is that it allows for studying and reading during down times (unofficially, or not); which today seems like it's going to be a 16-hour stretch of down time. *To my supervisor: I am only kidding, this is just to spice up the literature at hand! When I have nothing else going on I find 'busy work'.

I got home around 12:30am 'last night' and had to be right back at 7:15am (until midnight again). Sleepwise, this amount of time has unfortunately become my nightly average so I'm no more exhausted than a typical day, but what it means for my belly? YUMMO. My belly LOVES this. My body? My body does not like this. Having little to no time to prepare a lunch the night before or the morning of, and not wanting to inconvenience Brendon while he needs to get the girls ready for bed, my breakfast/lunch/dinner looks something like this:

Large coffee from Tim Horton's (fo' free!), maple & brown sugar oatmeal, strawberry poptarts, Uncle Ben's ready rice, an unnecessary amount of sriracha, coca-cola, and at some point my left over drunken noodles from No Thai last night.

Is this more sugar/garbage than I need to consume over 16 hours? Yes. Do I have the time to care about it today? Nope. Will my stomach churn later due to the perils of my lack-of-time decision making? Most likely. Also, when did poptarts start getting so cray?

?!&#*$&^@#*&^ what is this

OH WELL! Into my gullet. Also on my mental to-consume list for today? Memorize skull bones, bones of the upper limbs and ribs, bones of the hands, feet, and lower limbs. Also, all the individual markings of each bone. This is approximately.. ha, ha. I was going to attempt counting them all, but there are far too many and I changed my mind very quickly. The good news is that I am feeling confident on about 75% of them with the studying I've already put forth (possibly during other shifts at work). Hoping to get them all down before my lab exam tomorrow morning at 8:00am sharp.

With approximately 12 hours left until I get to head home, I took a little break from the studying to: snapchat with the family, eat a late, late, late breakfast of two strawberry poptarts with weird comic art, compose an average mom post, and take some time to tray and narrow down winter coats for the girls (my job is SUPER demanding today).

Just ordered my caffienne IV off Amazon; free 2-Day shipping!

Leia