How often do you hear: "Oh, I love such and such because..." or "You're going to love this because..."? I don't know about you, but they seem to reach my ears every day. In fact someone, somewhere is using these words as we speak. I guarantee it.
It's not that I don't throw these words around. Because I do. Whether it's a way to get my daughter to try something new at dinner or explaining to a friend just why a recent sale at Target was such a big deal, I am guilty.
It's reached a point that hearing these words so often has prompted me to feature those things that I love. It may be my family (which as y'all know are the brightest lights in my life) or it maybe a game. It could be a pair of sensible children's shoes or the most impractical silk dress I grabbed from the "not quite on sale" rack from Neiman Marcus.
Either way, I figure if these words are to be used as often as they are, they should be backed up with something pretty darn special and worth sharing. Words shouldn't be used and thrown away casually like they're tissues after all. Right?
So let's get things started.
Why I Love...Visits From My Parents
Because every night is game night-filled with huge laughs, delectable finger foods, and high spirits.
The wee one always gets a moment to read instead of being bothered by people telling him how precious he is and trying to devour him whole.
Eldest gets to cook with her Mimi. This makes her very happy-especially when pancakes are on the menu. Because everyone
loves
pancakes.
And everyone loves Mimi's red beans and rice with cornbread. You can't be a native of New Orleans and not know how to prepare this savory southern dish. Thank you Mother for making the absolute best red beans and rice this side and that side of the Mississippi.
It may be the one time I'm selfish with a family recipe. But it is so good and so special, I just want to keep it between our family chefs.
The cornbread recipe, however, I'll be happy to share. It's simple and super delicious.
Eldest always gets to choose her piece first and uses it to clean her plate.
The wee one may have helped to eat a little rice and gravy-sans beans. He is a southern boy at heart after all, and loves his hearty meals. And did I mention that with my parents visits comes a multitude of newspapers?
Our wee one tried to get into the sad story of Michael Jackson's passing, but in the end preferred to snuggle the morning away with his Daddy.
I can't say I wouldn't want to do the same.
But why I absolutely love about my parents visits, is this...
A repeat image from yesterday, but it sums up why their visits are so precious to me. They love my children and cherish every moment with our entire family of four. They have generosity in their hearts that knows no bounds and always find a way to show it. We have so much fun together. Our home is a never ending hive of activity when they're here. It definitely makes good-bye's difficult, but there's always the anticipation of their next visit.
And since their next visit may be to our new homestead in Tokyo, that should make for an exciting time with even more things to love. Something to look forward to indeed.
Now tell me...what are you loving today and why?
Saturday morning his bags were packed...
The children helped him make sure everything he needed was ready for his very long flight to Tokyo.
But the wee one was extra sly-trying to sneak away with his Daddy's keys. I guess he really didn't want him to go.
I don't blame him a bit.
It was so early in the morning, the lights were on in every room, including the dining room. It warmed them with its glow as the children embraced their Daddy.
I drove my husband to the airport, both of us saying our good-bye's in private. Some things should still be sacred, after all. A little prayer was said that his travels would be safe-and thankfully they were.
It was very hard to see him grab his bags, harder still to watch him leave. His voice sounded half a world away when we next talked.
And with good reason. Tokyo is half a world away.
But there was comfort in that my glorious children waited for me back at home, and my parents would be with us for at least two more days.
Yesterday evening they returned home to New Orleans, and we've all been left with many new and wonderful memories. But the house is much quieter. It's a lot less busy. Eldest is feeling blue and I'm missing my husband very, very much. Thankfully our littlest one is a bundle of joyful energy. He's keeping the laughter going and reminding us to see that silver lining.
Plus, it's two weeks. We'll see my husband again pretty soon, and in the meantime, delight in the pictures he's sending to us from his excursions during his free time.
The gardens from his hotel, The New Otani. Isn't it lovely?
The cafeteria from Sacred Heart-eldest's potential school. Very...clean.
And the Tokyo version of a subway map. I think it's gorgeous and as my husband informed me, much easier to navigate than anything in New York. Considering the language barrier, I'll consider this a very good thing.
Husband even managed to find a Starbucks, but as a rule in Tokyo, it's apparantly a no-no to walk, eat, and drink at the same time. Perhaps it's a matter of cultural etiquette? I think it's good. Why not stop and smell the roses? But my husband was a little bemused that had to sit and drink his "thimble-sized" iced mocha instead of being able to walk around with it in hand.
Forced to sit and relax. Can you imagine?
This gave me a good laugh, and made the ache of missing him ease up a bit. Can you only imagine the stories and experiences he'll come back with? The great opportunities and adventures that potentially await us? I can't, but I'm looking forward to my husbands calls and pictures every day.
It's definitely something fun to pass the time with. So until the next round of pictures arrive, I'll leave you all with a wish for a good week ahead.
My best to you all!
Would you believe I have a free moment? Mother and Daddy are resting, eldest is reading, and our wee one is napping. You do know what this means, right?
It's recipe time!
Served up southern style on Father's Day, this super simple and rather healthy chicken dish can be a stand-alone or part of a meal.
Either way your tastebuds and waist-line will thank you profusely.
So walk with me, friends, and enjoy this delightful dish from mother of three, Darby. She was kind enough to share her recipe with the blogosphere and isn't that a wonderful thing?
Of course it is.
I'm going to lay this out Darby-style and as she wrote it so you can see the progression of this lovely dish. It will make things very easy to follow, and as the pictures I took came out pretty well if I do say so myself, guaranteed to make your mouth water.
Enjoy!
You'll need shreaded mozzerella, parmesean, tomato sauce, and Jane's Krazy Mix-Up Seasonings.
Cut up squash and zucchini. Season chicken breasts with Jane's Krazy and place each chicken breast on a large square of aluminum foil (one breast per square) and place sliced squash and zucchini over top.
Also, I think cherry tomatoes would also be delicious cut up and put on top with those squash and zucchini.
Douse your chicken with some store bought tomato sauce (or make your own if you have time).
Then comes the good stuff: mozzerella & parmesan.
Wrap it up in the foil and be sure to seal any cracks. But try to avoid wrapping it too tight, you'll want to leave a little space between the cheese and the foil because you will be really sad if you have to scrape all your cheese off your foil.
Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes, then remove it from the oven and enjoy!
Darby joked that the "classy folks" may wish to remove it from the foil first, but it's not necessary. It's your call, my dears.
We added Tony's after baking for 35 minutes as the Krazy Mix-Up is a peppery seasoning and my husband is a "salt of the earth" kind of man. Next time we'll apply it directly to the chicken.
Our own teensy changes aside, the recipe is foolproof and delicious. Even our slightly picky eater, eldest, enjoyed every last bite.
I'm not a betting woman, but I'd wager you will, too.
Try it out and see!
If you're wondering why I'll be missing in action these next couple of days, here's why:
These fantastic people, also known as my parents, are here to play, talk, and keep us company while my husband is out of town and in Tokyo.
I can't say we're not having fun. In fact, we're having such a good time, the camera has made it to my hands only once-for these pictures. It's been such a blessing to have them here. The children are just ecstatic, and I'll confess, it's nice to have two extra sets of hands to help out.
Being that they are my parents, well, that's simply the cream in my coffee, the icing on the cake.
I'm a very lucky girl.
A wonderful week ahead to you all, I'll see you soon.
"Walk a Little slower, Daddy, said a little child so small.
I'm following in your footsteps and I don't want to fall.
Sometimes your steps are very fast, sometimes they're hard to see;
So walk a little slower Daddy, for you are leading me.
Someday when I'm all grown up, You're what I want to be.
Then I will have a little child who'll want to follow me.
And I would want to lead just right, and know that I was true;
So, walk a little slower, Daddy, for I must follow you."
He had a very good Father's Day. Arriving home early Saturday evening, yesterday was spent lolling around with nothing to do. It was lovely.
The wonderful Daddyhusband really enjoyed it.
Wee one gave a wave as he relaxed in his food throne, enjoying his blueberries, yogurt, and juice.
And as you can see, his onesie proudly proclaimed his love for Daddy.
This year beside their carefully selected cards, our children wanted to give something to their Daddy that he tries to give them every day...
He loved it.
More than that, though, was the picture book they (or eldest) helped me to put together. Dedicated with the poem "Walk a Little Slower" from above, it was a hardback filled with some of his favorite pictures of the children-and some he's never seen. I'd show you the end product (which was too precious for words), but the proud Daddy took it back to Winston-Salem.
Instead, I'll share a few things we did in honor of this great man in our lives.
Eldest helped makes these...
Then we made these delicious chicken breasts with veggies and tomato saucve. It's a tried and true recipe created by the mom phenom, Darby, of Fly Through my Window. Mouth-watering perfection!
Obviously this was a shot taken before the chicken was popped into the oven. But as I'm happy to share Darby's recipe-with her blessings-I'll give you a pic-tutorial tomorrow. Sound good?
We enjoyed a nice dinner together, then gave our wee one his bath, and put him to bed. It was a calming end to a calming day-made sweeter by the dense fudginess of the brownies we prepared.
The thing that made his day a little sad was that my husband had to return to Winston-Salem later that evening.
He'll be back on Thursday, just a few days before he leaves for Tokyo for two weeks. But we did get to spend the day together celebrating all that he is.
The children love him so much, and I know how much he loves them. I see it every day, it's such a blessing.
Happy Father's Day, honey. We love you.
Pray for this super hard working guy-also known as my dear husband?
He and 24 other members of his office volunteered their time to go to Winston-Salem this past week to help old friends and co-workers that are in a serious bind. They did this knowing two things: they already had mountains of work waiting for them on their own desks, and they might have to work through the weekend and beyond.
For the Father's in the group, this was hard to tell their families as Father's Day was right around the corner. What took the hard edge off the news, though, was that they were helping out friends. And when that was a factor, there wasn't really anything to think about.
Of course they were going to go and help out.
I hoped (and prayed) that the problems would be solved more readily with the large number of people going to help. This would mean the group in Winston-Salem would be in better shape, and our husbands/wives/friends would be coming home for the weekend.
As of last night, unfortunately, this scenario doesn't seem likely. It's not so much that my husband might not make it home for the weekend. It's not even that he may miss his Father's Day celebration. We can always do it on another weekend.
It's the simple fact that we miss him and cherish the weekends that we have him to ourselves. Does this sound a little selfish? I hope not. We just love our Daddyhusband to bits and pieces. We want him home with us.
So if you could all pray for everyone who is working hard in Winston-Salem, that would be wonderful. I'm not asking for you all to pray that they come home early- though it would be nice. Pray that their hard work pays off and they're able to resolve the problems that they find. And please pray for the goodness of friends and the charity of others.
We should all be so blessed to have people like this in our everday lives. It's a real gift.
Enjoy a lovely weekend ahead, all, and to the Daddy's out there, Happy Father's Day!
He's been fever free since that one spike, and feels much better. Just looking at him you can see the discomfort he was trying to play around is clearly gone. All the smiles and laughter seem magnified by his renewed spirits.
Halleluia!
Yesterday we chose to play it safe, but as he was puttering around non-stop, jabbering happily, hopes were high that he'd be perfectly good today.
And he is.
Today we have a few small errands to run, but other than that, we're treating Chez Quon as if it is going on the market. Move or no move, eldest has been helping me purge room by room every day this week. It's been cathartic and pretty darn amusing.
Imagine the things you discover under your child's bed after refusing to look for several years. Do you have an image in there yet? Truly, it wasn't that bad. A few trophies, her Christmas tree and ornament box. There were a few random pillows I forgot we had as well.
But not anymore!
Eldest's room was the first, then the kitchen and the great room. We're on day three of the kitchen as it's pretty big and we're still trying to figure out how we've accumulated all this...stuff over the past four years. Seriously. When did we become pack rats? It's sad how many cozies we have from random events and tournaments.
Have we ever golfed? No? Then how did we get seven cozies that say we did? I'm still not sure, but they're in empty diaper boxes ready to be picked up. They're ready for a new home.
With eldest's encouragement, Salvation Army will be coming by tomorrow (hopefully) to take those boxes as well as eight huge bags of adult clothes, four of eldest's, and several small bags of our wee one's too small outfits. In these times, and being as fortunate as we are, selling as opposed to donating isn't the path we wish to take. As eldest put it, she'd rather people have clothes to wear so they can find new jobs with them.
I'm going to open up our home to you in these next few weeks so you can see the wonders of making your home simpler and clutter-free. This will be a pretty big work in progress as it seems we can't let anything go.
This is going to change. No matter how painful it may be at first, a less clutter-filled home is going to be a happier one-even if we go crazy trying to get there.
Cross your fingers!
As we knew Daddy would be at work on his actual birthday, this past Sunday we celebrated our wee one's first year in this world. And what a year it's been! There were many times my Faith in God's plan was shaken. It never broke, but as I am only human and attempted to understand, it waivered quite a bit.
Prayer and hope, acceptance, joy of life and love brought us our son on June 15th, 2008. Our prayers had been answered.
As it was Father's Day, I teasingly remarked to my husband that I'd be very hard pressed to top this gift in the following years.
He was so elated with our little boy's arrival, though, now having both our daughter and son made him feel complete. I don't really think he cared about future Father's Day gifts after that. Don't y'all worry though-we have plans to spoil him rotten anyway.
YOU'LL SEE HOW VERY SOON!!!
Our wee one's presence filled all of our hearts past the brim. He gave each of our lives new dimension and offered our daughter the chance of a lifetime: to be a big sister; his champion, his spokesperson, his friend.
And, oh, how she loves him. If you can't tell from what you've already seen, our two little buds may have quite an age gap, but are thick as theives.
This is precisely why it was her assitance with making our wee one's birthday cupcakes that was most needed. Perhaps it was the promise of sugar or chocolate, I'm not quite sure, but she didn't have to think hard about offering her expertise.
This was great. Because in my opinion, children belong in the kitchen making messes, seeing and learning to enjoy what they praise at the table. And we got to bring out the Kitchen-Aid mixer.
There was a moment of silence. Then we began to bake.
It was great fun, and let me remind you all of one thing that is very important when you have a child helping you in the kitchen...
They will be forever thankful.
They will also be thankful if you let them help with the party set up.
Eldest had suggested the Curious Geroge theme as we've dubbed our wee one "monkey man", and there couldn't have been a better choice. Bright colors, friendly images, and it didn't hurt that eldest still likes the affable monkey (the stuffed Curious George in the picture is hers-it was on loan).
Where was our little boy during all of this? In the care of my husband, naturally. The boys played and wandered while we girls put the finishing touches on the birthday cupcakes-one for each month of his life with one to grow on. Don't you love the candles?
We gathered the family togather once everything was place. Eldest even tried to get her brother to wear his birthday hat. But he wasn't having any of it. Maybe he was afraid it was another hair clip?
Once the candles were lit, we sang to our sweet boy. He absolutely loved it! He was clapping along with us, smiling, and making his happy noises. He loved the flickering flames and our raised voices.
The cupcakes...
Not so much.
It wasn't too much of a surprise. He's a really healthy eater and while he loves pretty much anything, I think the sugary icing just wasn't for him. It was too sweet. This was fine. The point wasn't the cupcakes, it was the celebration of life. Besides, I know at least two people who would throughly enjoy the cupcakes.
I'm not saying that we've completely polished off the remaining plate of cupcakes since then. Oh no. Not us.
But three days later, two days past his actual date of birth, I'm thrilled for the year our little boy has had. He's such a joy and seems to carry all the life I had prayed for inside of him. Our once tiny, wispy haired newborn is a full-fledged toddler: walking, talking, trying to read and climb onto chairs. He sees himself much bigger than he really is, and while this may be normal for younger sibblings, I'm constantly marveling at his tenacity. He never gives up when he sets his mind to something.
It's an admirable trait, and one I pray he carries and with him and uses wisely all the years of his life.
It makes me wonder just what this next year will bring.
I guess we'll all find out together,won't we?
Thank you for sharing in our wee one's celebrations. Enjoy your day ahead.
