Oh Motherhood...

So my daughter started choking on some food today. Not to worry, all was well. She coughed and her eyes went red and she swallowed it.

Apparently I was in the process of eating when the event occurred because a few hours later I reached in my pocket and found a half eaten apple slice.... nice and sticky.... in my pocket. Didn't think that one through real well.

Valentine's Day

I am aware of how blessed I am, but I have married a man who knows how to make Valentine's Day so sweet. This morning as I was putting Kaela down for her morning nap, I came out of the room and stumbled on this trail of white chocolate chips: 

Which led to this beautifully made bed and heart and flower: 

In our holiday-greeting-card book (thanks Palmers for letting us steal the idea!) there was the sweetest note. It made my whole morning! 

Kaela and I worked hard today to have these ready when he got home: 

Homemade truffles (supposedly healthy...)  --> here's the recipe

And Chicken Parmigiana. Russ and I love this recipe!! (and thanks to Aunt Katy for introducing us to these rolls)

Here is Kaela's "Happy Valentines Day" face

Here is the face the I get when I tell her not to chew on the end of her seat belt. It's promptly followed by this face:  

What age are they supposed to understand "no"?? Is she being defiant already? Please say no. 

Recommendations

I figure that I have been getting some great information from other moms, why not share the things that I recently found that are WONDERFUL!

Picnik.com
So this is an oldie for me, but I forgot about it and just started reusing it. So it's kinda like it's new.
Picnik.com - it's this awesome picture editing program. It's easy to use and there is no huge learning curve. PLUS from now until April 19 you can get all the features that you would usually have to pay for because, dun dun dun, Google bought it. SOO after April 19 you will have to go through Google. Go figure, it is wonderful, it  is on the internet, why wouldn't it be bought by the Goog. Anyway, I highly recommend it!!
Another photo editing tool I recommend is Gimp, but since I only have till April 19 to use Picnik I have been using that a lot more lately.

Roku
The next one will reveal a random fact about me. I have never owned a gaming system. No Mario, no x-box, no wii, no handheld Mario. Crazy right? Am I even American (I assure you I am). My parents finally bought an x-box and wii after I had moved to college. Well, I figured since I had grown up just fine without one there was no reason for us ever to own one. I mean all they do is create more distractions for kids from going outside and using their imaginations. Since I got married the hubster has made me see that it may not be so terrible if we had game stuff so our kids and their friends come to our house too on occasion (besides I like that the Wii and Kinect don't have controllers where you plop your duff on the couch for hours so I wouldn't dig my heels in for that one).
Next confession, we don't have cable. We watch movies and stuff, but we haven't had cable or TV of any sort since we moved to Alabama. We never watched it really when we were both in school so why pay for it right? In fact, when we signed up with Time Warner the fellow asked us if it was legal to not have TV. He thought my husband was kidding and thought he would change his mind eventually, he didn't. We really did not get cable.
All this combined means that it is insanely quiet in my house (where I am most often located, in case you ever want to find me). Unless of course I want to throw in one of our 10 quality DVDs. There is really only so many times you can rotate through DVDs while cleaning. Anyway, this is my long story to tell you we found something that gets Netflix on our TV:
Roku
It's this little box that cost $79 for us to get netflix and tons of other things on our TV. The box itself comes with preloaded apps (like netflix, pandora, disney, hulu plus, etc) and then we just pay the $10/month for Netflix. AWESOME!! I have loved it!
PLUS we loaded it and looked at some of the favorite channels to add and two of the favorites were BYU Channel (complete with past Jimmer games) and the Mormon Channel. This means we can now watch General Conference on TV instead of rigging up our most uncomfortable chairs in the computer room. Or I can listen to past talks or Education Week talks as I clean.
Life changing, right?
I seriously love this little box!

Downton Abbey
Now that I have Netflix, I was referred to this series and I love it! It's fabulous!! It makes me wish I lived in England with all their proprieties and such.

Those are my recommendations for the day :)

My Mornings....

Here is what I thought my mornings would be as a stay at home mom:



I mean think about it. I am home all day and before the baby I would get up early and exercise and get to class. So it would make sense that this is how things would be. She even has a little one to dress and play with and everything. The only thing then would change is I would be singing "then will my life begin" because I am a wife and mother that's real life right there.

Now to show you what my mornings are not.

Go ahead and click on the movie above again...

I wonder if I could pay her to come to my house to do all that??