Wish me luck

Well the day has finally arrived.  Tomorrow is my first day at home alone with both of the kids.  So far Keith has either been home with me or Colin has been in daycare so it has been just Tess and me.  Colin officially had his last day of daycare last Friday. 

This is really a bitter sweet time for me.  Of course I am SO happy to have Colin home with me while I am on maternity leave but I do recognize that there were some good things about daycare.  For example

1. He got to play all day 3 days a week with a bunch of other kids his age.
2. He would come home and start talking about a song or book that he read at daycare that Keith and I had not yet introduced him to.
3. Honestly it was nice to have a break from chasing around a very active 2 year old. 

All of that being said though there are some things I will not miss about daycare

1. The horrible guilty feeling in the pit of my stomache when I would drop him off in the morning.
2. Feeling like the workers at daycare weren't really on board with potty training.
3. Shelling out hundreds of dollars a month to have someone else take care of my kid. 

I have said all along that I wanted to be able to spend time at home with my kids.  I have also always acknowledged just how hard I know it will be to stay home all day everyday with two kids.  It is also hard because I don't have many friends who are in this position so I don't have a lot of people to talk to about what I should expect.  A friend posted this article on facebook a couple of days ago and it really speaks to where I am in my life right now. 

Carolyn Hax - TELL ME ABOUT IT ®

www.washingtonpost.com

 

So what exactly am I trying to stay here...  Tomorrow is the first day of what I think will be the most challenging and rewarding 10 weeks of my life.  I get to spend the day with these two cuties, I couldn't be happier. 

For my love on his birthday

Tomorrow is my husband's birthday.  I had originally planned on having his present ready to go a week or two ago but baby Tess arrived a little earlier then I thought she would so my birthday shopping plans were put on hold.  I didn't have anything particularly exciting in the works for Keith's present.  Maybe just a couple of new shirts or some stuff for around the house.  I did end up getting him a couple of things for the house but he was with me and helped pick them out so I am not sure that that they should really count as a present.  So this year I am going to do something that I haven't done in a long time and I am going to try to be a little romantic (without making anyone want to puke).  I thought I would give you all a quick rundown of some of the top reason that I love Keith.

1. One of our first dates was a pub crawl.  I am 99% sure that this is the first picture of Keith and I ever.

2.  I knew he would be a great dad long before we had kids.

3.   His bread grows in all different colors; red, brown and grey. 

4.  We went down to Mizzou for a football game and while out celebrating after the game he pulled me on the dance floor because HE wanted to dance.  That was the night I feel in love with him.



5. He loves the Cardinals.  This picture is from inside Busch Stadium the night the Cardinals won the World Series. 

 6.  We can be totally silly and goofy together.

7.    He sings Karaoke.

 8.  He isn't afraid to show how much he loves me.

9.  He is incredibly good looking. 

10.  He asked me to marry him. 



 11.  He is the world's silliest dad.  (This is Colin)

12.  He is the world's most loving father. 

 

13.  Bottom line... he gets me.  And loves me.  And for that I will be forever grateful.

Happy Birthday Keith.  I hope you feel how truly loved you are today and every day.

It's been 'One Week'

My guess is that most of you are familiar with the song 'One Week' by The Barenaked Ladies.  It is probably the groups most well known song.  I want to say that this song reached the height of its popularity sometime in 2000.  All I know is that I was either a freshman or sophmore in high school when The Barenaked Ladies played a show in St. Louis at the Fox Theater.  I went to this concert really only knowing the song 'One Week'.  The show was AMAZING.  They were/are such a fun group to see live.  I was hooked on their music from that night on.  I have tied their music to some of my fondest memories of high school and college and even post college.

Much to my dismay one of the lead singers of Barenaked Ladies left the group.  As far as I knew the group was totally split up and they would no longer be producing music or touring.  On our 3rd wedding anniversary Keith surprised me by getting me tickets to go see a Barenaked Ladies concert.  I was SO excited.  Although one of the main members of the group was gone I was pumped that they were still touring.  We had been looking forward to the night of the concert for several weeks.  Minutes before Keith's Mom arrived at our house to watch Colin so that we could leave for the concert we found out the most amazing thing ever.... I was pregnant!!!  Excitement doesn't begin to describe our feelings that night.  All I know is that we will never forget that concert or that night!

Now it has officially been 'One Week' since our beautiful baby girl was born.  My eyes are filling with tears of happiness now as I think about how wonderful this past week has been.  Filled with many firsts; first night at home, first bath, first family walk, first trip to the grocery store.  As I sit with my newborn baby girl I am so aware of how precious this time with her is.  I know that things will never be like this again with her.  I will treasure every second I have with her in these early weeks of her life.

When I let myself think about the future with our two wonderful children I can barely contain myself.  I love that anything really is possible for Colin and Tess.  I can easily get too ahead of myself so for now I am just going to love them like crazy. 

We're home!

We were released from the hospital yesterday and I have to say I have never been happier to be home!  Right now I am watching my beautiful baby girl napping in her swing, my sweet 2 year old Colin is working on hour 2 of his afternoon nap and my wonderful husband is outside mowing the lawn.  I have never felt so blessed.  I am sure that Colin or Tess will wake up at any minute now though so I will keep this short and sweet.  There are just a few things I want to cover today:

1. I am a total sucker.  At the hospital there is a photography company who comes around and does photos for all of the newborn babies for free and then they offer the prints for sale to the families.  Well I just couldn't help myself; we had to have these pictures. 

2.  Colin is such a good big brother.  I was very worried about how Colin would adjust to having a new baby in the house.  He has been so cute!  He is always trying to give her kisses and he brings us her blanket or paci anytime he hears her crying.  While we were at the hospital he was a little standoffish, especially towards me.  I am so relieved that he has gone back to his normal self now that we are at home.

3.  I have the best family in the world.  If we didn't have my parents and Keith's parents I don't know how we would have made it through the past few days.  Between taking care of Colin and Brooke and being there for us in general they have been real life savers!!  We love you guys!

Tessa Susanne Street

Our beautiful baby girl is here!!  Tessa was born yesterday, 7.7.11 at 1:31 pm.  She weighed in at 7 pounds 13 ounces.  The delivery went better than I could have hoped for.  Don't worry I won't get into the details.  I just wanted to hop on here real quick and post some pictures because I know people want to see her!  I will be back with more updates later.  For now I hope you enjoy some pictures of the newest member of the Street Family!

3 BBQ's in 3 days- day 3

Happy Fourth of July!  We tried to make it out to a parade this morning but with all of the unknowns with the weather we just couldn't commit to going to one of the big parades.  We didn't want to get there just to have to pack up our stuff and head home if/when it started raining.  So we decided to go over to my parent's house and check out the little neighborhood parade in their subdivision.  I have to say I was a little disappointed.  This parade was much bigger when I was younger.  There weren't half as many participants as there used to be.  Colin still had a good time though and that is what really matters.   Heck we even let him have his first sucker to celebrate the occasion.

The BBQ we went to today was hosted by our good friends Johnny and Lori.  The served some delicious pulled pork sandwiches.  There were plenty of side dishes available to keep everyone very well feed.  I brought along one of my all time favorite appetizers, buffalo chicken dip.  I am sure you have all heard of this before.  I want to share my recipe though because there are a few things that I believe in strongly when it comes to making buffalo dip and I think they make a world of difference in the taste of the dip.

Here is what you will need.

Here is what you need to do:

* Boil and shred 5 chicken breasts into bit size pieces
* Measure 1 cup of buffalo sauce
* Measure 1 cup of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing

Combine all of the above ingredients and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  Here is what you will end up with.

I am telling you this dip is absolutely delicious.  The keys to remember are:

1.  Use Hidden Valley Ranch.  This cannot be compromised.  If you go with the generic dressing you will be disappointed.

2.  Boil and shred the chicken yourself.  I know this is kind of a pain.  I know a ton of people make this dish using canned chicken.  I am telling you now, what takes the dish from being ordinary to being extra ordinary is shredding the chicken yourself.  People ask me to make this dish all the time.  I swear it is because of the shredded chicken.  Take the extra time and do this, you won't regret it!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend.  Thanks for helping to keep me occupied over the past three days.  We had a lot of fun visiting with friends and family and I hope you will enjoy some of the recipes that I have shared here.

3 BBQ's in 3 days- day 2

Today's BBQ was actually not really a BBQ at all.  It was a pool party hosted by my Aunt Carol and Uncle Carl.  They decided it would be fun to have a 'taco bar' for the main meal.  So in attempt to stick to the theme I brought along a black bean and corn salsa.   As much as I would like to take credit for this amazing recipe I have to admit that it was one that I stole off of http://allrecipes.com/.  If you have never heard of this website you should really check it out.  It has a pretty good search engine where you can type in phrases like "easy corn side dish" and it will put up a ton of different recipes.  I have found lots of great recipes on here and I like browsing through all of the comments that people leave regarding the recipes and the variations they used when preparing the dishes. 

Here is what you will need.

 
Here is what you will need to prepare

* 1 can yellow corn
* 1 can white corn
* 2 cans black beans
* 1 medium tomato
* 1 red pepper
* 1 small red onion
* 5 green onions
* 1 small bunch of cilantro
* 1 tablespoon minced garlic
* 1 avocado
* 1 freshly squeezed lime

All you have to do is combine the above ingredients in a large mixing bowl.  You will want to let this dish chill for several hours before serving so that the flavors can all set.  I always hold off on adding the avocado until I am ready to actually serve the dish.  I like the avocados to be as fresh as possible.

This can be served on its own as a side dish or it can be served with tortilla chips as a dip.  Either way will be delicious.  Here is the link to the original recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/heathers-cilantro-black-bean-and-corn-salsa/detail.aspx. 

Tomorrow’s recipe- my guilty indulgence.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it. 

On a completely unrelated note I just have to share this photo from today.  These guys just make me smile.

3 BBQ's in 3 Days- Day 1

With my due date fast approaching I am working hard to keep myself as busy as possible so that I don't drive myself crazy sitting around and wondering when our sweet baby girl is going to make her grand entrance.

My idea on how to do that during this long holiday weekend is to document our activities and more importantly our food consumption over the next 3 days.  We will be attending three different BBQ's this weekend and I am bringing different side dishes to each.  I will be sharing the recipes for the dishes I have prepared here.  Let's get started.

Day 1 

Today's BBQ was a traditional burgers and brats all American BBQ hosted by our good friends Kelly and John.  I made a fresh broccoli salad and a banana cream pie.  Before you go running for the hills I would like to mention that up until about a year ago I wouldn't come anywhere near anything that had broccoli in it.  This salad though is amazing and was one of the first things that I ever ate with broccoli in it that I actually liked.

Here is what you will need.

 (does anyone know why the broccoli looks white in this picture?  I swear it was green in real life.  I seriously need to take a photography class!)

Here's what you will need to do.  Prepare the following items and toss together in a medium size bowl.
* 3 to 4 heads of broccoli.  Use little to nothing of the steams.  You really only need the florets here.
* 1/2 cup of red onion
* 6-8 pieces of bacon (I use turkey bacon but I am sure regular bacon would be equally delicious)
* 1/2 cup of raisins
* 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds (I used dry roasted)

For the dressing mix together
* 1 cup of mayo
* 1/4 cup of sugar
* 2 tablespoons of vinegar (I used apple vinegar today b/c it was all I had)

Now pour the dressing over the dry ingredients and chill for at least 2 hours before serving.  Here is what you will end up with:

Thank you to my cousin Sally who was the one who introduced me to this recipe in the first place.  It is absolutely delicious and it gets rave reviews every time I make it.

For desert I made a quick and simple banana cream pie.  Here is what you will need:

Here is what you need to do.
For the crust:
Crush about a half of a box of vanilla wafers so that you end up with 1 1/2 cups of the crushed wafers
Melt 6 tablespoons of butter
Mix the crushed wafers and the melted butter together and put in a 9 inch pie dish.  (There is no need to grease the dish first).  Cook at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

For the filling:
* 2 1/2 cups of cold milk
* 2 packages instant vanilla pudding
* 1/2 cup whip topping

Pour the milk in a bowl and whisk in the boxes of vanilla pudding.  Fold in the whipped topping. 

Once the pie crust has cooled layer the bottom of the crust with 1-2 bananas.  Pour in the pudding mixture.  Layer with 1- 1/2 cup of whipped topping.  Let cool for at least an hour.  Right before serving slice up another 1-2 bananas and layer on top.  So simple yet so delicious.

Come back tomorrow for round two.  Hint- we are attending a Mexican themed party.