12 Dinners in ONE day!

One of the greatest blessings in our family is that Kevin and I are able to work from home. One of the curses of having both of us work from home is that we don't get done with work til around 7pm on a good night. I've tried meal planning and doing dinners for lunch and lunch for dinners but it still took too much time. Between my daily activities and work, making dinner is the dreaded task I hate- as I make a messes to make dinner-finally get it on the table to eat and then I still have to clean it up and do dishes, by then its time to get Luke ready for bed, I never got a chance to relax in the evenings. On the nights I would decide to be lazy and we would get fast food, I always felt nasty from the greasy-fatty food.
Today I decided to take my meal planning to the next step. I pre-cooked 12 dinners ALL in one day! Although the mess was tremendous- it was ONE mess. Now I have 12 nights of dinners in my freezer ready to be warmed up-which take no more than 45 mins to warm up, unless they involve the crock pot. Our dinners include: Lasagna, BBQ Chicken w/ veggies (x2), Teriyaki Chicken, Homemade Mac and Cheese, Chicken Tortalini, Enchiladas, Orange Chicken, Cafe Rio Sweet pulled pork, Southwestern Chicken Wraps, and BBQ chicken Pizza. We'll see how it goes! If you have questions on how to start this for your family...I did do lots of planning for these 12 meals and am willing to share my recipes and advice.

BIG BOY!

Luke took his FIRST steps! We were both super lucky to witness Luke waddle through his first 4 steps as we were picking a movie for our movie night. I've been trying super hard to get him walking on camera like any other proud parent- however Luke refuses to walk to when the camera is rolling, so like also like any other proud parent I've been making sure he doesn't know I'm recording him. With the trickery of recording him comes the lack of a decent video-my apologies. Hopefully I will get one soon that will be blog-worthy.
I can't believe how big Luke is getting! He has 4 teeth -2 top, 2 bottom and another one on its way on the top. He's eating normal food-the only thing he isnt a fan of is tuna. He's such a fun little guy, I love how excited he gets with such simple things.

New Ride

After much deliberation and test drives...Kevin and I took our Audi Allroad and Kevin's Ram 3500 and traded them in for one muti- purpose vehicle that is functional, updated, safe, and of course family friendly. We chose the 2012 Dodge Durango Citadel because its ability to handle its own in the snow with the AWD and V8. We were also very pleased with still having the ability to towe if needs be as well as fit our growing family as it seats 7 (yes, that means that #2 will eventually come along).
We love all the high-tech features that are new to us as this is our first BRAND NEW car together. The Adaptive Cruse Control, blind spot indicators, back up camera and senors really make the transition from driving a sedan to a bigger SUV very smooth. I think Kevin's favorite feature is the "cooled" seats. I will admit having cooled seats especially in Arizona is a great selling point, we'll see if he's still as big of a fan of them when we move to Wyoming. I would have to say my favorite feature is the remote start. It will defiantly come in handy! All in all we are very excited and proud to have our first "grown up" vehicle.