T-ball pictures, Last day of swimming, Company picnics and a visit

Last week/weekend were super busy with the last day of swimming, t-ball pictures, Ben's company picnic and a visit from Mom and Tettie.

As you can imagine, I'm sure, t-ball pictures were absolutely dripping with cuteness.  All the tiny kids in uniforms way too big for them - oh my goodness - adorable overload.

Ben's company picnic was at a local water park (and by local I mean like 15 miles away LOL).  It was interesting.  I got to meet some of his co-workers and their wives.  It was more of a free for all event tho so there wasn't much interaction other than Hi, This is, Nice to meet you and so on and so forth.

Mom and Tettie's visit was a lot of fun!  We took them to Cameron Park Zoo and a couple of our favorite restaurants.  It was a nice low key visit.

We took Mia to the pool last night and realized just how many little friends she has made ... actual friends - not just a child she has seen before.  It was so cute to watch her, 2 little girls (S and T) and one little boy (J) sitting on the steps of the pool all playing together.  Even better when we were walking thru the gate J's dad recognized us and was like "J! Look who's coming thru the gate" and J got all excited to see Mia.  Now if we can just learn the parent's names.  LOL

Ben and I are working a lot on our eating habits and working out every day right now.  I'm personally stretching my skills and attempting to learn how to cook all types of vegetables in interesting ways so we don't get bored with them.  Last night I made what I'll kindly call beef and mush...  It started out beautiful with fresh squash, purple onion, eggplant, jalapenos, banana peppers, and bell peppers (all from the farmer's market) and ended up looking like ... well, beef and mush.  Needless to say one of my projects for the week is to scour the cookbooks and educate myself on proper vegetable preparation and cooking.

Mia's Room, Granola Bars and a Snake

I haven't been entirely happy with Mia's room since we set it up.  It felt small and got impossibly messy way too easily.  I was reading in the current parenting book I'm studying that it's really important to "simplify" your child's room as much as possible.  After reading that and my over all feeling of dissatisfaction with it I knew what today's project was going to be.  I spent the morning moving the furniture here and there, organizing all the little stuff, books, etc until I got it to where it is now.  I think (once the closet is finished but I needed Ben for that - his height definitely comes in handy!) that it turned out just about perfect.

The rest of the day Mia and I just chilled at the apartment cleaning, playing board games, listening to music, reading books and making more granola bars - we decided to put off Library Day until tomorrow - it was really good to have a day where we didn't go anywhere.

Ben headed to get his hair cut after work and stopped at books a million to browse - on his way into the bookstore he saw a snake!  It was all curled up and just chilling in the corner.  Adding that to our list of local wildlife we have now seen: a road runner, an armadillo and a rather large snake.  :)

Dinner was buffalo chicken salad - seriously nom nom.  A great "make ahead meal" because it tastes even better when it's been in the fridge for a day or two.  I'll post both that recipe and the granola bar recipe on the Recipe page just in case anyone would like them.

In other news - my mom got married today.  She and her fiance were in Huntsville for a visit and decided to go ahead and tie the knot since all the kiddos, save for me, were there.  We are very happy for her and wish her and Jim the best.

Tomorrow is library day, more cleaning and a visit from Ben's parents!!!!  We are super excited!  So forgive me if I don't blog over the next couple of days - I am sure we will be crazy busy.  No fear tho - it'll just make for a great post on Monday.  :)