one, two, three, jump!

"If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you." ~Bruce Lee

birthday at the beach.

so today is my birthday=) we are on amelia for the week with my family. they all made me feel special today!

mimi and papa kept the 3 girls tonight for trey, jonathan, ashley and i to go out to dinner. we went to beech street grill....hadn't been there in a few years and it was great=)

and with the girls....


i can't remember the last time my birthday fell on our family beach week but it sure has been fun! =)

smoothie recipe.

i am posting sk's smoothie recipe. i got the idea from my friend amy who makes them for her son. not that smoothies are anything new and you can make them any ole way you want i suppose - in fact, amy and i don't make them the same, but the key ingredient for your's truly that i was so excited for amy to tell me about is ...shhhhhh, don't tell sk......SPINACH. that's right, sarah kate eats a whole lot of spinach each week and she has no clue she's eating it. i offer her veggies still at her meals, but i don't stress over it if she doesn't eat every single piece of broccoli on her plate since i know she's getting her fair share of veggie goodness from her daily smoothie.

i make sure my food processor is full to the top with the ingredients that i want to be in her smoothie. if it's full before i blend it together then i know i'll get 2 sippy cups out of it. i will use one sippy cup on the day i make it and put one in the fridge for the next day. this way i'm not having to use and clean my f.p. every single day.

so this is what i do....i put about 5 or 6 cubes of ice in the f.p. bowl first. on top of that i put a layer of frozen organic blueberries. i get all my frozen fruit/veggies from whole foods (publix sells the cascadian farms frozen blueberries that i like to grab from time to time). then i cut up a fresh organic banana into 3 or 4 chunks and throw that on top of the blueberries. this week, i added a new ingredient... i had some frozen sliced peaches in my freezer so i threw in about 4 or 5 of those (so great that you don't have to thaw any of the frozen veggies!). then on top of all the fruit i put a few spoonfuls of stoneyfield organic yogurt . we usually buy either strawberry or mixed berry yogurt, but you could just use plain yogurt - probably would be less sugar if you used plain, but stoneyfield is already so low in sugar and you're only using a few spoonfuls so we use the fruit yogurt for flavor=) i buy the low-fat big (32oz.) tub of yogurt since sk has been cleared to switch to 2% or even skim milk. i have another friend who buys the whole milk tubs since her daughter could use the extra calories. oh also, if you buy stoneyfield yogurt then be sure to create an account online (look up stoneyfield) and you can enter in your special code from your products and get points which in turn will get you some free healthy products!

then....the green stuff. i buy frozen organic spinach. i just cook a couple of handfuls and then store the bag in the freezer until time to cook more. i put about a handful of the cooked spinach on top of the yogurt in my food processor. the other half i store in the fridge until it's time to make another smoothie....so i'm not always stinking up my house with spinach! then i just chop and blend until it's at a "smoothie" consistency. sarah kate slurps down her nutritious and delicious treat. i serve it to her with a meal.....i would never let her walk around the house with it (it has blueberries in it for crying out loud.) it's so yummy and kids cannot taste the spinach which is such a vitamin rich veggie.

from trial and error i've learned to stay away from berries with little seeds like strawberries. strawberries make yummy smoothies but my processor does not chop them up completely and the seeds are annoying when trying to drink the smoothie. also, i do not use the little sippy-cup stoppers for the smoothies.....they can be quite thick and the stoppers prevent the yummy goodness from flowing freely to the toddler's mouth & tummy=)



organic produce can get to be expensive. i'm pasting a chart below of the produce that is most/least likely to be contaminated with pesticides and such. kind of gives me an idea of what foods i'm willing to "give up" on as far as organics goes. for example...if the organic bananas aren't as green as the regular bananas then i'll just buy the regs because i know they'll be less likely to go to waste. and i know that bananas are less likely to be too contaminated with pesticides because of the thick peel. (i've heard you should still wash the banana after you peel it. what-ev-er....we are healthy peeps over here but we're not crazy...you have to get over it at some point and just eat your dang food.)

12 Most Contaminated

• Peaches
• Apples
• Sweet Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Strawberries
• Cherries
• Pears
• Grapes (Imported)
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• Potatoes

12 Least Contaminated

• Onions
• Avocado
• Sweet Corn (Frozen)
• Pineapples
• Mango
• Asparagus
• Sweet Peas (Frozen)
• Kiwi Fruit
• Bananas
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Papaya

*info from organic.org

so that's it! she gets 1 smoothie a day.

pool day & a few weekend pics.

sarah kate and i have really been enjoying our neighborhood pool lately. we went swimming this morning.

"you coming, mama? i don't have all day."


going in!


sk loves the pool!



she loves to go under. she says, "go under, mommy, one two three!"

one....


two....


three!!


kick, kick, kick!


she can't wait for our kriner family beach vacay next week so she can swim with her cousins! and i've bought my raft and can't wait to float=) praying for good health for all of us!

this past weekend went by SO fast for some reason. sk and i went swimming friday morning and then trey met us back at the house at noon so that i could go see my hair girl for some much needed hair-attention. trey worked from home while sk napped and then he cooked one of my favorite dinners friday night....grilled tequila-lime flank steak, feta orzo, and asparagus. it was all so so so yummy. he should win some kinda dad/hubby award for days like these: "hardworking stay-at-home daddy chef." that's what he was on friday. =)

saturday we spent the day at the beach.




after church on sunday we went out to sullivan's to eat at one of our favorite brunch spots....high thyme. i had eggs benedict and they were so delish! trey had chicken hash and sk had french toast but enjoyed my ham and their yummy biscuits more than anything.




sk likes to kiss beau-beau...


i ran a bunch of errands during sk's sunday "nap" (she never napped.) i ran by magwoods to get some shrimp for us to boil for dinner. the boat had just come in so our shrimp had only been off the boat about 10 minutes before i bought them. talk about fresh seafood! and they were SO darn good=)


one last pic of our fish:


happy august! can't wait for our family beach vacation and celebrating my birthday with everyone (turning 29 for the 4th time.....it's amazing how i just never can seem to make it to 30). ha;)

hoping for a great month;) sk goes back to school on september 6th and i look forward to getting back into our routine with school & activities, but i hope to enjoy our last month of doing 'whatever we please' to the fullest!

wordless wednesday: sc aquarium.

i promised.....

i'd take her to the pool or beach today....

she chose the "geech".....



which worked out great because we got to dig in the sand and go swimming, too. the current was strong in the tidal pool today & sk wore her puddle jumper and just laid flat on the water and let the current pull her along.....like she was in a lazy river. she'd just giggle and kick! so cute. i can't get a pic of her swimming in the ocean when i take her by myself since i have to be in there with her.


i always strip her down, bathe her in the ocean, and wrap her in a towel before strolling her back to the car. this helps decrease the amount of sand that gets in our car! and keeps her seat from getting wet.



she had a completely wonderful day. no meltdowns. no 2 year old fits. so very pleasant for me! she didn't take a nap but she stayed in her crib for a couple of hours and played with her animals and talked and sang to them. then she went with me to whole foods to do some grocery shopping. we came home and played for a few minutes before going back out to sullivan's to grab a burger (quesadilla for sk) at poe's. before dinner, she practiced riding her tricycle and practiced "calling the dawgs" which i have several funny videos of her doing!









getting a little foot-push from daddy...


sk's turn to push=)




"welcome to poe's!!" she loves it when we say that=) she loves going to poe's for dinner!


"ahhh, my eyes, mommy!!"






walking back to the car with her daddy=)


i love my little lucy family=)

"papa lucy."

my cousin, scott, was married this past saturday in alabama. in order to ease the pain of forcing a 2 year old to ride in the car for 8 hours straight, we stopped in atlanta friday night and spent the night with sk's lala and dougie! and they kept beau for us while we went to alabama sat./sunday. so nice to break the trip up. plus, sarah kate was SO excited to see her "yaya" and "dougie."

before we left atlanta on saturday to head to montgomery, we took sarah kate to meet trey's dad...... her "papa lucy."

boy would he be proud of trey. trey has accomplished alot since his dad died. he'd be so proud of his accomplishments in his company, his involvement in his community and his church. and he ended up marrying me for crying out loud....that's just genius. ha;) but above all else he became a father and he's a darn good one! the best! he's so proud of his sarah kate! she's his greatest accomplishment to date, and i wish that his dad could be a part of it all! he said that his dad would spoil her to pieces if he were still here.




sarah kate was having a HARD time......you can't tell from the pics but she was! she was angry about wanting to hold the rose and then when we tried to let her hold it the thorns poked her finger and hurt her (which i tried to tell her that was why we should just hold the baby's breath and not hold the rose, but i'd like to see someone try to reason with my two year old who is going through some bouts of the "terrible twos.") kinda funny when you think about it. i'm thinking trey's dad was probably laughing at us.....probably saying, "payback son!" we were certainly disturbing his peace and the peace of anyone in a 1 mile radius. raising a toddler is definitely humbling at times.

we were glad to have the opportunity to take her by. trey and i used to go by some when we lived in atlanta but now we obviously just can't swing by. and you know, her little ears are ALWAYS listening, even when we think they're not. she was talking all about her family on the ride home because she not only got to see lala and dougie, but she got to be with mimi, papa, ashley, jon-jon, ava and bryce in alabama. so she was saying all their names and she said, "papa lucy!" she remembered who she had "met" even though she was upset about the rose situation=)



what an honor for trey to get to finally introduce his girl to his dad. not that his dad can't see her any ole time he wants, but we can't see him so it's different for us.

as for the rest of the weekend.....the wedding was beautiful. scott and abby looked so happy! barbara and jimmy are certainly blessed with 2 really incredible daughter-in-laws. and they're pretty darn lucky girls, too;)

sarah kate swam at the hotel pool for over an hour. she was WORN out. that's alot of work! ava and bryce got there in time to swim with her for a little while. we had to wake her up to take her to the wedding which she was quite grumpy about. then after the wedding was over and the twins joined her on the porch all was right with the world. it's hysterical how much she adores her cousins! she just lights up when they're around. our 2011 kriner family beach vacay countdown is on! t-minus 13 days!

"Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers."
~proverbs 17:6