Its a week before Thanksgiving....

... and I'm just now getting around to a Halloween post. Sad. I know.

The night before Halloween we went to the Trunk or Treat for our ward. It was really cold and we were not bundled up enough, but luckily we had warmish chili and hot chocolate to keep us warm. Hopefully next year they'll let us eat dinner inside the building. Quick side note I made this creamy white chicken chili for the dinner and its pretty much amazing! It is deeelicious; the perfect way to warm up on a cold fall night! I give you the assurance of many satisfied taste testers that it will not disappoint!

My entire family (Mom, Dad, sister, bro-in-law, and nephew) joined Josef, Sofia, and I. It was great to have them there. Especially since my parents handed out candy for us so we could take the kiddos trunk or treating. Sofia loved that people were giving her candy and of course in typical toddler fashion she couldn't wait till the end to start noshing her sugary treats. So Josef and I kept her pumped full of candy the whole time.

Aaron and Travvis were Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat. They got rave reviews from every car we went to.


Sofia was a "Cutie" Queen (a great excuse to buy a fancy dress). I originally wanted her sash to say "cutie queen", but it didn't fit so I had settle for "Ms. Cutie". Man that sentence had a lot of quotations!

Ok, now I'm almost caught up. I will do my best to get it all done before we leave for Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin Patch and Air Show

Last month we had some fun filled weekends. One Saturday we went to a cute pumpkin patch with our friends and their toddlers. We had lots of fun even though it was super muddy!






Another Saturday we went to the Alliance Air Show in Fort Worth. Despite the 3 hours spent in the car driving to and from the show and Sofia screaming and clinging to me through the last 20 minutes of the Blue Angels, we had a blast!




This was Sofia immediately after one of the jets broke the sound barrier over our heads. From then on she screamed every time a jet flew by.

Lucas Family Pictures

In September, while Josef's sister Amy and her family were visiting, the entire Lucas family got together to have family pictures taken. We really LOVE the outcome of all the pictures and want to give a shout-out to the girls at Creatively Chic Photography. They just started up their business, are full of talent, and are extremely reasonably priced! So without further adieu here are some my favorites of the bunch.

Detox

The past month and a half has been pretty fun and eventful. Unfortunately I'm pretty behind on my blogging. Last Tuesday as Sofia's nap came to a close, I looked at the clock on our computer and realized that I had wasted nearly two hours on the internet. I was disgusted with myself, especially when I emerged from the computer room and saw the messy state of our house. Deep realization sunk in that I have an internet problem and I needed to do something about it! I immediately decided that I needed a little detox, which meant for the next six days Facebook and Google Reader were off limits and the internet was only to be used for practical purposes, for up to 20 minutes a day.

Now that my "detox" is over, its clear that I really need to set boundaries for myself when it comes to the internet. Which is why I haven't blogged much lately. However, make sure you come back in the next few days to see all that we've been up to.

An Evening With Bono

This past Monday, we went to see these guys in concert. It was my Father's Day present to Josef. What an AMAZING concert! The setup and performance were visually stunning. It looked like a spaceship had landed inside of the Cowboys stadium (which also looks like a spaceship). It was so much fun to here my U2 favorites live and even better then the recordings! We stayed out way past our bedtime and had such a wonderful time. Here are some pictures and a video (if I can upload it) from the concert.

Fall Food

I love fall food and flavors! Pumpkin, apples, cinnamon and nutmeg, sweet potatoes, chili, soups! With this new found fascination with cooking, I can't wait delve into all the fall goodness. This week for a Relief Society activity I signed up to bring a dessert. My mind instantly settled on making something using fall flavors. I ended up making my mom's Fresh Apple Cake. Before I put it in the oven I tasted the batter.....I probably could have had the whole cake raw, it was so good. But I just settled for licking the beaters, wooden spoon, rubber scraper, and bowl clean. Now I know why I don't bake very often.

The cake was a huge hit with several people in Relief Society, so I decided to share the recipe with all you, too. If you're looking for a warm, fresh, and indulgent fall time treat. Look no further, this is it!

Fresh Apple Cake

CAKE:

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 tsp. soda

3 tsp. cinnamon

1-1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. salt

1 cup chopped pecans

4 cups finely chopped apples

SAUCE:

1/2 cup half and half

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp. real vanilla extract

Directions:

Cream together 2 cups sugar and 1/2 cup butter; add beaten eggs. Sift dry ingredients together and add to batter. Add apples and nuts. Bake in a greased bundt pan for 1 hour (350 degrees for 15 minutes; 300 degrees for 45 minutes) Cool cake in pan for a half-hour or so before turning out of the pan, or only part of the cake will come out. Serve warm with sauce.

SAUCE: Cook half and half, sugar and butter in heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly until mixture coats spoon. It takes a while (like 30+ minutes). Remove from heat, add vanilla. Serve warm over cake. Side note: I added half the vanilla because the vanilla I have is really strong and I didn't want it over power the sauce. I would suggest adding half, then tasting it before you add the rest.

One of Those Days

All this past week has been incredibly boring for me. I have had feelings of isolation, loneliness, sadness, laziness, and BOREDOM! Yesterday, however, was one of those days. One of those days where I lay Sofia in bed at night, give her kisses, shut the door and think "Wow, I'm so blessed. I love my life". Nothing notable happened through the course of the day. Sofia and I went to story time at the library, met some friends for lunch at Corner Bakery, ran errands, played together, and had a picnic in the park with Daddy for dinner. Just a simple, fun day with moments sprinkled throughout where I couldn't help but smile to myself. I love my family. I love my husband. I love my daughter. I love the Gospel. I love my job as a mom. I love life.

My life has been anything but a bed of roses, that's for sure! I know sore trials lay ahead for me, but this was one of those days that fill me up and make me stronger for what lies ahead.

Menu Plan Monday

I haven't done a Menu Plan Monday in a while! That's mostly out of sheer laziness, not because I haven't been planning meals. I'm pretty excited about some of the recipes I'll be trying out this week so I thought I would share.

Monday: Hot hoagies and tossed salad. (We just had dinner and these were so good! So cheesy and toasty!)
Tuesday: Chicken Tortilla Soup with homemade tortilla chips (recipe below) and tossed salad
Wednesday: Mini-Meatloaves with carrot and sweet potato mash and tossed salad
Thursday: Sticky Coconut Chicken with rice and salad (If you haven't noticed already we eat salad with everything. Gotta get those vegys in some how, right?)
Friday: French Dip Sandwiches (using roast beef lunch meat and au jus mix) with leftover sweet potato mash and salad
Saturday: Leftover Buffet
Sunday: Dinner at my Mom's (hopefully)

For more menu plans and recipes head on over to the link-up at OrgJunkie.com

Here's my little recipe for super easy homemade tortilla chips. Note: There are no exact measurements in this recipe.

Corn tortillas
Canola oil (or other) cooking spray
1 lime or lemon, cut in half
Sea salt (regular salt will do), to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a pizza cutter, cut the tortillas into sixths then spread out on cookie sheets. Lightly spray tortillas with cooking spray. Squeeze lime or lemon juice over the tortillas and sprinkle with salt. Bake in oven for 15-17 minutes, rotating cookie sheets once, or until golden brown around the edges.

I've also done this with flour tortillas, melted butter, and cinnamon-sugar, yum!

Sofia Sofia Sofia

I realized that I haven't written much about Sofia lately, so for journaling purposes, here is what the center of my universe has been up to.

Sofia is coming up on 20 months! Can you believe it? My little girl is getting closer and closer to 2 everyday. Her language has really exploded in the last month or so. I wouldn't say that it was delayed before but at 12 and 18 months she used fewer words then the average child her age. However, in the last month her words have probably quadrupled, at least! These are a few of her favorite words and phrases:

-Nigh-nigh
-Dack (Zach, her best friend) and Dack hou (Zach's house)
-Play
-Wide (ride, which means a ride in our big blue Ikea bag)
-Nacks (fruit snacks)
-Ba (bath)
-Ween (rain)
-wet
-pwease (please) and dinkoo (thank you)

Sofia is obsessed with climbing. She has been a little monkey since she learned to crawl and started with the dish washer. Now she has discovered that she can carry around our little step stool and use it to climb and reach onto most surfaces. Thankfully she hasn't learned how to climb out of her crib yet.

Sofia is still petite and has a very petite appetite. At her 18 month appointment she was in the 0.75% for her weight. So basically 99.25% of children her age weigh more then her. I actually like that she hasn't been gaining weight at drastic speeds (or normal speeds for that matter) because it means she can wear the same clothes many months and saves us some money! Sofia can still wear dresses that I bought for her 10 + months ago!

Sofia has definitely entered the tantrum stage and can be quite dramatic at times but for the most part she is easy going and tons of fun. I especially love that she is a copycat. She loves when I sing songs with actions, which she tries to imitate. Her top three songs are "Insy, Weensy Spider", "Popcorn Popping", and "Skidamarink". If you haven't heard of the last song, YouTube it.

Now onto the pictures!

Sofia is such a little flirt, especially when it comes to her best bud Zach. Here is Sofia in action

I can't believe how grown up she looks in these pictures. At the rate she's going we're going to have to have "the talk" by age two!

Breakfast for Dinner

One of my favorite things to do for dinner, especially after a long day, is have breakfast. I had a craving tonight for some pancakes, but I've been eating lots of sweets lately so I made these healthy and oh so tasty MckPancakes. I found the recipe here and pretty much stayed true to the original except for a few substitutions to use ingredients we already had. So here's the recipe with my substitutions.

MckPancakes

2 c. Whole Wheat pancake mix (if you have picky kids then use regular mix)
1 1/2 c. water
1/2 c. flaxseed meal
1/2 c. reduced-fat peanut butter, softened in the microwave (it originally called for Almond butter)
1 banana
1 tsp. vegetable oil
1 egg (I used egg beaters instead)
1/3 c. plain, whole yogurt
1/4 c. honey (I used Agave nectar)
Several dashes of cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, blend pancake mix, flaxseed meal and cinnamon. Set aside.

In blender, combine peanut (or almond) butter, oil, egg, honey (or agave), yogurt and banana. Blend until smooth.

Add blended mixture and water to the dry mix. Stir together well. Make pancakes out of the batter.

(Picture courtesy of MckMama)

To top of the pancakes I thawed out some blackberries and raspberries, mashed them and added some more agave nectar to sweeten the sauce. Yum! These were so so good. They are dense, super hearty pancakes. I think next time I might substitute canned pumpkin for the banana and add pumpkin pie spice instead of the cinnamon.

Our Anniversary Weekend

This past weekend my parents generously offered to come over to our house and babysit Sofia over night so Josef and I could go and celebrate our 3 year wedding anniversary. We instantly knew where we wanted to stay: The Gaylord Texan. We stayed there two years ago for our one year anniversary and fell in love with the resort so we decided to pack our bags and head back.

Unfortunately for you, our camera still isn't in working order so we didn't take any pictures. However I did surf the internet a little and found some bootleg pictures to make this post a little more pleasing to the eye. If that still doesn't satisfy you, well you can click here and here to read my posts (which have tons of pictures) from 2 years ago.

Josef took Friday off for our special weekend away. We left Sofia in the capable arms of my mother at noon. Our first stop was the temple. After eating an awesome lunch in the cafeteria (if you ever are in the mood for some serious down home cooking before doing some temple work, then go here), we went and did sealings. Josef and I were giddy and couldn't stop smiling through the whole thing. The sealer must have thought we were newlyweds because he jokingly asked us how long we had been married and even had us kiss. It was an awesome way to celebrate and we both decided to make it a tradition.

From there we headed to the resort. Here's a picture:

We decided to splurge and upgrade to an atrium view (instead of a parking lot view) which I highly recommend. Here is a picture of what our room looked like and a picture of the main atrium (there are 3 total):

With nothing to do for a couple hours Josef and I decided to be lazy and watch Stars Trek on demand in our room. At 6:30pm we had dinner reservations at the Old Hickory Steakhouse at the resort. To say that the food was amazing would be a bit of an understatement. I cannot remember the last time I had food that tasted that good. Which means that this could have quite possibly been the best (and most expensive) meal I've ever eaten. Every bite was as good as the first and left me wanting to lick the plate, but I didn't because it was a pretty swanky place. When I made the hotel reservations I told them it was our anniversary and apparently they past on that info because just as we were contemplating dessert, they brought us one "complements of the chef." Free dessert? Awesome! Here's another bootleg picture of the restaurant:

Later that night we went to the night club at the resort, The Glass Cactus. The band playing that night was a Rolling Stones cover band. They were actually really good. I just couldn't get over the fact that they were all pushing 50, at least, and trying way too hard to look like the Rollings Stones. It was pretty comical to me. After I got over that, Josef and I enjoyed some dancing, even though were the youngest people on the dance floor by at least 10 years (for me it was more like 15).

We slept in until 8:30 (meaning I got 2 extra hours) the next morning which felt like heaven. After having a deeeelicious all-you-can eat breakfast at the Riverwalk Cafe we headed back to our room where I slept until 11:30 (oh yeah, my favorite part) and Josef watched sports. Then we checked-out and headed home.

What an awesome 26-hour vacation! I can't wait for the next one!!!

Utah Trip: Part Three

Tuesday: This was our last full day in Utah, so we decided to have some fun. After Sofia's nap we headed off to Park City. What a gorgeous little town! Josef said it reminded him of Austria and Germany, and now I can see why he loves those countries so much. The bulk of our time we spent riding the alpine slides and coaster. It was so.much.fun!!!! The alpine coaster was my favorite. It's hard too describe, but if you've ever gone on the alpine slides, its the same concept just using a track instead of a slide. It weaves down the mountain side, in and out of the trees. So not only was it thrilling, it was a beautiful ride. Here are some pictures of Josef, my dad, and I going on the slides and on the ski lift. A huge thanks to my mom for entertaining Sofia while we had fun!

For dinner we headed to the historic downtown part of Park City. We found a little pizzeria and attempted to have a nice relaxing dinner, but Sofia was not having it. My mom, Josef, and I each took turns walking down Main Street with her while the rest of us shoveled our food in. I wish we could have spent more time looking in all the cute shops in downtown. Josef and I are already discussing a special trip devoted to Park City since there's so much to do and see.

This picture cracks me up simply because it is so "Josef".

Wednesday: We flew home. Thankfully I was able to get Sofia to take a nap in the morning, which meant that she wasn't nearly as tired as the flight there. Plus, Josef and I were a little bit more experience flying with a toddler so we were able to keep her more entertained this time. Also a BIG thanks to my Aunt for giving us a sheet of stickers for Sofia to play with on the plane home. They were a life saver the last 20 minutes. I would peel stickers off and stick them on Sofia's nose, arm, leg, forehead, and it took her a while to get them off. Then she would put them on a sheet of paper or on mommy and daddy. This has also become Sacrament Meeting entertainment too.

We are so thankful that we were able to go on this vacation, as short as it was. Sofia did remarkably well especially with sleeping. I was so worried about that part, but she slept better then she does at home! Josef told me that this was probably one of the best vacations he's ever been on and I would have to agree!!

The Story

If you've read my post "Chasing Cars" then I'm sure you are wondering what is the story behind the post. Well here it is.

Monday was labor day. We didn't do a whole lot during the day. I went out to lunch with my parents as a belated Father's Day present and then hung out at home. Later that night we met some friends at a park for a picnic and had a great time! The food everyone brought was delicious and despite the park being kind of ghetto, it was beautiful. The husbands played a little football and us girls sat and talked while we watched the kids play. It was fun. We decided to call it a night and head home as it was starting to get dark. Josef loaded up all our stuff in the trunk of our car and shut it. As we are about to hop in and drive home when we realized (much to our dismay) that Josef had left his keys in the trunk and I had left my keys at home. Thankfully some of our friends hadn't left yet so we decided that Josef would stay at the park with Sofia (borrowing their stroller) and they would drive me home to get my keys and drive Josef's car back to the park. So our friends dropped me off at home (just so you know the park was not close by) and when I arrived I remembered that I had let Sofia play with my keys earlier in the day and had no idea where they were! Looking outside I noticed the sun was quickly setting. Worried about Josef and Sofia being in a sketchy part of town after dark I frantically set out to find my keys. I looked in all the usual places first and when I didn't find them my pulse quickened and my searching became more frantic. I tore the house apart. Crawling on the ground trying to think like a toddler, looking in the fridge, looking under and in the dryer, digging through the trash, checking every nook and crany in our house; I couldn't find those keys. I was becoming exhausted, but I couldn't stop. I had no other choice. It was dark out and I was still worried about Josef and Sofia. I talked to him on the phone several times. Josef kept urging me on and telling me to calm down.

After more then 40 minutes of searching, I called my friend Carly with the idea that she could go to the park in the dark in a part of town she had never been too (yeah great idea) to pick up Sofia and bring her back to her house to go to bed until we could get things sorted out. As I was attempting to describe to Carly where exactly the park was I randomly picked up a pillow in our office and low and behold there were my keys. Elated, I hung up on Carly, grabbed the keys and bolted out the door. I pulled Josef's car out of the alley way and was about to turn right on our street to head to the park when I realized I didn't have my wallet. Not wanting to get pulled over without a license I turned left and pulled up to the front of the house, put the car (which has a manual transmission) in neutral, turned the car off, and pulled on the e-brake. I ran in to the house and grabbed my wallet. I fumbled with my keys trying to lock the front door. As I turned around I was horrified to find that the car was gone! For half a second I thought "Oh no someone stole our car", but during this thought I looked down our dark street and saw Josef's car. Rolling backwards. Frantically I chased the car down the street, again fumbled with the keys, jumped in the moving car, and slammed my foot on the brake. I flipped a u-turn and drove back to the park. From then on things went smoothly. Two and a half hours after packing up our car to head home, we finally arrived at our desired destination exhausted and sweaty.

I can't help but think that Heavenly Father must have a great sense of humor because I'm sure it was quiet comical to see me chasing Josef's little car down our darkened street.

Today

Today three years ago I was married and sealed to my best friend. Everyday I marvel at why I am so lucky to be spending eternity with such a loving, thoughtful, patient, hardworking, steady, independent, hansom, kind, gentle, funny, strong, spiritual man. Josef and I have learned so much about what it takes to have a successful marriage and we have so much more to learn and experience. He is such a wonderful husband and an amazing father! I love you Josef!!

Chasing Cars....

Isn't there are Snow Patrol or Cold Play song with that title? Maybe not, but the end of my Labor day could be described well by the title "Chasing Cars". I'm not going to write about it tonight because I'm too tired, sweaty, and have a headache from the last 2.5 hour ordeal. So I will just leave you with the image of me.....chasing a car.