Culinary Adventure

The girls and I went on a culinary adventure in the valley today. It had been quite awhile since we ventured out with hopes of treating our taste buds to new flavors, so we rallied up friends and googled Best Cheap Eats in Los Angeles. Our search led us to try banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) at a tiny little place in Alhambra.

Everything on the menu sounded delish, but all of the pork sandwiches had pâté, so ew. I went with the beef banh mi and it was the right choice!

What makes banh mi so yummy are all the layers of flavor. Mine was filled with marinated beef, sweet Asian slaw, jalapenos, peanut sauce, and house made mayo. So many flavors were represented between my baguette: sweet, salty, spicy, and cool. It was so tasty. The best part though? Every sandwich cost $3. So worth the trip out of town! 


There are so many great places to eat here in LA, there's no excuse for me not to try something new every week. My summer bucket list has several more culinary adventures planned. If you could dine anywhere in Los Angeles, what would you try?

AZ Girls Week

We spent last week in Arizona at my aunt's house having our 2nd annual desert girls week. Just like last year, we had so much fun.

My niece, Ryan, was a great playmate for my girls. The 3 of them ran circles through Pam's house playing tag and pretending to be puppies. It hurts my heart that they only get to play once or twice a year, but they sure do make the most of their time together. It was wild and hilarious watching the 3 little girls play nonstop every day.

Beatrice learned how to swim in Pam's pool! She is always so confident in the water and has never shied away from jumping in, so it was time to take the floaties off and teach her how to swim properly. By the end of the week, she was swimming strong and never put the floaties back on.

Our week was pretty chill. We swam and shopped and cooked and ate. Most days started slowly with coffee and bagels before we eased our way into the pool until nap time. The little girls rested while the big girls tanned, shopped, and caught up on our reading. No one bathed until dinner time and we wore makeup maybe 2 times all week. It felt like a vacation.

It was hard to say goodbye. My girls cried the first 30 minutes into our drive home. We love this tradition and hope to continue it for a long time (and add to our girls - Jenni, Erin, get yo-selves to the desert next year!).

Rib Masters

I have a weird thing to admit: I'm afraid of meat. Weird, right?!

What I mean is I'm afraid to prepare it, everything except chicken and ground beef, that is. For the first 5 years of marriage, I cooked everything other than chicken dishes and ground beef dishes in the CrockPot for fear of undercooking a tough cut of protein. I love to cook and read restaurant menus online (nerd alert!) for fun. I study tough recipes like I'll be tested on them later, I should not be afraid to cook a brisket or tenderloin!

Baby back ribs have always been at the top of my scary meal list. Ribs seem so time sensitive and finicky. So much could go wrong! And we don't have a smoker - don't ribs need giant smokers or other meat cooking contraptions?! JD suggested we try it, we are smart after all, we could learn the secret of the perfectly tender, fall off the bone ribs.

So we did. I read a bazillion rib recipes online before going with the instructions on the packaging on the meat. They. Are. Perfect. We are amazing rib making people! Who knew?!

Our rib preparing method:

Coat meat generously with dry rub, wrap in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours (overnight is best). Preheat oven to 325, wrap marinated meat loosely in foil and place on a foil lined sheet pan arc side up (like a rainbow). Add 1/2 cup of water inside the foil wrapped meat. Seal tightly and bake for 2 - 2.5 hours. Remove from oven, cover ribs with BBQ sauce (optional) and cook on grill at medium heat for 15 minutes. Eat!

Dry rub recipe:
2 TBSP brown sugar
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp ground mustard
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper

These ribs are so tasty, a little spicy, and fall-off-the-bone delicious. We had them tonight and after stuffing my face, I couldn't believe how silly I have been all these years avoiding them. Bon appetit!

Land of the Free

Howdy! We have had the best weekend swimming in the neighborhood pool, walking to the beach with friends, and doing some home improvements. It's so nice to live in such a beautiful place with good friends to enjoy holiday weekends with.

We went to the beach today and as I was walking across the park to take Penelope potty, we passed folks in all types of beach attire from very provocative to fully covered up swimming clothes. I'm so grateful to live in a place where my daughters are free to wear what they please. I hope they make conservative choices, but I'm relieved they won't be accosted (or worse) for baring skin at the beach.

I'm so thankful to live in America, to live in a land with so many freedoms and choices. And I'm thankful for all of the service people and their families for their sacrifice. Freedom comes with a cost and I am so grateful for those selfless heroes. May God bless you and the U.S.A.

In This Season

In this season of my life, conversations like this occur a lot:

"Mama, can you help me smell this?"
"Well baby, you just have to use your nose and smell it yourself."
"Can you just do it for me? I don't want to smell that."

I am in an endless cycle of cleaning up dollhouse furniture, washing dress up clothes, and picking glitter off of the couch. The messes are constant, the laundry multiplies, and emotions run high among my little girls.

The needs of my children are great and require all that I have. Some days I am awesome at meeting each one, other days I fail miserably before I've had my morning coffee.

Motherhood is hard. It's a daily reminder of my shortcomings and areas where I need grace in my life. I struggle with patience the most. But it's also mostly joy. Watching my children's bodies grow strong and their brilliant brains expand each day is amazing. These little babies that came from my body are turning into little people! Sassy little people... They say the best, most hilarious things and have giant, compassionate hearts.

I know it's cliche to say that I can't remember life before having my kids, but I can't remember life before having my kids. In this season, they consume me. They need me for everything and touch me so often, it's like they are still apart of my body. It's overwhelming sometimes. But I know it's just a season. Soon enough they will be grown up with their own little ones to raise.

Sometimes I try to burn an image into my mind to recall on their wedding days, like when Penelope struggles with pulling up her pants and after giving up, waddles around like a streaking penguin until someone helps her. Or when Beatrice begs me to save all of my bras and underwear for her to wear when she's a teenager. Amid all of the chaos of mothering young children, these really are the best days.

I never wanted to find my identity in being a mother. I imagined myself to be so much more than that: friend, wife, lover of Jesus. Then I grew people in my womb and something changed. I never knew the honor of being a mother until I became one. There's no greater calling in a woman's life than to raise babies. I may have many roles in my life, but in this season, I am a mother. And I love it.

Happy Mother's Day! All photos by my friend, Sara Rose Photography.

One Piece

I turned 32 last month. Of the few goals I set for myself this year, wearing a one piece swimsuit was at the top of the list. My 2 pieces aren't super skimpy, but I just felt like 32 was a good time to throw a one piece into the mix. I didn't want just any ol' suit though, I wanted something that was really cute and flirty, but not too revealing because I have to chase my kids at the beach. My goal was to be a bit more modest, but still look young and fresh.

So I shopped. Mostly online. Do you know how difficult it is to bathing suit shop online? Whoa, it's hard. Really, really hard. I found tons of cute suits, but the models' bodies aren't like mine. I'm as tall as most of the women in the photos, but nowhere near as thin and curve-less.

Through all of the shopping I realized that you almost need to be in better shape to wear a one piece suit than you do when you wear a bikini. Most of the suits I tried on had cutouts or plunging necklines and other features that required sitting up really straight, sucking my stomach in, and not bending over or moving at all. I need a suit that I can slouch in and let it all hang out, without letting it all hang out!

After trying on many duds, I finally found a keeper. Today was my first time wearing a one piece bathing suit since I was 12 and I gotta say, it was awesome! I felt so cute!! My suit stayed put during wave jumping, shell hunting, and sand castle building. I slouched to my heart's content and never once sucked anything in. It was glorious. I felt modest but not at all frumpy or like I was trying to hide a problem body part. I actually didn't feel self-conscious at all. 


I am so down with the one piece now, I ordered another one just a little bit ago. I can't believe I waited so long to make the switch, but I'm so glad I did. Here's to a summer of slouching and not sucking in!!

Spiders

Do you want to know a fun fact about California? It's overrun by spiders!! How awesome is that?!?!

It's actually not very awesome. There are spiders in our bushes, spiders in the railing on our porch, spiders in our grass, and spiders in our house. Webs cover the landscaping and porch corners. We clean them off, but California spiders are ambitious arachnids and re-web everything by morning. Awesome, right?!

The worst spiders of course, are the ones found in the house. I find them behind toilets, under furniture, on walls, in the bath towels, and on window sills. Most of them are harmless, but I have found several brown widows on our outdoor toys and 1 in our laundry room. Brown widows are poisonous, just like the black variety, so... EEK! 

We go through spells where there are more spiders in the house than not, but there are always spiders in the house. And that has me a bit on edge, as you can imagine. I'm always on the lookout for 8-legged terrorists. After 2.5 years of being surprised by them, I now walk into rooms scanning the walls, floorboards, and ceilings knowing they are there, waiting to be discovered.

And sometimes they are there. I am brave now and can make a weapon out of most anything. Shoes, books, toilet paper, trash cans, and the mail are some favorites! I don't enjoy killing, but these spiders are out of control. I'm just doing my part for population control. Plus, there is a huge spider problem outside of our house, so releasing them just contributes to that issue. Murder is the only way!

I wasn't always this lethal though. Some of these rascally spiders JUMP, so instead of quickly squashing them, I would scream, cry, call JD, call the neighbors, and call the police. The threat of a spider crawling on me is bad enough, but imagine one lunging off of the wall in my direction... you would become murderous too.

I've grown so accustomed to looking for spiders that I see them when they're not really there at all. A wad of thread on the floor in my sewing room? Spider legs. A discarded candy wrapper in the corner? Spider abdomen. Texture on the basement wall? Spider. Naturally, I go into full annihilate mode, for nothing. Basically, the spiders have made me crazy.

The pest control guy tells me there is no way to completely de-spider our house. We have a basement and spiders like cool, dark lower levels, so it's likely we will have unwanted housemates for all of our days here. Our best bet is to sweep away webs, kill the live ones, and make sure other bugs don't make it into our house. Other bugs = spider food. He says lots of Californians have spider problems in their houses, it's just a California thing.

Super awesome, right?!

This Year's Easter Dresses

I made the girls' Easter dresses again this year. I didn't really intend to, but my sister in law begged me to make this dress for my niece to wear, so I bought the pattern and fell in love with it. For awhile last month, I was a one woman dress making machine. I churned out 3 little heart cut-out dresses for my favorite little people. I couldn't be happier with the outcome!

The dresses were fairly simple to make. The pattern was very detailed and easy to understand. I was really proud of myself for making a successful garment after so many failures.

The girls love their dresses too. It's so rewarding to make something that they actually want to wear. We bought some new glitter shoes today to complete their outfits. They look lovely, dontcha think?!

Penelope says Happy Easter! And make sure to wear your panties under whatever you're wearing this weekend!

Earthquake

This past Friday night, I felt my first earthquake! It was simultaneously super scary and kind of amazing. I was sitting on the couch crocheting, when the room started moving. It felt like the house was on a wave machine. The movement was smooth, rolling, and nauseating. It lasted at least 10 seconds - long enough for me to feel it and be totally freaked out.

My initial reaction was that JD was messing around with me. This was completely ridiculous and irrational considering he was upstairs putting Penelope to bed. When I realized he couldn't move our furniture from upstairs, I concluded someone was behind my couch, moving it. I'm serious, that was totally a reasonable explanation for me. I jumped up, fully expecting to see somebody hiding under the couch. Maybe I was in shock??? Then I noticed the chandelier swinging and the blinds swaying and deduced, oh my goodness, that was an earthquake!!!

I ran upstairs and said to JD, "did you feel that?!?!"
"Feel what?' he asked.
"We just had an earthquake! Come look, everything is moving!"
"You know what? I totally felt nauseated a few moments ago, like the room was rolling or something."

We both felt it. I texted friends and they felt it too. Soon, it was all over the news. There was a 5.1 quake about 30 miles from where we live. What we felt, the rolling waves, is typical for the distance we are to the fault lines where the quake occurred. For the next 24 hours, there were dozens of aftershocks, but we never felt them.

There have been earthquakes almost every month since we've lived in Southern California, but I've never felt one until Friday night. I've got to say, I'm excited to have experienced one, but I never want to feel another one again. Feeling the earth shift and move is unsettling (pun intended) and I don't really want to feel it again!

32, W

I had a birthday last week. It was one of the best ones yet. JD flew my best friend out for a week and then told us to spend a day doing something fabulous while he watched the girls. We booked a cabana at the W Hotel in Los Angeles and spent the day lounging, eating, and tanning.

It started out cold and cloudy, but shortly after noon the sky turned blue and the sun blazed. We fried. We stayed all day (8 hours!) and made it home just in time to eat homemade spaghetti and garlic toast. Thanks, honey!

It was such a fun treat for this mama who rarely gets any me-time. A pool day with my BFF? Best gift ever!

In Bloom

My lemon tree is in full bloom.

It's a tiny, little tree so full bloom may not seem like much to you, but it's pretty exciting to me! This little guy is so low maintenance and happy, he's the easiest plant I've ever kept alive. The blossoms smell so sweet, the bees cannot keep away. I can't wait to see my lemon harvest this year.

Living in Southern California is such a treat for citrus lovers like myself. The endless sun and mild temperatures create the perfect environment for little lemon trees like mine. Having kept him alive for almost a year now really makes me want to get more trees. I'm thinking avocado next, maybe lime. Definitely kumquat. My own little container orchard, coming soon!

Grapefruit Revolutionized

I'll be 32 in 2 weeks. This post is not about aging though, it's about fruit. For 30-something years, I have been eating fruit the wrong way. Mainly, grapefruit. This cannot go on!

My entire life, I have always cut the grapefruit in half, cut along the triangles, and spooned each fruity bite. (Like the photo above). This has been a perfectly fine way to eat grapefruit, but it is messy and time consuming. Plus, I never felt like I ate all of the fruit. There always seemed to be some pulpy bits stuck inside my triangle cuts that I could never spoon out.

Then one day last week, I saw a picture of a salad with grapefruit wedges. A lightbulb went off inside my head and my grapefruit eating has been revolutionized ever since.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PEEL THE FRUIT!!

Peel the thick outer skin, separate the wedges, remove the membranes, and eat! It's so easy and nothing is wasted. All of the fruit and all of the juice (my favorite part) is consumed this way.

This is probably not a huge news flash, you may be smarter than me and have been eating grapefruit this way your whole life. That's awesome, you are my fruit consuming hero. Me? I have wasted way too many years eating it the wrong way and I won't waste another one! I haven't been this excited about fruit since I discovered I have been opening pomegranates the wrong way, but that's another post...