Once again, busy week.. are you tired of hearing me say that? Oh well, hopefully soon things will lighten up and I’ll be able to tell you all about it, but for now, here’s what you get! This week it rained all day TWICE. For us dry, on the verge of the desert, West Texans, one rain day is a feat. in itself, but TWO? Now that’s just crazy talk!

So, I cheated, that picture {above} was taken in Dallas least week, but I never shared it.

Tuesday I came home from work to find my husband asleep in bed. This was odd because he’s usually working out during this time so my first thought was, He’s sick. I went to wake him up and check on him and he assured me he was “just tired,” so I let him sleep. Around 7:30 that night he drowsily made his way to the living room to watch TV with me and by 9:15, was ready for bed again. Something in the back of my mind knew he wasn’t telling me the whole story.

Wednesday morning, he woke up with a sore throat and after quick examination in the bathroom mirror, a sigh of frustration, and storming off, I knew he was sick. He was not happy, but thankfully after three years of marriage, I’ve taught him that going to the doctor early on will always lead to a quicker recovery. This from the girl who’s afraid of the doctor, every doctor, in every setting… don’t believe me? Ask my high school girls when one of the doctor dads walks into the room during bible study, it’s embarrassing y’all. I’ve diagnosed myself with “White Coat Hypertension,” sounds official doesn’t it?

Back to my husband… the one who was actually physically sick, not mentally.

He took himself to the doctor at 8:15 that morning and called to tell me he had strep but that he “didn’t feel that bad” and he “might go to work anyways.” The mom in me put my foot down and told him “NO!” he was contagious until he had been on antibiotics for 24 hours. I had planned to go pick up his prescriptions around lunch because they said it might be a while. At 11, the pharmacy hadn’t received anything. At 1:30, still nothing. a call to the doctor {it was one of those express care places}, and they said their new e-file system must not have worked so they would send it again. Did you know they’re no longer offering paper prescriptions? So everyone’s learning how to use the new system at the expense of the people who are sick and need medicine. At this point, hubs is mad because he will now for sure have to miss another entire work day.

5:00 I call the pharmacy and still nothing. I called the doctor furious. They felt really bad and said the provider that saw him would handle it personally. Within minutes, B got a call from the PA that saw him apologizing, which did nothing to help his situation.. and FINALLY at 7pm, his prescription was ready. Was it that hard?

So I played my normal role of lysol-armed woman when I came home from work and wiped everything down. Within 12 hours of being on antibiotics, he was back to his normal self, and I came home to him cleaning the baseboards Thursday evening. He was going to pull his hair out with boredom sitting around the house.

Wednesday we hit 15 weeks, and even though hubby was sick, I am feeling GREAT! Finally made a turn and I think I’m out of the icky-ness, hopefully for good! I’m thankful for having a seemingly event less pregnancy thus far. Aparently babe is supposed to be developing those little eardrums within limits of this past week and next and will be able to hear me sometime in that time. It amazing to me to think about the things that happen, how God has planned creation so perfectly that a 4 inch little baby is swallowing, kicking, growing and listening already! How amazing. I’m looking forward to being able to feel this little thing move around in the next few weeks!

…and this little girl doesn’t have a CLUE what’s coming!

Happy Friday!

I’ve made this pizza a couple of times in the last 4-5 months so I decided to share the recipe with you. I threw it together one evening when I was scrounging for something to feed the husband and doing what I could with what I had. We’ve been trying to eat better since the beginning of the year, and that has included a lot of vegetables. Husband loves this pizza, and it’s the perfect quick dinner when you’ve got a lot going on.

The only thing I could think of that would make this even better would be to make your own pizza dough – something I’ve done plenty of times – but this recipe is for quick and easy, so a pre-made store bought pizza dough will get the job done in a quarter of the time {not including the time it would take for your dough to rise}.

So here’s what you’ll need:

-pizza dough {you can find this near the canned biscuits}
-olive oil
-pesto
-1 clove minced garlic
-zucchini
-squash
-roma tomato
-shredded mozzarella cheese

Start off by preheating your oven to the temperature on the dough package, for me it was 400 degrees, and spray your cookie sheet with non-stick cooking spray. Slice up your vegetables and heat some oil in a skillet over medium heat. Toss the zucchini and squash into the skillet and cook until slightly tender. Add garlic and saute 1 minute longer.

Spread a little bit of olive oil over the pizza dough and about 3/4 teaspoon pesto evenly over the pizza – more or less for taste, we like just a little bit for this pizza. Then add your vegetables to the pizza.

Next, cover the pizza with mozzarella.

The top with your roma tomato slices. I like to slice mine really thin because the slimy-ness of tomatoes grosses me out a little.

Finish it off with a little more cheese and pop it in the oven for as long at the directions call – for me, about 10 minutes.

Once it’s cooked and the crust begins to brown, pull it out of the oven and off of the cookie sheet. I always transfer it to my big wooden cutting board to slice it up with my pizza cutter and serve.

There you go! Enjoy your quick, easy, {healthy}, and fairly low-calorie dinner! I slice my pizza into 12 slices and we each eat about 3 slices {4 servings per pizza} which evens out to just over 200 calories total for all three slices! You can see the rest of the nutritional break-down {here} thanks to SparkRecipes calculator. I’m happy to see all of those vitamins included in this dish!

Have you “freestyled” {as I like to call it} lately and come up with something great out of what you had on hand? I’d love to hear!

{a little 14-week bump for your viewing pleasure}

I’ve been MIA here on this blog – sorry! It’s been an interesting last few weeks for me work-wise, and busy to say the least. Last Wednesday I had a meeting in Fort Worth and then decided to take Thursday and Friday off for some much needed time off and to spend some time with family.

My sister and her {soon-to-be-expanding} family are moving to Dallas from California and we’re all beyond excited! They were in town one last time before the arrival of my second nephew to look at houses. I was able to spend some quality time with my nephew and it was glorious. Ever since he was born, I’ve never been able to spend any time alone with him, and visiting was never as often as I’d wish. But I made up for it, getting to keep him for two days straight at the perfect age.

20-months is so, so fun! He’s talking and doing his baby sign language, it makes me excited for a little one of our own! His enthusiasm in everything that moves {trucks, cars, airplanes, buses, …you name it} was such a delight and so fun to hang with. I’m no longer one of those strange people who comes to visit him, I’m his “An TA” and I’ll take it!  I brought my camera with me and yet again, never took it out of the bag, he was just too precious and too busy for me to care about taking it out. I did manage to snap a photo of some bed head after his nap, eating apples and watching Yo Gabba, Gabba! with his “B” {blanket}.

Saturday came too quickly and I headed home to get back for a wedding shower to celebrate some friends. It was a fabulous night with so many wonderful people, and of course and incredible couple! We can’t wait for July!!

Sunday, we went to church, lunch, spent the afternoon lying around, cooked green beans for 25 people, grocery shopped, and did some much needed laundry.

I’ll be back soon with more substance, bear with me!

About a month or so ago, we planted sod in our front yard, things are growing in quite nicely but I had my eye on something else.

This little flower bed has been driving me insane since the day we moved in {almost 2 years ago}! Ever since the yard has been done, I’ve been begging husband to let me fill it in with plants and finish out the front of the house! He’s done everything he could to keep me out of it for the last couple of weeks, he had to put in the drip irrigation line that’s connected to the sprinkler system and a new border along the edge because the old one was cheap plastic that was broken. I waited “patiently” for the time to come and it did the weekend before last! That Sunday my plan was to fill in the flower bed with plants, until we got a call from some friends to go play a round of golf. It was a bittersweet moment for me, but I went and had fun. All last week, however, this flower bed was the bane of my existence {how’d you like that SAT word?}.

Friday after work, I needed to work off some stress so I headed to a couple of garden stores and home depot to compare prices. Usually, the garden places are much more expensive, but sometimes worth it because of the quality of plants you get compared to home depot or lowe’s. When I arrived at home depot, I was shocked at the quality of some of the plants I had been eyeing for this project – and at those prices, I was sold! So I purchased! I came home with 3 pots of purple fountain grass, and 2 pots of salvia. I was looking for height and fullness without purchasing the typical bushes such as boxwoods – though they’re pretty.

I came home and couldn’t stand it anymore, I grabbed the shovel and got to work after I placed them around the bed to find the right layout. If you’ll notice in the photo above, I’m dealing with the eye sore of our gas meter right by the front door… handy right? Maybe for the meter man, not for me.

I planted the new plants, moving around some of the existing plants we already had for a more balanced layout. The purple jews from last year seemed to be doing really well, and they provide a really pretty color, so I kept them. The monkey grass that has been there since the day we moved in needed a lot of adjusting, some I had to split so they would be balanced across the front of the bed, and so there would be enough plants to go across the front. One of the things that has bothered me from day one was the imbalance of the placement of the monkey grass {or liriope for you curious type}, thankfully, I’ve fixed that problem.

Saturday I went to Lowe’s and bought two pots of geraniums as well to fill in with a little more of a pop of color!

This was before mulch, you can see the drip line.

Sunday, husband went and bought all the mulch and got to work on all of the beds in the front of the house {we have two more I haven’t really even touched yet}. It was just the finishing touch they needed!

You can see in this photo {above} that the purple fountain grass should cover up the gas meter quite nicely. Side note, we realize that ornamental grasses can get HUGE, but we plan to keep them pruned back and splitting them when we need to, no worries.

I think it looks pretty, and when the plants start to mature and grow, it should fill in quite nicely. Husband was thoroughly impressed with my plant arranging/picking out skills, now if I can only keep them all alive! I’m hoping the drip line will help a sista out. Here’s an overall picture of the house before {the earliest photo I have at least} compared to the overall of it now! What an improvement!

Before

{p.s. all that gravel in the road is from the city starting a re-paving process on our street}

We still have a few more things to accomplish out front, but I’d say we can enjoy it now and no longer be embarrassed by our mudpit! We’ve even had some of our neighbors come by and tell us we have “the best looking yard/house on the block” – don’t know if I’d say that myself, but it does feel good to hear that people notice the hard work and changes you’ve made!