St. Louis Zoo

The weekend before Dax's birthday we went to St. Louis and took him to the zoo. We realized beforehand that he probably wasn't going to be that into it. But, I still wanted to do something memorable for it. St. Louis zoo is free so it wasn't that big of a deal and Sam and I had fun checking out the animals. The only animals that got reactions from Dax were the penguins and camels! Man he cracks me up! We can't wait to bring him back in a couple years.

Halloween 2015

This is one of my favorite holiday traditions! Every Halloween growing up we would have dinner in a pumpkin and pumpkin roll. Now Sam and I do the same thing. Pumpkin roll is my favorite dessert although it is tied with strawberry cheesecake. Anyways, I will post the recipes. I would have both of these any time of the year!

Dinner in a Pumpkin

- 1 small to medium pumpkin

- 1 onion copped

- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

-1 1/2 to 2 pounds ground beef

- 2 tablespoons brown sugar

- 2 tablespoons soy sauce

-1(4oz.) can slices mushrooms

- 1(10 3/4oz.) can cream of chicken

- 1 1/2 cups cooked rice

- 1(8oz.) can sliced water chestnuts

Cut off the top of the pumpkin and thoroughly clean out the seeds and pulp. Paint a face on the front of the pumpkin with a permanent marker. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, saute onions in oil until tender. Add meat and brown. Drain drippings from skillet. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, mushrooms and soup. Simmer 10 minutes, stir-ing occasionally. Add cooked rice and water chestnuts. Spoon mixture into the cleaned pumpkin shell, replace pumpkin top and place entire pumpkin, with filling, on a baking sheet. Bake for a hour or until inside meat of the pumpkin is tender. Put pumpkin on a plate. Remove pumpkin lid and serve meat. For your vegetable, score out cooked pumpkin and serve. Serves 6. 

Pumpkin Roll 

(from the back of the Libby's Pumpkin Can paper)

Not the greatest picture but, Happy Halloween from the Solo's and Yoda!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Want something to do with those pumpkin guts after carving? :) This is an awesome, "somewhat" healthy treat you can make after you're done carving your pumpkins and I'm pretty sure you'll have all the ingredients on hand.

Step 1: After you've carved your pumpkins, save the seeds and clean them well. I did this by putting them in a colander and rinsing them. After, I placed them on a pan and dried them off. Some recipes tell you to dry them overnight. I didn't want to wait so I just towel dried them. Either way will work.

Step 2: After you've decided on the seasonings you want(I split the batch and did a couple different ones) you melt some butter and then mix the seeds in. To make it healthier, you could use olive oil.

Step 3: Most recipes asked you to stir the seasoning in with the butter and pumpkin seeds. When I did this all the seasonings ended up sticking to the bowl and not the seeds. I ended up placing them on the pan then sprinkling the seasoning on top. I like them pretty powerful so I wasn't stingy with the seasonings :).

Step 4: Place them in the oven on 300 degrees and keep an eye on them. They can burn very easily so I checked them about every 5 minutes and took them out once they had reached the crunchiness I liked.

There are a million different recipes so I suggest you check out different ones and see what sounds best for you/what ingredients you have on hand. These are the ones I tried today:

Salt

Cinnamon and Brown Sugar (my favorite)

Dill and Salt (also very good)

Chili powder and Garlic Salt

I also saw one that was pizza flavored but didn't try it. I would make all of these again.

Cinnamon & Brown Sugar

Thanks for stopping by! I'm so excited to share my favorite Halloween tradition this Saturday!

Daxton Turns 1!

My sweet baby is one and I am in denial! I can't believe we have had a whole year with Dax and at the same time I can't imagine what life would be like without him! Since going back and reading his birth story again all day I have been thinking about what I was doing at this moment a year ago. I'm just so grateful to be his mother. I've had so much fun being this little explorers mom and can think of nothing I'd rather do. I'm so excited to watch him continue to grow and establish his own personality. As for now he rules our house, hes learned how to get his way and most of the time we think he's too cute to say no to :). 

Weight: Not sure because we haven't had a check up yet but I would guess low 20's.

Height: Same with his weight. When he was born and for quite a while he was tall for his age but that has slowed down a bit.

Clothes: Anything from 9-12 to 12-18, clothing sizes seem to range more at this age. But he is in a size 4 shoe.

Diapers: Size 3 but the next box we buy will be size 4. It feels like we have been in size 3 for forever!

Food: DUDE, this kid EATS!  Everything and all the time! He'll eat pretty much anything but, we have noticed he likes to be eating what we are. So if you give him something different he will usually sneak his hand off his high chair and drop it on the floor(why!!!??). He loves fruit, especially bananas and anything dessert(uh oh!)

Movement: Crawling and cruising(walking while holding on the things). He has been standing up by himself so maybe walking soon? He also can go up and down the stairs and it's his favorite thing to do :/.  Oh, and he has started climbing things.

Sleeping: Pretty good, he puts himself to sleep and sleeps through the night. He usually wakes up very early and when he does we usually complain but then I realize that I'm at least lucky he's not waking me up in the middle of the night.
Teeth: He's got 8 teeth! 4 on top and 4 on bottom.

We  have had two parts to his birthday. The first was our trip to the St. Louis Zoo which I will post about later. The second was his actual birthday which was today. Sam had to work at two so we celebrated this morning. He woke up around 6:30 and usually we eat right away but Sam wanted him to open his presents and he was so entertained by it he could have gone hours without eating! His favorite thing was from my parents, a little motorcycle that makes noise and lights up. He had been sitting on it all day and honking his horn:). After awhile we had him eat his cake. We thought he would immediately tear into it but he just stared at it for about a minute. Finally he tried it and then destroyed it as shown above!

The rest of the day has been spent playing:). Happy birthday to my best little buddy! 

Corn Maze 2015

I'm so glad that it's October! Fall is finally here, and it is my absolute favorite season! Everything about it and add in a couple birthdays and it's perfect. One of our favorite fall traditions is going to the corn maze! What's even better is being able to take Daxton to his first one! I don't think he loved it but he did pretty good and I can't wait until he is running around them! And of course they are always a lot of fun with friends! They also had a petting zoo but Dax did NOT like that. We stuck his hand in to touch a sheep and it was back out as fast as possible! I hope everyone is enjoying their fall season! We are starting to plan our Halloween costumes and I'm super excited!

Grand Falls

 We decided to go and check out Grand Falls. It's the largest continually flowing waterfall in MO. It was pretty sweet but I think it was funner seeing how much Dax liked putting his feet in the water. Mostly we were just happy to spend some time with daddy! Here's to 11 months with this little one! I can't believe you will be a year old in about a month!

Labor Day

We went on a hike with friends for Labor Day. It was super hot and we did get lost for a little bit but it was a lot of fun! The babes did so awesome and didn't complain the whole time! I feel like we rarely get out of doors lately so this was just what we needed. Burning a ton of calories didn't hurt either ;).

Sam's Birthday + Birthday Cake

Sam's birthday was last week and I made probably the best cake I have ever made for him. Naked cakes are becoming popular so I decided to make one. If you haven't seen one you should google them. There are some really cool ones! 

 

I think Dax will like opening his presents on his birthday because he sure liked helping dad open his.

There's my masterpiece! Haha, basically a naked cake is just not frosted everywhere. I can never get my cakes to come out of the pans smoothly but I knew that would important when I couldn't cover it up. I looked up some tricks that hopefully will help you if you have this problem. Wipe the pan with butter or oil, flour it, lay down wax paper (you can trace it and cut it before oiling it) then repeat the oiling and flouring. It comes out so easily! The peanut butter frosting was so good and light. I layered the top with a ganache. I have never made one before but this stuff is amazing and I just want to cover everything with it now!

The last month

Get ready for photo overload! I've got a month worth of pictures to share. Now that we are finally getting into somewhat of a schedule, maybe I'll post more than once a month! We had so much fun being home for a month! I don't think I have played that much during a summer in a very long time! It was basically no work and all play :).

We made the 1000+ mile drive to Ozark, MO. Not the funnest. Daxton got sick but was still incredibly happy the entire drive until the last 30 minutes, then he basically lost it. We got all moved in then we all got sick except Sam. How he escaped it I don't know but I guess it was a good time for it since it was the only day we didn't have any plans.

Since the move we have been unpacking, organizing the house, exploring, and getting to know people. I still have a ton to do but it will get done eventually. Sam officially starts school tomorrow, it's crazy! Only two years and four months to go! Haha I'm sure it will fly by but right now it seems like forever. Anyways, here are some of the pictures of what we've been up to.

What the boys do when mom is gone!

Daxton's first time fishing. The first time we showed him the fish he slapped it! Cracked me up but later he was trying to lick them so I think his opinion improved :)

We gave Daxton his first french fry. He is definitely our child because he loved it!

His little face kills me! Pure happiness!

Now for the real thing :)

Exploring Springfield

This place is going to be so beautiful in the fall!