Leif has the best daddy ever! Happy Father's Day Hubs...:)
Saturday, June 21
We took Leif to a nice playground close by before it got too hot, but didn't stay too long because...it got too hot, even though it was 9am! It was nice because no one else was there, but hopefully we can stay longer next time.
After a morning nap, we decided to get lunch at our favorite sushi spot.
For being such a good boy/eating a hearty lunch, we gave Leif one of his Mickey lollipops.
We let Leif play with one of Hubs' board games-he really likes playing with all of Daddy's games!
Sunday, June 22
For Father's Day, we decided to visit Long Beach for lunch and to visit the aquarium. First we visited this nice park on the water to let Leif run around, then off to lunch at Rock Bottom.
Leif didn't nap well on the way to Long Beach, so he fell asleep on his way to lunch, then proceeded to sleep on Daddy until he woke up as soon as food arrived.
Hubs used the carrier most of the time at the aquarium. Leif was so much more aware and excited that it was worth the drive!
It was such a fun weekend, and of course it went by very quickly. Looking forward to July 4th weekend-we are flying up to Washington for my cousin's wedding!
June is going by too quickly. I love June because:
1. School is done
2. The campus is quiet
3. My drive is much quicker/easier due to school being done
I do not love June because:
1. Weather is warming up to be too hot
(that's pretty much it!)
Here's my June update:
Saturday, June 6
Playing with Leif's treasures from Disneyland
Before an IKEA run, we took Leif to a fun park in Burbank.
Sunday, June 7
Leif enjoying our new purchase from IKEA
Saturday, June 13
We decided Miles needed a park run for himself-Leif had fun roaming around until...
I somehow managed to snap this photo of a cute puppy jumping up and licking Leif. Pretty epic. Leif was fine-he fell down on his bum and cried out a little, but then when I picked him up he cried to be put down so that he could walk around some more. :)
We had planned a date night that evening, and I didn't get very far on this "Parent's Night Out" pad until Leif wanted to fill out the information.
We bought tickets to the Cinépolis in Westlake Village-swanky movie theater with "leather" reclining seats, and dinner served to you if you wanted. We saw Jurassic World-CGI dinos were awesome, plot and acting was terrible. And we will probably never go to this theater again-too expensive!
Our babysitter was so sweet and she said they had a wonderful time. He cried before bed, but I expected that with a new person.
Sunday, June 14
Can you guess where we ended up on Sunday?
With the Amazon gift card my Pa sent me for my birthday, I picked up a front facing and backpack-wearing carrier for Leif! He's almost too big for front facing, but he was great on my back!
We stopped by Toon Town and waited in line to see...
Goofy!
This was his second character photo, but he was way more excited to see Goofy. He was even trying to walk closer to him while we were in line. :)
Couldn't leave without visiting Goofy's house and his fun piano!
After visiting the Disneyland side, we went to the La Brea Bakery in Downtown Disney for lunch. Hubs took this photo-it's my Hibiscus Tea Arnold Palmer...it was yummy.
I was running out of things to keep Leif occupied while waiting for lunch-I ended up playing puppets with the Disney bag. It worked out for a little while!
Leif fell asleep after lunch, so we wandered around California Adventure for a little while. When he woke up, he played in the water area in Bug's Life which was SUPER cute, but all the photos were taken on hubs' nice camera. I'll probably post a couple soon! After a quick change, we watched the Pixar Parade.
We wandered around Disneyland a little more, then decided to grab some dinner for Leif. I was getting sleepy and wanted to leave, but Hubs wanted to stay for the fireworks show. We ended up doing AstroBlasters and picked up a half-birthday present for Leif:
Since he knows the Toy Story movies now, he was super excited to see Woody!
After the fireworks, we waited out the crowd. This is how Leif fell asleep, and I carried him to the car about a mile away. My feet were killing me, but we made it.
It was a fun trip, but now that it's getting hotter, I don't know if we'll be making it out there as much this summer. Our passes are good until next February, so I have a feeling when the fall hits and our passes are good pretty much every day, we'll be there more often! Leif is one lucky boy. :)
And I'll leave you with this last photo:
Today marks one year that Leif has been at Karen's Busy Bee Learning Tree Daycare! Look how small he was-I can't believe a year has gone by this quickly!
So what does my little family do when daddy has a couple days off?
Why, take a mini vacation to Disneyland of course!
Tuesday was super quiet in my office, and hubs had the day off so we decided to get Leif from daycare and go down to Disneyland for a day or two! We weren't sure about hubs' schedule for Wednesday, so we packed up in hopes that he didn't have to work the next day and stay down in Anaheim for another Disney day.
Traffic was terrible getting there, but we found out hubs didn't have to work. So we arrived at our hotel and Leif had a blast! Here's a fun video of him discovering the hotel Mickey Mouse (his hair is crazy because he had just woken up from a car nap, and don't mind my high-pitched voice):
Leif is such a trooper! He lasted all night at Disneyland-we enjoyed the new parade in random places-we didn't get a spot reserved, so we kept getting shuffled by the Disney employees, but we still were able to watch most of it! Then we waited for 25 minutes for fireworks; but due to "high elevation and wind", they were canceled. Boo. Then we rode Pirates, and then watched Fantasmic-at 10:45pm. I felt cruel keeping him up that late, but he really enjoyed the show. He was on top of Hubs' shoulders, and he said he heard Leif say a serious "uh oh" when the dragon came out. What a good boy!
Daddy bought him a crazy light-up toy-here they are playing with it in the line for Pirates of the Caribbean.
We didn't get back to the hotel until 12:30am, and Leif had passed out on our way back to the car and we were able to get him in bed without waking him up. We fell asleep around 1am, but of course Leif sprung awake at 6am, his normal waking hour. Thankfully I coaxed him back to sleep (after he made a quick jaunt around the hotel room), but we didn't wake up until 10am! We rushed to get ready and didn't make it to the park until noon.
He had a fascination with climbing up on chairs/benches in the hotel room and sitting properly. How cute is this?!
First stop: Disney Jr. Live! He had a fun time seeing Mickey, Doc and the rest of the Disney Jr. cartoons.
We managed to stay until around 7:30pm, and by then I wasn't feeling all that great so we headed home. What a fun mini vacay!
This is out of order, but on Monday we had some music on while waiting to meet a potential babysitter-we wanted to find a babysitter to come to our house for occasional date night instead of having to take him to daycare that's out of the way. After meeting her and really liking her (we booked her for next weekend!), Leif had a dance party!
AND here's another video of Leif in the car from Sunday...
I know, cuteness overload. Here's my last video-this was taken yesterday, after he saw his daddy put the drum on his head...
Okay, done with the videos!
Having a mini vacation in the middle of the week throws off my sense of time...I can't believe it's Friday already! I think we'll be having a nice, relaxing weekend. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!!
It's been quite a while since I've updated my Pinterest tab...which shows you how long it's been since I've tried a new recipe! But things have finally slowed down/family health is better and I actually had time to cook a healthy meal...
Here's the pin:
This comes from the website "Minimalist Baker", click here to go there now!
I didn't get a chance to take lots of photos as I was setting up the tofu in the middle of playing with Leif, then getting him ready for bed...but in order to get the perfect tofu, it's kind of a long process. First you have to dry it out, then you bake it, then you let it sit. Even though total time was over an hour to prep the tofu, the stir fry part went quick. And it was so worth it.
I wish veggies would come pre-cut and cheap. I know you can buy cut up veggies, but you have to use them right away and they're uber expensive. But I think cutting the veggies took longer than actually cooking them. Aren't they pretty though? This is so colorful!
Adding tofu and sauce
YUM
Finished product!
This was definitely a success-the tofu was firm, the sauce was extremely delicious-a little sweet, good spices. It was amazing.
Here's where I deviated from the recipe:
1. It calls for fresh ginger, but I've realized over the years that hubs and I aren't huge fans of too much fresh ginger-so I used half a teaspoon of ground ginger.
2. I used three cloves of fresh garlic in the sauce (it doesn't call for ANY!!!)
3. I used a variety of veggies
This is probably my favorite tofu dish now, and think I'll be adding it to my weekly menu since it's so healthy! YUM!
