Memorial Weekend 2012

This past weekend was what I hope to be the start of an annual weekend at the cabin.  It was just Ryan, Naomi and I up there this past weekend and we had a lot of fun together as a little family.

The only mistake of the weekend was that Ryan told Naomi on Saturday morning that we were going to the cabin for the weekend and going to go fishing on the boat...so all morning long while Ryan was at work all I heard was, Da! Boat! Fishin! Go Bye-Bye! Yeah!  and repeat....about 8,000 times :)  She's a bit obsessive...

 We timed out the trip to coincide with nap time and I couldn't help but snap a few pics...

 I have a feeling that her car seat is quite comfy

 Her sweet little feet

I love her.

Right after Naomi was born, my sister Tammie took a picture of Ryan and Naomi and I said that looking at this picture was like looking at my heart....

Below is the updated version of what my heart now looks like (:

 So. AS SOON as we got to the cabin she kept running around saying BOAT! BOAT! BOAT!

So, I quickly unpacked and we went out on the boat...and she got mad...because we wouldn't let her drive!!  Super funny, aside from this may be an unknown fact to some, but an angry toddler can make quite the loud echo across a lake. Just so you know, in case you were wondering.  Ha ha. 

Luckily she is still easily distract-able and there were fish and ducks to look at.

We came back and made dinner and just had a quiet and relaxing night back at the cabin...

Sunday brought beautiful weather and Naomi's first fishing trip...which reaffirmed that yes, I am a wimp and I cannot bait my own hook.  Don't judge, I can do a lot of things but not that...just yet at least.  Naomi on the other hand is VERY brave and not scared at all to touch worms, bugs or fish.

I think that it is true that a good marriage has a partnership of balance, Ryan is MUCH more patient than I am and was an excellent teacher for Naomi on her first fishing expedition.  And together they caught a little sun fish!

 Slowly reeling in her line...

 Helping hands from daddy...

Serious fishing face

Even the most avid toddler angler (and her parents) need an afternoon rest...

The afternoon took us to check out a family Bluegrass show (in preparation for Hiawatha in July)...at first she just sat in my lap and would. not. move.  By the third song she was starting to smile, by the end of the fourth she was clapping...then Daddy asked her to dance and she said YES!  Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera but let me tell you, it was sweet, then they pulled mommy on the dance floor and it was fun.  Right after that song was done so was Naomi so we meandered over to playground and beach right next door and Naomi spent some time playing on the slides and swings.  Then we walked over to the beach and she wanted to just run into the water...I will have to keep that in mind for our next adventure to the playground and beach!  Pack her swimming suit!

Our Sunday concluded with a night boat ride, Naomi in the latest of toddler fashion is wearing literally every pattern in her wardrobe...ahh to be two...when else can you dress like a crazy person and still be so stinkin' cute?  (aside from Ryan still thinks its acceptable to wear a tie-dyed t-shirt and plaid shorts at the same time...it's a work in progress :) )

 With her beloved blankie, whose corner she rubs in her eye.  Yes, in her eye.  I know it's weird.  Even more weird?  Ryan's dad used to do the same thing when he was little.  Who would have thought THAT would be an inherited trait?

 On the lookout for fish...

 Best boat buddies...

And we finally let her drive the boat...while in Ryan's lap at least, she is quite the attentive captain!

Monday came and we took one more journey "out to sea".  The weather was perfect, the sun was shining, there was a cool breeze.  We did a little fishing and a little riding around the lake on the pontoon.  When we got back to the dock, Naomi got out, RAN down the dock, with me screeching at her that we do NOT RUN on the dock, 

then she plunks down at the end of the dock and puts her toes in the water and just starts splashing and splashing and splashing.  

 

 

My little peanut is literally growing up before my eyes.  I know this is the process of life and there is nothing you can do to slow it down but I would love to hit pause for just a little bit.  At least I can "freeze" a few moments every now and then to look back on...

We had a wonderful long weekend and I was humbled by the amazing freedoms that we are blessed with and am so thankful for all those who have given up time with their families and loved ones, who have given their lives so that so many can enjoy amazing times with our loved ones. 

Thank You to all of our serviceman past, present and future.

Much love and many blessings.

A picture is worth a thousand words...and countless emotions

I feel like time goes way too fast...I have been taking a photography class for the past month or so and one of my personal goals in taking the class is to freeze little moments of our family's life because I sincerely feel like life has been moving too fast! 

Below are some of my favorite pics that I've captured over the course of the class.  While the actual lessons covered specific technical terms such as aperture, fstops, shutterspeed, ISO, etc. the real lessons that we have been learning have been how to freeze moments in time...

 The smell of fresh cut spring blooms to a curious toddler nose

 

 A laugh shared between grandpop and two of his grandbabies

 A light of wonder in a little girls eyes

 A look of surprise!

 Bright eyes, curious about all there is in the world

  A laugh shared among cousins

 A real giggle coming from deep down

 The early life lessons of not eating sand...LOL!

 Gliding through the trees

 Rosy cheeks and perfect skin

 A moment of smiles and snuggles of two brothers

 Story time, story time, story time

 Toddler kicks and peddling on a big boy bicycle

 Looking super cool in shades

 True signs of summer

 Fun times running in sprinklers

 Sweet Smiles

 A trio of trouble and giggles 

While a professional I am not, this class has taught me so much in the technical scope of photography that I have been able to capture those moments that when I look back at the picture I can not only see it I can feel it.  And to me, that is priceless.

Who's Ruling the Roost?

We spent last weekend up north for a little long opening fishing weekend...while the boys were out fishing the girls (Barb, Naomi and I) played around the cabin, did a little bumming and went to meet some very fancy chickens at Uncle Pat and Aunt Annie's house. 

As always Naomi was a trooper with the traveling however we have been having MAJOR sleep problems since we said bye-bye to the nukkers a few weeks ago.  We are trying numerous please just go to sleep methods as well as please stay in your room methods, we have not had much success yet which leads me to the answer of the above question for our house right now...who's ruling our roost?  Well, she's about 35 pounds and a little over 3 feet tall and she is a tough ruler!!  We have had a number of very fun things happen in the last week though too - she absolutely could NOT wait for her grilled cheese sandwich the other night and got a boo-boo on her finger.  Later after many tears (hers and mine) Ryan offered to kiss her finger to make it better.  Naomi's response?  With wide eyes and a look of dismay, "No da-da, my boo-boo!"  Super cute. 

Back to the cabin, who rules the roost at the actual roost?  This pretty fella:

However he was not a fan of me taking pictures of his lady friends so I had to snap and run pictures of him - the black and white hen really liked me though so I was able to snap a couple of good ones of her as well...as you can see the rooster is in the background of this picture too - but lucky for me there was a fence between us!



Part of the fun of getting together with family on the weekends is the good food and this weekend was no exception - we ate dinner out at the Minocqua Pizza Company and it was awesome!  Perfect setting for our family, Naomi could run around without raising too many eyebrows and they had great Amber beer and fantastic pizza!  Sunday night was my night to take care of dinner, I had snagged a pack of baby bella mushrooms at Aldi's the week before and had some chicken in the freezer so thanks to the wonderful search engine at Allrecipes.com I found this recipe.  It turned out fantastic and I will definitely be making it again:

Chicken Marsala with Mushrooms

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour for coating
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - pounded 1/4 inch thick
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 cup Marsala wine
• 1/4 cup cooking sherry

Directions

1. In a shallow dish or bowl, mix together the flour, salt, pepper and oregano. Coat chicken pieces in flour mixture.
2. In a large skillet, melt butter in oil over medium heat. Place chicken in the pan, and lightly brown. Turn over chicken pieces, and add mushrooms. Pour in wine and sherry. Cover skillet; simmer chicken 10 minutes, turning once, until no longer pink and juices run clear.

The only thing that I would have done differently would have been to add twice as many mushrooms!  I paired it with roasted red potatoes with Italian seasoning, steamed broccoli and ciabatta bread.  It was a great meal and was ready in about 40 minutes and really was simple.

Here are three full but happy Thomases :) (and 2 pups)

The weekend was pretty rainy overall so we didn't get to play outside as much as we wanted but Naomi got to try out the new dump truck that "Boppa" refurbished for her.

We also spent a lot of time coloring and playing with puzzles...

It was a great weekend with family and I am looking forward to our next little get away!

Mommy Breaks

For those of you reading this with kiddos - I will most likely be preaching to the choir, but it is so important to take "mommy breaks" where you have a weekend, a day, an hour , 5 minutes or whatever you need to just breathe and be yourself...I had a mommy break this past weekend and spent the weekend in Madison with my best friend Ellie.  It was refreshing and relaxing and exactly what I needed to refocus on my life back home.  If you haven't taken a break lately - you really should, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the day to day that you forget to take care of yourself too. 

While in Madison we visited the Farmers Market there - the first one of the season, their market is held right by the Capital which is really beautiful.  It was the perfect morning weather wise and I just started taking a photography class/get to know how to use my new fancy dancy camera  last week so I was looking ALL over the place at all of the things I wanted to take pictures of!  I ended up with a lot of the tulips out around the Capital - I couldn't help it - they were so pretty and now that I know how to play with the light with my camera my photos look completely different then when I was in the auto setting - F.U.N.

Continuing on in the fun we spent the afternoon at some thrift shops on Odana Street - VERY fun and we both were able to snag some little treasures :)  Ellie and I are both little foodies so our dinner plan for Saturday night was to put together a great meal that could stretch over the night so we could chat and cook and just not be rushed.  We looked over a few recipes and put together one of our own from the ideas of what we read - literally my absolute favorite way to cook - getting the general idea and then putting your own spin on things.  Here's what we did:

Our first course was some great rustic Italian bread from Trader Joe's, Ellie mixed olive oil, Parmesan and spices for dipping and some great red wine.

While we enjoyed the bread here is the recipe that we got to work on creating:

Seared Salmon over Linguine with a Lemon Dill Vodka Sauce (don't be scared of the title!)
For the Sauce:
Dice 1 medium onion and saute over medium high heat in a good drizzle of EVOO until the onion is translucent (about 5 minutes) 
Add:
1 Cup cream
3 Cups Chicken Broth
1/3 Cup vodka
Simmer the sauce over medium heat for 1 hour to reduce to 2 cups

At about the half way mark we started assembling the other parts (pasta, salmon, salad) of our dinner and the timing worked out fabulously....

Bring a big pot of well salted water to a roaring boil and add your pasta of choice - we used linguine - according to the pasta measuring thing from Cooks America is said we had 2 servings of pasta measured out - I think it was more like 4 but it worked well for the amount of sauce.  Cook the pasta until el dente.

Saute 1 medium diced red pepper and a 50/50 mix of spinach and arugula (about 2 cups each) in a pan with a good drizzle of olive oil.

Meanwhile - back to the sauce, once reduced add 1 1/2 tsp lemon zest and 2 Tbls. lemon juice, black pepper to taste and 1/2 Tbsp. dried dill.  The sauce will be thin - it's not like a cheesy Alfredo sauce...that kept throwing us off, while it's not thick it is still rich and satisfying!

Pour the water off the pasta and add the pepper and greens along with the sauce to the pan and simmer everything together for about 5 minutes.

Your pasta is set - while all of that magic was going on, Ellie was tending to the salmon fillets - we picked up about 3/4 of a lb of fresh salmon from the grocery and rubbed it with the leftover bread dipping oil and seared it on a grill pan over medium/high heat for about 4-5 minutes per side.

Plate your pasta and place salmon over the top alongside a salad - for the salad we did a mix of romaine and spinach tossed with pecans, bleu cheese and dried cranberries.  We dressed the salad with 1 clove of garlic mashed to a paste (dice the garlic then sprinkle with a little salt and using the back of a spoon mash the garlic into a paste - or they sell mashed garlic in a tube at the grocery store but where's the fun in a just squeezing? :) ) then whisked with 3 tsp. honey, 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup lemon juice with salt and pepper to taste.

Yum.  It was delicious - the flavors in the sauce are outstanding without being overpowering.  I would definitely make this recipe again. 

Sunday we took Ellie's dog Loki for a long walk on the Ice Age Trail - yes, the same Ice Age Trail that comes through by Medford is in Madison, I never knew!  While out on our walk I brought my camera along and got some really fun shots of flowers along the path...we also spotted two HUGE turkeys - luckily, I spotted them before Loki did so we were able to get her on her leash before she ran off after them.  Ellen and I were joking around about the scenarios of when turkeys attack - our imaginations may have gotten the best of us! 

It was a wonderful weekend away and great to spend some time just relaxing...but one of the best parts of the weekend was walking through the door at home and hearing "Momma!" and to see Naomi come running at me with a huge smile on her face and getting the biggest hug in the world.  It was a great welcome home!  I think that when you take a break or time out from your day to day it gives you a chance to breathe and refocus.  It gives you the perspective you need to come back to your "real life" with a new perspective and appreciation. 

Many blessings and much love :)