Lisa's Amazing Vegan Icecream!

I am a vegan wanna-be (wanna-be is heavily emphasised here)...but I do love most of the idea of the vegan diet and I do try to pattern my diet somewhat based on it. Anyways, one thing that I love is ice cream (not so vegan friendly :) - but my incredible vegan friend, Lisa, introduced me to the PERFECT vegan ice cream. It is the perfect fix to my ice cream cravings. Easy, cheap, and delicious! Carolyn, Angela and I are obsessed! All you do is put some frozen bananas in a food processor (or, if you are me, a blender). Next, blend/process it together to make ice cream-like consistency. Take it out and sprinkle a little cinnamon on it - and WOW! An amazing fix for an ice cream craving!! For more yummy vegan recipes...

http://www.wholefoodmommies.com/
http://allergen-freerecipes.blogspot.com/
http://myrecipeforgranola.blogspot.com/

Garden Treasures

I have definitely developed a huge passion for gardening over the last couple of years. Our garden isn't as big as I'd like (although we did double the size this summer...and next summer we're going bigger) and we're nowhere near to the expert-gardeners I know, but I really love it! We have zucchini and tomatoes coming in (I've been having too much fun with the zucchini and I can't wait to start on my salsa making!) - and the peas and cucumbers are close :) So exciting. Anyways, the girls just love the garden, too! In the mornings, we'll go out and pick our veges and then eat it as part of our breakfast (what's yummier than raw green smoothies with fresh veges or raw zucchini and tomatoes for breakfast? (I just love Ang's face in this pic)


And...a couple of random pics..

Chantal (Andrew's sister) had a baby on the 23rd! Welcome Ryan David! He is a cutie!
On the 23rd, we celebrated the 24th of July at a stake activity...basically, we just love Saturdays with Andrew :)

The End!!

Friday was a bit of a bitter sweet day...the last Harry Potter! I'm down about not having HP to look forward to anymore, but it was wonderful while it lasted. When Andrew and I first got married - we wanted to take interest in each other's interests. Soooo....I went to most every BYU football/basketball game and Andrew read the HP series. The result? I'm a pretty big football fan and Andrew is a HP fan :) It's fun that we have had these movies to look forward to...it was fun pre-kids to go to midnight showings...but the last couple it's been fun to go opening day. Anyways, it was fun and now it's done. Here we are being cheesy with our HP tickets before leaving.

A Little Bit of Preschool

I don't have much to post about preschool, but here are a few things we've been up to this month. We've been reading a lot of "If you Give..." books and then writing our own little books with the same idea. It's fun. Carolyn writing her "If you Give Carolyn a Sleepover" book - it's fun seeing her ideas unfold.
Not really preschool - but Carolyn has just been thriving in her piano lessons! I was worried that the books I got for her would be too challenging but she's been doing AMAZING and is obsessed with practicing and she asks all the time for more piano lessons.
Not preschool again, but I just love making all the food that I can from scratch. So much healthier! The girls love graham crackers but I didn't like buying those for them....so, I started making our own graham crackers - they are amazing tasting (we think) and are 100 percent vegan and whole wheat! Yay! I love when we discover new recipes like these :)
We also made some chocolate chip ABC cookies for Ang-Ba-Nag to review her letters and sounds. Cookie looking on one side...
....and a letter written on the other..
Who eats the ABC cookies? The giant Angela I made on a cardboard box. It's been a huge hit :) (and don't judge me for my lack of artistic ability).

My Little Fishies!

Carolyn is an old timer, but Angela started swimming lessons for the first time this summer and just lllloooovvvess it! I know I've said it before, but I am just obsessed with our community center! The girls are thriving in their activities there and just love them! Swimming is so much fun for the girlies.

5 Months!

Today our sweet little angel turned 5 months! It has been an amazing 5 months and we just can't get over how blessed we feel to have such an amazing girl in our family. She is a sweety. Emily is so content and easy-going. She is also a little social butterfly and loves, loves, loves smiling and "talking" to people. She'll just sit there and stare at someone until they look at her...then her entire face lights up...she smiles huge and just "talks" away. She is our little roller and is doing great and well on her way to sit on her own. She does a great job with it - I just have to be there to catch her when she does start to go down. She LOVES solid foods- just eats that rice cereal right up (I've never had a baby that loves solids like she does). We love our Em!

4th of July!

Our 4th of July weekend was wonderful! Mostly it was great spending more time with Andrew. On the 4th of July, we went to a parade with Andrew's family (Michelle's fam, Chris' fam, Chantal's fam)...then we went and played at a park for a long time with them (played a lot of soccer). After that, we went home as a little family had a barbeque, played together, and went to fireworks (for the third night in a row...we like to hit as many nights of fireworks as possible :) After fireworks, we went home and Andrew put on a firework show of his own for us. It was a wonderful day! Emily's first 4th of July...and first parade :)








On the driveway watching Daddy's firework show :)