Birthday Madness

May is full of birthdays in my family- 4 birthdays on my side of the family alone, plus Hayden's birthday, Mother's Day, and our anniversary. So we have been a little busy over the past month.

Lucky Hayden has his birthday two days before our niece Avery's birthday, so he got to go to her Elmo party on his birthday. He even got to wear a party hat and we all sang happy birthday as he blew out the candles on his own cake.Avery wanted to have a Dora and Elmo party, but Elmo won out. Megan made all sorts of decorations for the big day.

All of the kids are getting so big and getting better at hitting the pinata. The girls are still dainty about trying to get the candy out so it took a few rounds of batters.

Gardening - Apartment Style

Since Christmas, Morgan and I have been working on our patio garden and as the weather heats up, we've begun harvesting some of our produce. Some of the smaller things like cilantro and parsley were started from seed and the rest we've been accumulating on trips to Home Depot. The banana peppers have really taken off and we've got a lot of jalapenos. Now if only the birds would stop eating our tomatoes as they turn ripe.

Seriously, if anyone has a good way of keeping birds off tomatoes, let us know. We haven't been able to pick a tomato yet because of the feathered fiends (I like alliteration :).

And since it seems like each of my posts includes some food pictures, here are a couple. The first is a breakfast frittata with bacon and onions based on a recipe from Kitchen Boss (and made with our own parsley :) Breakfast for me during the week is usually only a nutrigrain bar so I look forward to the weekends when there is time to make something more substantial. It was my first time to try it out and turned out really well. So good that I've tried a different variation made with chorizo.

The second featured meal is pretty simple but turned out great. Morgan's parents sent us back with some squash, so I made some chicken and rice to go along with a squash and onion side dish. I wasn't following any recipe, but it turned out really well for a meal I was making on the fly.