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.

Easter Festivities

It's been a while since we put something up, so I'll pick up close to where we left off. Holidays are always busy trying to fit in both sides of our families. Its also busy when I try to bake tons desserts to take to both families. This year I made lemon meringue pie, gluten-free carrot cake cupcakes, and iced sugar cookies. I'm so glad Hayden helped me get everything together and keep some order in our kitchen. Between church, work, and baking, Thursday and Friday were pretty hectic.

Friday night we drove down to Yoakum so we could be there early for Easter. Saturday morning Hayden went off to play golf with his dad, uncle, and cousins. I spent the morning finishing up the icing on the sugar cookies. For once I got to decorate something without trying to meet a deadline. (It was awesome!) Saturday evening meant it was time for the Easter vigil service and then Easter dinner with Hayden's family.

Sunday morning we were treated to a yummy breakfast before we hit the road. Then it was off to New Braunfels for Easter with my family. Between Easter baskets, tons of candy, Easter eggs, and confetti eggs, I think it's safe to say our nieces and nephews like Easter.
Hayden & I helped hide all of the eggs. By hide, we mean throw them out in the grass. Once they get a little bit older we may have some real fun hiding eggs. Connor figured out real soon that some of the eggs had money in them and starting hunting only those eggs-smart kid. Too bad he ended up having to share with everyone else. I think Jake is getting the hang of this Easter egg thing. He definitely got the candy eating part afterwards. The only thing with being the youngest is that your an easier target for the confetti eggs.

Sandblasted

This past weekend we went down to Port Aransas with my parents for Sandfest. It's a 3-day festival down on the beach with a lot of vendors selling things from carved wooden fish to jewelry and people building sandcastles ranging from kids to amateurs to teams of "master" sand sculptors. Port Aransas is usually a town of around 5,000 people, but they were projecting about 100,000 to attend the festival so it is a really big deal for the community. It was the first time for Morgan and I to go to the festival, and we had a great time!

The first day was really windy, hence the title of this blog, and we got covered in sand walking to and from the festival. The sculptors still had a lot of work to do on Saturday morning so we spent a lot of time checking out the different vendors. Below are a couple sculptors making the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.

We went back down Sunday morning before we left, and the sculptors were putting the final touches on their creations. Here are a couple of the coolest ones. The first is Mr. Peanut at the psychiatrist.
And the last one, in honor of the Dillo Cup which was also being played this past weekend, is an armadillo drinking a beer. Very classy.

And finally, every trip to the beach is not complete without one last couple picture. You can see we got a little sun, and we're already looking forward to going back soon.

We might like food a little too much

If there is one thing we like in the Migl household its eating good food. I'm afraid we might be in trouble. This really can't be good for us.

Case in point. I figured out how to drag my husband to acres of antique shopping in Round Top a few weeks ago. THE SECRET- you promise some delicious Snow's BBQ for breakfast. Throwing in a trip to College Station at the end of the day doesn't hurt either.
Hayden looks pretty happy to have bbq at 8:30 am. Come to think of it I was pretty happy, too. We needed to fuel up for the wonder that is cow pastures full of antiques.
This was my plate. The two little cups contained my potato salad and coleslaw. I didn't take off the lids before I took the picture, but trust me, it was delicious.

After breakfast, we spent a few hours looking at expensive antiques and other things we have no room for right now. Poor Hayden he heard the phrase "when we have a house" a few million times. My husband humors me sometimes. On the way out of Round Top, we even paid a visit to my dream home. I'm mildly obsessed with the model homes by Texas Casual Cottages in Carmine. Then Hayden got to hear the phrase "when we win the lottery."

After our busy afternoon, we headed to College Station where we got some yogurt at Spoons (oh how I miss me some Spoons yogurt) and visited with some friends. The first social call was to the Hartl's and their two adorable boys. I built several space needles out of magnetic building blocks for Ian, which we promptly destroyed and rebuilt. After catching up, we met up with Hayden's old roommate Joey and Dr. Bearfield for dinner.

Okay, back to the depths of our food obsession. Last week, we tried out a new recipe for Chicken Pesto Panini Sandwiches. All of our new recipes lately have come from Kitchen Boss. It's the Cake Boss' cooking show and surprise all of the recipes are Italian. We don't mind that at all.


Hayden hard at work assembling the paninis. We made two different types of pesto and potato wedges for a side. It's not exactly the healthiest meal, but it was tasty.Speaking of new recipes, I discovered my next craft project- a menu board for the fridge. I'm excited to try out new recipes and fill up our board. Of course, I'll have to make a few trips to the craft store and play around with my Silhouette machine first.

I love this idea. Its great for the obsessively organized of whom I strive to be one of someday. I found this idea and the sample at the blog below.

Unemployed no more!

It's been a while since my last post, but I have a pretty good excuse. These past couple weeks I have been getting back in the groove of working full-time and trying to settle into my new position as an Executive Assistant to one of the Assistant City Managers for the City of Austin (Woohoo for having "assistant" in my title twice :).

It's similar work to what I was doing in College Station, but I'm still getting used to the increase in scale. My boss has five departments under his purview so I will primarily be working with Transportation, Public Works, Aviation, Solid Waste, and Code Compliance. I can already tell that this position will be a great learning experience for me as I get to work for a bigger city and interact closely with some large departments.

So the blog posts about new recipes might not happen quite as frequently, but I think we'll trade that for having two incomes again. Below is a picture of my new workplace, a.k.a. Austin City Hall.

More birthdays!

March is starting to become a busy month for birthdays. First mine and then exactly seven days (and many years) later comes my nephew Connor's birthday. Jake almost kept up the seven day difference when he was born last year, but his birthday comes six days after Connor's. So last weekend was a busy one for us when both of the boys had their birthday parties.

Megan asked me to make a birthday cake for Jake to match his owl themed party. Hayden and I made a test cake a few weeks ago to see how it would turn out and more importantly to give us an excuse to eat cake. Friday night we got busy working on his birthday and smash cake. Hayden baked and helped get the cakes ready to go. I got to do the decorating. After a long night the cakes were packed up and ready to go.

The first stop was Connor's six birthday party in the park. He had a Pikachu themed party with all of his friends from school. I can't believe he is getting so old already.

The poor Pikachu pinata didn't last very long once the boys started swinging.Connor opening some of his presents.Getting ready to blow out the candles.

The girls enjoyed their snacks out on the playground.Jake was really concerned about the cupcakes and who would share with him.

After Connor's party we dropped off Jake's cakes and headed to New Braunfels for the night. We decided to stay at a bed and breakfast for the night rather than drive all the way back to Austin for the night and back down the next day.Jake's CakesJake getting ready to dig in.I think this boy might like his cake.He pretty much destroyed it.

Here is Jake's birthday gift. Tim is a huge Cubs fan, so we had to make Jake a Cubs gift.