Oven Baked Taquitos and Guacamole. It looks plain and boring, but it’s so good. I don’t even remember what deep fried taquitos taste like, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

Week of 1/12 – 1/16
Monday: Chicken Noodle Soup
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Bean Soup
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Ceviche

I haven’t shared our family meals in awhile, but since the time change, it’s hard to get a good picture at dinnertime. We haven’t had much leftovers either, so no luck taking a picture at lunch. What have you been cooking lately?

One week down (almost), 51 more to go. This week beat the crap out of me. It was a total struggle to get back into routine and everyone was (is) off their game. Last year’s word of the year was “focus,” and sometimes I did good and sometimes I did bad. I know that’s normal. This year’s word will be “Jesus” because that’s really what I need more of, so Jesus it is!

I don’t really have any resolutions. As far as diet and exercise, being married to a dietitian keeps me on the straight and narrow (most of the time), and Ben and I have been going strong exercising together every morning (most mornings) for 5 years now. You’d still never ever see me in a two piece though, I think my body just natural wants to retain some mom belly as my souvenir of birthing. Anyway, last year lots of big things happened like my book, Let’s Sew Together, came out. Ben and I traveled to Singapore, where I taught my first workshop, and we had lots of mini vacations interspersed between too. True’s first tooth came out, then second and third, and fourth, and Brave even lost a couple too! These are just a few of last year things.

I don’t know what this year will have in store. I have no plans so far! Ben and I have a mini family vacation planned in the spring, we’re talking about sending the big girls to Texas for part of the summer, my baby sister comes back in June (yippee!), other than that, I’m game for whatever. We also have our 10 year anniversary coming up, so we are thinking of maybe doing something for that. I’m also perfectly content to celebrate by chilling together at home. Since we got back from Texas early Sunday morning, and pretty much took off running back into reality on Monday, I haven’t had much time to think about this year’s plans.

As far as this space, I want Ben to join in a little bit more. I really enjoy his writing and his take on diet and feeding the family, so I hope you don’t mind if he pops in from time to time. He’s also the ones that leads all the gardening, so he’ll be sharing about those things too. Blogging has changed a lot from when I first started, for both good and bad. I’m thankful for the opportunities that have come because of it, and that this is a place where I can share my struggles as well as the frivolous parts of life, and I’m grateful that you guys are so gracious in accepting both.

Cheers to 2015!

We are partnering with Schoola for their #PasstheBag campaign. Schoola is an online gently used clothing retailer for women (coming this spring) and children. The clothes they sell have been donated by parents and $2 out of every $5 spent on Schoola goods goes right back to the schools. Schoola reached out to see if I wanted to be part of their #PasstheBag campaign, and we are always purging through stuff here, so this was definitely something I was on board with. It was easy to gather a bag full of stuff to donate (I already had a large full of stuff waiting in my closet)!

If you want to #PasstheBag too, follow these easy steps:
Step 1: Go online to Schoola and request a donation bag here.
Step 2: Fill it, and send it in for the benefit of your child’s school. Schoola is now accepting women’s as well as children’s clothing, so if you have some things you aren’t using, send them over to Schoola.
Step 3: Challenge at least 3 friends or family members to do the same by posting on Facebook or Twitter and using the hashtag #PasstheBag.

Schoola also gave me a chance to try their ordering system myself and there are definitely lots of gems to be found. Another plus is that their prices are very fair and reasonable. Most everything that the girls are wearing (except their shoes and Glow and Soul’s shirts) are from Schoola! You will even find a few vintage items in their stock too, like Brave and Glow’s dress, or True’s denim jacket. Brave’s prized find from Schoola is a Spider-Man army jacket (not pictured). Also, this spring Schoola will be launching a women’s category, so watch out for that. I filled up my donation bag with some skirts, tops, and a pair of shoes, so I’m sure those will be appearing on their site sometime in the next couple months.

Obviously my girls don’t go to a traditional school, but the charter school we are part of was listed in Schoola, so I’m glad this is a way to support them. As one who purges often, I like that schools can benefit from clothes we move on.

on me: dress, sweater, jeans, and shoes, all thrifted. on true: shirt, vintage denim jacket, skirt, c/o schoola. biker boots, gap kids. on brave: shirt and vintage dress, c/o schoola. doc martens, shoes.com. on soul: shirt, old navy. jacket and skirt, c/o schoola. boots, thrifted. on glow: shirt, misha lulu. dress, c/o schoola. shoes, minnetonka moccasin.

This post is sponsored by Schoola. Join the #PasstheBag campaign and request your donation bag here. Thank you for your continuous support of this space and the brands I partner with!

Ben turned 40 a few weeks ago. He’s a simple guy and didn’t have many requests for his 40th birthday except to 1) not have a party, and 2) garden together as a family. Easy enough, but the girls and I still wanted to do something extra special for this extraordinary man of ours. It’s not every year that someone turns 40, and I think 40 is a pretty big deal. One day, as the girls and I were driving somewhere, and singing the song, “All About That Bass;” it dawned on me that we could easily change the lyrics to be “All About That Ben,” so that’s exactly what we did.

“All About That Ben”
Because you know I’m all about that Ben
‘Bout that Ben, he’s forty
I’m all about that Ben, ’bout that Ben, he’s forty
I’m all about that Ben, ’bout that Ben, he’s forty
I’m all about that Ben, ’bout that Ben

Yeah, It’s pretty clear, you’re the birthday boo
And you can shake it, shake it like you’re supposed to do
‘Cause you got that boom boom that all the girls chased
And all the right junk in all the right places

I saw you in a magazine you need no photoshop (I hold up the magazine he was once in, which happened around the time we met)
I knew you were for real
And I wasn’t gonna stop
Cause you got beauty, beauty, inside and out
Every inch of you is perfect
From the bottom to the top.

Yeah, my mama she told me you’re gonna marry that guy (my mom really told me that after the first time Ben and I hung out)
She said, “Boys like that are the ones who’ll hold you at night”
It’s been like that for 10 lovely birthdays with you so far (we’ve been married almost 10 years)
And I’m sure that they’ll be many more as our lives move along

Because you know I’m all about that Ben
‘Bout that Ben, he’s forty
I’m all about that Ben, ’bout that Ben, he’s forty
I’m all about that Ben, ’bout that Ben, he’s forty
I’m all about that Ben, ’bout that Ben

You’re forty now!
No one would guess that right off the bat
I’m not playing, you look like ten years minus that
I’m here to tell you,
Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top
Repeat verses above

It’s kind of hard to choreograph something with four little ones, but we all worked on memorizing the words together, and watched the video a gazillion times (we are playing it while we dance for Ben) to get some of the moves down. When it came down to performance time, it seemed they got a little shy, but I think Ben got the gist. We love him so much and we wanted to do something fun and silly for him! We did get to work in the garden a teensy bit, I made him one of his favorite meals, and he got to blow out candles on an oatmeal pecan pie. I think he would say it was good way to celebrate turning 40! He did end up surprising me with something too, but I’ll save that story for another post.

I can’t believe how fast Christmas came and went. We spent Christmas in Texas this year, and we had such a good time. We always do though, so not really news there. For Christmas morning, the girls and I planned a special show for them to perform for their Grandmama and Auntia (auntie + tia) Suzi. The show included some of their piano pieces, hip hop dance numbers, mixed in with some readings of the Christmas story from Luke 2. Ben also led a short time of family worship and a story from our advent book. Then, Papi Claus came back into town and did all the handing out of the presents. Papi Claus is full of jokes so everyone was laughing all morning. After all the present opening, the girls naturally wanted to play with them, so they went outside to ride the scooters they were given from their Auntia Suzi. Glow didn’t get one, since she will just get the three-wheel scooter we already had at home, so she watched from the sidelines.

Ben and I prepared Christmas dinner while we watched the Spurs game, and the girls just had fun with their Grandmama and Auntia. It was such a laid back day and everyone stayed in their pajamas. Actually, the girls stayed in pajamas most of the time we were in Texas, and they are so cute all matchy-matchy. Ben’s mom had these all laid out for them when we got there, and they were so excited about matching.

This is the second year we had Papi Claus (this is from last year’s), and it’s always hilarious, and this is the first time we prepared a Christmas show. I think it would be fun to have the girls do a Christmas show yearly, so hopefully next year we can do another. Ben’s mom doesn’t have a piano, but this roll-out piano we borrowed from their piano teacher came in handy. I want to try and include some sort of puppet show in next year’s, but we will see what the girls want to do. They always have their own plans when it comes to this stuff. I think it would be a fun tradition to do, until they don’t want to do it anymore (who knows when that will be?!). What are some of your Christmas Day traditions?

Things are slowly getting back to normal here after Winter Storm Frona threw our plans off a little bit. We took off from San Antonio, Texas for home early morning New Year’s Eve, but an hour out and we hit traffic. No one was moving, then our car died. Oye! Ben and I tried pushing it to the side (it’s 25 degrees F outside), and someone saw and offered to find jumper cables from another car. They came back with jumper cables, and did all the attach here and attach there stuff, and our car started. Phew!

Traffic was still stalled and there didn’t seem to be any police activity going on, so Ben braved the weather and walked up half a mile to figure out what was going on. Turns out, a large truck was crossing the bridge, but since it iced over, started to skid and just stopped. Thus, everyone else behind them just stopped. Once Ben relayed the message to some of the cars ahead of us, things started moving until another truck stopped, so we were stuck again. We were talking to the Fedex guy next to us, and word was that all the roads, not just the bridges, were iced up ahead. After contemplating a few things (and praying together), in the end, we thought it best to turn back around to San Antonio.

Seven and half hours later, we were back at his mom’s house. We were exhausted since we had woken up at 3:30am, so we ate lunch and took a nap. Once we woke up, Ben studied the weather and traffic reports online, and we were glad we made that decision to go back to SA. We left everything in the car because we didn’t want to unpack all the junk we put in, so we lived out of a little bag and one change of clothes. Though we pretty much stayed in our pajamas the whole time.

The following days the weather got worse, so we were happily stuck in San Antonio for a few more days. Ben took care of work stuff, I got through most of my emails, and the girls got more Spanish lessons in with their grandma. Our usual NYE plans were changed, but we were with family safe and sound, so we had lots to be thankful for. Anyway, all that to say, we never made it home until about 1am Sunday morning (We left Texas at 6am Saturday morning), and here we are.

We had a wonderful time in Texas. I was able to get some girl time in with his sister, Ben and I went on a couple dates, I even got alone thrift shopping time, and of course lots of family time with jokes and home movies. I’m still trying to get the house back in working order, as we purge through the toys to make room for the new ones they got, and of course unpack and put away all the clothes.

The pictures above were from Saturday when Frona moved onward, and we were finally able to make it westward. She left Texas looking quite beautiful with the dust of snow and ice, though it was very sad to see the many overturned and stranded vehicles on the side. I think Frona is hitting the east now, so I’m hoping you all there are staying warm and safe!