It's Good to be Us

Happy Friday!
I don't know about you guys but I am super super excited that it is Friday! And I get off early tonight :)  We are going to the beach tomorrow with S's mom here-on referred to as my MIL (mother-in-law) because I am too lazy to type...sorry Lisa :) (love you!)

These last couple of days have flown by pretty uneventful. Wednesday evening Zeke fell down and busted the corner of his eye and his eyebrow. There was blood and he was sad :( It was kind of funny watching S try to hold him down while he was screaming and squirming. S was trying to put pressure on it but really, who is able to put pressure on the eye of a toddler? It's impossible if they are awake. I cant even change his diaper without him squirming away. Here is a picture I took after he fell asleep last night. He was so so tired he fell asleep in his high chair while he was eating.

You can't really tell but the cut is pretty small. And just a little puffy. I am really thankful he didn't hit his eye :( Silly boy. He is taking a lot more spills now because he is getting more confident with walking.

Speaking of walking, S and I took him to the park after work last night because it was still light out and beautiful. We held his hands and he walked in the little middle. He walked almost the whole way(2 blocks), but I got tired of having to stop for him to look at the grass or at a branch on a tree...he has a very short attention span! He loves the swing though so much! It is really fun and you just can't help but smile as you watch him swinging with a huge open mouth grin!

So I don't know if anyone else has a problem with coming up with lunch food ideas but I really suck. S and I are not morning people, and this week he works at 7 am, which means we are up and out of the house almost an hour earlier than normal. The last thing I want to do any morning is get up even earlier to make lunches for us. So we do them the night before. If we don't, I spend a fortune for not that great of food, and S starves because there are no food places near him since he doesn't have a car to drive anywhere! I have made it my new mission to do more hand made foods and less sandwiches and prebagged chips. I can't stand spending a fortune on prebagged things that cost so much more than from scratch recipes. And I like to bake/cook so I am dumb by not doing it by hand. Plus, Dave Ramsey would probably have a fit if he knew how much our food budget has increased since I started working full time...Anyways, I have a couple recipes to try out, and I will let you know how they go. One snack recipe went through testing in our kitchen last night:

You will notice one is missing because S and I couldn't resist tasting one :) They turned out delicious. I did a small batch (only 6 pretzels) because it was a new recipe and I didn't want to make a million pretzels that we didn't want. I guess I could have fed them to Zeke because he is like a trash compactor. He will eat anything you feed him. You just pretend to take a bite then he is all for it. But we didn't have to do that because they were seriously delicious. I am definitely making more this weekend. I will be making a salted batch and a sugar/cinnamon batch...hopefully they will taste like auntie anne's pretzels! Here is the recipe for anyone interested:

Dough 2 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 2 1/4 tsps yeast (pretty much 1 packet-that's what I used. I just dumped the little bit extra in) 1 cup warm water Topping 1 cup boiling water 2 tablespoons baking soda coarse, kosher or pretzel salt, optional 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted Dough 10 1/2 ounces King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 1/4 ounce instant yeast 7 to 8 ounces warm water* *Use the greater amount in the winter, the lesser amount in the summer, and somewhere in between in the spring and fall. Your goal is a soft dough. Topping 8 ounces boiling water 1 ounce baking soda coarse, kosher or pretzel salt, optional 1 1/2 ounces unsalted butter, melted Dough 298g King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 7g instant yeast 198g to 227g warm water* *Use the greater amount in the winter, the lesser amount in the summer, and somewhere in between in the spring and fall. Your goal is a soft dough. Topping 227g boiling water 28g baking soda coarse, kosher or pretzel salt, optional 43g unsalted butter, melted   1. Place all of the dough ingredients into a bowl, and beat until well-combined. 2. Knead the dough, by hand or machine, for about 5 minutes, until it's soft, smooth, and quite  slack. Flour the dough and place it in a bag, and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. 3. Combine the boiling water and baking soda in a dish that is big enough for you to fit your pretzel into. Then aside to cool. 4. Preheat your oven to 475 degrees F. Butter a baking tray really well, or line with parchment paper (we used butter and I think it added to the pretzel). 5. Flour your working surface, and transfer the dough. Split into pieces. 6. Allow the pieces to rest uncovered for about 5 minutes (I was too impatient so I only waited 2 and they turned out fine) 7. Roll each piece of dough into a long thin rope..I had trouble with this. My dough was a little too thick to want to roll very skinny. I ended up squeezing it through my hand to make a rope shape...I'm not sure how to fix this problem but if I figure it out this weekend I will update this. 8. Once you have your rope, you twist it in to a pretzel shape, then soak them in the baking soda bath for two minutes each. 9. Once soaked, transfer them to the tray to cook! I melted butter and brushed it on the tops before I put them in the oven and after I pulled them out...I didn't read the recipe right. it said afterwards but I liked the golden deliciousness of putting the butter on before, so I will be keeping that step. Also you are supposed to let them sit on the tray for another 10 minutes before popping them in the oven...I didn't do this either...mostly because it was already 10:50 and I desperately wanted to go to bed....I will try this step because I think the pretzels were a bit smaller than they could have been if I had let them "rest" a little longer. 10. Sprinkle with salt...whatever kind floats your boat. Salt is salt to me. Some may look prettier than others but they all taste like salt. But we used Sea salt from our grinder because S likes big chunks of salt on his pretzels. 11. Bake pretzels for 8 to 9 minutes. 12. Eat. Das. Pretzels. Super easy..time consuming because you have to wait for the dough to rise and all that, but not really time consuming to actually make them. Plus they are super cheap to make, and taste delicious. And you can't help but feel a little proud when you pull these beauties out of the oven! So in other news, as some of you know S and I are following Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover Plan. It is coming up to our budget meeting time for March and I am super excited!!!! (And meal planning is happening too which I will probably post on here because some people have asked me how we meal plan/grocery shop.) I know, I know...I am the nerd and he is the free spirit when it comes to money...in every other way he is the nerd... We are almost ready to finish Baby Step 1 which is so exciting for me. I love knowing that we will have security in case we have an emergency. God is good, and I am thankful to be able to follow this plan. I listen to Dave Ramsey's pod casts every day and couples call in with $100,000+ in debt and I am just overwhelmed with the thoughts that could have been us if we had never been taught how to handle money. Thank goodness we only have some leftover hospital bills (stupid gall bladder surgery). But God is good. I just have to say it over and over again. He provides for us in our times of need and always. I will probably post more about Dave Ramsey as we come on to Baby Step 2 and then 3. For now, I am going to end this post with a scripture that helps me when planning:  5 Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you further behind. Proverbs 21:5 MSG