Food Glorious Food, Pink Eye, and a Weed Boquet

Did you miss me? This week has be kuh-RAZY!!! I had to teach preschool Tuesday and Thursday (my weeks to teach always end up being crazy!). Wednesday, Spencer came down with a pink eye (but we didn't know that's what it was until Thursday). Thursday night was our incredible Girl's "Waitress" Pie Night at my friend, Emily's house. Today I spent deep cleaning my kitchen so I could move everything from my living room to the kitchen so I could deep clean and shampoo the carpet in my living room. (Did that make sense?) And amazingly I even managed to make it to the gym a few days this week. Just now am I able to sit down and breathe! Here are a few pictures from the week.

I've been cooking a lot lately, and thought I'd share my latest new favorites. Recipe #1 comes from my cousin Kristen's blog. (Or you can see the recipe here.) She posted an amazing recipe for eggplant parmesan that I made for my mom's birthday dinner. It turned out really yummy!

We also served butter and herb roasted chicken (Kyle's creation since he was adamant that we could not have a strictly vegetarian dinner),

spinach salad,

and asparagus with gorgonzola.

By-the-way, my mom loved her pecans...shelled and unshelled!
Check out Janelle's shoes...they're Aunt Emily's magic shoes. These shoes turned sweet Janelle into sassy Janelle, you should have seen her bust her dance moves in these shoes.

For Emily's Pie Night, I decided to give Emeril's Chocolate Cream Pie a try topped with dark chocolate umm...squiggles. I was very pleasantly surprised with how yummy it turned out. I even tied for second place in her pie contest!

I am STILL full of pie...24 hours later. Here's a glimpse of all the pies (minus one). We had:

Key Lime Pie, Coconut Cream Pie, Caramel Apple Pecan Pie, Chocolate Pecan Pie, Lemon Tart Pie, my Chocolate Cream Pie, and an Apple Pie PLUS ice cream. They all were amazing!!! What a fun night! The perfect end to a busy day. Thanks Emily!!! Now I just need all those recipes...not to be made until Thanksgiving. :)

This is a picture of my new favorite food for the kids. It's the Blender Wheat Pancakes recipe I posted awhile ago Deceptively Delicious style. If you're interested, you can view the recipe here.

We've been taking advantage of the warm weather and playing lots in the backyard lately. This year has been HORRID for weeds, and our backyard is full of them. I just laughed when Janelle brought me in this bouquet. I remember bringing my mom bouquets just like this one when I was little. The purple flowered ones were my favorite!

Here's the kid that came down with pink eye...not pictured in this photo. Poor guy, his eyes were SO RED!!! Janelle has had pink eye a few times, but neither Kyle or I have ever had it, so the symptoms are still new to me. Fortunately this morning he already looked much better after one day with his eye drops.