First Pizza in a long time

Pizza is my favorite food. It's perfect really. You have all your food groups there even!

But since my two greatest enemies are onion and garlic, I haven't had pizza since July!

But last week, I made this:

And it was awesome. Okay, not the best ever, it would have tasted better with pepperoni, but then I would be a mess. But it was great for me!

I made the dough myself, from scratch, well okay, in the breadmaker, but that's still close enough to scratch!

Then used olive oil, little bit of crushed tomatoes, basil, parsley, lots of red pepper flakes, fresh spinach leaves, slices of roasted red pepper, and mozzerella cheese. 

Next time I'll pre-bake the crust about 8 min before topping and then cook with toppings another 15-20. Just to have a crispier crust I think. Oh and add bacon. Because bacon.

I didn't even miss the garlic.

Low FODMAP Blue Cheese Dressing

Heck, I haven't been writing on my blog for about 6 months, and there are probably a plethora of reasons for that. But lately I've been needing to do this whole Low FODMAP way of eating, I can't even call it a diet, because it's probably going to be life-long, in order to try to get my digestive system to get with the program and stop trying to ruin everything.

But it's FREAKING HARD.

So I have been combing the internet looking for recipes to make foods at home that normally you'd just go out and buy in a store, because two of the worst ingredients for me are onion and garlic. In any form. And they are in EVERYTHING.

I came across this recipe today and really wanted to save it. But instead of printing it out or something I thought, hey, I could put this on my blog and then I could actually FIND it and use it! 

So here it is. I found this here. And so far it's the only one I've found with no fodmaps in it.

Greek Yogurt Blue Cheese Dressing

Author: Brianne @ Cupcakes & Kale Chips

Ingredients

• ½ c plain Green Yogurt
• 1-2 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 T olive oil
• ¼ t salt
• ¼ t dry mustard
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• ½ c crumbled blue cheese

Instructions

1. Combine all of the ingredients except the blue cheese in a bowl, and stir until well-mixed.
2. Gently stir in the blue cheese, so that you don't completely break up the nice, large chunks.
3. Use for dipping veggies or put on top of a salad, on a sandwich, in a wrap...

Shiver me timbers!

Well about 7.5 years after getting his first tooth, Nick finally has lost his first tooth!

It's been loose for a while now. The adult tooth actually came in behind it (we checked with the dentist, it is fine) so he isn't actually going to get to be a snaggletooth this time.

Tonight the Tooth Pirate will come and steal away his pearly white tooth and leave a pirate map to lead him to a pirate treasure! 

We've only ever talked about the Tooth Pirate, but the girls heard about the Tooth Fairy somewhere and now say they want her instead. We'll see if they still say that when their time comes!

Obligatory grosstooth photos below!

Nick is EIGHT!

I cannot believe it, but Nick is now 8 years old!

This week was a whirlwind between his birthday weekend and my annual conference at work, so I'm just now getting a chance to sit and try to share this with you all.

We'd originally planned to have three of his four grandmothers here along with a family friend, but as it turned out, two were unable to make the long trips from FL and NC, and our friend was sick, so we had a simple, but excellent party with a smaller group.

Nick had the choice between taking one friend to the Aquarium for an outing or doing the whole themed birthday thing like I've done in prior years. He decided he'd rather just have his best friend over and go to the Aquarium, so that's what we did. And he chose a roast turkey for his birthday dinner along with a strawberry cake with chocolate icing. I still do the cake myself if at all possible, so I went out the night before to get the cake stuff.

His birthday is St. Patrick's Day, but that was on a Monday this year, so we celebrated the Saturday before. We woke up about 9am and I made the cake and got it into the fridge to cool so that I could ice it later.

I also had to run to the store for a few things while the cake was cooking. I took Gabi with me because she was ready and asking. Lily was off playing Minecraft with Nick, so it was just Gabi and I. We picked out broccoli and garlic bread for dinner, some drinks for the kids, and some ice cream to go with the cake. We even made it home in time to take the cake out of the oven.

While we were gone, Nick's friend arrived and they were all playing Minecraft. Tom put the turkey in the oven at 11:45 or so, and we left the house. (Hoping that the turkey would just take care of itself and not turn into turkey jerky!)

 By the way, boys giggle. They were both in the way-back (the third row of seats) and chatting back there while each playing on handheld devices (Tom's old phone and Nick's iPod touch) and we just kept hearing all this giggling back there. I knew girls giggled, but I didn't realize boys did too. Tom confirmed that yes, boys do giggle. Men just don't talk about it apparently.

We went to McD's first for lunch:

Then we headed to the Aquarium where we saw the harbor seal exhibit before we even went inside. They were enthralled already:

We went through the whole first building at the Aquarium, which apparently has a whole outside part and another building too, and here Nick and his friend are, overlooking the water right outside.

They got to all pet some rays, which felt weird and soft (and were pretty smelly):

And sit on a dolphin. The boys were chatting about something:

But the girls posed for me. Lily has long hair and Gabi has short hair. I'm so glad they're still happy doing this! It makes telling them apart in photos so much easier!

Gabi dressed up as the Garbage Monster, but Lily was too shy:

The boys were eaten by a shark. They're excellent actors:

And they picked up the girls for a group shot. The girls were quite taken with Nick's buddy, and as he's the baby in his family I think it was good for him to see what caring for younger kids was like.

While in the Aquarium, at one point Nick came out of a cave and said "This is the best birthday EVER!" Yay! We bought little things (shark teeth, little dolphin and a ring) in the gift shop, and then headed back to the house. The turkey was doing fine, and I decorated the cake. I went ahead and did a Herobrine cake along with two grass blocks (this is all Minecraft stuff) and Nick seemed well pleased with my efforts. The kids played outside till dinner, and then we had our turkey dinner and then did the whole cake and ice cream thing:

Nick's wish will come true, so I really hope he didn't wish for a brother:

And then we did presents:

Nick had a great birthday, and two days later he was officially EIGHT! That night as I was tucking him in, he said "I don't feel 8. I still feel 7." That's ok Nick. To me you'll always be my baby.