The best thing I ate all week was this sandwich from Tiny’s. I don’t like many pestos, because sometimes they just taste so aggressive (maybe too much garlic? I never know.), but this pesto was mild in the best of ways.

Here’s a close up: mozzarella, tomatoes, pesto, balsamic glaze. Amazing.

The heat finally broke and we’ve had amazing weather! Over the weekend we had a Family Festival with food and bounce houses at Andrew’s work. The girls now think this is the norm and that Andrew jumps on inflatable bouncy castles all day at work. They had burgers for everyone.

Sunday after church I wanted to be outside all day long, so I took the girls to the zoo. They just redid the sea lion exhibit and it’s this amazing underwater tunnel where you can see the sea lions swim over. Their habitat before totally sucked…so this is a massive improvement for them!

Between animal viewings we stopped for a tiny container of $7 dippin dots. I wish it would’ve been twice as big and in a cup, but so it goes.

After the zoo, I laid on the only hill in Houston lol while the girls ran up and down it. They had a blast and I did too. It was one of those reliving moments where I was like, “mmm this is what I imagined having kids would be like.” Was such a nice day.

The fried rice game is still going strong. We make the rice and the steamed veggies ahead of time and then the dish comes together in 5 mins. I heat sesame oil in a pan with the rice, add steamed veggies, add ginger from the freezer + green onions, crack in 1-2 eggs, add soy sauce galore and BOOM! It’s ready. Eaten while watching the Love is Blind reunion. I honestly thought no one was going to end up together from this bunch. I liked this season! Probably because it was Houstonians!

Andddd a ton of Asian noodle dishes with eggs. So much so that we went through an entire bottle of sesame oil this week.

A protein shake drank after a strength workout.

When I can’t eat lunch at the house and don’t want to/can’t go out, I’ve been making a big smoothie and taking it with me. Milk, protein powder, kale, strawberries, acai packet, done.

One night the weather was amazing and I just wanted to get outside as fast as possible so I made the girls french toast and I had cereal and we called it dinner and headed outside asap.

I have been trying as often as possible to have a pleasant start to my mornings. Andrew told me the other day that he wants me to enjoy my life and it was such a loving thing to say. Sometimes I can get so concerned about working hard (aka moving about restlessly and frantically) that I forget I have the option to slow down and enjoy. Trying to do this more and I appreciated the encouragement from Andrew since he is the person who’s opinion I value the most. I love a morning with morning pages, bible reading and coffee + a pastry. I did it twice this week.

The above pumpkin bread wasn’t quite right (according to my ADHD), so I had to remake it later this week. I made the same recipe I mentioned here without the streusel and with chocolate chips – perfect.

Had it multiple times for breakfast.

We are still trying to figure out Friday nights. The last several Friday nights I’ve been drowning in the whines of children, so we had to do something different tonight. We went out to a green space that has restaurants and it was at least 5 times better than normal. Margarita(s) for the adults + nachos for me + ice cream & pizza (in that order) for the kids. It’s nice that the weather has turned nice enough to be outside.

And Leah, who cried for most of the evening, kept stealing her sister’s water bottles which cracked me up. I tell the girls all of my wrinkles are because they keep cracking me up.

Happy Saturday!