Skinny Funfetti Cake

In Jeff's continuing quest to lose weight, I try to find Weight Watchers friendly recipes. I have to brag on him- he's done amazingly well. He started at the end of February and as of last Wednesday, he has lost 84 pounds!

I'd love to say I jumped right in and not only made Weight Watchers friendly recipes each night, but perfected my cooking skills simultaneously.

That did not happen.

I have found a few recipes we've added to our rotation, but Jeff deserves all the credit for exercising more and finding ways to make "everyday food" fit into his Weight Watchers plan. This has become more difficult as the weight has come off because you start with a certain amount of points, but those decrease as your weight drops. He's accepted the challenge and does really well managing his portions and points.

I thought this recipe might be a good compromise between easy for me and good for Jeff and his point allottment for each day.

Skinny Funfetti Cake
*1 box Funfetti cake mix
*12 ounces Sprite Zero
*1 container Lite Cool Whip
*1 large box vanilla Jello pudding mix
*Sprinkles (optional)

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix cake mix powder and Sprite Zero together. Pour into greased 13"x9" pan and bake until golden brown (about 40 minutes for our oven). Mix Lite Cool Whip and vanilla pudding powder together. Spread over cooled cake, then sprinkle with, well, sprinkles if you want.

Jeff deemed it a success. It's definitely not as good as the full fate version, but it will satisfy a sweet tooth. Now I'm interested to see if the "icing" can be made into a chocolate version.

Ole Miss, White After Labor Day, and Being a Sorority Girl

Ole Miss instituted a "Goodbye to Summer" tradition by inviting (also known as "ordering" or "strongly suggesting") everyone attending their football home opener to wear white because every good Southerner knows you don't wear white after Labor Day.

Unless it's "winter white" then it's totally okay.

I had to share this with my big sis from KD, Leigh the Supermom- then we discussed how difficult it must have been to find a white dress. In Oxford. At the end of summer.*

As the article pointed out, the poor girl who couldn't find a dress? She's probably blacklisted from the "good" sororities and won't be able to drop out of school from embarrassment because recruitment is after the drop date. This might have been me. I was the girl bawling on Bid Day because I didn't get my first choice of sororities. Memphis did recruitment before school started way back when, so I could have slipped easily into the commuter student abyss and never been seen or heard from around Greek Life again. I stuck with it, Leigh took me under her wing, and we're very close to this day. My college experience wouldn't have been near as fun without Greek Life.

Sorority Girl habits die hard. I've written several recommendations for former students, family friends, or relatives and I always get so excited for them. I despised recruitment, mainly because it really cut into my sleep schedule and our recruitment chair always decided camping or bunking at a livestock auction house was a great retreat idea, but I also remember how much fun those times were. And you better believe I'm writing those recs knowing exactly what's being said after parties end for the day.

Part of me realizes the Ole Miss white-out game and reasoning for delayed recruitment is insane. The other part of me wishes Memphis had been more like them because they end up having article written about them and their fashion choices for a football game. See what I mean about Sorority Girl habits?

*Please don't misconstrue this as me thinking Oxford isn't a shopping mecca. If we strike it rich, I'll be shopping there all the time. What?!?! They've got super cute clothing down there. Oddly enough, I've never seen a white dress on the Square. 

Vacation 2012

We recently returned from our annual trip to St. Pete Beach, FL. It was an odd year with Tada not being able to join us because of his new job and several of our friends were in the same position. Lots of our 75+ people group of friends didn't make the trip or had to shorten their trips because of work.

We left Memphis a little after 2am and drove straight through. Cooper was a champ the entire way. He watched DVDs, slept, talked with us, and looked out the window. We arrived in St. Pete at 7pm, just in time for a massive storm and a quick run to the grocery store before calling it a night.

The rest of the week was spent by the pool, at the outlet mall, walking to and from breakfast, looking for lizards, and having lots of fun. Jeff and I are really missing our morning swims with Cooper. He's growing up way too fast. More little boy than baby now- he's independent, talkative, and even though I'm biased, the cutest little kiddo.

We stopped in Atlanta to stay with my friend, Jenni and had a great time relaxing before the last leg of our trip. We got home at 3pm, which gave me time to knock out a bunch on laundry before starting in-service Monday. Our reservations are made and we're ready to go back for more fun in the sun, but for now, here are some pictures from our trip.

4th of July- 2012

We had a low key 4th of July this year. Jeff and I are both working this week, so while we had the day off, we wanted to relax knowing we would be right back at work Thursday.

Instead of driving to Dyer for the 4th of July festivities, we opted for a long walk downtown. I was being lazy, so we got started a lot later than expected and I didn't hydrate like I should have, so we were going at a much slower pace than normal. We made a stop by Nana and Bob-O's, then headed home to relax.

My grandmother has had some health issues, which also contributed to the low-key day because my parents are helping her quite a bit. Once everyone had dinner, we met up Pops, YaYa, Tada, Uncle Mark, Aunt Leigh, Regina, and some of their friends for the fireworks.

Here are Regina and Cooper waiting for the fireworks to start. She's our super star swimmer and just broke her record in the 800 meters by 23 minutes, which also set a new team record. She'll be a freshman at the same high school Jeff, Tada, and I graduated from this year and has already made their swim team because her times are better than any records already set for the school. Yeah, she's freakishly good. We probably should start saving up for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Cooper was a little freaked at the beginning of the fireworks and wanted to go back to Jeff's car. Pops swooped in and saved the day and he and Cooper provided some "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!" sounds for us as the fireworks exploded. Once Cooper got comfortable, he enjoyed watching the show.

YaYa loves giving glow sticks and brought along one for Cooper. He used it as everything from a toy gun (definitely discouraged by me) to a sword to a camera.

We're all dragging a little this morning because several people in our neighborhood were setting off fireworks of their own when we got home. That continued until close to midnight when everyone apparently banded together for a grand finale that woke us all up. I think we're all hoping that will be the end of the fireworks so we can get a better night's sleep.

Hope your 4th was fun-filled and exciting!

Bashing Cotton Balls

I found an idea on Pinterest that I thought Cooper would love called Bashing Cotton Balls. After last week's painting with colored shaving cream did not work out, I thought we'd give this a try.

 Mix equal parts water and flour together, then add food coloring. I used basic colors, but also found neon food coloring on clearance at Target. Leave it to me to be the overachiever on how many colors to use:

Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment paper, put the cotton balls on the baking sheet, and bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes.

 

I did not use non-stick spray and if we do this again, I probably will. Most of them came off with a little work, but a few stuck and the cotton ball stretched apart. I would also bake them a little longer. They were supposed to be "crispier" so they really cracked when you hit them, but I did not cook them long enough. 

We headed outside and showed Cooper how to bash the cotton balls with his baseball bat. Then he took over:

 

As long as it took you to look at that picture was as long as the fun with bashing cotton balls lasted. Cooper was right back to playing golf, baseball, and begging to turn the water hose on. Seems like I'm enjoying the Pinterest kids' ideas much more than he is!

Summer Fun

After working the first few weeks of summer break, I finally was able to get some time off to spend with Cooper. I have had more fun listening and having conversations with him, even if I am worn out from how energetic he is. I scoured Pinterest for some kid-friendly fun ideas that we could do together. One of the first things I found was painting with shaving cream.

 Basically, you mix shaving cream and food coloring together:

Then paint. Except if you're Cooper...Cooper wanted nothing to do with it and preferred to make a huge mess with the water hose:
 

We were able to swim at Aunt Leigh, Uncle Mark, and Regina's pool. We definitely have a water baby on our hands and Jeff hated having to work instead of spend the day at the pool with us.  

Unfortunately when we got home, I discovered our air conditioner was leaking. After an early evening visit from a HVAC repairman, it was discovered our condensation pump was broken. Even more unfortunately, we could not get it repaired until today (Monday). Coopie tried to cool off with a popsicle and I was even told by Jeff that he'd make sure none got on the furniture after I asked that it not be eaten anywhere but the kitchen:

  

We celebrated Father's Day with breakfast at Stone Soup, a long walk downtown and tried to stick it out at home, but just could not take it anymore. We spent the night at Nana and Bobo's house since they are out of town and as of late this afternoon, we are back in our house! 

I have a "to-do" list I am hoping to complete this summer. I am still working on painting our new doors, but making progress. I've cleaned out some of Cooper's toys and he now has a new toy box in his room. The pack and play that has been in our den since we brought Cooper home from the hospital- first as a a place to nap, then as another toy box- is in storage and it makes me kinda sad that it is gone. 

I have a few more weeks off, then return to work for two weeks before we go on vacation. I am really excited to see how Cooper does at the beach this year. We're having so much fun and I can't wait for it to continue!

Spring Pictures

Recently we took our spring pictures, which went amazingly better than our fall pictures. Our talented photographer, Erin Reagan, was game for anything, so we met downtown and galavanted around finding unique pictures spots.

We've discovered that getting a good picture of the 3 of us is next to impossible with an active 2 year old. The current blog cover picture was about as good as it got, but this was a close second. Just ignore the visible fat rolls on my neck:

Luckily, we got some really cute pictures of Cooper:

And one last one of the 3 of us:

If anyone has any good picture locations for next time, let me know. We've now done a cute town square, an outdoor shopping area, a downtown neighborhood, and cemetery. Yeah, a cemetery. Erin loved that idea and thought I was crazy. Then she saw how the grotto area with a pond and stone bridge looked and didn't think it was such a bad idea. And then Cooper took a header, busted his lip, and I don't think she's been back. Never a dull moment!