Tia Allred Blog

Swimming Race

2:33 PM

Brett and I were at the mutual swimming party, and I challenged him to a race. We swam the length of the pool, a 50. I won! I was so excited! I'm sure with just a little practice, Brett would beat me in a heartbeat. I have the advantage of having done swim team several years growing up. But, I will take the bragging rights every chance I get. I'm glad Brett is such a good sport.

Homemade Ice Cream

3:13 PM

Sunday after church, we grilled up some dinner and ate outside. I love eating outside, it's one of my favorite things to do. After dinner, we churned up some homemade ice cream.

The kids loved peering in and watching the ice cream maker work it's magic. Landon also loved helping add more ice and rock salt.

I got this recipe from my sister-in-law. It's super delicious and basic. My favorite kind of recipe. It has already been added to my tried-and-true recipe cookbook. And we've made it another time since. Because we just made it for our little family, we had a decent amount leftover. So we freeze it, and enjoy it as a treat for several nights afterwards. Even better! This one seems like a good recipe to try using a real vanilla bean, I'm hoping to try it this summer some time.

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe

1 quart (4 cups) milk

1 quart (4 cups) half and half

1 pint (2 cups) heavy cream

1 1/2 Tbsp vanilla

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

*Instead of using half and half, I did about 6 cups milk with the 2 cups cream. It worked out just great doing it that way.

Date-Night-In: Cheeseboard

2:36 PM

Since we live in the boonies, going out on a regular date night can be hard. Not only are babysitters often hard to come by, we have to travel a significant distance just to get almost anywhere. So we have had to get creative, which usually means we do date-nights-in pretty frequently.

Brett went to scout camp a while back. I thought it would be fun to plan a little date night for us at home after the kids went down for bed.

I've been wanting to do a cheeseboard for a date for a while now, so I gathered up some ideas and went to town with the kids. We kind of made a little outing out of it. First we stopped by McDonald's and I let the kids get a kid's meal. Then, we went to the grocery store and picked up some cheeses, meats, fruit, a baguette, and some chocolate. It was nice not trying to cram a regular grocery shopping trip into this outing, and just taking our time picking out a few yummy things and then leaving. The kids were still happy and still had full tummies by the time we left.

After the kids went down for bed that night, I just spent about 5 minutes--sprawling out the food on my butcher block board and spread a tablecloth on the ground in the living room. Then we ate and talked and watched a show together. It was so fun! It also was delicious, required no cooking, and came together so fast. Perfect date night!

Sunglasses

2:11 PM

Landon and Vivienne are obsessed with the sunglasses the Easter Bunny gave them in their Easter baskets. It's pretty amazing to see such tiny little people leave sunglasses on their faces for such extended periods of time. It's also so cute. They both fell asleep in their carseats wearing their sunglasses, and I couldn't help but snap a picture before trying to move them to their beds to nap (and praying they would)! I also love that they have matching carseats. I'm a sucker for matching and all things that are cheesy.

Bath time

3:26 PM

Summertime means a lot of time outdoors--which means a lot of dirt and a lot of grass all over the babies.

They usually have 2-3 baths per day due to this glorious "predicament".

I love summertime.

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Tia Allred Blog

Swimming Race

Homemade Ice Cream

Date-Night-In: Cheeseboard

Sunglasses

Bath time

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