Crock pot coconut curry chicken w/ lime

That's a long name and a whole lot of "C's." I've recently rekindled my love with the crock pot. I love how I can just throw everything in there and then forget about it until dinner time. It's awesome. I try to use it at least 3 times a week. And the husband has been loving it as well, he even told me, with a giant grin on his face..."I LOVE when you cook with the crock pot." So, with that positive re-enforcement, my crock pot and I have become the best of friends.
And this recipe totally won my husband and myself over. So if you're a coconut milk lover and curry lover, you'll be a lover of this.

Ingredients

• 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 3 tsp curry powder
• 3 tbs soy sauce (I use low sodium)
• 2 tbs sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• the zest of one lime
• Lime cut into wedges
• cilantro

Combine coconut milk, broth, cumin, coriander, curry powder, soy sauce, sugar, salt and lime zest in your crock pot. Whisk until smooth. Add (raw) chicken breasts, cover and cook on low for 4-5 hrs. 

Once your chicken is tender enough to shred, have at it and shred into whatever size pieces you prefer. Dump back into the crock pot and mix it around in your delicious sauce. Serve over rice of your choice, top with cilantro and fresh lime juice.

*Updated suggestion: Add cubed pieces of potato or the last 30 minutes of cooking, pinch about a half cup of the sauce from the crock pot and add a few tablespoons of flour and whisk together until all clumps are gone. Do one of these to help thicken the sauce a bit. 

My little fish

Mr. E loves the water. And lucky for him, we have 2 pools, a splash pad, and beach surrounding us in less than miles distance. After spending almost every day down at the pool, I finally decided I HAD to get him some floaties. All of his little buddies can either swim or have some sort of flotation device on them, while he had none. He screamed bloody murder for the first 5 minutes when I put them on, but once he got that out of his system he adjusted and loved them. After one day of me helping him swim with the floaties, he decided he was ready to go out on his own. With me still supervising, he leaped from the pool step and off he went. He kicked those little legs, swallowed a small amount of water, and never turned back...to me, his mom. He's just growing up so fast and becoming so independent. He would actually get mad at me if I tried to help him, even if I was trying to save him from swallowing mass amounts of water. Whatever, I'm just the mom that always gets in the way :)

Check out those little legs kick. Love it.

Don't worry, as soon as I noticed him struggling to keep his body vertical, I jumped in and saved him :)

And he loves to say "cheeeeeese" for the camera. But because he still can't really talk, he just says, "Deeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

4th of July

Now that we're half way through summer, thank goodness, I should probably post a picture or 2 of what we've been up to.
We've finally settled into our new area and are enjoying ourselves out here...quite a lot actually. Minus this disgusting humidity and heat that comes along with it, it's been great. We've made some really good friends and enjoy our park dates with them. The beach has been a little non-existent because of the bad weather we've been having. It seems every Saturday, it's cloudy, windy, and rainy. Which makes for a bad beach day. living 2 minutes from the beach, you'd think we were there almost every day, where in fact, we've been once in the past month and a half.
Our 4th of July was filled with friends, food and fireworks. We started off our morning at the beach, where it was partly sunny, partly cloudy, partly rainy. We had a few friends from the ward meet us there and turned out to be a lot of fun. Until, I got (bird) pooped on, and Conryd went swimming with his phone. That was totally awesome.

 After the beach we headed home for a few hours until we had to leave for our friend's pot luck party. I decided to make these cute little desserts my Aunt Carol made for my baby shower.

I think they're cute and show beautifully, and they're so easy which is a total bonus.
If I haven't said it before, my friends in the ward are awesome. They're all super down to earth, nice, and easy to talk to. I'm really enjoying actually getting to know people we go to church with. Complete opposite of our Utah ward.  It was great to have uninterrupted conversations, all of our kids were consumed with the mass amounts of toys this family has :) It was crowded, loud and wonderful. The plan was to go out with a few families to light fireworks but Mr.E hadn't napped and needed to go to bed. But before we sent him to bed, I insisted that our friends that live in our building, let us come up to their place to watch a few minutes of the city firework show. They live on the 21st level, and have a great view overlooking the golf course where the show takes place. They were so kind to let us bombard them and take over their balcony :) Don't worry, they watched with us, along with their son, Mr. E's BFF. The firework show was okay, but didn't really AMAZE any of us. But because we were so high we could see 5 or 6 different firework shows from all over. Some as far as 30-40 minutes away. Perks of living at the penthouse level.

As for now, not much is going on. We go to the park almost every day. Have play dates almost every day. Go to the pool a few times a week. And play with cars...all day, every day.

This little guy now likes the swings. He's hated them since the day he was born. He's a changed man.