Introducing Crash!

Crash! Is our new puppy and I believe the "!" Is important in his naming. Crash! is an Olde English Bulldog and we got him this last thursday and he is 9 or 10 weeks. He is such a goofball and he is also berserk, his name is fitting because when he gets a full head of steam, he crashes into everything. The kid has no idea of his strength and his size. He is very intelligent and we got him house broken in just two days (mostly; he's still a puppy). He is very headstrong and stubborn so he is going to take a lot of effort to train him. He sits anytime food is around, and is learning to lay down and he is pretty good around juliette as long as she doesn't have one of his toys. Crash! loves to play and he plays pretty hard right now and he's got some sharp little teeth so we are working to make sure he knows who he is playing with. We hope to teach him to sit, lay down, stay, go to bed and anything else that it seems like he will pick up. We are excited to train him.

I admit I wasn't thrilled to get a dog so quickly. I wanted to wait till we got our own house but Shae has wanted a dog since we got married and it was only a matter of time before she broke me down and made me see her way. Two years and some months later, I feel like I fought the good fight but lost. It isn't really a loss because Crash! Is so much fun. 

The Olde English breed is a good breed because they don't have the same health problems that AKG English Bulldogs have. Also, they are drastically cheaper dogs. Can you believe that English Bulldogs are $3000 dogs? Yeah right. Not with all the health problems they have with their hips. Anyways, we are super excited to have him. He is a wonderful addition to our family and he has adopted us just as quickly. 

Married for life

So I just kind of stumbled across this book at Walgreens today. It was just hanging on an end-cap with some other books that I just thought were journals. It's a cute little find, and when i opened it up, it just kind of reminded of all the little things married couples have told me over the years. When it comes to marriage, I don't really think there's any magic formula, it is all pretty common sense, but it boils down to be the best person you can be for your partner. I think what happens is we do what's natural and that is, when we get busy, have kids, go to work, go to school, we accidentally start focusing on ourselves in an effort to try to provide for our spouse and for our family. Even in the best relationships, we innocently, and absently mindedly begin to forget who is most important to us. Which is our family, but somehow we make it seem, in our minds, like we are most important. What I really like about this book is how it simply states those concepts in a clear and concise manner. It's like one of those desk calendars where there's some sort of funny picture or quote for each day of the year. I believe there are about 50 to 100 of these "good ideas", and I wanna try to remember each of these little concepts on a daily basis, ponder them, write about them (here or in my personal journal) and really try to sponge up on a daily basis something  on how to take care of my wife and my family. It's a neat little book and am excited to see how it helps our relationship. Who knows, maybe it will just be a table book but I hope that we can really learn and grow from it. Check it out 

Married for life: inspiration from those married 50 years or more, Russ L. Potter, II, Bill Morelan

ISBN: 978-1-59530-329-5

Whole 30

Lately, Shae and I have really been working on making ourselves better in a lot of different facets. Mentally, spiritually, physically. We found alot of different rewarding techniques and changes, and we have found a new one in this diet called the "Whole30" diet. When it comes to diets, both Shae and I are not really into fad diets, and we have been very fond of the Paleo diet and what we decide to have our family live. Whole30 is kind of a jump start into paleo in that it's a bit more restrictive, but this picture here gives a general overview of what the diet is. We started back in mid-March and the changes that we've had have been pretty great. I've lost about 10 pounds so far, after hitting a high of 196 I was really ready to fix that. Shae has lost weight too, but I will allow to her to keep that disclosed. Sufficeth to say she has good reason to make other mommies totes jelly.

What makes this diet unique is the focus to take out any additional sugar, or refinement out of meals. That takes out a lot of different "healthy" option additions, especially when it comes to sauces and dressings. I was amazed to find so many products added sugar to things I couldn't imagine actually needing sugar. Hot sauce, Tomato sauce, are two of the more prevalent items that I can think of right now. It also cuts out a lot of things related to soy because their are so many different conflicting ideas and science behind it. I like the concept of it all, "If you have to check if it's good or not, probably just don't eat it". Good mantra.

We will probably go back to Paleo in 30 days because whole30 really cuts out anything that is even a "Cheat" meal. A cheat meal is any paleo substition for traditional food that would not normally be in this diet because of it's ingredients. For example, if you were craving pancakes, it would be a "Cheat" meal to instead make pancakes from bananas and eggs. Well, guess what. We did it anyways.

That right there, is some of the best pancakes I've ever had, and they are simply egg, bananas and whatever else crazy Shae decides it needs. Super good, super quick. 

But what I love about this diet is the way it makes me (us!) feel. Better amounts of sustained energy and just a better feeling after eating. Losing the weight is really secondary, but it feels good to eat, feel good, and still lose weight doing it. What I also love is we have found substitutions for everything. Coconut (everything!) and cauliflower has been a godsend. A lot of people might be familiar with Cauliflower mash, but are less familiar with cauliflower "rice." Holy crap, I will never need to eat grains again. Like seriously. Look at this: --------->
That right there is the best Red Curry that I've had in a long time. Coconut milk, bell pepers, bazil, chicken etc. We also used that cauliflower rice to make sushi. Because sushi grade fish can be really expensive, we decided to keep it cheaper and we used shrimp instead. This is still a little bit of work in progress because as it turns out, sushi is hard to roll, especially when you don't have any of those nifty tools that Sushi chef's use to roll them perfectly. For a couple white kids in Fresno, I think it turned out alright and it tasted even better.

The other thing that has changed our life is the spiralizer. The spiralizer is this nifty device that you spin in a circle (hence spiral-izer) that shaves down whatever it vegetable or fruit into a thin noodle like shape. What is awesome about that, is it has made spaghetti a lot easier to cook without actual noodles. In the past we have always done it with spaghetti squash and we really love it, but it is time consuming and kind of a pain, or a labor of love. I love spaghetti squash but would happily replace it with something easier. Voilà. Spiralizer. One particular meal was spiralizer zucchini with a stuffed portobello mushroom with red sauce. Come on. Ridiculous. Anyways this diet is a lot of fun for Shae and I and I don't mind the extra dishes that have to be done with all the extra cooking. I've lost quite a bit of body fat switching to the diet and I think Shae feels like she is doing well too. Here is to healthy living and enjoying a diet that makes you feel good

Cya Facebook

Wow! How time has flown by and how much we have missed! It has been a lot and I need to add pictures to this post as I go along so this is going to be long but it is necessary.

Last time we wrote, well I think Shae wrote something but kept it private.  I don't really know. Anyways, Last time we wrote, and published it, Shae and I announced that we were pregnant with a little baby girl. Well we are now a year or so past that mark and we now have a wonderful daughter named Juliette Snow McKnight! She is the most beautiful child in the world with the sharpest and quickest personality out there much like her parents. She is beautiful like her mom, and fortunately, to date, bares no resemblance of my ugly mug.

In the meantime, We had a very successful first semester at Fresno State. Shae and I both pulled out 4.0 and with a little help from a professor and a timely doctors note, I scraped ou
t an A in my CDDS 80 class. I was at an 89.5 or something crazy and was off by 4 points to get an A! 4!!! So my dear wife went to the professor and asked to make sure we hadn't missed anything and sure enough, we had missed an in class assignment worth five points. With our teachers good graces, she told us if we could get a doctors note for that day in class that we could get the 5 points! Our beloved OB/GYN did us a huge favor and wrote us out a doctors note and voila! I got my A!

After the semester ended I got a job working for a pest control company, which I am still currently employed, named San Joaquin Pest Control. Family run operation, it is kind of a funny story how I got it. Shae and I were getting some food at a local burger king (haha she was pregnant don't judge!) and I happened to see one of the San Joaquin Pest Control trucks at the Wells Fargo nearby. I decided to go in and see if I could talk to the technician. Well the technician turned out to be the Head Hancho's grandson, and while he didn't call the shots, he certainly had a strong influence on who got interviews and who didn't. It was funny because literally hours before I showed up, someone had just quit without even giving their two weeks notice and the guy, Josh, hadn't even been able to give the rest of the company the heads up on what was happening. I came in that same day and had an interview and had the job within a day or two after turning in a driving record and a drug test.

Our friend Josh Morgan has turned out to be a good friend and actually had a baby boy 2 or 3 weeks before us, and we are happy to call him and his wife Catilyn our friends.

I started work in May, Josh had his baby may 17th, and we had Juliette on June 4th, 2014.  I will have to write a seperate post on that amazing experience, but let me tell you, I can't believe how lucky we are to have Juliette. That's not to say that anything went wrong for Shae, far from it, but childbirth is an amazing experience that can only be shared between a loving husband and wife. The transformation to Mother and Father, happens in a flash. It's subtle, but it is at the same time heavy. The weight does not hit you immediately, at least it didn't for me, but it is a gradual.

Short version of it here, is we are so thankful for Juliette and her growth.

The summer is HOT here in Fresno! I don't like one bit. It got to 110 on one day that I was working. That was no fun. It just feels like an oven. But whatever, I grew up in the Southern California desert area, I can suck it up. Juliette and Shae survived as well and we did a lot late evening runs to the farmers market to keep from going insane inside our little apartment.

As summer came to a close, (yeah nothing really happened during the summer, just a newborn and sleepless nights) we got back into school, but this time it was not as easy. Unfortunately for us, we didn't have a good baby sitting schedule for Juliette, and Shae was forced to miss a lot of class time. I was trying to make sure the house was in order and Shae was taken care of, and unfortunately, or study time to a dive and so between August and mid-September our grades fell. I know that it's early in the semester at that point, but we tanked pretty hard and we were digging ourselves out of a fairly deep whole from October all the way to December. All-in-all we did as good as we could have done, but we didn't get our 4.0s and we got more like 3.25 or something which sounds nice, but just isn't going to cut it in this major.

In the meantime, Juliette kept her quick growth and progression and began to army crawl by the time she was six months old. Shae's mom Debi has moved in with us for the time, and is considerable help for us to make sure we can make our classes for both last semester and currently this semester.

It's really condensed here, but I guess that takes us into 2015! Shae and I had the opportunity to go down to Las Vegas to visit her Dad, Michelle and their kids who are a lot of fun. I had to work so I only spent 3 or 4 days down there while Shae actually spent a whole week! Shae kind of resents me for this a little bit because she took Juliette with her, and Shae makes the comment I was practicing "bachelor life". Well that's not my fault!!! And it really wasn't all that fun anyways cause I was just so worried about them and missed them so much.

Anyways, so our senior year at Fresno State has started, and we are so excited to keep learning. Classes are hard, but our babysitting schedule is MUCH better than it was previous so we are having a better time at being able to study and get to class. Plus Juliette is more independent now so she doesn't have to constantly be in our arms which is nice. One class was pretty gnarly, which was CDDS 109 and our first test didn't come out so well, but that's ok because their are more tests to come and hopefully they can average out better!

One neat thing that happened is for Valentine day Shae, Juliette and I all went down to Orange County and met up with my parents. Shae and I had the opportunity to take the night out and went to a really nice place in newport beach. The next day, Shae and I along with my parents were talking about what we should do for the day, when suddenly, we got the great idea that we should go to Disneyland! Shae and I had been toying with the idea, but didn't want to go by ourselves since Juliette is so little, but my Mom and Dad had the same idea and just didn't want to pressure us! In the end we all had the opportunity to go and it was a blast! I will have to write another post specifically about that! Anyways, so yeah. Now we're getting into March and that's crazy! March 26th will be Shae and myself's fourth year anniversary since we met. That will be a nice little treat and I am so thankful for her, and also for Juliette as well. Who knows what the future will hold, but this is a terrible way to end a post. It's like saying their isn't gonna be anymore. How does one finish these things again? Where's my sign off? See you guys next post!

Merry Christmas!

We moved to Fresno on Friday and it's been so crazy here till Christmas Eve on Tuesday. Everything is mostly unpacked and put away. We couldnt be happier for where we chose to live. It feels right, i found a chargers fan and everyone is so friendly. A few Christmas miracles have come to our aid as well. First, my last check came direct deposit instead of us having to wait till after Christmas for snail mail. On top of that we went out tonight (Christmas eve) for dinner and got Japanese food and decided to go shop and see if we could get a fake or real discounted tree somewhere. We lucked out and found a kind gentleman who gave us our Christmas tree for free. It's a humble 5 foot tree and we love it. Tomorrow is Christmas with Shae's Mom and Grandparents. No baby news yet! Shhhhhh!!! (????) We are so excited and feel so blessed everything is falling together.

Our Pseudo vegan transformation

As if having a baby, moving, and starting a new school wasn't enough change for one lifetime, we've also decided to drastically change our eating habits and become pseudo vegan. Why pseudo you ask? Well, first let's start with why we've decided to make such a drastic change...

1. Health benefits-meat consumption, especially in large amounts, has been proven to be linked to many diseases including cancer and heart disease.

2. Pregnant lady (with already existing meat aversions) watches random PETA videos then a documentary called 'Earthlings' and can hardly breathe through the sobbing.

I guess that sums it up. What more reason do you need? Any who, back to why it is pseudo. We received an awesome suggestion to raise quail once we move into our new place. They would provide us with eggs and meat if ever we chose to have it. This way we know exactly what is going in to our meat as well as their quality of life and even how they would be killed. We also thought that once our child/children were old enough it would be a great learning experience and give them the opportunity to understand how meat is made and if they wanted to continue to consume it.

Tonight's dinner we had sweet potato and kale soup with a baby greens, pear, and quinoa with a homemade champagne vinaigrette. Super delicious. We are so excited to test our cooking skills in thus foreign territory.

My letter to you

From Momma to Poppy...

My little seed, how you have grown. To love something so small and delicate is the most overwhelming sensation. I want to let you in on a little secret: dads have it easy, at least this far. He has gotten to hear your heartbeat and see you on big screens and that's how he knows you're safe and sound. I feel you. Even if right now you are merely bubbles in my belly. I think that's something we will always share. I will feel the drop of your first tear. Your first laugh will be more than just sound. When I don't feel you, that's when my whole world is put on pause. 

When you get here, you will start to create your own life, your own independence and sense of self. It will be hard for me to let you go, but I know as long as we give you the power of knowledge and curiosity you will be just fine. Every day I will try to fill your head with ideas big and small. Some days you won't want to listen and that's fine but know I will try my best to have answers when you are ready to ask your own questions. 

Today, there are a million things I could tell you, but I will start with ten. These ten things may be of little or great importance but they may serve you some use one day.

10. There is a great debate on whether or not money can buy happiness, I say that's up to you to decide. Right now, we have very little but I cannot picture a time I have been more content. 

9. A smile can turn the darkest of days around.

8. Fear can be a good thing as long as you don't let it control your life. Listen to your fear but turn around and prove it unnecessary.

7. Parents don't always know best. We will fight you tooth and nail on anything but we are all just people of equal value and can be wrong.  

6. I cannot stress enough that ALL people are equal. ALL people are beautiful. 

5. Finding your own faith and testimony might not be easy and we will always be here for guidance but YOUR faith is just that; yours. Your relationship with God will be a personal one that no one else can force upon you or take away. 

4. Some people are cat people and some people are dog people and that's okay. 

3. Use your voice, it is arguably your most powerful weapon. Speaking of... speaking, your father and I are loud and obnoxious and will embarrass you. I promise you will appreciate it some day

2. All you need is love. And I don't mean that you need the love of someone else. Love yourself, be your own best friend and the rest will follow. 

1. Being number one is too definitive, I will leave this for you to discover. 


I am a part of you, you are a part of me and forever we will be.