family photos

A lot of pictures, I know, but I love my cute little family! 

ONE YEAR!

Eli had his first birthday yesterday! He was by far our best birthday cake eater! He took huge handfuls and shoved them in his mouth and begged for more! He had 3 servings (and this was after dinner, too)! I think he ate more cake than I did.

 I baked a banana cake, a recipe Brian brought home from his mission in Chile. It was frosted with a cinnamon spice frosting, and decorated with a dirt road and a pumpkin patch. A little red truck had a pumkin in the back of it, and I found a cool picture of Timpanogos with autumn leaves, which I used as the backdrop to the scenery. I wish I had a picture of it...but we were to excited to get shots of this boy eating his cake!

Jackson and Zoey ate all the pumpkins, and Jackson said in his prayer last night that he was grateful for Eli having a birthday, and being too little to eat the pumpkins so that Jackson could! 

I can't believe it's been a year! We love Eli so much and so happy he is in our home! He's such a great little guy...

You scream , I scream....

You know how it goes..."we all scream for Ice cream!" 

We had a family fun-night and made homemade ice cream out of #10 cans. Jackson was enthralled with the process. I learned how to do this at a YW's camp way back when I was a beehive in Texas (although it was my only year at camp as a youth, I guess I did learn something after all!)

This is all you need: 

#10 can

a smaller tin can (like the formula size cans for babies)

1 pint of half and half

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

any flavor mix-in (berries, cookies, etc. we prefer just vanilla and put stuff on top)

ice

rock salt

mix all the cream, sugar, vanilla together and dump in the smaller tin can. Place that inside the #10 can, surround with rock salt and ice. Secure lid and start rolling! Our kids liked the "kick the can" style!  20 minutes is usually good for a single recipe. It's pretty simple, but there are better recipes out there I think.

 Jackson and Zoey were more than happy to kick the can around- for the first five minutes- and then it was an endurance race to get the to be patient to wait 20 -30 minutes more so the cream could freeze.

But in the end, they couldn't get enough of the ice cream and pretty much ate until their tummy's ached!

 These are just some fun shots of Eli hanging out while we "Creamed." He does this thing right now that we like to call the 'chicken-walk'. Take a look for yourself!

 And from behind...he really does this all the time and I think it's funny!

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Pet Rock

So, I have been getting pretty good at telling bedtime stories. Not to brag or anything, but I can get pretty creative (I loved creative writing class in school). Sometimes the kids prefer me tell them a story than read from a book. Which is cool with me since I can delegate how long the story is and not get accused of skipping pages (skip pages? Who does that!?!)!

Anyway, the story for Jackson last night was about a boy named "Jackson" who loved to explore in the mountains and found a really cool-looking rock that was really smooth and so he wanted to take it home. A few paragraphs later, "Jackson" realizes that the rock comes to life and loves to be thrown around the yard since he has no legs to walk and he is always stuck in the same spot! The two quickly become best friends and live happily ever after,

yada yada yada....

Well, that was all fine and dandy until I woke up this morning to Jackson wanting a "pet rock" named river-rock. So we found one, decorated it and they have quickly become best friends! I even caught him throwing the rock around the back yard (hope he doesn't break a window, otherwise that story will come back to bite) and painting a picture of him (with legs, no less).

Life is good!

Now or later?

There must be some undetectable smell in spaghetti sauce that sends the message to a baby's mind that "it would be a good idea to smear this delicious red sauce all over my face and hair.... and while I am at it, maybe put some pasta on top to save for later!" 

I don't know what it is, but every child does it!

Jackson's first week at school

Although he learns a lot, when asked what he did at school that day he always says "played trains"...

He enjoys the playing part best, needless to say. The best part is the teachers work in play time with learning, so learning is fun for him. He will walk around the house and sing songs he has learned, or tell me a story they talked about, or mention a fact here and there, so I know he is picking things up whether he knows it or not! It's fun to see him grow.