Tay-toe bu-ug!

One of the many words that Jack has mastered is the word 'bug.' Heather also taught him about potato bugs. Growing up, I used to call them rolly-pollies. Or Christopher candy, mostly because I had a cousin named Chris who would eat them. Anyways, Jack is familiar with these bugs and their amazing quality for rolling up.
The other day, Heather found a Lady bug to show Jack, and.....I think you know where this is goin.......Jack promptly took the bug, rolled in his little fingers into a red mush and exclaimed "Tay-toe bu-ug!" Down goes ladybug.
Bless Heather for continuing to try. Just the other week she found a snail to show Jack, which he took in his hand for about a second before shoving the whole thing in his mouth. Poor snail and now ladybug. At least he hasn't tried to eat ants yet.
Sheesh kid, don't we feed you enough?

Macey's Run......Sorta Kinda

So some of the girls are in the healthy habit of running/walking/pushing-strollers to the local Macey's. It's a great workout.

Of course, in order to balance out the karma, we usually get ice cream to cool off when we get there. Balance in all things, that's our motto.

Man, check out that spoon technique- Amazing-some of the ice cream even ends up in his mouth.

This is a good shot.

Hmmmmmm........flushed faces, short sleeves, ice cream goatees...... Yup, it's summer!!

Friends

I was excited to try out our new camera, so I tried to get pictures of as many of the kids as would hold still at Jack's party. These were some of the best. This one is of Little Man.

Here is Jonathan, looking fierce.

I love this picture of Collin. Too cute!

So, I think I figured it out. The cuter the kid, the more trouble they are. makes a lot of sense , right? Also, as a corollary, they look also look cute when sleeping and standing still, unless they are trying to look sad. Whatever. Kaden, in all his glory. He's gonna be a heart-breaker.

I'm still kinda sad that Owen isn't blond anymore, but he still looks dang cute. You can come over anytime, man.

Dennis was a huge help in unwrapping presents. Heather was taking waaaaaaaay to long with that stuff.

Jack used to say Gavin's name right, but now he adds and 's' at the end of most words he says, so.......here's Gavins!

Abby wanted to take home a bunch of balloons sooooo bad, and after we were all done and were handing them out, her dad promptly tied a bunch to her wrist. Then the knot came undone and bye-bye balloons! (We got her somemore-hey Jared, learn to tie a knot!)

Candles!

The grand finale-blowing out the candles. Jack didn't really know what to do, but he had plenty of help.

He seemed happy. That's probably what matters the most right? I hope so. I sure had fun.

The Birthday Party: Part 1 - CAKE(S)

So, I plead temporary insanity. I went a little overboard for my kid's second birthday party. Not only did we have a jumping castle, balloons, pizza, ice cream, and TWO Cars cakes-I made most of the cakes by myself. As if you couldn't tell-if Heather had made the cakes they would have actually looked good.

The first cake, as you can see, is Lightning McQueen in all his sugar-frosted goodness. The second cake was a creative collaboration that Heather and I came up with. It is a re-creation of the race between Doc and McQueen around Willie's Butte. Charm City Cakes-look out! Just kidding.....

This a shot of me in the A.M. about the time I was wrapping everything up. His party was on a Saturday, and I spent until 3 in the morning baking, frosting, and cleaning up. It was quite the mess, too.

The frosting recipe was really good. (Thank you Julie Colby!) And if I never taste any frosting again in my life, that will be ok as I probably consumed a cup of it as I was making my cakes. Hey, I needed the sugar to stay awake.

We were only going to make the diarama/race scene cake, but we were at the craft store the Wednesday before (Roberts) and there was a sale on the all Wilton stuff, plus another 30% off for some reason or another, so we got this $13 cake pan for 7 bucks! I couldn't resist, much to Heathers' chagrin and consternation. Man, I've always wanted to use those words in a sentence, and I just did-in the same sentence!

This is what happens when I spend until 3 in the morning (following a 12 hour clinical shift at the hospital) baking and frosting a cake for my kid-I take a lot of stupid pictures of frosting.

The raw goods. The cake was a delectable mayonaise cake (also from a recipe graciously provided by Julie), that formed the base of the race scene and the body for McQueen. We used regular box red velvet mix for the cupcakes.

It was quite a mess to clean up. Plus, the kid is only two-like he's gonna remember, right? My reasoning goes like this-when the twerp turns into a teenager and complains that I never loved him enough, I'll have these pics to defend my-self with. See, it's not parental insanity, it's forward thinking!

I love Wilton! I have a leaf tip, and I know how to use it.

We used a sugar cookie recipe provided by Amanda for these, which turned out to be a big hit-all the kids wanted one. Of course, the first time I tried to make the recipe, I looked at it and decided that I didn't need that much dough, so I halved the recipe. Except that I halved everything except for the butter! So imagine my surprise when I looked in the oven to check on my cookies and THEY WERE MELTING!!! Augh! So frustrating...So Heather made a second batch, and frosted them as well. These are from the good batch.

More frosting pictures.

Look, I know many of you out there in reader-land could make WAY better cake than this, but I'm actually proud of the way it turned out. After you free the cake from the mold to refrigerate and cool the cake, you're supposed to lightly frost the entire cake in white so that when you do the frosting-flower thingy, the frosting has something to stick to. Well, as soon as you do that, you lose all the contours of the cake! So I had a heck of a time drawing in the black outlines for stuff, and almost quit right then and there. How amazing am I-not only am I incapable of drawing a straight line with pencil or pen or crayon-I can't make a straight line with frosting either! Is there no end to my super-power??

However, I discovered that once you start doing the red flower thingy's, they are actually very forgiving, and I started to get into a little rythym, and I think it turned out great. Jack was able to recognize it for what it was, so thats all I needed.

More mess. Food dye-yeah, it's messy. It's also quite fun. See you again next year?

More "before" footage. I know, I can't get enough of it either. This counts a keeping a journal, right?

New Do

Before 17 1/2 inches was hacked off my head by Sue's scissors. Actually, "gnawed" would explain the feeling a little better as that's what it took to get through the ponytail.

Sue doing her magic. It should be noted that I work at the hospital with Sue, who would not allow herself to be photographed for paparazzi reasons...her door would be knocked over by hordes of long-haired crazies wanting haircuts and with the economy as it is, she doesn't have the funds to continually replace her door.

The back flippies I think are so fun

Man, I love this haircut! Oh, and the glasses are new. I haven't had a pair of glasses since high school, and I never wore them then.

Jason loves it, too!

Rainy Day at the Museum

"Hey, Jack!" He's apparently not paying attention because he sees something more interesting (i.e. 'dozers,' FJ cruisers, or garbage trucks)

Well, hello there! and stop kicking my seat

Mom and son with the African elephants at the Bean Museum in Provo, UT.

Jack passing up the butterfly masterpiece made of lots of little butterflies

"Bee-os!" Jack is fascinated with his wilder counterpart. Side note: I can really appreciate how much hair I cut off last month...to be continued in a later post

30 seconds later...what's next?

Papa Bear and Baby Bear in front of the impossibly huge grizzly bear. How do they even get that big? The baby, I mean.

"Choo Choo!' Jack is fascinated with trains and even loves Thomas with those weird roll-y eyes.

"Aaahhh! He's gonna eat me!" Jack: "Huh?"

Cape buffalo and whatsitcalled

Jack and some more half-animals/half-walls.

Kisses! Jack was goaded by his parents to kiss this thing...which he did obligingly.

KP Duty.......Sort of

Jack likes to help us cook. And by help, I mean that when one of us is at work and the other one is at home alone with Jack trying to cook dinner, Jack is constantly underfoot. For his birthday, we got him construction stuff, including a little workbench and tools and such. Should have gotten him a kitchen.

Sometimes, we have strokes of genius and actually go through the effort of putting Jack somewhere where he can actually help. In this picture, Jack is not really helping anything along in particular, but he is out from underfoot. Plus, he looks dang cute.

We do have Jack help us out with the salad spinner, and he also knows how to grind pepper.

Too cute.

A nice 'closing in on the unsuspecting subject' shot by Heather