Book Group Anniversary

I am lucky enough to belong to a couple of book groups. This past Thursday, the 25th, one of the groups I am in celebrated it's 20th Anniversay. Obviously I have not been in it as long as it has exsisted (I was only 9 the year they started), but the ladies in this group have welcomed and accepted me for the 3 years I have been attending. We don't always agree on if a book is good or not, but we always enjoy hearing each others opinons. I learn something every time I attend and it is one of my 'must have' evenings to myself each month. Below are pictures of most of the current group and the cake that one of the members got to celebrate.

Just Call Me Welches

From this

To this
To this


I ended up with over 40 quarts of juice from both purple and green grapes. I think the canning bug has definitley bitten me.

Thumb sucker

Attention all...we now have a thumb sucker. I'll let you know if this is good or bad later on.

Hopscotch

This is G playing hopscotch, which was something he specifically asked to do.

The G Man

I've been meaning to post this for awhile. Just a little snapshop of What G is into right now since things change so quickly.

* He loves CARS. They are his reward when he gets a whole row of stickers. He often asks if he can have 'a whole row a sticker' and I gently remind him he has to earn each one.

* He loves to go for drives. He doesn't really care where we go, unless I could figure out how to get to Curious George's house or Rookie's (Lightning McQueen) house. Then he would want to go there.

*He likes to listen to the Magic Tree house books we got from Wendy's. He often asks for 'Jack and Annie' and knows them by title.

*He is starting to sing along with songs. Especially the songs from 'They Might Be Giants, Here Come the 123's"

*He has always (since he could express an opinion) been a little particular about his pjs, but he's starting to get particular about ALL his clothes now, and must pick out his own outfit. I think he actually does pretty good.

*He now understands the meaning of 'Time Out' and will start apologizing as soon as he gets put in to one. He still has to remain the full two minutes though.

3 Months Old

According to my bathroom scale, H now weighs 14.5 lbs. And according to my sewing measuring tape he is 24 1/4 in tall. He is getting to be so fun. He smiles in response to smiles. We've started having 'conversations' and he is getting so good at grabbing things and even trying to put them in his mouth. He sleeps in the car and will even fall asleep while we're out shopping sometimes. He also sleeps through pretty much whatever noise G and I make during the day. It seems to be the quiet that wakes him up :). He is also consistently sleeping 6 hours at night and then another 4 after a feeding. He seems to favor 4a.m. a lot more than mom does. My only negative is that he is refusing to take a bottle or a binkie. Some might not think this is negative, but I have quite the milk supply in the freezer and wouldn't mind if other people got to participate in the feeding part of things every once in a while. Don't even get me started on the binkie...

Anyway, we love you H. You are just a delight to have around and you let me kiss you a lot more than big brother does.

Dinner

K and I made a deal on Saturday. I would clean the bathrooms if he would make dinner. G is really into pizza right now so I handed K a recipie for easy pizza crust and they went at it. Now, I am grateful my husband is willing to try new things and help out with dinner, but sometimes I can't help but laugh a little. All through making the crust he asked questions, "Do you have a recipie? Where do I find the yeast? Can I mix this all in one bowl? Do I have to make the sauce?" To that last question I told him I usally just use spaghetti sauce because it's easier. Later that night when we pulled the pizza out of the oven I noticed he had used ALL our cheese and tomatoes. No biggie, we just won't have either on our Sunday hamburger. Since we don't have a pizza pan or stone we use a cookie sheet. When I cut into the pizza I noticed that there was quite a lot of sauce.
"Hey hon, how much sauce did you put on this pizza?"
"A whole bottle of spaghetti sauce. Was I not supposed to?"
"No, but that's ok, we'll just eat it with a spoon."

Making Salsa

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to my friend Christy who gave up an entire day to teach me how to make salsa, the bottled kind. I've made fresh before, but this is quite a bit more involved. After all the cutting and chopping and scrounging around for just a few more tomatoes we had this coooking on the stove...
During this time we were also entertaining our three boys, taking holding H breaks or feeding H breaks and just chatting and having a grand old time. Once it was on the stove cooking I made sno-cones for everybody with my handy dandy new sno-cone maker. The boys were so adorable sitting on the front porch eating their treats.

Since the salsa had to cook down for awhile and Christy does have a life outside of helping me in my canning ignorance, they left and I spent a few minutes working on a blog I set up for our wards book group. Realizing G was being awfully quiet, I went into to the kitchen and found this.

"What are you doing?!" I say. "Bubbles Mom!" he says, looking so pleased with himself. Fortunately, most of the 'bubbles' ended up in the sink. Unfortunately that was the only dish soap I had and it is now mostly gone. Fortunately my sense of humor kicked in and I made him reinact the whole thing so I could take pictures to post on the blog.

After all of the adventure, I did end up with 9 1/2 jars of pretty salsa. The 1/2 jar didn't have a chance to last longer than K knowing the salsa was done and yes we have some chips.

B is for Brownie

...Which was obviously the treat at today's 'preschool'. My friend said G was so helpful and was 'reading' right along when they read 'The Very Hungry Caterpiller'. He does love that book. It is one of the many he has memorized but usually only reads out loud when he's in the right mood. He also got some Beads and Bouncy Balls in his Blue Bag. What creative friends I have. But now I have pressure...I have the letter 'C' next Tuesday, and that is a lot to live up to!

Swinging

G and his good buddy Colter getting a 'Whoosh' from dad. G is playing so much better with his little friends these days, it's just fun to watch.

Yes...I did.

For anyone who is wondering...Yes, I did go buy a 'sno-cone' machine. Now I can have tasty coconut flavored sno-cones whenever I want. Yay! Oh, I figured out how to make my own flavoring too! Hurray for the internet.

I Got It!

Dear World,

I'm not sure what to do with it now that I have it, but Mom keeps laying me under these things and I finally got a hold of one today. If I find out later that there's no point to this exercise, I may just spit up. H

Tummy time

Pretty self explanitory, I'd say.

A is for Awesome

Two other moms and I decided to do a 'Joyschool' type of preschool with our kids, who will all be sunbeams come January. Once a week they meet and play and have a little lesson and scack. Obvioiusly we started with the letter A. I think it might be working cause G spent the rest of the day going, "A ah apple. A ah ant. A ah frog." Okay, so frog doesn't start with A, but amphibian does and it was only the first day. We'll see how he does with B...

Projects

The Garden. We're doing pretty well with tomatoes and chile peppers. The squash plants look nice and big, but we haven't actually gotten any squash off of them .

After talking about it for months, and having the slats lying around for months, we finally got a little privacy for our south fence. Please disreagard the weed filled and dying lawn, we've been a little distracted from yard care this summer.

Neighborhood friends

We're pretty lucky to have lots of good friends in our neighborhood. In this picture you see G's friend Shaden who is only three months younger than him and of course H and his sure to be buddy Stockton who is only 3 days younger than him. If only I weren't so much older than Jaime, we'd be a perfect match. Good thing age doesn't matter so much when you're older.

Fun Things

Face Painting while waiting to see George

G is a very big fan of Curious George. We read a lot of his books from the library. When we found out he was going to be at the Health and Safety Fair we just had to go see him. The whole way up G kept saying we were going to Curious George's house and he was so excited. It was a fun day even though we had to wait in a long line but he was so happy when he finally got to see George and the Man in the Yellow Hat up close. It was right at the end of the fair when we got to see them so the picture isn't great of G, we only had a few seconds to snap it as they were leaving.

Thanks Grandma

G recently received a package from Grandma M. He was so excited to open it up and even more excited when he saw the cool 'CARS' water bottle and stickers. He insisted on putting an entire sheet of the stickers on his shirt right away. He likes to wear the water bottle around his neck and I can even get him to drink Water out of it! (usually he insists on Juice) So...Thanks Grandma!!!

New Outfit

I personally like the bow tie. K thinks it looks silly.

Adventures with G

G's first bloody nose. Darn those slippery gas station floors.

G all decked out wearing his 'packback' and sunglasses.

Checking out a cool bug

Labor Day Weekend

Over labor day weekend our family went with my parents down the the mountains near Beaver, UT. K is planning on going hunting with my dad in October and we went to scout out some good hunting/camping spots. We were intending to camp the whole weekend but because of the rain and thunderstorms that were all over Utah that weekend, we ended up making it just a day trip. It was still really nice.

We all had lunch together and then right after lunch, Grandpa and Grandma said they were going for a little fourwheeler ride. K decided to take G as well. I stayed in camp with sleeping H. I had put sunscreen on G but didn't send them with water or anything else. TWO AND A HALF HOURS later, they came back to camp. K said they had had a great time and G kept saying, "Go Faster!" He did, however, have the worst diaper rash I had ever seen after sitting in it for so long. He is obviously still not telling us when he has a poopy diaper.



We sure had fun relaxing and enjoying the good weather while it lasted. As you can see from the next picture, no one needs to teach G how to relax.

We packed up just as the clouds were rolling in and drove off just as the first rain drops were starting to fall.