sick

The Frog has the flu. The only thing that he liked doing today was this.

Look what I caught him doing

I found the The Frog holding a white erase marker eraser and fervently scrubbing down the floor. I ran to get the camera, and by then he had moved on to other things...

such as the cabinets

the wall

the kitchen chairs

don't forget the bench seats too!

who can play on toys this dirty?!

Please tell me this isn't just a phase, and is sign of a bright future full of clean toilets, empty garbages, and no whining.

Despite the cold, The Frog still loves to take rides in the stroller.

Day after...

The day after Thanksgiving, we all seemed to be sick. After finding The Frogs temperature to be 100.3, he insisted on taking Jay's.

Your Favorite Christmas Movies!

Jay and I watched "You've Got Mail", the other night and I loved that it is clear that it takes place partially during Thanksgiving and Christmas and it got me thinking... what other great movies out there have Christmas references, but aren't necessarily explicitly Christmas movies? I'm sick of watching "Home Alone", "Christmas Vacation", and other traditional Christmas classics. Help me switch up my Christmas movie list this December!! What are your favorites?!

Thanksgiving Spread

Before I get onto talking about the delectables, I would like to brag about how awesome my amazingly amorific husband is. On Thanksgiving, he woke up earlier than I did (I woke up at 6:30) and not only emptied the dishwasher, BUT put in the huge pile of dishes left from "the-day-before" preparations and ran those dishes AND then emptied those so that I would have a cleared counter, every possible kitchen item at my disposal, and a completely empty dishwasher. YEAH. He's just that awesome. You're the best Jay!

Thanksgiving was not typical (though I seem to have lost a sense of "typical Thanksgiving" ever since I went away to college) but turned out much better than I thought it would. Since my parents are on a mission, all my local family did Thanksgiving with the in-laws, and so I was expecting to have a huge feast for just us- as in 2.5 of us. For me, that goes against all things Thanksgiving. Luckily, my long-lost friend from 7th grade and I have recently made efforts to hang out and discovered that we were both suffering from a lack of crowd for Thanksgiving dinner. We decided to merge and it was quite lovely!

I was pleasantly surprised about how non-stressful it was. Kathryn, was oh so kind to take on a side, rolls, AND dessert, even though she was working graveyard shift the night before (unbeknownst to me. I promise). So that just left me the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and another dessert. (I don't care how many people are there. You need at least 1 dessert for every 2 people!) At the last second I decided we needed greenery, so I threw some frozen peas in the microwave. The end product?

My favorite item would have to be the rolls. Don't worry, I got the recipe. :)


I stupidly, forgot to take pictures of the people- a common flaw of mine. And I didn't manage to get a shot of Kathryn's pumpkin cheesecake. mmmmm. BUT here are my pecan pies. Why did I make two, you ask? Because I have trouble following butter instructions in recipes. I don't know what it is, but if they don't tell you how many sticks you need, I'll probably screw it up. I accidentally put in twice the amount of butter, so had to double the recipe to save my skin. This is a bit risky, as I had never made pecan pie before, but ours turned out ok. (We gave the other one to Kathryn and her hubby, Jared. How was it Kat?) I surely had fun decorating them though! :)



And of course, I must include the cutest part of the meal. Doesn't he look adorable in his train conductor overalls?

Love Song

Love it!

Alternative Thanksgiving

This year, since my parents are on a mission in Chile, the only local family I have is doing Thanksgiving with the in-laws, SO I took matters into my own hands and did something early with everyone. I'm saving my turkey for Thursday, though there will only be 2.5 people eating it, so instead I just made chili and potato soup and the other families brought corn bread. It was yum.

Here's little cousin S. He has the longest eyelashes! I didn't have my camera out enough, so he's the only kid who got a close-up.

Here's Audra with her white w/ chocolate truffle frosting cake. I was ill-prepared in the candle department (I can't even count how many times that has been the case) so her wish was a bit easier to obtain than it should have been. Oh well, she probably deserves it :)

Before everyone left, I insisted on a sofa shot. This is the one closest to getting them all to look at me. I think two pictures later, cousin W started smacking everyone on the head :D

This past week I got a cold and gave it to The Frog, so we spent a lot of our time moping around and whining. ;D I did, however, catch a few cutenesses.

On Sunday, after church, I caught him doing THIS!

I love how careful he had to be to keep my shoe on his foot while walking. I think biting his shirt was somehow helping his concentration.

I thought I was going to have to wait until I had a girl before I would observe this kind of cuteness!

I was baking something (can't even remember what now) and decided The Frog should wear an apron too. I think it looks like he's wearing a kimono, heh heh.

He finally decided it wasn't for him.

Snow!

Nothing very interesting happened this week.

I did get these two kinda cute shots of The Frog while experimenting with bad lighting. I've decided that to take good pictures, lighting is everything- I just wish I understood it better.

Anyway, we DID get snow yesterday and today! It was the first time The Frog got to try out his new snow pants (I've been dying to get him to try them on). The first day, he kept falling over and not being able to get back up, but today he was a natural, and the snow was even coming down really hard! I wonder what he thinks of all this!
Day 1: Mom, why are you making me wear all this stuff?! I can't find my thumb to suck on it!
This snow stuff tastes weird.
Day 2: I wish I had my gloves this time!
I love that you can see the individual bits of snow in his hair.

This picture turned out a lot cooler than I was expecting.

Halloween Haul

Hahaha. I forgot about this picture until I was trying to find snow pictures from today. This is a picture of the last-second candy bag I made for The Frog when I realized he didn't have anything for candy collecting. (except, The Frog ripped off one of the eyes before we were even on the road. They are very nice for chewing on, apparently.)

As you can see, our 20 minutes out, before The Frog was unbearably cranky/tired brought in a large haul. Hopefully he won't get any cavities.

**confession: the only thing he actually ended up eating was the Kit Kat. I wonder who ate the rest....

Anyone Want to Come With Me?

I've been meaning to go to this since I moved to Provo, and this time I'm really going to do it. Anyone with me? Think, unique Christmas gifts!

14 Months!

Wow, The Frog is getting so big and coordinated! It's been very fun to hear his jabbering get more complicated and even just today he started saying "wowowowowowow". Very cute.


Sadly, he officially figured out how to remove lids from pens, markers and chapstick (he's enjoying the taste of some above...) so I've had to move all those out of reach. I'm running out of storage spaces he can't get into now! Sometimes, "get into" is more literal than I thought possible, as you can see below.
Yes, he is holding fondue lighter fluid. Yes, I promptly put it in a high place... but not until after the picture ;)
The Frog doesn't only say gibberish. Kinda. The untrained ear may not recognize it, but he actually says quite a list of things. Luckily, he always points when he says them, so I've been able to figure them out, but they are all mostly only first letter sounds. For instance, he uses "buh" to mean: "ball", "bug", "book" and "basket", depending on what he is pointing to at the time. This is a "bug" instance below. He also says "luh" for "light" and "lid"- two very important things in his life. Occasionally we get a "duh" which obviously means "duck" or "dog". :) I just love the look of satisfaction he gets on his face when he points to a picture of a ball in a book and very decidedly says "bah!"

He is also showing that he recognizes a lot of things I say, though I didn't notice until today. About a week ago, I was holding him and he was excitedly hitting and grabbing my face. I decided this had to stop, now that it actually hurts, and I grabbed his wrist and helped him stroke my cheek nicely and said "be gentle, please!" I thought he had totally forgotten the incident but today he was throwing some large toy down and I said, "Oh! Be gentle, please!" And he came over to me and stroked my cheek. I couldn't believe it!

Also, he loves it when I ask him "where's my nose?" because he'll stop whatever he's doing to come over and show me. He of course, always gives himself a round of applause for his great knowledge. :)
One of his favorite outdoor activities continues to be throwing dirt from my planter onto the ground. Although, today he one-upped it and carefully carried it a few feet away to...
the bench on our picnic table. So he could smear it around, of course!
I thought it was funny that two different angled shots I took, look like the same instance in time, though really they are not.

Great job, little man! I can't believe how much you have learned!

I Think I Need a Haircut

So I was at church on Sunday, and one of my neighbor's son (I think he's 10) says to me, "I forgot to tell you last Sunday, I noticed your hair looked really cool!"

(I did it curly, and I don't usually)

Me: "Wow, thanks!"

Him: "I think you should have done it like that for Halloween because it was kind of scary"

hmm.