Hats!

My ward started a knitting group recently, and I decided this was the best way for me to hop back on the band-wagon and use up some of the skeins and skeins I have all over my craft room. I'm a little too impatient to do anything large-scale, like a sweater, and actually, I rarely knit from a pattern. I decided I should learn to read patterns though and have been delighted by the selection of free ones at ravelry.com . This is one of them- it's a hat with a chin strap that buttons on the other side. I started it before I knew the sex of Baby #2 and once I found out it was a girl, I decided to add this non-descript flower-like embellishment.
I just hand sewed a basting stitch to one side of this grosgrain ribbon and gathered it into a mess and sewed it in place. I think it turned out quite cute! I had so much fun making this one, I decided to make one for The Frog too.
It's still a bit big on him, but he likes wearing it...
until I button the chin strap. Hopefully he'll get over that...

Recipe FAIL-ish.

Saw this awesome idea for quick dinners and decided to try it out. Turns out, it's very important to line your dish with FOIL and not plastic wrap. Turns out, plastic wrap won't pop right out and I had to whip out the hair drier remedy my stupidness...

Spring is Finally Here!

One of the best things about going away last Tuesday, is that we left a snowy white Utah, and returned to green and flowers popping up all over! I can't believe the changes that can occur so quickly! After snapping this shot, I quickly got distracted by all the pruning and weeding that needed to get done, but The Frog and I had a great day spent mostly out in the sun! Our tulips are mostly out and our magnolia tree is looking gorgeous with it's large purple blooms!

Love it!!

DC Trip!

The Frog and I flew to visit my little sister's family for a quick trip last week. My camera was checked in our bag (which didn't make it onto our flight during our Chicago layover) so I didn't get any airplane shots, or any pictures until our bag showed up the next afternoon. (Thank goodness she had maternity clothes for me to wear!) We nearly cancelled the trip because The Frog got REALLY sick the Friday before we were supposed to leave, and I was worried about getting little cousin A sick. After much discussion, and noticing how quickly The Frog revived, we decided to go ahead with it anyway. Sadly, The Frog's virus took hold of me the morning of our flight, and it put a bit of a damper on our sightseeing. Luckily, The Frog didn't know what he was missing, and in the end, I think it ended up making the trip more relaxing.
Here's The Frog and little A, hanging out together in the bathroom. Cousin A has now mastered the art of the army crawl, and he's so good at it, I wonder if he'll ever attempt crawling any other way. He followed The Frog around, incessantly, despite The Frog's often brutal treatment. Little A was a good sport though, and seemed to hold no grudges.
When I pulled out the camera, Cousin A just perked right up and looked right at the lense, ready for his closeup!
Here we can see Cousin A chasing the broom The Frog was dragging around. It was so funny! Things like this make me excited to watch baby #2 and The Frog play together in the future :)
Despite my feeling fairly awful and a crazy car ride, we did get to the DC zoo, and I think both of our little men enjoyed it. A lot of the animals were pretty shy, but the meercats looked like they couldn't be happier posing for us.
The Frog was really excited to see a "pha" in person.
And here is one of The Frog's favorite animals- the mighty "Lie". Too bad it was so warm, I think they were too hot to move. Even so, I can see why he's been deemed the king of the jungle. He looked so majestic, even just lying around.
The zoo took a lot out of me, and so the next day, instead of heading off to the Smithsonian, we opted for playing on the playground at the apartment complex. I think the kiddos probably had more fun anyway :) Here's a great shot of Cousin A's two little in-mouth additions.
The Frog loves being able to get up on chairs by himself.
This was The Frogs favorite way to get up on top. I couldn't believe how easily he climbed up! Sadly, my camera battery died at the playground, so we managed a whole trip with no sister shots! Probably just as well... I think I looked as bad as I felt ;)

All in all, we had a great time, sickness and all. Hopefully my obsessive hand sanitizing saved the Fowles from getting sick too! Thanks for letting us crash there!

Half-Way There!

I'm 20 weeks and had my ultra-sound this morning. Pictures to come (not that I find them particularly helpful) but for now, rest assured that it's a GIRL!

Easter Weekend!

After briefly debating about whether or not The Frog is old enough for messy egg-dyeing, I just couldn't bring myself to let him do anything else. It's just not Easter without it!! So I put on my apron, and pulled out the tablets on Saturday. Though I tried to keep him from touching the glasses of dye as much as possible, he still joined me in "woah"s as we brought out the newly colored egg, and emphatically requested a color for the next one.

Aren't they cute?!

He, of course, wanted to "hoe" (hold) the finished products and so all my careful separation was for naught. Luckily, it came off in the tub :)

On Sunday, he loved playing with my Easter (wheat) Grass centerpiece I'd been growing. It still looked very uniform and straight, before this happened.

I decided to do easy dinner so I could enjoy conference, and a painstaking cake that could be made ahead. I too often find myself running around on holidays that I sometimes wonder where they went. I think this was a great idea and I'll probably make it my tradition. We had yummy BBQ beef sandwiches and a new recipe I found for Garlic & Parsley New Potatoes, which was really easy and we all liked. And for the cake? I made this:

It's goooood. I made my own lemon curd for it, which was surprisingly easy. Unfortunately, I now not only have a lot of cake to eat, but a lot of lemon curd as well. Yay for holidays!

Uncle J, Auntie A, and cousin S joined us for dinner and I sadly forgot to take any pictures!! We were just enjoying ourselves too much, I guess. :)

Spring Is In the Air!

I was so excited the morning I woke up and all our daffodils were finally in bloom!

That makes spring official, in my mind, despite the fact that it snowed the very next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

I've been meaning to grow herbs ever since I went to grad school but never managed to do it until now! I was really nervous because they were only supposed to take 5-7 days to start sprouting and on day 8, I thought about starting over, but I didn't have time that day and I'm so glad because the very next day my cilantro started growing!! I only tried basil, cilantro, oregano and parsley, but 3/4 seem to have worked!! It's so exciting! I just don't have any know-how for this sort of thing, so for it to work so easily makes me very pleased.
I was reading a blog which mentioned that if one wanted to grow wheat grass for Easter, it should be started at least 9 days before. This is slightly more stressful than the above, since I had a deadline, but I decided to put my food storage to use and see if I could get my wheat to grow. (I used Turkey Red wheat, for anyone that cares). I was a bit nervous that on day 5 it only looked like this:
But by easter morning it had thickened out and turned into a full blown head of troll hair!
I want to try eating it (don't they put it in smoothies at Jamba Juice?) but I'm not sure how. I thought about just adding it to my oatmeal/scrambled eggs and other things and just see how it tastes. Suggestions anyone?

And finally, no post is complete without a picture of The Frog. He just adores being outside, no matter the temperature, so we can't wait for the temperatures to start acting spring like! Here he is smelling a tiny flower he picked off a ground covering.