the hunted

When Pearl woke up from her afternoon nap on Easter Sunday it was time to hunt for Easter baskets. George was quite patient to wait all that time, and when we said he could start looking he was so thrilled. He remembered that last year his basket had been in the dryer so that is the first place he wanted to look :).


He found his basket in the bathtub and immediately started examining its contents.


I love his fist-fulls of Dum Dums.


After he had looked through his basket for a few minutes he left all his goodies on the coffee table so that he could go help Pearl find hers. The best part was that Pearl was not interested in finding hers; she had anything she could have ever dreamed of right there in front of her :).



She's like, "Woooww! Mom! Have you seen all these treats?!"


George was hunting for Pearl's basket in the kitchen and I decided I should probably have John bring her in to join the party. I seriously cannot handle how much I love her up on those tippy toes.


She sat down on the tile and watched over her shoulder as George discovered her basket in a cupboard. He brought it over to her for her to look through and she humored us by glancing down at its contents for a moment before speed-crawling back into the living room to attack George's treats.


We didn't know if we'd be able to do any Easter egg hunting with extended family this year since both of our families were supposed to be out of town, so we planned a mini hunt at our house with a few dozen eggs for the kids to find. George was loving it.


Pearl was less impressed, but she did reach out and grab a few colorful eggs as long as they were within about 2 feet of her :).


One thing she quickly learned to do was pop those little eggs right open and sample the contents.




This was our best attempt at a photo with both of them and their Easter baskets. Pearl could not be bothered to look up from her candy.


In the end, John's mom ended coming back into town to be with the family on Easter so she put together an Easter dinner and hunt at her house that evening. I feel really blessed to have all of this family; George only has one cousin at all right now, and I love that when we get together with John's extended family there are so many more "cousins" to play with. Most of them are actually John's cousins or his cousins' kids, but George loves them all so much and they have so much fun together.

Pearl was loving sitting on Grandpa's lap, especially because he was wearing glasses :). She loves swiping glasses off of people's faces and putting them on her own.


These pictures of Pearl with her great-grandpa (John's grandpa) are some of my most favorite photos ever. I think I love them so much because I know how much Grandpa truly delights in and adores his grandchildren, and that tender love is so evident to me when I look at these. Seeing these pictures makes me want to get photos of my children like this with each of our grandmas and grandpas so that I have them to show my babies someday.


Oh, they seriously melt me. Love these two people so much.


Logan had his basket all ready to go :).


Here are some of the younger kids sitting by the door waiting for the green light to go out and start hunting for eggs.


And they're off!






Aunt Lisa helped Pearl find a few eggs with some special things in them just for her like little hair bows. I love that Pearl totally looks like she should be Lisa's daughter-- so pretty with their dark hair and blue eyes!


Georgie was happy with his findings.


Pearl snuck a few treats that had fallen into the grass from someone's basket. Or, more likely, her brother thought it would be really thoughtful of him to give his little sister some peanut M&Ms to snack on.


After all of the eggs were found we decided it would be a good idea to have a little more sugar, so I made this cake for us to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's birthdays.


I really like the perspective of these photos-- Grandpa's hand and the cake in focus with him blurred in the background. He was trying to block the wind from blowing out the candles before he and Grandma were ready.


There they go, only a few years old it would appear :).


The cake actually turned out to be pretty tasty, which I was happy about because sometimes elaborate plans to make fancy cakes end up being nice to look at but not so great for eating. Yay for a festive cake that was still worth the calories to eat :). (I cannot remember the website where I got the recipe and idea for this cake from, but I know I linked to it from The Pioneer Woman's cooking blog... if you are curious or want to make it I am sure you could find the link there.)



Mama and baby eating some cake. (This was a momentous occasion since it was the first day John and I had eaten refined sugar in quite sometime after giving it up for Lent this year.)


Daddy and his girl waiting for their piece.


John snapped a few pictures of people as we were eating on the porch and I especially liked this one of Spencer. He is so happy and cute.


And this one of Natalie and Prestley.


With cake and candy-filled bellies the kids decided to hit the trampoline for a little jumping. (I love Prestley's flying ponytail in this second picture.)


Pearl is just like her mama in that she doesn't ever want to miss a party, so she made a beeline off the porch to join the big kids.


Luckily Grandma was there to wrap her up in a blanket and take her out for some stories on the trampoline. Lucky for Pearl, but mostly lucky for me because I was getting cold and really didn't want to have to take her out there myself :).


Wowsers, that was a lot! My final Easter photo this year is just to document my stealth thieving ability. John thought it was totally mean of me to steal this many paint chip samples from Home Depot, but I say, they are free, that is not stealing! Who's with me?! I saw this linked to on lots of blogs this year and decided to make one for myself. I'm sure I could dig up the original site to credit it to if anyone wanted it. I love the cheery, colorful splash it adds to my living room and I still haven't taken it down. Easter egg garland year-round, anyone?

tummy dreaming

If you have a large one of these:

(and I do)

and a nice one of these:

(and I do)

and you miss laying on your tummy so bad that it hurts,

then head to the craft store for some of this:

your husband and son can do all the measuring and slicing (and sneezing-- check out my tool wielding baby),

and pretty soon you'll have one of these:

and you can happily do this:

and not look or feel pregnant, which is kinda fun.

And if you have a two-year old, he'll surely want in on the action, too:

This little project was completely the brainchild of my thoughtful husband, and he INSISTED on making it, even when the foam was a little more pricey than I would've spent. I am lucky, I know.

december 09 festivities

I have a folder on my computer that has been collecting the pictures of all of the fun & festive things we have done this month to celebrate Christmas. I figured it would be easier to post them all at once rather than a separate post for each, so here I give you a month's worth of holiday fun :).

We have so enjoyed the holiday feeling this year. I feel so grateful for the cozy, easy way this month has seemed to pass. We have soaked a lot of Christmas spirit in, watching plenty of Christmas movies, baking almost constantly, and crafting and creating festive projects. 

Most of our Christmas fun has happened within the walls of our home, but we did venture out to The Festival of Trees at the beginning of the month to kick off the holidays. 

Little G was not so sure about being engulfed by a giant bubble, but after it popped on him he was all smiles.

We brought my little sisters along (and brothers and grandma, too, actually), and they had fun helping G do some of the little Christmas projects in the kids' area.

The next thing to check off our list was getting our tree picked out and brought home. G was pretty excited about having a big tree tied to the top of our car, and of course, thought he was an indispensable help to his daddy in getting the tree all situated in the stand. Notice his little step-stool in the picture-- he totes that around with him all over the house to "help" with whatever project is going on.

Here is the tree all lit up and decorated. G has not let me forget that our tree does not have "colors" on it this year, only "whites," and that next year he would like a tree with colors please.

I have seen a bunch of ornament wreath tutorials floating around on the internet. I went with the one that used a hanger, not a straw wreath, and I LOVED making it and I LOVED the final product. In fact, I loved it all so much that I made two of them. This was one of those projects that is so fun and satisfying to make. (Quite unlike the gumdrop wreath that I also started to make this year, but is not pictured here because I tediously made it about half way around the wreath with the gumdrops and got so sick of doing it that I haven't gone back to finish it since. I have half of a gumdrop wreath and about 3 pounds of gumdrops sitting in my room staring at me, but every time I have a free moment to sit down and get working on it, I think of something else I'd much rather be doing.)

I had never made a real gingerbread house before. I have decorated one using the kits you can buy, and have made a few out of graham crackers, but had never actually made and baked the gingerbread and then assembled and decorated the house. So this year G and I set out to learn how. First we made the gingerbread dough.

Then we rolled the dough out and used cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. (After this picture I realized that it would be a much better idea to roll out the dough onto parchment paper so I didn't have to lift it up and transfer it to a cookie sheet to bake. This made a huge difference in having smooth, even edges of the house to fit together.)

After a horrible realization that I had used the roof pieces for the sides of the house, and a construction intervention that salvaged the project thanks to my husband, I had so much fun decorating the house. My favorite part is the mini Charleston Chews I used to create the bricks on the front of the house.

G loved helping with the house. By helping I mean eating the candy as we went. One afternoon I found him in the kitchen on the table breaking the bottom halves of the roof cookies off and eating them. It was too classic to be mad at him (in fact, I had to leave the room to giggle about it), but he immediately felt bad (he definitely knew better) and started crying and apologizing over and over. The broken cookies give the house character, right?

I am not a fabulous chef by any means, but I do know how to follow recipes and cook, and usually stuff turns out okay. I got all excited to make caramel & chocolate dipped pretzels to give away, but holy cow, making the caramel for dipping almost made me crazy. I made three different batches, thinking it was turning out, but as it dried, the texture went all grainy and yucky-- not at all the soft, chewy caramel I was going for. It was so frustrating and I wanted to just throw them all away, but I couldn't quite stand the thought of just wasting it all. I did throw away a bunch of them, but the ones that weren't quite as bad I dipped in chocolate and decorated anyway. They taste just fine (my mom and J both loved them), but I don't want to give them away. So I shoved them all into a giant Ziploc bag on my counter and that is where they still sit. I don't know what to do with them.

My handy little helper and I have also made dozens of cookies, brownies, and other baked goods for various parties and activities. My favorite ones were the caramel filled chocolate nut cookies. I made this recipe last year for the first time, and it is so perfect for the holidays because you can make up a few batches of dough, shape them into balls, freeze them, and then when you are short on time but need a yummy homemade treat to take to a party or give away, you just pull some out and bake them. If anyone wants the recipe let me know and I can post it. It is too far away for me to get right now :).

G licking the beaters-- the baking skill he does best.

I took a picture of the process so you could get an idea of what you do. The most time consuming part is unwrapping all the Rolos. Then you just shape the dough around them, dip in a nut/sugar mixture, and

put in a Ziploc and freeze. Once they bake you drizzle them with melted white chocolate and they really do make such a yummy, pretty holiday treat.

After the baking, this is where G inevitably ends up. I am loving the modesty cup in this picture, and not loving how incredibly TALL this little boy of mine looks.

For the last three Christmases this has been our little family. I can't believe we've had that many Christmases with our little boy of joy, and oh how excited I am to celebrate Christmas with him this year-- I get butterflies thinking of Christmas morning and running out to the tree with him. I'm sure I'll take plenty of pictures and give you all a play by play at some point next week :).