Happy 31st!

My wonderful, fun, hard working, and sexy husband turned 31 Monday. Happy birthday babe!

I tried to make it a good day for him but he didn't get his official birthday dinner and cake until today.

Our little guy was pretty excited about the cake, even more so when we added candles and lit it; it was really cute :) He loved eating it too.

Hot Cup made a perfect choice of cake. It was really good, I'm glad it turned out! He picked it out of the cookbook CakeLove. It's a Black Forest Cake, brushed with syrup from the Soured Cherries, and topped with Whipped Cream with Cinnamon and Soured Cherries.

Hot Cup said it tasted like chocolate chip pancakes. He's not wrong.

(The ingredient list and the instructions didn't match each other on amount of sugar. I sort of picked a middle ground and since it was good I'm still not sure how much sugar is supposed to be in it.)

Toddler Drawings

Our little guy loves to write, draw, and color. He's been drawing cars for us lately and I finally took a picture yesterday. (It's usually on the magna doodle or chalkboard so I don't get a chance afterword. There's probably some on paper around here somewhere ...)

After I took this he came to see it on the camera display and then immediately went back and drew a bunch of cars with only two wheels. I'm curious as to whether he will do four wheels or two next time.

He does trucks occasionally too. When he does them the arc is more of a squiggly.

2013 Family Reunion

Preface
My mom's family has a reunion every year. It's usually across the country so I don't get to go very often, but this year my mom was in charge so it was the perfect excuse to make it happen. Since I was going to be 33 weeks pregnant for it, it took a while to decide we'd go for sure. But we went and I'm so glad we did :)

We flew into Salt Lake City the day before the reunion began and stayed with my uncle in Springville before driving down to Pine Valley for the Reunion the next day. We had lots of fun there and our little guy really enjoyed their pets and playing outside. And he got to spend time with a second cousin that's his age.

The day the reunion ended we drove up to Lehi and stayed with a cousin of mine. My brother & sister & their spouses (who live in Provo) joined us for a bit. Our toddler has two second cousins there, one is his age, and we really enjoyed our time there too.

The next morning we met Hot Cup's brother and his wife for a quick breakfast near the airport before our flight. I'm glad we were able to see them too!

The Reunion
The reunion involved camping for three nights in Pine Valley Utah and 112 of us came for it. I wasn't too sure about camping while being so pregnant so my little family stayed at my grandparents' 45 minutes away in St George. They're 92 and 86 and they camped so I don't know what that says about me; they stayed in my uncle's RV so at least there's that. We left at 8 or 9 each day which unfortunately meant we missed all the evening campfires at the main fire pit. Our toddler napped pretty well in a tent so that was nice. I had to stay in there and lay down too until he fell asleep but I didn't mind.

After Sunday's wonderful Church Service, we prepared for Sunday's Big Family Dinner:
Salmon, Vegetable Skewers, Cubed Fried Potatoes, Salad, and Cobbler. Yum!

Also on Sunday ...

My boys had fun in my brother-in-law's hammock.  I think they could have stayed there forever.  And bonus, it was something relaxing that our boy allowed his daddy to do.


We went down to the river and took the path to the lake.  Switching hats with daddy and playing with rocks were both themes of this trip. 


Finding more rocks at Snow Canyon Overlook:


On the way to my grandparents' to spend the night we stopped at the Snow Canyon Overlook. Beautiful Canyon!



Here are photos of Monday's organized activities.

Thai Massage Instruction with Thai Massage Expert, my oldest sister

Dance Instruction with Dance Expert, my youngest sister
Yes that's my Grandpa in the top right picture :)

Crafts with me and my sister and her husband

The crafts are all owls cause the theme of this year's reunion was wisdom. A booklet was compiled in the lead up to the reunion with advice, wisdom, experiences, etc from members of our family. I keep reading through it, what a neat thing to have!

Bingo MCd by my brother-in-law

Sports with my brother and his wife

Our little guy was quite attached to his daddy. Hot Cup got a little break to play volleyball while I tried to entertain our toddler. Eventually I gave up and sat him down with a bag of chips and Curious George on the iPod so he'd stop asking for his daddy for a little while.


And a couple more pictures of him with his daddy from Monday evening.


Tuesday morning we made a quick trip back to the river.  Our little guy had fun throwing in rocks and playing with bubbles.



And finally, some group pictures.

My mom with her parents and all her siblings.


Me & my siblings.  And me & my siblings and our families.


And here's a couple pictures of my grandparents.  They will celebrate their 69th anniversary this September ♥


Postscript
Every day as we drove to and from the campsite we passed a little pie shop that we couldn't resist, so on the way out on Tuesday we stopped and bought two pies.  Oh yummy!

Counting with daddy on the flight out.

How our little guy did on the flights:

On the way out we woke him up a little after four (ET) so we could get to the airport, so he was tired by the time we arrived in Utah (noon ET).  He did really well considering, but he didn't like not being able to run around.  He played with toys, watched a handful of his shows on the iPod, and asked to be held a lot.  One time I got up to take a little walk down the aisle (per instructions for pregnant ladies on flights) and he wanted to come.  So I said yes and that I was just going on a little walk.  Well, I think calling it a walk confused him cause the rest of the flight he was saying "outside! outside!"

We didn't make the morning flight we'd hoped to on the way back (we were flying standby) but we hadn't waken him up as early for it so that was okay.  We waited around the airport for the evening flight and he had a 2.5 hour nap, which surprised us cause airports aren't exactly his normal napping environment, but we're glad he got the rest!  He asked to watch "1" Curious George and surprisingly didn't ask for a second.  And he didn't watch any shows on the flight.  He did great on the flight home!  It was past bedtime before we landed and he did want to be held the last hour or so but he was very good about it.  While on daddy's lap he enjoyed seeing the city lights from the window.  It wasn't ever dark on our flight out there and he didn't care too much to look out the window then.

Father's Day

My father's day was great! My husband grilled a rack of ribs that were absolutely delicious. Then he took our son outside for a little while. Then he shared his father's day cookie (that he got at church) with us. And after we put our little guy down to bed he fixed the over-heating problem my laptop was having. I think he was spending the day the way he wanted to (except I'd bet he didn't particularly want to fix my laptop) so I hope he had a good day even though he some of that was a bit of work.

He's a wonderful father and I love seeing how much fun he and our little boy always have together.

May 2013

I decided that with our little guy turning two, and with another baby arriving soon, it didn't make sense to keep up with the posts as our first born got each month older. But that doesn't mean I can't do one at the end of the calendar month to share things! I don't know if I'll do it every month but we'll see.

After 2 years of not taking anything to bed/naptime, he now has his security-blanket-monkey with him every time. Putting him down was getting a little rougher than usual. Not too bad but I don't always have a lot of energy for it these days. So one naptime I offered him his monkey and since then he hasn't gone down without it. And now we're in a phase where it's super easy to put him down.

Hot Cup and I always just called a pacifier a pacifier. (Although we would use binky as our code word which he has just recently figured out.) He'd say pacifier 'ooo-wah-ooo' at first, and now he's shortened it so it pretty much sounds like 'wow'.

He's talking more all the time and is says mom a lot :) He's started calling Hot Cup daddy (as opposed to da or dada).

If he asks for something and I say no he immediately runs to ask his dad.

He's figured out how to put on his own hat.  He loves wearing it and used to ask for help several times a day.

He wants to go outside all the time. Sometimes we go out both in the morning and again after his nap.

These pictures are from a super hot day at the park. After pushing him in the swing for 20 minutes I decided to stand back in the shade and let him play.


In the afternoon our deck is shaded by the house so that's nice. Here he is playing with bubbles and washing a car.


And a couple more pictures ...

Tools & Letters

Yesterday morning he made some hand motions to request we sing The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock.  And a couple of times today too.  That doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the post, but it's cute!

Yesterday morning he got out his screwdriver and hammer to work on a cabinet.  He knew he was being super cute and had my attention.

A little later we sang alphabet songs (he loves those!) while looking at the lowercase letters.  A little after that he played with the foam letters he got a few days ago.  The lowercase letter printout was still out so he invented a game!  He placed the foam (uppercase) letters on the lowercase letters.


I got out the camera to take a picture and he stopped his new game, grabbed his screwdriver and hammer, and headed straight for the cabinet.  He must have wanted me to be taking his picture when he worked on it earlier.  I love that he remembered and had me take his picture!


When he woke up from his nap he was delighted to see that both his grandmothers had come to visit him.  I told them about the game he invented and he did the whole alphabet for them.


I guess it's really not surprising cause he loves letters and he loves matching letters. But I thought it was pretty smart of him.