Happy *REAL* Birthday To Max!!

We celebrated Max's birthday last week while my mom was visiting, but I couldn't just let his REAL birthday go without making at least a small deal out of it! So, we took him to Craigo's for a pizza dinner and of course their wonderfully yummy Cookie Monster!

Happy Birthday to our 4 year old boy!!!

Logan's new friend

Any-old-fruit Cake

I know I've been posting a lot of recipes lately. Sorry....I just had to post one more. I came across this recipe in one of the ward cookbooks I have. I probably looked past in a hundred times and kept going because when I read the title, I read Fruit Cake - which I really don't like. But, this is not even close to the Christmas fruit cake we are all familiar with. This is like regular cake.

The reason I was drawn to the recipe last night is this is an extremely food storage friendly recipe. I don't have a lot of bottled fruit in quart jars down in my food storage room. (Although I hope to some day). I do have a lot of cherries from last summer. When I bottled the cherries, I had these wonderful visions of our kids loving them and eating them all the time. But, as with most things, real life is way different than my dream world. At least I'm an optimist, though. Our kids hardly eat the cherries at all - mostly because of the pits still inside. One good thing I learned from making the cake is that the pits pretty much just come right out of bottled cherries - you just have to take them all out individually.

I'm rambling....sorry. Back to the recipe. It's so awesomely food storage friendly because it uses NO EGGS and NO MILK, so really every ingredient should already be in your food storage. And, it's easy to make and tastes pretty good!! So, I say....we have a WINNER!

Any-old-fruit Cake

1 quart any-old-fruit blended, juice and all, in a blender
2 C sugar
4 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cloves
1 C oil
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg

Mix all ingredients together. Add anything else you want - nuts, raisins, etc. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes. This makes a huge cake - I had to use my largest cake pan. I haven't tried it, but I imagine that with nuts, etc, it would also make a really good "loaf" cake.

Coats

I am sick and tired of this:

SICK. AND. TIRED!!!!!!

The problem is....our kids can't reach the top of the closet to hang their coats up. And, they've been stuffing them on the coat closet floor so much that it's breaking the door. It's kinda like in the cartoons where someone tries to stuff a closet WAY too full and the door is bulging and things are sticking out at every corner. Yeah. That's what our hall closet has been like. And, I don't like to hang and hang and hang a coat up either.

So, just in time for spring and warm weather and non-coat season, we came up with a solution! Dave's brother Scott builds furniture. We had him build us this:

And, my favorite part:

So, now the training begins. "Can you please hang up your coat on the new coat-rack/bench?" Okay....maybe we need a better name for it. But, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!!!!

7 Months

Our little guy turned 7 months old on Saturday! What a great way to welcome spring! He's been a very busy guy this month. He is so excited about the world and ready to learn everything possible. He learned how to say Mama. For several days, he would say Mama when he cried, ate, played, fussed. Pretty much all the time. I think he said it 10,000 in a few days. Then....he learned how to click his tongue. Now, we can never get him to say Mama....all he wants to do is click his tongue. Click. Click. Click. All the time. I guess that's his way of practicing. =)

He is a very happy little boy. He rarely fusses or cries unless something is really bothering him. He is happy sitting up on the floor and playing with the toys we put around him. He is finally getting on a better sleep schedule. He is officially moved into his crib all the time. No more half nights with mom and dad. His napping routine is probably as good as it can be with two very active and often loud siblings running around the house. Mom is excited for warmer weather when the older ones can spend nap times outside.

I can't believe how fast Logan is growing! Just out of curiosity, I pulled out Max's old 12 month size clothes, and Logan fits in them beautifully! He is almost 18 lbs now. He's not a really chunky baby, but he is very solid. Definitely a boy! He eats like no other. He loves. LOVES. solid food and can't seem to get enough. He eats double the amount of solid food our other two did at this age. He also got his first two bottom teeth, which he's discovering that it makes chewing on his fingers a little more painful!

We sure love our Logan!

Family Pictures

After Max's birthday party, we got family pictures. I don't want to say that we haven't gotten professional pictures of Logan, because Dave does videography and photography for a living, but we haven't gotten studio pictures of Logan since he was born. We also needed updated family pictures. So, while my mom was here and we could get Three Generation pictures, we went to see our good friend/photographer Jeff. We took a TON of pictures! We got some with Dave's parents and my mom. I so wish that my stepdad could have been here so we could get some with him too! I won't upload all of my favorites - there are too many! But, here are a few of the very best!

Three Generations:

The Outtakes:

Four is Fantastic!

Since my mom was visiting, we wanted to celebrate Max's birthday while she was here. So, even though it was a little more than a week early, yesterday we had a party! We invited Dave's parents to join us there so it was just a small family party. No friends. But, Max couldn't have had a better time! We took him to the Rex in Rexburg, they have a part inside that has a bunch of those large blow-up jumping toys. We only stayed about an hour, but I think they would have stayed all night.

Dave's parents couldn't come down to our house for cake, so Max got to open presents from them there. He got a lighted moving lamp, which is perfect for a night light and some much needed new clothes. Thank you! Thank you!

After family pictures (stay tuned...), we came home and had cake and ice cream and opened the rest of his presents. My mom actually bought his presents the day before at Walmart. She is lending her car to my sister, so she didn't have a chance to go before she came. So, Max was with us when she bought his birthday presents. She got him some Bakugans, new pants and church shoes. At the store, Max had other ideas for his presents. In the toy aisle, he just started picking presents out and putting them in the cart. He has expensive taste too - most of the toys were $30-$40! It was like a little game - Max puts the toy in, my mom takes the toy out and puts it back. Over and over. When we got home, Max said "Let's wrap my birthday presents now!" Last night, we had him open the presents from mom and dad first. We got him a dinosaur toy, an Iron Man action figure and a new outfit. When he opened the Iron Man, he said "Yeah...Bakugans!" I guess he thought that he knew all of his presents and didn't look very closely.

The cake was horribly hard to make. And, it looks nothing like the really cute one in the Wilton yearbook. I would never have even gotten it finished if my mom wasn't here to help! But, Max absolutely loved his cake! And, that's all I really cared about anyway.

Happy Birthday, Max!!! We love ya!

Museum of Idaho

One good side effect of Aunt Verda's death is my mom coming to the funeral. It worked out perfectly with her already scheduled vacation from work. So, she got to spend a few days visiting!

Since this is March and we do have a small baby, there isn't a lot of options for stuff to do around here. So, we decided to go the the Museum of Idaho. It ended up being a really fun day! I need to take our kids there more often.

They currently have an exhibit on dogs. I was a little skeptical. It's not like Ancient Egypt or Abraham Lincoln - topics that sound incredibly fascinating. But, it was surprisingly interesting and very educational. Plus, most of the exhibits were interactive, so very fun for our kids. I do have to say, probably my favorite part was Max singing "Who let-ed the dogs out? Who? Who? Who?"

Aunt Verda

Saturday was the funeral for my Aunt Verda. Well, technically she was my great aunt. I was very blessed to have a grandmother who placed an incredibly high value on family and she made sure I knew her family. As a child, we spent summers at family reunions and visiting relatives in their homes. She didn't want me to just be acquainted with her family, she wanted me to know her family. To her, if two people were related, even distantly, they not only needed to know of each other, they needed to become well acquainted. I thought that this was completely normal and that every kid knew who their grandmother's brothers and sisters were. Now I realize how uncommon my experience was. But, I feel very blessed to have been able to know my extended relatives.

At our wedding. Aunt Verda is in the front with the pink dress on. Next to her is my grandma.

On March 3, at the incredible age of 91, my Aunt Verda passed away. She was one of my very favorite extended relatives. Probably a lot of that is because she was my grandma's absolute favorite sister.

 In April 2005. My mom and I took Bria to see Aunt Verda.

I wanted to take a minute and write down some of my memories of her. I visited her many, many times growing up. We would spend the summers with my grandparents in Salt Lake City and my grandma would bring us to visit Aunt Verda in Blackfoot nearly ever summer. If you've ever wondered why this big city girl come to be such a country-loving, small town Idahoan, this is why. I loved it here and looked forward to visiting Aunt Verda. She lived nearly her whole adult life in the same house her and her husband built.  She had an enormous garden in her back yard that she pretty much kept immaculate. Every time we visited, she made homemade sourdough waffles for breakfast. At one of these breakfasts, she taught me how to make perfect sunny-side up eggs. I think of her every time I make one.

Aunt Verda was a really spunky old lady. She wasn't afraid to tell you what she thought and was always full of energy. On one visit, she let my grandma sleep in her bedroom with her. My grandma was a terrible snorer and she kept Aunt Verda up all night with her snoring. In the morning, Aunt Verda was terribly mad at my grandma, and understandably so. What surprised me is that she wasn't mad at my grandma for keeping her awake, she was made that my grandma woke her up from her dream. She was dreaming about James, she said. And it was wonderful and she didn't want to be woken up from it. James was her husband. He died in the early seventies, so Aunt Verda was away from him for a very long time. She really loved her husband.

When I was in college, we stopped on our way through to visit her. She asked if my apartment had a TV. I told her no, we didn't. So, she sent us with the TV in her spare bedroom. We were so excited to finally have a TV to watch! It was a pretty old TV, but we didn't realize just how old until we plugged it in and found out it was black and white. We were a little disappointed, but still very happy to have a TV. Well, almost a year later, the TV finally started going out. We had a great run, but it was an old TV. One of us decided to try a good old-fashioned bang to the side of the TV to see if we could get it to work. Not only did the TV continue to work, but we found out that it was actually a color TV all along!

Aunt Verda always treated everyone with such love! She was a true mother and grandmother to all who knew her. After my grandpa died, she warmly welcomed my grandma to come live with her. She wasn't there very long, but when she got suddenly sick, Aunt Verda was there to take care of her until she died. I'm very greatful that my grandma had someone she loved so much to help take care of her.

I'm really going to miss my Aunt Verda. But, I do know that she is so thrilled to be back with her dear husband that she loved and missed so much!