Three on Thanksgiving

Dear Jack,

Three years ago, in a nearly empty hospital in Logan, Utah, you quietly and miraculously entered this world and my life changed forever. It took just one moment to love your tiny six-pound body with dark brown hair, birdy legs, a button nose, and squinty almond eyes – I loved you so much that I thought my heart was going to burst! Instantly, my world no longer revolved my wants or needs but around you – your sleeping and eating and crying and diapering. I noticed your breathing, your dark peach fuzz, your smell, your tiny toes and fingers and bum and I loved it all! I laughed at your adorable hiccups and yawns and sneezes and slurps and toots.  I was amazed that my heart had the capacity to love so deeply – your were perfect because you were mine, because I created you and because you simply were. How miraculous that every soul that enters this world is loved immediately and unconditionally by a mother! Each stage of your three years has been a wonder - from cooing to crawling to walking to running to talking to loving your brother - ordinary, maybe, but miraculous through my mother eyes.

Thanks for letting me experience life through the eyes of a three year old boy. Thanks for pointing out the airplanes and tractors and cement mixers and construction sites and lawn mowers. Thanks for showing me all of the bugs. Thanks (kind of) for always making getting dressed or getting out the door a hilarious game of tag or hide and "shriek". Thanks for (at least) being the world's best PB&J eater and thanks for loving David (even when you love him too hard). And since you insist on waking up before the crack of dawn each morning, thanks for at least doing it cheerfully and for immediately telling me your dreams about us riding airplanes together to the moon. Thank you for your squinty-eyed smile and hugs and thank you for letting me kiss you anytime I want. Thank you for being YOU! I love you more than you’ll ever know and more than I ever thought I could.

Love,

Mom

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack's Three-Year-Old Interview

1. What is your favorite color? green and LOTS of candles 
2. What is your favorite toy? my lawn mower
3. What is your favorite thing to eat? pizza
4. What is your favorite TV show? Curious George
5. What is your favorite outfit to wear?  dinosaur shirt
6. Where do we live? the car and the gym and the swimming pool (oh dear)
7. What are your favorite animals? the birds and the giraffes 
8. Where does Daddy work? the "hosibal" (hospital)
9. Where does Mommy work? the "hosibal" (ha!)
10. What is your favorite book?  Dinosaur doctor one (How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon) and my snail book
11. What is your favorite thing to do outside? spray the bugs
12. Who is your best friend? Henry
13. What do you want to be when you grow up?  4 years old
14. What's your favorite game to play? hide and shriek
15. What do you like to take to bed with you? mom and dad :)
16. What's your favorite thing to do with Mommy?  have birthdays
17. What's your favorite thing to do with Daddy?  work
18. What's your favorite treat?  Christmas (???)
19. What is your favorite movie? Curious George
20. If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go? car ride
21. What makes you happy?  Frosty the Snowman 
22. What makes you sad?  I dunno
23. What makes you scared?  Scary Halloween (he LOVES Halloween :)
24. What is your favorite sport? Scooters
25. What's your favorite flavor of ice-cream?  White ice cream, pink donut

Can't think of a title

I had a few solid anxiety-free months of leaving the house with Jack and David in tow but then this happened and I'm back to square one:

I feel like I need to document the one hour this November Saturday when Gilbert was colder than Davenport:

Sometimes Jack insists that he takes his nap by his lawn mower in the basement and I think it's pretty cute:

I like how he puts this lego bag over his head and plays astronaut :) I think his friend must be playing vampire in a coffin or something  :)

Seriously, it's no wonder David is a horrible sleeper:

I liked filling out this map that was going around on fb. I included the states that I've driven through and the states where I've had layovers. Next places I'd like to fill in: Oregon coast and DC.
 
This looks like a picture of Jack comforting David when he is sad but really, Jack is loving on David so hard it hurts :)

We have new neighbors!!! Jack loves Presley and I love Presley's mom!

Other things we did while my mom was here

• We went to the mall to run a few errands. Unlike me, my mom actually puts the quarters in the ride machines so Jack and David were pretty excited. (I got stuck in the ride and sick on the ride.) Santa was already there and Jack sat on his lap but we didn't get a picture because they charged 20 bucks!

• We got burgers and the most delicious Heath milkshake ever at Steak N' Shake.
• My mom babysat while we went out on date on Friday night. We went to a improv comedy show similar to Jesterz in Arizona, except that it is only 5 bucks a person! Score.

• We woke up to snow on Sunday morning so obviously our Sabbath morning activity was sledding :) We have a hill right outside of our back door which I'm so grateful for! It saves us the exhausting work of packing up a car full of bundled babies. 

 

• Church - my mom gave Jack and David these adorable outfits that came from three different stores. She should be a baby clothing designer!

We had so much fun with my mom. The weekend was too short and Arizona is too far!

Party

My mom got a great deal on Allegiant Airlines last minute to come visit this weekend (under $200 round trip! Come visit me!) so we decided to have Jack's birthday party a little early while she was here. We didn't tell Jack that she was coming and he was so surprised and happy when we picked her up at the airport. He just kept looking at her, smiling at her, and saying, "Nanaaaa!" all weekend long :)

Jack had a blast at his party! We played with a parachute, hit a pinata, and ate pizza and pink donuts (his two absolute favorite foods - he doesn't like cake). Plus he was thrilled about my dollar store decorations and my lady bug, spider, and tractor non-theme that I had going on :)
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
My mom surprised him with his very own tractor/lawn mower and he obviously LOVED it. I think he thanked her about a million times. We took it out at the end of the party for everyone to try and he didn't get off that lawn mower until the lawn was covered in snow!
 
 
 
David loved watching Jack AND riding with him
 
 
 
 
The colder it got, the more serious David's face got :)
 
 
 
We took David in, but my mom and Jack kept going!
 
 
Later that night, we went out for Jack's birthday dinner at my favorite place - The Machine Shed. It was the best experience eating out with our kids yet! Jack was never content in a high chair as a baby so I was shocked when David played and ate and smiled in his high chair the entire time. Also, every restaurant should give out tractors to play with - The Machine Shed is definitely Jack's kind of restaurant! Now if only they served Little Caesars pizza...

They sang a birthday version of "The Farmer in the Dell" but Jack kept telling us that they sang "Ring Around the Rosies" to him.
 
 
Once the celebrations were all over, he kept saying, "Do again!? Do my party again!" I loved celebrating this cute boy of mine! I want to do it again, too!

3 TV shows and 3 Thanksgiving recipes

I was in a show rut for a long time so I re-watched my favorites - LOST and The Office. I still don't think anything beats those shows (I'm open for recommendations though!) but these are the shows I am currently watching and loving - all kind of girly shows :)

Once Upon A Time - Cute, clever, and fairy tale cheesy. I love it.

Parenthood - I'm so sad that this is the last season. I have fallen in love with the Braverman Family.

Gilmore Girls - I think I'm the last girl on earth to have not watched this series. I just started it because it's on Netflix and so far so good.

Has anyone watched Arrow? Is it good?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I am not a very skilled Thanksgiving Dinner maker, but these three recipes are my absolute favorite. Too bad I'm not a real live foodie blogger who includes pictures.

Stuffing

12 cups bread, broken up w/ crust (let it lay out for two days until it's stale)
1 cup melted butter
3/4 cup chopped onions
1 1/2 cup chopped celery with leaves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 TB dried sage

Brown onions and celery in butter over stove.

Mix in 1/3 of the bread and let the butter soak in the bread.

Transfer to a mixing bowl and gradually add salt, pepper and sage

Add the remaining bread crumbs

And here's the tricky part - my recipe says to cook it in the oven. That's it. So I guess cook it at whatever temperature you want until it looks done to you :) (Grandma, do you know at what temp and for how long?!)

Sweet Potato Casserole

3 cups sweet potato
1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk

topping:
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 cup chopped pecans

Boil and mash sweet potatoes. Blend in sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, and milk. Put into baking dish and bake for 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Mix topping ingredients and pour over sweet potato mixture and heat for 5 minutes.

Chocolate Fudge Pecan Pie

1 cup pecans
1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 heaping T cocoa
2 eggs
1 to 2 tsp vanilla
5 oz evaporated milk
1 9 inch pie shell

Melt butter in a saucepan. Add sugar, cocoa, eggs, milk, and vanilla. Mix well and add pecans. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place pie shell in oven for 8-9 minutes. Poke down bubbles. Pour mixture in pie shell and cook for 40-45 minutes. Take out of oven and cool completely so the pie can set.

What are your favorite Thanksgiving recipes?

Cool people, uncool things, and cool couponing

We partied hard this Halloween - we trick-or-treated 7 times in October and I'm ready for a new holiday! Spencer said after taking Jack trick-or-treating, "I felt a little self-conscious at first until people started saying how cool we looked!!" hahaha For the record, I knew all along that we looked cool :)

 
Speaking of cool, my best friend and her son also went with the Incredible theme. She was Edna! I love it!

 
And while I am still speaking about cool people, my mom confessed to taking Halloween witch selfies all day long on the 31st :) Jack thinks these pictures are the coolest thing ever - he REALLY wanted to be a witch for Halloween and his Nana beat him to it.

One really uncool thing about Halloween was The Great Halloween Injury of 2014. On October 29th, Jack stubbed his toe on a pumpkin so hard that he cried about it for pretty much the entire day. That night when I finally had Spencer home to help me pin down Jack to get a good look at it, we pulled out a chunk of pumpkin (a chunk!) wedged up his toe. The day after that, it became infected. So on October 31st, I went to the doctor because Jack had an infected pumpkin toe. (AN INFECTED PUMPKIN TOE!!! ON HALLOWEEN!!!) My mom thought the circumstances were kind of funny (actually she couldn't stop laughing when I was trying to explain how a chunk of pumpkin could possibly get stuck in a toe) and the nurses thought it was kind of funny and I sometimes think it is kind of funny, except when Jack absolutely refuses to swallow his dang antibiotics! We've tried every trick in the book (putting it in juice/yogurt, tackling him and squirting it down his throat, squirting it down his throat in the middle of the night, begging, bribing...) and we are lucky if we get a forth of his dose down his throat. We are hoping that supplementing it with essential oils (thanks to my crunchy mama friends!) and lots of warm baths will help heal the infection. It's not getting worse but I still haven't decided if it's getting better. We will have to go back to the doctor if it gets worse or if it still isn't better after he "finishes" his antibiotics. Stupid pumpkin. Stay out of my kid's toe!

And while I'm talking about uncool things... daylight savings is the stupidest thing ever. Jack now wakes up at 4:30 am. It has been four mornings. I'm tired!

Back to cool things - it is cool to take selfies with the only craft I've made in the last 365 days. My mom had a turkey decoration like this when I was growing up and I loved it. I looked everywhere online for one to buy, but apparently you have to actually craft the dang thing! Last year, my friend's husband (bless his heart!) cut out wood for us and we painted our turkeys and I love it :) I put my turkey pumpkin up high to avoid any other pumpkin toe injuries :)

Also, this little cheeseball thinks he's super cool :) And he is, of course.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. I tried extreme couponing for a while in Alabama, but when I moved to Iowa, I just didn't think it was worth trying it with our local grocery store's couponing policies. However, I LOVE these apps because I save money on the basics - milk, break, fruit, and veggies and it doesn't matter what store I shop at. I've saved/earned over $30 with these apps and just started using them this fall!

https://www.checkout51.com/

http://snap.groupon.com/?ref=0829469c54c0e464

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shrink-grocery-app-redefined/id876304239?mt=8
If you use my shrink referral code, then $1 will automatically be added to your account: XZQXFA