Happy Birthday Henry!!

It's finally here! My little guy is a year old! I say finally, but honestly I'm having the opposite reaction - how is he already a year old??

Thomas helped me make a super special birthday breakfast for his little brother. What a sweetie, huh? I didn't let him touch the bacon though - he's not quite up to the hygiene standards to be touching raw meat... 

Henry looks a little skeptical, huh? He was happy enough because he had his milk, but he is really giving us the side eye!

I made grandmom's waffles (of course!), but I wanted to make them super duper special since it was a birthday breakfast! So I added whipped cream and sprinkles! Thomas was so excited about the waffle tower!

Thomas does not waste any time digging into the waffles. 

Henry was still a little skeptical. I put the stack of three waffles on his tray and looked away to get the camera. And somehow he got the bottom waffle out without disrupting the tower. Well that's impressive. 

Then he did it again! I guess he wasn't interested in the fluffy pile of white stuff on top of his waffles. He eventually dug in to the good stuff, but I was also digging in so you'll just have to trust me. :)

While the boys were napping, I finished up Henry's cake. We affectionately call him the Hulk because he's such a happy, calm baby - until he goes into a baby rage! Haha, it's usually food related, but man can he get angry! Then he's all sunshine and roses again. So - the Hulk!

I found a cake example online and did a pretty good job of mimicking it. I was more than happy with the final result, especially since it's been a while since I made a tiered cake. Well any super involved cake at all really...

Hulk was not cooperating at all! He kept falling over and knocking the "bricks" over. So I made him a fondant boot to keep him upright. 

After nap time, I lost sight of Henry for a second and realized my mistake when he was too quiet. This kid! Normally I would whisk him away and not take the time to get photos, but the damage was already done and it was his birthday... He looks pretty proud of himself, huh?

I tried to die a birthday shirt Hulk purple for Henry. It was the perfect dark purple shade when I pulled it out of the dye bath. But then it got considerably lighter after washin it... Oh well, it was still a purple and green combination. Matt teased me so much about the shade of purple that Thomas refused to wear the matching shirt I dyed him. At least that's my version of events - I'm blaming hubby!

Whatever - Henry looks happy enough with his birthday shirt!

We started singing Happy Birthday to Henry and he was so enthralled about it. He kept looking from person to person and grinning so big. (I totally forgot the birthday hats, but given Thomas' bad reaction to them at his first birthday, that might not have been the worst thing.)

He looks pretty excited about his cake as well! (Who wouldn't be??)

But the best part was the biggest fiasco! Unbeknownst to me, my mom packed up a box to bring with her with dry ice and Blue Bell ice cream for Henry's first birthday. Those of you that know us, know that Blue Bell is a big deal! So guess which bag the airline lost? More correctly, the bag the airline never even put on the plane in Dallas??

Mom was irate! She was much more polite on the phone than I would have been, but she was still pretty upset with American Airlines. The ticket was Alaskan Airlines, but the first leg was on American. In the end, it worked out amazingly - the ice cream got there late that same night and when the staff at Alaskan Airlines saw "Ice Cream" written on the side of the box, they put it in the freezer right away. When we opened it, it was pretty obvious the ice cream had never melted at all. Awesome save, Alaskan!

Henry wasn't too sure about the cake at first. He took a few small nibbles of it...

Thomas is an old pro at cakes and dug right in!

Henry quickly followed along! The fondant held the piece of cake together well enough he could pick up the whole thing at once. 

Then the ice cream got involved! Messiness ensues...!

Hahahaha - look at this kid! If he could have taken a bath in the ice cream, I think he would have. Well worth the headache to get it up here. :)

Happy Birthday little man!! It's been a great year and I can't believe it's gone by so fast! 

The only sad part of the day was while I was trying to get some good messy cake photos of Henry. I was snapping away and then I hear this sad voice off to my left.

"Mommy? I'm over here, mommy!"

Apparently Thomas was feeling left out. I felt so bad! He usually gets tired of me taking his photo all the time, but I guess I don't usually favor Henry with the camera quite as much. So I took several of him and that seemed to pacify him - though he didn't have any big smiles for me. Break a mother's heart...

And the best part of a tiered cake? Even though we had the four of us, plus Nonni, Heather and Brittney - we couldn't even finish the top tier. But after I pulled off the remnants of the top - it was like a whole new cake! The three candle upgrade was to cover the holes from the supports I used for the second tier. Yay for cake - part two tomorrow!

Nonni Comes to Town!

We love it when Nonni comes to visit! We hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving, so we were super excited to be seeing her again! The night before she headed up here, Thomas stole my phone while I was making dinner (and texting her!). He loves sending emoticons when he can, so he started sending her a stream of them.

She, of course, had no idea it was Thomas and couldn't figure out what "her daughter" was trying to tell her. 

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can also send text messages from my laptop, so I let my mom know who was actually texting her. After that, it was hard to tell who was most excited!

See what I mean? ;)

And then she was finally here! Thomas was more than happy to show his Nonni the ropes in playing with play-doh. They use cookie cutters at school to play with the play-doh, which is super convenient since we have a ton of easy to clean plastic ones!

Haha - he looks so concerned! I wonder if Nonni was doing it correctly??

It looks like she did a pretty good job, huh? Notice the combination lock on the table. This kid finds the most random things and holds on to them like they are pure treasures. His other current favorite is a keychain with a safety light on it - though according to him, it's his keys!

Oh and not random, but one of his favorite things - his camera! I think it's the first camera Matt and I ever bought after we got married. We researched and got the best one in our price range with a highly recommended Schneider lens. And now it's our two year old's toy. Crazy.

I've been trying to teach him to look through the viewfinder, but he hasn't quite gotten the concept. He's holding it up to his face, but as you can probably tell that he's not got his eye anywhere near the viewfinder. Ha!

But he's certainly got the looking after shooting down ("chimping" is the slang term for that). His favorite part of the photos is seeing what he took a photo of. His aim is improving, which just makes him more excited to shoot more photos! 

His subject of the night was his Nonni. She looks pretty excited about the photo! I haven't even looked at them yet. That's not very supportive of his photography hobby, huh? I'll grab his best ones soon and post them, I promise!

What a happy little photographer! Man, I love this little guy. Not hard to see why, is it? :)

And since we booked Mom's ticket up on Valentine's day, we had a nice steak dinner in celebration. I sent Matt out for some last minute ingredient and he came back with roses for me and a set of roses for Thomas to give to Nonni and Aunt Heather. They were both pretty ecstatic. I didn't get any photos of it, but if it was 1/10th as cute as when he ran up to me with roses at the airport, then it had to have made their day!

Pinterest Playing Update!

I know you are all dying to know how to frozen balloons turned out! Unfortunately, I am in the same boat. I forgot to go check them the next day and by the time the next weekend (and chance for good lighting) rolled around, the snow had melted and all of the balloons popped. I don't know if it was the dry grass that got them, but they were all goners! Of course, when I thought to take a photo to show their sad state, they had gotten snowed on. Such uncooperative weather...! 

Thomas was super bummed and kept telling me "Balloons popped." I know son - I'm sad too. We'll just have to try again when it gets cold again. I'm sure there is plenty of winter left...

Cupcake liner fish! I saw this one and thought it was easy enough for Thomas to do and thanks to Grannie, we have a ton of cupcake liners. I found the most colorful ones and let Thomas go to town with the scissors. He was supposed to cut triangles for the tails, I ended up just finding the most triangular shaped fragments and made it work. I think he was most excited about the "goo-goo" eyes. Love toddler mispronunciations! (And another appearance by Olwin and his buddy James!) 

This one was in the quiet activity suggestions. Basically you give a toddler a bowl full of pom-poms and scoops or such to play with. I figured he would just throw them on the floor and be done... Wrong - he played with them the whole time I was making dinner. And that is why I rely on others to give me good ideas!

This one falls in the fail category. It was supposed to be slime that you make from glue. Well it did not make slime, it made a chunk of... I'm not sure how to describe it. But anyhow I think I added the Borax incorrectly and it just seized up into a glue mass. I'll try it again, but for now it was a fail.

This one looked fun - painting without the mess! And without Henry getting paint in his mouth... You put blobs of paint in a plastic bag and tape it down so they can play with it - preferably on a white surface so they can clearly see the colors and the mixing. Henry seemed interested at first...

But quickly decided ripping it off was more fun. He was so proud of himself when he got it off his tray. Then he made eye contact with me, held it for a second and dropped it on the floor. Ha - this little guy has some attitude!

Snow painting with colored water! It was a bit of a fail. The snow kept clumping up on the brush, but Thomas seemed to be enjoying it - so we improvised. 

Snow spraying! This he loved. It took him a few tries to get the hang of spraying, but then he had a blast coloring the snow. I did give him yellow, but then decided I didn't really want him to associate yellow snow with "pick up and play with it!" - gross! So we switched it to orange. 

Then we got out cups to stack the snow and make geometrical snow men. Well that's a stretch... We made stacks of snow. 

I gave Henry some snow to play with. He was not sure what to think about the cold, white stuff. Amazingly, he didn't try to eat it - that's a first. ;)

Cotton ball painting! It's not like we don't have about 20 paintbrushes, but I figured it was something new to try. Plus the cotton ball / clothespin combos fit so nicely in the silicone mold I was using for a paint tray. Even better plus, I could just throw the cotton balls away, so clean-up was super easy!

This one was not from Pinterest, but a new paint set I saw at Target. It's a little foam roller with shapes. It looked so fun! There were stars, flowers and stripes.

He really liked it, but he kept pressing so hard that all he got were rectangular smears of paint. I tried to show him how to make the shapes show up better, but he really likes utilizing some force while painting. As long as he is having fun, who cares?

And the winner by far was the snow spraying! He keeps asking me to so it again, so we did. Henry even got in on the action. Sorta - he just held the bottles and smashed them into the snow. But he was having fun. :)

Plus I made the switch down to the art table. To reach over the side of the container last time, I had to boost Thomas up on a book. Which kept falling and scaring all of us (especially the dogs), so I thought this might work better. I generally prefer to keep him at the table when he is doing art do he can't run away and paint the walls or whatever, so I had to stand guard with both of them. One of these days I might trust them with art supplies, but until them they will remain under lock and key. ;)

Snow Play Day!

We finally got a decent snow! Of course most of it came while Matt was on a short trip up to the North Slope, so I got to shovel the driveway about five times. At least it's a good workout, I nailed it on my fitbit steps for the day both days. Yay!

Once Matt was home, we thought it would be fun to bundle up the boys and take them outside to play. Henry mostly got to watch play time from the stroller, but he still seemed content to hang out. I always worry that they aren't warm enough - so for now I'm going with the assumption that if they aren't crying, they must be fine.  

I looked up snow activities on Pinterest (I know, you're shocked by that...) and they had several cool ideas. The first one I decided to try was snow painting. I bought some spray bottles and let Thomas go crazy. It was a little hard for him to do it with his gloves, but otherwise he loved it!

Matt wrote his T's name in the snow, but Natalie attacked the purple snow before I could get a photo. Apparently everyone loved the snow painting...!

Henry was not impressed by "someone" throwing a snowball at him. Look at his side-eye his throwing at his dada. I would imagine if this happens in a few years, a full blown snowball war would ensue. Better enjoy the lack of counter-attacks now Honey, it's not going to last. 

Haha - Matt looks pretty proud of himself, doesn't he? Nonni brought us these snowball makers last year, but this is the first time we've really gotten to use them. The snow was still a little powdery, but we managed to make a few successful ones. 

Look at the one Natalie is trying to eat, that is a picture perfect snowball! So round and pretty!

Thomas was trying to make snowballs too, but his wouldn't stick together. He kept trying, but when he would pop the tongs open, he would just look all surprised and yell "Uh-oh, snow!!" It was pretty adorable. :)

And you can see the snow paint bottles in the background. I made a pink one and a purple one because those happen to be some of my favorite colors. And Thomas has no objections to pink yet, so I will take advantage of it while I can!

Thomas was super determined to ride his bike even though I told him it was too icy. I lost track of him in the garage for a second and next thing I know he was dragging his tricycle out. His dad ended up pushing him around in the driveway and doing wheelies. Thomas is doing his best to give me a thumbs-up in his snow mitten. 
Also notice the spray bottle in the background. It might have gotten forgotten when we went inside and when the water in it froze, it broke the bottle. Well that didn't last long... Luckily Matt took the other spray bottle inside, so we still have one.

Back inside, I thought we should warm up with hot chocolate - best idea ever! As far as I know, Thomas hasn't had hot chocolate yet and he loved it! The fact that I made it with Ghirardelli chocolate chunks and topped it with whipped cream might have had something to do with that. I love some good hot chocolate, why wouldn't I give my little man the very best?!

Henry isn't quite up to hot chocolate drinking yet, but he did get a warm bottle of milk. He seemed happy enough with that though - as long as Thomas doesn't tell him what he is missing, we'll be good for a few more months. I feel like Henry is going to get to try sweets a bit sooner than his brother - how can I say no to Henry if Thomas (and probably me...) is chowing down on a piece of cake right in front of him. That just seems rude!

Eleven (32.5) Months!

Since the boy's daycare is a federal program, they honor all of the federal holidays. Which means that I got an extra day this weekend to hang out with them - woo! And it just so happened to be monthly picture day - double woo!

They were both in great moods this month! Sometimes they really, really enjoy each other - this photo shoot was luckily one of those times. :)

Of course I needed a second to set up the camera and flash for the photos. Eliza was more than happy to be my test model. This poor girl needs a hair cut so badly. She's starting to look like a muskox. Smells about as good as one too... "/

Eleven whole months! Only one short month away from his first birthday. How on earth did that happen??

He seems pretty excited about it though. Well honestly, he's excited about most things these days. He's usually in a great mood. Of course he still has hanger issues, but that's genetic from his momma, so I don't think he's going to outgrow that. Sorry kiddo!

Look at these two! So adorable loving on each other. Henry kept trying to hug/tackle his brother and they both were giggling away.

Then Thomas got down and was trying to tickle his little brother. Giggles switched to full blown laughs. It's an awesome sound. I love it when they are making each other laugh! They've started doing it in the car on the way home, Thomas is now in the middle facing forward and Henry faces backward, so they can see each other and Henry always tries to poke his big brother with his bottle. Henry always thinks it's hilarious, Thomas finds it funny about 75% of the time... ;)

This is what happens when Thomas sees the camera and wants to smile. Can you make out that he is saying "Cheese!" I think it's his new favorite word. He will carry random toys around and pretend they are cameras. "Cheese, momma! Cheese!"

Love those big blue eyes. And that big ole belly! :)

The photo session went really well, but that doesn't mean there weren't a few moments of exasperation. So I figured for full disclosure, I would share some not-so-perfect photos. 

Henry tried to rip his whole shirt off instead of just his sticker. And Thomas was up and down in the chair so many times that his shirt was pulled up in about half the photos. Henry totally looks like the Hulk in this photo - minus green, of course. 

About to lose the toddler again. I swear he makes himself Jello and just slithers all the way down to the floor. And if I try to pick him up in Jello mode he just flops around. I've learned it's just best to wait it out. 

Thomas likes to wait until Henry is leaning on him to pop up and see if Henry will fall over. Henry's balance has gotten good enough that he doesn't get completely unstable. And a nod to the train in Thomas' hand - that is Olwin. We've been working on toilet training Thomas - he got most of it down right away, but we had troubles with #2 for a while. So I may have resorted to bribery... If he makes it in the potty, he gets a sticker. When he gets enough stickers, he gets a reward train. He just got Olwin right before we took the photos, so he was in a majority of the pictures. 

And I tried to get a photo of all three of us, but it didn't work out. Someone's face was always half out of the frame, if not two someone's... I did manage to get a cute one of Henry and I though! Just more reason to get that 20mm lens. ;)

Henry's First Haircut

I ended up giving Thomas his first hair cut shortly before his first birthday. It was getting so long that it was almost in his eyes. I was super worried about messing it up right before all of his birthday photos, but I think I actually did a pretty good job! 

He wasn't quite sure what I was doing, but he was very interested in the clumps of hair on the table. Since that awesome first haircut, my haircutting skills went waaaaay downhill. I don't know if it was just beginners luck, but I gave up on cutting Thomas' hair a while ago.

Cut to breakfast yesterday and I noticed that Henry really, really needs a hair cut. I knew it was getting long, but this morning he had wings of hair in the back. Yikes! Luckily our Saturday morning breakfast joint is right down the street from the barber.

Look how excited he is for his first haircut! Lehi makes a pretty big event out of the first haircut for his young customers. He took before/after pictures of Henry, saved a lock of hair and made a super official certificate for Henry. The line about him "graduating from babyhood" may have made his momma a little sad, but it is pretty close to true. He's such a big boy!

Look at him playing with toys while his dad gets his hair cut - he looks like a little boy. Sigh... My boys are growing *much* too fast for my liking. :(

No more wings! Lehi managed to get it pretty even all around - impressive considering how much Henry was moving around. He was super curious about the whole ordeal. 

Definitely not a teeny tiny baby anymore. (Still loves those two fingers though!)

First haircut, what a milestone! I get the feeling that they are going to start flying back faster than I can keep track. But for now, I'll take them as they come and enjoy all of the smiles these boys want to share with me. :)

Happy Birthday, Matt!

No auroras for the hubster's birthday... Poor guy! And he ended up having to work late! Awful!

So we ended up celebrating on Saturday instead. I hid his presents around the house and ended up having to play the "Warm/Cold" game with him this morning to find them all. Apparently what I thought were logical hiding spots were only logical to me - ha!

We really don't have enough ways to make coffee in this house. We only have the K-cup machine, french press, percolator, Technivorm, the pour over set-up, Aeropress and the occasional use of instant coffee. That's really not a lot of options. ;)

Obviously, we are a little coffee obsessed. And we've had some trouble lately with the coffee tasting bitter. So when I saw this pretty little Chemex, I thought it would be the perfect gift to try out. Matt loves things that look nice and it is by far the nicest looking coffee method we have. 

Thomas was at his usual post of helping out with the morning coffee. I have no idea why he is rocking the LL Cool J look this morning. Those sweatpants are my least favorite of all his pants and he seems to love them. I guess they are super comfortable so I can't really blame him for that. Also note that he is ready for business in his apron - ready to make cake!

That's right, look at my super duper helper for cake making! I don't actually have any photos of the cake part - he was much more involved in the icing part of the cake. He was super pumped about actually getting to add ingredients!

Then he was on sprinkle duty! I let him pick out the sprinkles, I'm not a fan of the little spheres - they get everywhere. One errant breath and they roll all over the place. But he wanted them, so we got them!

They all ended up in piles of rainbow goodness! Partly my fault for putting such thick icing swirls in the cake, partly Thomas' because he kept dropping them all in the same places. Group effort!

Look how proud he is of his cake decorating! So adorable! For the record, Matt loved his cake. I may have forgot to take photos of him enjoying it because I was too busy wolfing down my slice - whoops!

Happy Birthday, Matt! We love you whole bunches!

Ice Fishing

Sam and his daughter invited us to go ice fishing with them this weekend. We debated on it and decided that it might be best to leave the baby at home for this one, so I stayed with Henry while Matt and Thomas got to go have some serious Alaskan fun. In the end, it ended up being warm enough they didn't even use the fishing tent, so it was a really pleasant day for the fishers! 

Sam took some photos for me with his cell phone so I felt included via being tagged in photos on Facebook. The first few looked like Thomas was more interested in watching his dad fish than actually fishing... The scenery is pretty awesome too, I might add!

But then Matt caught this huge "monster" of a trout - he's mimicking a pose of Brittney when she actually did catch a monster salmon this year. Somehow it is not quite as impressive with a 9" fish. (Or whatever the actual size was - it was legal, that much I know!)

Then Thomas started to get into the fishing once he realized what was going on. I've caught a impressive total of one fish since we moved here, Thomas has now bested my record by several fish. Oh well, if I am going to lose to someone at least it's one I completely adore. ;)

Look how proud he is of his fish! He was even reeling in his own fish. I think Matt helped him at the very end, but he did most of the work himself. What an accomplishment! :)

Thomas and Abby with their haul! They both had fun, stayed warm and had fun snacks. Sounds like a pretty awesome day in the life of a little kid!

And the best part - dinner! Matt gutted and cleaned the fish like a true pro (thanks youtube!), then panfried them with a recipe that was really, really good. Turns out that the larger trout don't actually taste as good as the size they were catching. Nothing to make you feel like a true Alaskan that catching and cooking your own food. Well, I would assume so, the only one I caught we released... But I can claim my son's fish by proxy, right? ;)

Auroras

For those of you that don't know, my husband is a serious night owl. It is super rare that he is in bed before midnight any day of the week. One benefit I have noticed from his awful sleep schedule is that he is usually up when the auroras come out to play. Like this morning, he just happened to do his nightly aurora check (I'm not exaggerating). They were just barely visible from the driveway, so he woke me up and told me. 

I was not interested and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, my phone rings. Matt really thinks I should come outside. Fine...! But I'm just going out and then coming back in. Until I saw them - holy cow! They were the brightest I have seen since the one good show we got last year (and there was no good photos of that one!). So I went back in to get the camera and start taking some photos to share with you all. :)

I ended up giving up and going back to sleep after a long while, but the lights kept dancing and dancing. Matt took over photographer duties after I went back to bed, so most of these are from him - I take credit for the camera settings though! I think he finally gave up at 3am, all I know is that the memory card was full of shot after shot of awesome auroras.

Here are my favorite ones, enjoy!

Pretty awesome, huh? And to be that awesome in a neighborhood and with an incredibly bright moon is super uncommon! So the best (most likely!) show of the year just happened to show up right on my birthday... That's a pretty good birthday present in my book. :)

Pinterest Attempts

We didn't go out for breakfast today, so that meant that it was a pjs morning! This is a thing, right? Most of you don't change out of your pjs on the weekend if you are staying home? I'm going to assume you all have said yes and reassured me that we are normal. Thanks for that!

After we ate, we ended up skyping with Matt's parents. Sometimes we randomly call them just to see if they are actually there. They've done it to me several times since my account automatically logs in when we turn the TV on. We didn't have anywhere to be (see "pj morning" above), so the kiddos were happy to entertain their grandparents. 

You decide, brotherly love or brotherly attack?? I honestly think it started out as Thomas trying to use his fire truck as a bumper car into Henry's elephant, but Henry was all about the hugs. Thomas didn't really try to get away, so I am assuming he enjoyed the hug too. :)

We've gotten a little bit of snow recently with the cold weather, so Matt decided to go ski for a few hours (trying to make that season pass worth it!). I wasn't feeling up to going out in the cold today (it happens!), but didn't want to resort to watching a movie just yet. Luckily for me, I had an idea the other day to look up toddler activities on Pinterest. Holy moly - there are so many ideas on that website! While Pinterst can be a huge time sink for me (humor section, I am looking at you!), it really worked out well for this particular idea hunt!

First thing we decided to attempt were frozen balloon decorations. We had the balloons laying around and we certainly had the cold temperatures. I decided to just stick them out in the snow, but since the snow is pretty darn thin, the orange one rolled off into some hard grass and popped. Thomas retold me the story of the "orange one popped!" all afternoon... Now just to let them freeze and see what they look like!

We also found several ideas for quiet activities. We certainly have a bunch of loud activities around the house... But I was more looking for things to pull out and occupy the little guy while trying to prep dinner or related times where I just need a quick distraction that doesn't require my oversight. 

I wasn't sure he'd be all that excited about sticking pipe cleaners in a container, but he loved it! He was so serious about it too, he had to make sure they were all the way in before attempting the next one The pipe cleaners were a little flimsy, so I just twisted them in half to make them a little easier to work with. If I'm totally honest, I found playing with them a little soothing myself. :)

When it was Thomas' turn to nap, I thought I would try letting Henry paint. I trimmed a piece of paper to fit on his tray table and put little dots of paint on there to give him a go at finger painting.

He wasn't too sure about it. He scratched at the paint, then poked at his fingers, then looked at me a little confused. After a little while, I figured he had enough and went to get a rag to clean him up.

Which is, of course, when my finger sucking baby decided it was past time to stick his favorite fingers in his mouth! I probably should have seen that coming. I tried to stop him before they made it in, but I failed - and that or the taste made him start crying. All in all, not the most successful activity. But he calmed down pretty quick and forgave me...

And while not specifically mentioned on Pinterest, I saw a pair of little kid scissors when we were buying art supplies and thought Thomas might want to give them a go. He was so excited to cut things with them! For some reason though, he decided to try with his left hand. He has almost no left handed preference these days, so I was pretty surprised. But he did a great job in cutting the paper and not himself. (Also note his trusty cell phone in case anyone needs to call him...)

Thanks to Pinterest for a crafty day with the guys and only one tiny incident. ;)