My Little Baker

Another weekend of working, so Henry and I decided to chill out at home while Matt took Thomas to hockey practice. (I hear it went well!)

Henry got bored of me sitting at the computer and decided to go read books in his finished Space Pod. I thought that he needed a little more comfort in his Space Pod and managed to squeeze one of the bean bags in there. He's wearing his shoes (huge no-no on the carpet) because he had a little bit of a freak out when Thomas and Dada left without him. He kept running over to me and crying "shoes!" with them in his hands. I figured it might appease him a little to be able to put them on - it did!

Thomas decided not to take a full nap after lunch, but did stay in bed for his "quiet" time. Once his songs were over though, he was ready to get up and do something! I thought it would be fun to make cookies together and had the brilliant idea to see how much he was capable of doing on his own. Usually I limit his helping and I thought it was possible I was underestimating his abilities. So I gathered up all the ingredients and put him to work. Once he started opening the butter and declared it was "sticky", I decided it might be good to find his apron Grannie made him last year!

I told him the first rule of apron wearing is that you can wipe your hand on your apron, but you have to make sure you are on your apron and not your shirt! He got the butter in the bowl just fine, then got to work measuring out the other ingredients.

Look at how carefully he is transporting that baking soda to the bowl. We still ended up making a mess, but not quite as much as usual...

Focusing hard on mixing the dry ingredients! I didn't get a photo, but he even managed to measure out the flour with the scoop and sweep method. Teaching him right!

He knew how to lift the bowl up without any instructions on my part. I should probably know they watch me like a hawk at all times, but it still impresses me when they pick things up. :)

And making sure he has the mixer on the right speed. We had a safety "stand down" before operating the mixer so he knew not to put his hands anywhere near the beaters. I think he was so focused on safety he asked me about 5 times what speed to use each time he turned it on. 

This was the big moment - his first time to crack an egg. I showed him how to do it with the first egg and he watched closely. Then it was his turn to try! You can see he has his tongue out for full concentration!

So his cracking the egg open was a little like smashing it to smithereens, but he got the egg out of the shell! And we only had to fish out one shell fragment. I'm calling it a win!

Once he had all the wet ingredients creamed together, we moved on to slowly adding the dry ingredients. I think I made his job a little more difficult because I wanted to get a photo and wasn't holding the bowl at a very helpful angle. 

Then I had him measure out the chocolate chips. He even stopped at the correct marking instead of dumping the whole bag in - such self control!

He couldn't decided on chocolate chips or M&Ms, so we decided to do both. Had to use up those Valentine's colors at some point. This is the only part he needed help on. Totally understandable, chocolate chip cookie dough is pretty hard to stir by hand!

I was debating whether or not he would be able to scoop out the cookie dough with the dishers and he did it like a total champ! His aim was a little off, but he would scoop up the dough and drop it on the cookie sheet all by himself. It's fair to say I was a little amazed at all of his culinary skills by this point!

He was more amazed by the mechanics of the cookie scoop. Not at all a surprise for my little engineer!

The only thing I didn't let him try was the oven part - I figured a mistake there would be a little more of a hard lesson than I planned for the day. But the two of them were certainly happy enough to be cookie tasters once the cookies had cooled down. 

I am super excited how awesome he did with making the cookies. I am going to have a full scale helper in the kitchen soon. And my sons have no choice but to be bakers - my legacy must be passed on! :)

Party Day for Our 2 Year Old!

I'm still having trouble believing that my youngest has turned 2. Does time magically speed up once you have kids? It must, there is no other logically explanation for how we have ended up here. He was teeny tiny just the other day!

I am just not following my own chronological blogging rules these days. But I just loved this photo so much I wanted it first. Nonni and Grandpa sent Henry a bunch of new trains for his birthday. Thomas already had the letters to spell Tommy, so now Henry has his own name train. She also sent him a bunch of Chugineers from Chuggington and I am not sure which set he was more excited about. I obviously favored the name train for photos. :)

Back to breakfast - the start of party day! The boys have been really into smoothies recently, so I made sure to include one on the breakfast "menu". Also, that may look like his fireman's hat, but it's not - it's Elmo! We were having a very Elmo themed party day today! And if you look closely, you can see Elmo got some smoothie on his nose - I think Henry was trying to share...!

Present time after breakfast! I don't think I've ever seen him so excited about ripping paper. The first few rips were teeny tiny pieces and I figured it was going to take us an hour to get it unwrapped. But they he got this giant piece and even impressed himself!

He's been super in to Pete the Cat recently and we bought him a stuffed "Pete Cat" (as he calls it). There was one morning he stole the school's Pete Cat from a classmate and there was a big kerfuffle because we made him give it back and apologize. So we thought he might like one at home. We were right! 

But the giant box held this cardboard contraption that is a Space Pod. We had eyeballed it for awhile at Target, then bought it once it went on clearance after Christmas. I know the package said 6+, but we figured it would be something they could help us put together. Ha - it was so complicated and they were more interested in throwing pieces. Matt will have to put it together when his little "helpers" are napping..!

Nonni and Grandpa also sent them bubble wands (6!) for Valentine's Day and we hadn't gotten a chance to play with them yet. After the boys nicely asked if they could blow bubbles, I put their jackets on over the pajamas and we all went outside. Look how excited they are to blow bubbles!
Also look how sad the back yard looks without snow. This winter has not been very impressive...

Henry has even gotten the hang of blowing bubbles! He was blowing them like a champ after a few false starts. Now I am going to have two little guys begging to blow bubbles every single evening. Why do kids love bubbles so much??

We have a firm no bubbles in the house rule that has an exception for bath time, usually with the tiny bubble containers we get for party favors. I need to take one of the wands up to their bathroom - that would blow their little minds!

When they finally went down for a nap, I got started on decorating the Elmo cake. I figured I bought the pan for Thomas' second birthday, might as well get some more use out of it! I thought I should decorate it a little differently for Henry though and decided to use the star tip. I did about 10 stars before realizing it was a horrible idea with my ergonomic issues. Matt heard me muttering and offered to do them for me. And he did an awesome job - such a talented hubby!

Thomas woke up from his nap just in time to get a little bit of extra frosting!

Finally got Henry in his party shirt post nap time! I figured he wouldn't make it to the party with a white shirt if I put it on too early. He also loved his Sesame Street banner I put up in their play room. I was imagining getting photos with a fabulous background when I bought it, but the folds on it would not smooth out. And it was a little too shiny to be flawless, but he liked it and that was the more important thing!

Also bought these banners because I have no self control. Look at him being all cool wearing his Elmo hat backwards. I love this photo because he has the best look on his face - that mischievous little smile is so fitting! And I am also pretty proud of that shirt - I came up with it without Pinterest (what...??)!

He was more than happy to ham it up for tons of photos! I tried to get as many as I could before everyone arrived because I am awful at taking photos during parties. I will never be an event photographer. But hanging out with my boys and taking photos? Sure, no problem!

Party time! I wrapped a dish towel around Henry trying my best to preserve his shirt. His friend Jaxson apparently has no qualms about wearing bibs, but Henry usually rips them off. I guess Jaxson wearing one helped Henry keep his on. Also check out the super cool Sesame Street cups (I told you - no control!).

Little Miss Lottie also showed up for the fun, though she's not quite big enough for the kiddie table. But look at her sitting up like a total champ! She was a little bummed she didn't get any of the tasty sloppy joes or tater tots, but I promised her next year she could go to town! 

After dinner jump time! Henry kept running away from the bounce house and Matt kept putting him back in. This particular "putting back" was by far the best. Henry has no fear, in case you didn't know... Also the floating Elmo face is a dangling decoration. They were a little hard to shoot around since I put them right in the middle of the house traffic pattern. Oh well!

Thomas still loves the jump house and was in and out of it multiple times! I was having trouble with the colors on the slide though, so these photos had to go B&W so the kids didn't look like technicolored tots!

Jaxson was a little more hesitant about the bounce house at first, but he warmed up to it! 

Henry was worried that Lottie might be feeling left out of the bounce house fun, so he took her one of her toys that she left in the living room. What a thoughtful little guy, huh?

After we figured they had burned off enough energy and made a little more room - it was cake time! Doesn't Elmo look smashing in his stars? Matt and I are a great cake baking team! :)

Henry looks so bored in this photo. In my mind he's thinking "Come on and sing already so I can have some cake!"

So we sang! Then I handed him his candle and then went over to get the knife to cut the cake...

Only to turn around and realize he had bit a chunk out of his candle. I was telling him to spit it out and ended up having to fish the chunk of wax out of his mouth because he was convinced it was a tasty treat! Casey (Jaxson's dad) nicely thought to grab my camera and get a photo of the fight over the candle remnants. Thanks Casey! There's also a video Brittney took - apparently it was quite the hilarious moment. ;)

Finally time to eat real food - the cake! Thomas was back to his usually cheesy grin. Sigh - can't just tell a kid to smile and get a normal look out of them, can you? 

Uncle Duncan gave me real smiles though (Lottie chose to dance instead)! Lottie didn't get any cake, but she was still pretty excited about the party hats! (She may or may not have tried to eat one...) She might have been the only one though - they were the tiniest hats ever. Several of us adults put them on and they were trying to strangle us during the Happy Birthday song. Actually you can see the string digging in on Henry in the photos with the cake. Lottie might be the only one they actually fit...

Whose birthday is this, anyway?? Thomas was more than happy to test out his brother's new drum kit from Aunt Heather. And Aunt Heather hid for most of these photos, but I got her in one of them! :)

More interested in the ribbon than the actual presents - sounds about right...!

Happy (day-after) Birthday, Henry! Hopefully it was as fun for you as it was for your momma!

Happy Birthday Henry!

I had grand plans to have a fun-filled day of activities with Henry today, but life (work!) got in the way. The daycare was closed on Monday, so Matt took the day off and all of them went to Chuck E Cheese for an early birthday treat! I managed to make time to meet them over there and even got some play time in during my lunch hour. (And a cute photo for my wall at work - I love the photo printing machine more than any game!)

Since Henry was going to be at school for his birthday, I decided to take him cupcakes for their afternoon treat so he could have a mini-party with his friends. Plus he just moved classrooms and there is no better way to make friends that with cupcakes, right??

And in order to make friends with the teachers and fellow parents, I tried to make slightly healthier cupcakes than previous years. I found a recipe that used applesauce and apple juice and no eggs or fats. While it sounded dismal to me, the blog post I found it on swore it tasted like an apple fritter.

Yeah no... Whatever, it was decent enough I figured toddlers wouldn't notice if it had a little frosting on it. 

Plus I made him Minion cupcakes and what little kid these days doesn't love Minions?!? I was pretty proud of how well they turned out - especially the one where the liner pulled away and I managed to turn it into a cool hairstyle. Soooo clever!

Of course, I totally forgot from the Elmo cupcakes two years ago that black cookie glaze icing will spread overnight and the cupcakes looked significantly sadder by the time the kids got them. They didn't even seem to notice, so it was really just my decorating pride that suffered...

I made sure to show up early enough to not miss the start of snack time and this little guy was super excited to see me. As a side note - standing behind him is one of the other Henry's at school. Who knew there would be three of them?? Anyhow, shortly after I took this photo, my Henry got tired of waiting for the other kids still in his class to wake up and started pounding on the window.

Sigh...

So much for taking the awake kids to the adjacent gym to let the other ones sleep. "/

While his teacher, Anna, was rounding all the kids back up, Henry and I went down the hall to go get Thomas. I asked him if he had wanted to join the fun and he was super excited! (Probably mostly for the cupcakes, but who knows?) Also, Anna had made these super cute table covers while the kids were napping after lunch.

Have I ever mentioned how much Henry loves Anna and vice versa? The two of them have been best buds pretty much since Henry started there. Sometimes I would come to pick them up and Henry wouldn't be in his usual classroom - because he had somehow convinced Anna to come get him. So he has been super thrilled this week with his recent move to Anna's class. I certainly love knowing he's with someone who really cares about him. :)

Anyhow, back to the party - the kids are ready for some cupcakes!

Thomas even wore his Minion shirt for the occasion! Henry doesn't have one yet. He's in the same size shirts as Thomas, but I haven't convinced Thomas to send a Minion one Henry's way yet. I guess I could go buy him one, but a little waiting is good for the soul, right?

Obviously the cupcakes were a little messy and Henry was covered in icing. He never cared about how dirty his hands were until a few weeks ago. Now when he is eating, he hollers "Napkin! Napkin!!" at the tiniest amount of food on his hands. This mess was a little bit more than a napkin could handle, so we washed him clean in the sink. He's also becoming quite the pro at washing his hands - that's some independence I can get behind!

Happy Birthday Henry! There's more fun to come tomorrow, but I didn't want you to miss out on having some fun for the correct day. Between Monday and a party tomorrow, this is a birthday week celebration!

Happy Valentine's Day!

First off, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! 

Secondly, how adorable are these two?!? I'm not honoring my usual chronological blogging, but how could I not start this post with the cutest photo possible??

Chronologically, breakfast was first and I had this great idea to make them heart shaped pancakes with their names. I quickly realized I don't have the pancaking skills for that, so it got downgraded to hearts with their initials in them. Even then it was only moderately successful... And you can probably now see why I didn't lead with this photo!

They loved the pancakes anyhow! Little boys are apparently not so picky about how cute their heart pancakes are, they just thought it was too cool that it had their "letters" in them. Matt was less impressed - probably because I went with pancake mix because it was easier to use in a squeeze bottle. I have spoiled my husband with good thick pancakes apparently. Ladies - let this be a warning to you. Spoil them and then they expect spoiling. ;)

Also Henry is throwing his heart at me - how rude! The Star Wars pillows were only part of their Valentines presents from mommy. They also got candy filled hearts and Star Wars cups! Oh no, it sound suspiciously like I am spoiling my boys too. Sigh...

I told them the only gift I wanted from them was cooperation for a little while today. I thought we could do some Valentine's crafts and then take some photos. I bought this kit to make pinwheels and it was absolutely a disaster. I had trouble getting one together, so the boys didn't have a chance. So I made them both pinwheels and then none of us could get them to spin. Worst pinwheels ever!

Luckily, they still looked cute in the photos! Especially the top photo - Henry looks so serious!

I also saw this cute photo on Pinterest of heart stickers on the wall and then the little kid was blowing like she was blowing the hearts. I'm guessing that mom put the stickers up on her own and didn't have a preschooler trying to help, because our "cloud" of hearts is pretty much going the wrong direction. Whatever, he's still cute and managed to pull off a pretty convincing blowing motion. 

As soon as I said I was done taking photos, these two were attacking the wall and pulling all the heart stickers down! Well, they mostly pulled the glittery  and decorated stickers down and I got the "boring" ones they left on the wall. 

Of course, I was reviewing the photos on the back of the camera and realized I didn't have a good one of both of them smiling & showing brotherly love, so I asked for just a few more... Surprisingly they were willing to comply and I even got a hug out of them! (Those are mostly smiles, right?)

They were obviously taking this present for mommy pretty seriously!

Or mommy may have also bribed them with an episode of Chugginton if they were cooperative... I've got no shame in a little bit of bribery if it gets me cute photos to remember every (minor) holiday with them. :)

Star Wars Pillows!

I've been trying to find the boys new pillows for daycare for a while now. Henry's is too small for his growing head and the one Thomas' former daycare teacher made him was getting pretty lumpy after repeated washings. I kept seeing girl themed pillow and blanket sets at Target, but nothing for boys. Then we randomly saw a Darth Vader set in the clearance aisle last week! The boys wanted them so much, but the blankets were too big for the sleep mats at school and even the clearance price was a bit much for just a pillow.

So I had the brilliant idea that I could just make them pillows! I had been to Joann's Fabric a few weeks ago for mom to pick up some things and had seen a whole rack of Star Wars themed fabrics. After doing some reading online for ides, I decided to buy small pillows and make them pillow cases. That way I could wash the cases every week instead of the whole pillow.

The plans I found online were for bigger pillows, so I did some math to make proportionally sized cases for little kid sized pillows. I was so proud of myself for buying fabric got ready to cut everything out. Which is when I realized I really had no clue what I was doing...

I have only sewn two things in my life that I can recall - an incredibly lumpy and not straight at all pillow and a pair of pajama pants. I did pretty good on the pajamas, but I had a pattern to pin to the fabric for cutting. I really had no clue how to cut this fabric in a straight line. I didn't have anything besides a sharpie to mark on the fabric and no straight edge long enough to mark all the way across. Plus I had bought the wrong size fabric and had to sew two cut pieces of it to make it long enough for the band(s).

I was not off to a great start!

Then we couldn't get the sewing machine to work... It's one of Grannie's old ones that we have had forever and we have used it successfully before, but we had no luck today. The manual in the case was for a different machine, so I was googling the manual to see if it had any helpful information (not really!). We ended up Face-timing with Grannie to try and see if she could help. She ended up showing Matt a youtube video she found and we decided something on our machine was just not working correctly.

Thankfully, Heather had just gotten a sewing machine for Christmas and she didn't mind loaning it to me! I think she'd do anything for her nephews...! She hadn't even taken the strapping tape off of it yet, so I did at least get it all set up for her. Hers has a built-in needle threader on it (so fancy!) and the bobbin worked like a champ. I was ready to get sewing! 

I didn't get any in-action photos because I was very focused on trying to not mess these pillowcases up! And I was following a description without entirely knowing I knew what the process was going to be. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job - I messed up the seams a little, but the pattern I was following did blind seams. It required sewing the seams once the wrong way at 1/4", trimming them, then sewing them the other way at 1/4". I got the process just fine, but I had a ton of trouble trying to sew at 1/4" with my not perfect initial cutting. I think next time I would just give myself more material to start with!

The final result! This one is Thomas' pillow. Matt requested that I find fabric that wasn't just Darth Vader. Apparently them loving the bad guy bothers him a little. My argument is always that at least Darth Vader loved his mother! But I did manage to find fabrics with a better distribution of light & dark side characters. 

Henry loved his pillow! As soon as I gave it to him, he ran to get his daycare blanket from the laundry room and proceeded to pretend nap all over the house. How adorable is that?!? Of course, he assumed both of the pillows belonged to him since Thomas was still asleep. The moment he realized they weren't was quite traumatic and involved a few tears. But he cheered up pretty quickly - he still has one awesome pillow, after all!

I may have been so excited to give Thomas his pillow that I woke him up from his nap. I mean, he had been asleep more than his usual nap time, but he still wasn't very happy to be woken up. And he didn't even care about his pillow at first. :(

But he did finally start carrying it around and even used it as a place to hide from mommy's camera. So I am quite sure he will love it once he is no longer grumpy! :)

January Phone Photos

I did awful this month at pulling my camera out! Looking back, I took enough photos last month for 11 posts, so I think maybe I was just worn out from taking photos? Which is silly! Luckily for me, even if I don't drag my Nikon out, I still have a camera with me at all times thanks to my phone. And they always say the best camera is the one you have on you! So I figured I would do another month review in phone photos so I didn't feel like such a slacker!

This is what happens when you tell your boys to get their breakfast out of the pantry. I meant for them to grab the cereal, but they went for applesauce and cookies. They generally get applesauce in the morning on their way to daycare, so that I get. But cookies were just wishful thinking! Much to their dismay, they ended up with cereal this morning.

Thomas helping me bake the cookie bars of the week. I think this may have actually been a repeat because we wanted pecan pie bars again. But really, if I make any version 50 times, that's pretty much honoring the concept of making 50 bar cookies, right??

Thomas learned a new trick from his dad at breakfast this morning!

He was pretty proud of himself.

I'll let you decide if I mean Matt or Thomas by that last statement. (Hint: both!)

This little guy is not old enough to start skating lessons, but doesn't he just look like he's ready to tear it up? Soon Henry! Also, I love his little belly hanging out between the chest protector and pants. Reminds me of some of my toddler photos...!

This guy did not want to nap this particular Saturday and I needed to run errands. Matt needed to work on the garage, so I tried to convince Thomas to go with me since he would probably be more of a hinderance to his dada. Finally got him on board when I promised we could stop by the neighborhood park for 5 minutes on our way to the store. Magic words! Also, his hat wasn't in my car, so I improvised with mine and he looked pretty adorable in it. :)

Henry started his tumbling classes again! It's hard to get a photo of him while he is in motion, so I took a selfie while I could. For the record I love taking selfies with my boys and have a photo folder on my phone dedicated to them. Pretty much the only way we end up in photos together!

Another park trip, another round of forgotten kids winter gear. Luckily, I had another hat and Henry didn't seem to mind the giant pink gloves I put on his hands...!

Birthday breakfast with my boys! Also the last time Henry is getting a sprinkle donut for a long time - both he and the floor were covered in sprinkles! 

Last year, Thomas and I hung out for my birthday and he painted me a coffee mug at the ceramic store. This year, my mom and both boys spent the day with me! I was going to get them to share painting the same mug, but it wasn't there! One of the big cargo ships had an issue this week sailing up from Washington and all kinds of stores were low on goods (the downside to living on the edge of the earth!) Since all they had were smaller mugs, Henry got a coffee mug and Thomas picked out this "I Love You" piece. Awwwww!

Birthday dinner at Benihana's! They took a photo of our group at the end and promised everyone was in the photo. When we got the photo, it had everyone but Heather! Sorry this isn't the greatest photo, but I wanted to prove she was actually there! And a good sport about the fact our waiter totally left her out. ;)

Tumbling lessons again! Thomas has aged out of the class they used to be able to do together, so now he sits in the corner during Henry's class and plays lego games on the ipad. He seems pretty happy with the arrangement, but I still feel the need to go check up on him from time to time.

Ok, this isn't a phone photo, but it's literally the only photo on the camera I got for Matt's birthday. Clark had wandered over to one of the Happy Birthday drawings I did for Matt and it looked like he was reading it.

I'm easily amused...!

I made Matt wait until almost the end of his party before I gave him his "real" birthday presents. I had sneakily ordered him a bunch of gear he was daydreaming about for his motorcycle and gear for the related trips and shipped it to Brittney's house. I figured once he opened it, we were going to lose most of the guys to the garage and I was absolutely right. I did manage to surprise the heck out of him and earn "Best Wife Ever" title for at least the month of January! :)

Second ski day with Matt at Alyeska! I took a short lesson last month to try to remember how this whole skiing thing worked and mostly remembered what to do. Matt finally convinced me I could handle the blue trails on the upper mountain and we bought a full mountain pass. The lower mountain pass is less than half the price, but you really only have 4 green trails to work with. After spending the morning on those trails, I was ready to head up Ted's Express after lunch.

Thankfully, I didn't see this sign until the second time up the lift. And I did pretty good on the harder runs, but I did fall a few times and was just way more stressed out in general. I did a few runs, then I went back to the greens after telling Matt I was worn out emotionally. He gave me a hard time about that for days. Sigh...

We had a 7.1 earthquake hit at 1:30 in the morning! It was super scary and we both ran to the kids rooms thinking we could somehow protect / save them. It was quite jarring and felt like it went on forever, but we really didn't have any damage beyond frayed nerves. This picture frame in the hallway fell over, but that was about it. Though the chandelier in the entry way swung for about 15 minutes after the shaking stopped - that was a bit freaky. And we got hit with lots of smaller aftershocks. One downside to Alaska is certainly it's seismic activity. The first few were a novelty - now they are just unsettling...

Last, but not least, Henry and I at Thomas' hockey practice! He's a great sport for not being able to play and is mostly happy to sit with me and watch Thomas. Of course, I occasionally have to chase him down, but overall it's quite fun hanging out with the little guy being a spectator!

Hockey Update

Thomas is on his fourth week of skating lessons, so I figured I'd bring the camera along again to show his progress. It's still a frustrating 45 minutes for us to be stuck on the sidelines, but Thomas seems to be making incremental steps in the right direction.

He's got his new jersey and it's not much smaller than the temporary one he had the first day. But it does have his name on it! We had to pick a number for it and that was way more stressful than it should have been. We ended up going with 76 - it's his dad's birth year and coincidentally America's. When we were discussing it was the first time I realized my husband is a bicentennial baby - ha!

Back to skating lessons! He can get on the ice without falling now, but his progress is slow enough that most of the time someone helps him get over to the group for warm-up. You can see the older / more skilled kids are super into it and ready to go! Thomas is keeping his safe distance from them... 

Coach Allen is trying to convince Thomas to get down on the ice to practice standing up. Thomas was not convinced falling down on purpose was in his goals for the day and ended up having to be pulled down to the ice. But Coach got him down, gave him a pep talk and coached him through standing back up. 

Thomas doesn't do a great job in following along with team activities, so Coach Allen gives Thomas his own "missions" to focus on. This involves giving him a ring and telling him to put the ring on a cone that is situated by Matt or I. It's a mostly guaranteed way to make him sloooooooowly skate to a target. You can see Matt is giving him a pep talk as Thomas is coming towards him. 

Then it was my turn to have the cone! You can tell how thrilled he is about this mission, but he's doing it anyway. The lessons are on the rink in the bottom floor of the mall and it is super distracting for Thomas with all the lights, the bigger kids skating all crazy and the crowd of spectators that always show up.

Watching kids learning to skate is incredibly entertaining in case you haven't seen it - which is why it always draws a crowd on the upper levels of the mall. The older kids have a game where they furiously skate around and the coaches throw their hockey gloves at the kid's skates to try and make them fall. It is hilarious and I have a hard time not watching it as well!

He made it!!! I get all excited and bounce the ring up and down off the cone and his hemet to cheer him on! So he's all smiles while I do that. But then wants to leave... Then the coach pulls him across the rink and we start over.

He's been making slow progress, but it's progress! Matt and I found an outdoor rink at a nearby elementary school, so Matt has been taking him to practice. The deal is that Thomas has to "try hard" and then they go get hot chocolate and read books at Starbucks. As a side note - my negotiating skills have improved since my oldest turned 3...

Finally the lesson is done for the day and they meet to have one last "Go team"! Of course, this is just the littles of the skating program - there are at least twice as many on the other side. Thomas told me one night before bed that he wanted to skate with his friends on the other side of the ice. I told him if he keeps trying hard, he will make it over there! 

Anova

For my birthday, Matt got me a new play toy for the kitchen. A sous vide immersion circulator made by Anova. Sous vide is a relatively new cooking method to make it to the home kitchen - it's quite popular in restaurants, but has been a little too pricey for home use. 

I've heard pretty amazing things about them - especially with regard to cooking steak! We actually were doing amazing at cooking steaks back in Houston, but our outdoor method really doesn't seem to work as well in 30° and the ventilation in this kitchen has a 99% chance of the smoke alarms going off when cooking steak. So when Anova started popping up in my newsfeed, I got interested in the technique and off-handedly mentioned to Matt that it would be fun to play with it. And he always pays attention to these things! :)

Since we were cooking for a crowd, I decided to make a Costco run. They are honestly one of the better sources of beef up here. (I miss you, Texas cattle!) The ribeye packages were all different sizes though, so I went with New York Strip! 

My carnivore child got pretty interested at this point. Shocking...!

Sous Vide literally means "under vacuum" and that is how you cook most foods. The Anova is merely a fancy water heater and circulator. The idea of sous vide cooking is to maintain a set temperature precisely for a set period of time and the piece of food immersed in the water (no floating because it's vacuum sealed!) will slowly reach the same temperature throughout. No overcooking the outside while trying to reach safe temperatures inside!

I used my giant pot I bought in 2014 for the giant recipe of French Onion Soup and clipped the steaks to the side. I am unsure if this was necessary or not - I didn't want to risk blocking the ports on the Anova. And you can see the multitude of thermometers we were double checking the accuracy with - Anova was as awesome as advertised on temperature control!

The one downside is that the meat came out looking a little blah. Obviously you can't sear the meat with sous vide, so it comes out needing a little bit more attention before serving. 

Into the cast iron skillet with you! Just a quick sear on both sides to make them extra scrumptious, but not enough to overcook the outer edges. 

The final result - a perfectly medium rare steak with just the right amount of sear on it. Look at that evenness all the way through! I think maybe next time I might cut off all the extra fat on the side, but that's just a good excuse to do this again! And again...! :)

And to top it all off, Heather and Mom made me a cake for my birthday! And it was Oreo! And it was delicious. Also my mom decided to decorate it with a J33 because she loved BB8 in the new Star Wars. Cute, mom!

Henry was chowing down on the cake! He has a bit of a cold and can't really breath through his nose. Which meant he was scarfing food down, with a pause occasionally to take a deep breath. He finally shoved the empty plate across the table to me and said "What do you want, Henry?" He replied without any hesitation and in a very big-boy voice "More!" This boy loves his cake...!

But don't think Thomas was any less excited about the cake. He finished it and Matt suggested he lick the plate. I don't think that it had ever occurred to Thomas to do this and he was completely on board with this method of frosting recovery. That plate was pretty darn clean when he was done.

Happy birthday to me and thanks to everyone for making it a great birthday! :)

Learning to Skate

After his last round of soccer lessons, Thomas decided that he wanted to try hockey next. I think his best friend at daycare has been taking skating lessons and of course Thomas wants to play hockey like his best buddy!

We took him down to a frozen pond near the house a few weeks ago to try standing on skates and he actually made it up a few times. He didn't make much progress with locomotion, but he seemed pretty impressed by his friend's skating ability! Then his dada took him to a hockey game, so he has been talking about playing hockey nonstop!

Although we have been telling him it's hockey lessons, it's really just learning to skate at his age. But he has to join the US Hockey Association and the program requires full hockey gear, so it's not *that* much of a difference. As a side note, I had no idea so much gear would be required and we have been scrambling the past two days to get all of it when there is a limited supply for tiny kiddos (somehow we managed!).

The coaches had emailed us that a hockey jersey and socks would be provided. We had no clue that hockey socks are full leg covers and apparently we need to get something to help hold them up. Hockey suspenders or garters? We are totally hockey noobs... "/

All geared up and ready to get skating! The only thing he isn't wearing in this photo is his gloves, but he has a helmet, shoulder/chest pads, elbow pads, padded hockey pants, shin guards and his skates. And the jersey is obviously a bit too big, but they were just temporary jerseys today, we'll see if the real one is any smaller...

And he's probably one of the smallest kids in the class! Look at the other #3 who was waiting next to him for class to start! The class is for 3+, but I think the majority of the other kids are 4+ or more. There were several who had obviously taken lessons already and the coaches split the skating rink by ability so none of the crashers would take out the skaters. Whew!

Before they got on the ice, they practiced sitting down, standing up, kneeling down and standing back up. They are trying to teach them to stand up without using their hands since they will have a stick in their hands when they get to the playing hockey part. 

And the mass of kids moves toward the ice! The coaches told them to get on the ice in single file but it was a bit more chaotic than that... Thomas is just to the right of middle in this picture. He managed to get on the ice and take that first step!

Then he was down. He managed to scoot out of the way of everyone getting on the ice, but that was as far as he made it. One of the helper teenagers ended up pushing him down to the goal line because Thomas was not going to try to stand up just then.

Or at all for the first 15 minutes. A few of the helpers tried to get him to stand up, but he was not at all interested. It was a struggle for me to watch him sitting all alone, I am used to being able to help him and coax him into trying things at tumbling and soccer, but we were on the sidelines for this one. Then Coach Allen got down on the ice next to him and talked to him for awhile.

I don't know what was in the pep talk and Thomas was not very enthused at first, but Coach Allen didn't give up on and he got Thomas up on his feet. Thomas even managed to slowly glide over to us on the side before the Coach backed him up and had him try again (and again!). I'm not sure he liked any part of the lessons at the time, but decided later today that part of the skating lesson was fun. Hopefully he'll get the hang of it in the next few lessons and will start to enjoy all the fun activities they do to get the kids more comfortable on skates. Then Matt and I will probably need to brush up on our skating abilities...!

I'm sure you are all wondering how Henry took his brother's new activity. He honestly didn't see to mind all that much. Nonni came with us as well and the two of them watched from the sidelines for a little while before Henry got a little antsy. Then they wandered around the mall for awhile. Henry likes hanging out with his Nonni, so he didn't seem to mind not being able to fall on the ice like his brother. Ha! 

Clark the Shark and Dino Tails!

Apparently the best presents are the ones that come late! Matt promised me that my best present was still in the mail and it finally arrived last night. And it was more awesome than I could have ever imagined!

That's right - he bought me a remote controlled flying shark!! It didn't come with helium and I may have begged him to go buy helium after dinner so I could play with my fun new toy!

Apparently I saw the shark on an unrelated TV commercial and started laughing hysterically and telling Matt I wanted one. He ordered it that night. It is even more amazing than we expected. It has a tail fin that you can move back and forth, so the shark basically swims around in the air - super realistic sharky action!

The gray "pod" on his belly helps him climb or dive - it has a space to put a little weight in there to offset the helium lift of the balloon. You can add or remove the weight depending on how well the shark is floating. His other fins don't move, but they certainly add to his overall awesomeness. We decided to name our awesome shark "Clark" after one of the kid's favorite books. They both love Clark, though Henry has been calling him a fish.

He's cooler than a fish, Henry!

The kids didn't get left out though - they got these super awesome dinosaur tails from Brittney! She's much handier than I am and made them. I can make a grocery store because it only took some glue & tape - sewing machines are outside my realm of expertise. Speaking of the groceries - I can see why dinosaurs aren't allowed in grocery store, they were knocking all kinds of things off the "shelves"!

But dinosaurs have big appetites and those appetites must be fed! They were both quite entertained about the fact there were dinosaurs in the grocery store - kids are so easily amused! 

Dinosaur #1 came over to investigate the flash I was playing with. He actually wasn't wearing these clothes when we were at Brittney's for lunch, but he wanted his dinosaur pj's as soon as we got home since he had a dinosaur tail to wear with them. Can't argue with that logic!

Don't worry, Clark wasn't the least bit concerned about all of the dinosaurs hanging around, he just swam around the living room having a grand 'ole sharky time. I think watching him swim away is when he looks the coolest. It may not translate as well in a photograph, but trust me, it is hilarious!

I really think you should all buy a remote controlled shark, he brings such joy! Even when he is just hanging out, he moves all over the house thanks to the heater. He likes to rise to the ceiling, dive back down and creep from room to room to keep us on our toes. And amazingly, the dogs haven't freaked out about the addition to the family. Clark is just *that* awesome!

Most awesome Christmas present there is - thanks Matt! I <3 Clark the Shark!!