beaver or rat?

It's kind of hard to tell, so I'll let you all decide.

No matter what he is...he's a darling little rodent, that's for certain.

The little beaverat is a big fan of his Daddy.

He is also a big fan of having his costume taken off...all except for the hood which he likes to keep on.

As soon as I took him out of his costume, he took off running. I barely had time to grab my camera and chase him down.

Knowing that as soon as he was caught he would need to be clothed, he ran laughing to the back door which we had left open for the air-flow. As he rounded the corner to the back door, he turned around to laugh at me and he was off again.

This will definitely be one of the first pictures I show his first girlfriend.

i'm happy...in no particular order

1. I'm happy that I get to go to sleep in a mere 6 hours.
2. I'm happy that I got through 4 very difficult shifts in a row.
3. I'm happy that I now have 6 days off in a row.
4. I'm happy that my sister who is currently out of the country should set foot upon American soil sometime in the next 36 hours.
5. I'm happy that Halloween is coming, and almost over which means that Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner (I'm already singing Christmas songs to Porter)
6. I'm happy that I have a darling little boy who can't seem to get enough hugs in during one day.
7. I'm happy that I get to spend the whole day with that darling little boy who currently is sleeping like a log.
8. I'm happy that I have CSSM in my fridge...all nice and cold and fizzy.
9. I'm happy I don't have to eat cafeteria food tonight.
10. I'm happy that I get to spend the evening with my sexy husband, who I miss just as much as my little boy when I'm working so many days in a row.
11. I'm really happy I get to see my Momma this weekend.
12. I'm really happy I get to see my Doddy this weekend.
13. I'm really happy I get to see my sisters this weekend.
14. I'm happy that my husband is going to school to get his education and that means that someday I'll get to stay home with two little boys and just be their momma.
15. It makes me happy to see how much Kyle loves Porter... he's such a good Daddy.
16. I'm happy that the sun is shining today and yet you need a jacket to be warm enough outside.
17. I'm happy that the leaves that haven't fallen outside are now a beautiful yellowy-green...it really is fall.
18. I'm happy to see pumpkins everywhere I look.
19. It makes me happy to see that eggnog is back in stock.
20. I'm happy I have a home.
21. I'm happy with my life.
22. It makes me happy that I have a sweet neighbor who goes around to all the homes on our street and puts out our trash cans every Thursday morning before we even get up.
23. It makes me happy that he puts the trash cans back right after the garbage-man comes around... that man will be dearly missed by all if he ever moves or goes away on vacation.
24. I'm happy that my hair did it's thing today without me having to fight with it for longer than 2 minutes.
25. It makes me happy to watch "Hello Dolly" and belt out the words of every song while I scrub every bit of my house.
26. I'm happy to have the gospel in my life.
27. It makes me happy to have a temple so close by.
28. I'm happy that I can feel a little baby moving around in my tummy.
29. I'm happy that I've said I'm happy so many times in this post that happy is starting to sound funny... and almost like it isn't a real word.
30. I'm happy that I finally have a blender again and that smoothies are no longer just in my dreams.

I'm happy that I'm happy.

leaves

Yesterday we raked up all the leaves in our front yard; there were a ton. The pile was huge and Porter loved it... to an extent. I don't know how much he loved being stuck in the whole pile, but he did enjoy tossing leaves around once his Daddy showed him how.

And yes, apparently it changes from summer to winter so quickly here that our leaves don't have time to change color before they fall.

Porter got distracted quickly though (what a shock) and decided his time was better spent tinkering with the broken down dryer that we stole from Kari and Craig. Thanks guys for the entertainment that it's given to both my boys.

Baby #2, and why I'm a liar.

So sorry for the lie. I know that I said I would be back on Saturday, and here I am on Thursday. Things got kind of hectic around here and I didn't keep my camera around me all the time. I promise to catch back up over the next week or so, but I can't even promise a daily blog starting today cause I work all weekend. But, I promise to do my best.

Now that we're done with the lame excuse and the apology, let's get down to business.

The videos and pics of the newest/future addition to our family.

This is an awesome profile shot, complete with nose and lips. His right hand is on his cheek.

This is a back side shot of him. You can see his spine, his rib cage, and his right ear. I'm just amazed at what these ultrasonographers can pick up on.

This is kind of a cool shot, profile with his arm in front of his face, and his leg straight up in the air. I swear this is the position that Porter was in during most of my first pregnancy.

This first video is a profile shot of him. He started out sucking his thumb (he did that a lot) and moves his hand up to pop himself in the face. (Sorry about the length of the videos, they're only 3 seconds long.)


This one is kind of difficult to see what's going on, but it's a profile shot with his hand under his chin. In the center of the video, you can see that he's sucking. His little tongue is making a sucking motion...this is the most still he held for the US.


This last video is Kyle's favorite. Our little boy already knows how to kick-start a motorcyle. He's practicing on his Mommy's insides!

hiatus

I'm going to take a small three day hiatus while I'm working... no worries, I'll be back to finish my week starting Saturday.

A third day in the life...

Not as great of a day of documenting. I woke up a little later today, and I am ashamed to say that my camera wasn't by my side constantly. I am proud to say that I slept in until 11:00 this morning! (I haven't been sleeping on my nights off for the past couple of months, so when I can get sleep, it's a big accomplishment for me.) Kyle was so sweet to take Porter this morning and let me sleep in.

Porter played with wrapping paper this morning before I got up. Kyle said he sat there for almost an hour just tearing it up, he was so focused on it.

When I woke up, Porter was actually already down for a nap. He's been needing them a little earlier this week. Two weeks ago his top two molars were coming through and I thought his bottom two were, but they didn't start to until yesterday. He's been sleeping more during the day because of it.

When he woke up we worked on having him feed himself. Porter did pretty well getting the food to his mouth, but he still needs help getting the food on the end of the fork.

Porter's Halloween costume finally came in the mail today! (More pictures of that to come at a later time)

Porter went down for a second nap only 2 hours after his first. That made for 2, 2 hour naps for him today... that's unheard of. He hasn't had 2 naps in one day for months now.

While he was sleeping I was able to get some dishes done, and do my laundry.

Once he woke up I got him ready to go visiting teaching with me, while Kyle worked on his homework for the night.

After we got home, Kyle and I put in the new Indiana Jones. We popped some popcorn, which Porter loves to eat. After he had eaten his fill, he started feeding Kyle and I... it was so cute.

Then he found something even more appetizing... his brown crayon. You can see it on his bottom lip.

Not a ton of pictures, but today went by so quickly. Hopefully I'll do a bit better tomorrow. (At least I made it through a post without restating my love for a certain carbonated beverage... consider yourselves lucky...I think I was tired when I wrote that last night, please forgive me...)

A second day in the life...

8:30 AM

Porter slept in (can you call it "sleeping in" when he woke up at 1:30 in the morning?). So we got a little bit of a later start this morning. But we started the morning off with music.

Porter learned how to play the pots this morning. His favorite, however, was the saucepan... but we'll get to that a little later.

9:30 AM

We got around to eating breakfast... Porter's consisted of yogurt and mandarin oranges (one of his absolute favorites)

10:00 AM

We start getting a little silly while eating breakfast and Porter breaks out his cute little fishy-face.

I can't believe how far in he can suck those little cheeks!Love the mandarin orange left on his lip. You can always tell when Porter's done eating when he spits out his last bite and scrapes his tongue off with his finger.

Exhibit A.

10:30 AM

Daddy's home! Porter always gets so excited when Kyle comes home from school. After Daddy got home, he and Porter went to take a little nap while I filled out a grocery list...

12:00 PM

Laundry, dishes... you know, the real fun stuff

2:30 PM

Porter wakes up and we play around until Daddy comes home from his afternoon classes. Remember I said that Porter loved the saucepan? After his nap, he carried it everywhere.

I started doing some more dishes and I came out to the couch to find him watching Meet the Robinson's (I have to have something going on to give the house some ambient noise). Porter normally doesn't pay any attention to the TV, but apparently it is much more interesting to watch when you have a saucepan in your lap (I wish I would have caught a shot of him hugging the pan, but he stopped too quickly).

3:10 PM

Daddy's home again and we head to the store.

Why is there a lighthouse at the shopping center? It makes no sense...we're no where near water...

While walking through the store Kyle pointed this out to me! It's back!!! I have a deep love for this stuff. I discovered it a few days after New Year's this year. I bought a 2 liter bottle of it and it turned out to be so wonderful that I headed back to the store the next day for another. We left town for a few days to visit my family and when we tried to pick some up so that we could share the joy, it was no where to be found. When we got home, it was gone. I think I cried a little bit.

"It must be seasonal" was Kyle's response. So I tried regular Sierra Mist, and I discovered something about myself...I think it's dumb to have things be seasonal.

Cadbury mini eggs should be year round as well as the Cadbury Creme Eggs. Eggnog should be available to all those who want to have the yuletide feelings in their hearts throughout the seasons. And Christmas trees, and Christmas music and Santa... they should all be around more than once every 365 days, don't you think? And...Cranberry Splash Sierra Mist should be allowed to spread its cheer to every boy, girl, woman, man, fetus, dog and parakeet that so has the desire. And none of them should have to wait until October to enjoy it.

Just my feelings on the subject.

However, since not everyone shares my feelings on the matter, I'll take another swig of my Cranberry Splash Sierra Mist and clear out space in my storage room for the stock-pile I plan to collect over the following three months while it's available.

5:30 PM

Done with my rant, and home from the store with my stock-pile and stuff to make one of my all-time favorite meals. My Gramma F. would make this every Sunday when we went to her home and it's always been my favorite. She told me that she would make it specially for me when we would come for the weekend.

Brown Sugar Glazed Ham and Dutch Potatoes....yummmm.... I actually went back for thirds because it was so tasty....

7:00 PM

We all gathered around to watch Big Bang Theory and then put Porter to bed.

10:00 PM

I put Singing in the Rain in and started working on my post for the day.

And, very soon it'll be time for me to go to bed. Oh, like right now.

A day in the life....

Kari has inspired me to a different way of documenting what happens in our sweet little lives. This inspiration was acquired from Ali Edwards (a big-time scrapbooker) who believes in not only scrapbooking or documenting the big things in life, but also the little things. Daily things. The challenge that she set up was to document for a week the small things that happen, the routine that you follow daily. It has seemed like such a great idea that we decided to take up the challenge and try it. So, today I kept my camera with me all day (all day started at around 11:30 when I woke up because I worked last night). But, for the next week I'm going to try and capture, for myself, what my life is like daily. Things are going to change drastically in the next several months and I want to remember what my day-to-day life is like right now.

*Kyle took my first picture of the day. Well, actually the ultrasonographer took my first picture.

Can't quite tell what you're looking at? That's our little boy. Our second little boy. That's his bum, a couple of hazy little moving legs and some stuff in between. He was all too excited to let us know that he was in fact a boy. Kyle and I are so excited, and I'm sure that if Porter knew what it meant, he would be excited to be having a little brother. I really had no preference whether we would have a boy or girl, but I'm really really excited for another little boy to run around the house!

*I hopped in the shower to get ready for church, and I hear Kyle tell Porter, "No sir, that is not a walking stick, that's a plunger. Put it down." I died laughing. (Porter uses everything as a walking stick, I think he's going to be a hiker.)

*It snowed yesterday, and it stuck...kind of. By the time we got home from church and I had a chance to take a picture, this was all that was left of the snow. We got a couple inches on the ground, but it's mostly gone today. Kyle was almost crying over his now frozen tomato plants. For the past several months, Kyle has had nothing but bacon and tomato sandwiches for lunch, with the fresh tomatoes from those dead plants you see hanging there. Kyle doesn't cry...but I know he wanted to.

The chill is still here though, and that's why we've had to start using our wood-burning stove.
Kyle has built up a fairly large stockpile of wood for us this winter, but we think we'll need to head out and get some more this coming weekend.

*Kyle started a fire right after we got home from church today. He took Porter outside with him and I stayed inside making dinner. I heard him come back in the house, so I quickly went and shut the door to keep the cold air out. A minute later I turned back around to find this out my back door.

Porter was still outside trying to bring in his piece of wood and his Mommy had shut him out of the house! I thought Kyle had brought him back in when he brought in the wood! Such a cute little boy, and a big helper already... if only his Mom wouldn't get in the way.

*Porter hasn't been eating very well lately, and so tonight we decided to strip him down and let him have a go at his dinner himself. He did pretty good using the fork to get food to his mouth for the first few bites, but after that it was just fun to stab the noodles and squish them between his fingers. He didn't do much better than he has for the past few weeks, but he certainly had a lot of fun.

After dinner, Porter got his bath, and both he and I went to bed. I got back up a few hours later to post this blog, but I'm headed back to bed as soon as it's finished...which is right now, so until tomorrow...

16 Weeks!

I have a belly at 16 weeks! What's up with that? I didn't get a belly until I was much farther along last time. However, it's still not the kind of belly that looks like a pregnant belly, I just look like I've had a few too many servings of ice-cream at this point.

But, the baby is starting to move around in there, and in only 2 weeks we get to find out whether we are having a boy or girl! I can't believe how quickly this pregnancy is moving along!

It's already going by so quickly, I've already moved into the second trimester (which is so much better than the first if you ask me). I'm not as exhausted all the time and I don't have to pee every 10 minutes. The best part though, is that most of the food aversions are gone and I can eat almost anything! Beef is still riding high on the Not-on-Your-Life list, but if it's ground beef and it's mixed in something, I can tolerate that (like your yummy lasagna Jill, I'm going to make that tonight cause it was so yummy).

In fact, I've started in the other direction and started having cravings. I have been cooking like mad this past weekend making just about anything and everything that has sounded tasty (maybe that IS where the belly is coming from). I made Poppyseed Chicken, Mom's Sweet Potatoes (they were soooo nummy), and last but not least...Gramma F.'s Oatmeal Cake. This last one comes with a bit of a story.

I love Gramma's Oatmeal Cake...it's to die for. It's so heavenly, you might even say it's ambrosial. I could eat the whole thing myself (hence the reason I had to make it on a weekend when my in-laws were in town so that I wouldn't devour the whole darn thing).

So, I set out to make Oatmeal Cake on Saturday night. I've made it once before, but to make sure that I didn't ruin it, I called Mom multiple times while preparing it to make sure that it would come out perfect.

I put the delicious smelling cake in the oven, and sat down for dinner, the cake would be ready in 30 minutes. 30 long minutes.

The buzzer went off and I ran to the oven, the smell was already overwhelming. When I opened the oven I found this...

the cake had boiled over the edges of the pan and was dripping onto the bottom of my oven. I called for Kyle to come help me take it out, and we tried to figure out what had gone wrong. In the meantime, I dug out part of the oatmeal soup and put it in a smaller pan thinking I would just bake the two of them. This is what they looked like when I called my Mommy back.

We sat on the phone for 10 minutes trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Never had she had this problem. Kyle mentioned that it seemed as though I had used too much baking soda, but I know that I put in the appropriate amount. At that moment my Mom asked, "Any chance you used self-rising flour?"

About 2 months ago I made a Blackberry Cobbler that used self-rising flour. I had never used it before so when I bought it, I bought a small sack of it.

When I reached in my cupboard to grab the flour, I grabbed the smaller bag thinking it would be good to finish it off first and wondering why I had two bags of opened flour in my cupboard. I should have wondered a little harder.

Never you fear, an hour and half later I was dining on a wonderful Oatmeal Cake. I decided that it was delicious enough to make another and throw the old one(s) out. Let me tell you it was all worth it.

Oh, and I'm throwing out my bag of self-rising flour.