Excuse me....

I'm trying to re-create the children's museum in my mom's kitchen.

Have a fun weekend!

Our Desert Vacation

Lincoln and Sawyer love each other. They played like boys-plenty of pushing and toy thieving involved-but they loved each like brothers and kept laying on the slobbery head kisses no matter how many times Sawyer pulled Linc's hair, or how often Linc knocked Sawyer over in exuberance.

The Phoenix Children's Museum-"Child Heaven"

the boys played themselves ragged; there was no end to things to explore, demolish, and rifle through

Lincoln's Dinosaur-Themed 1st Birthday

my complements to the party planner, Lincoln had an amazing party

{the new Lincoln memorial}

{Sawyer's oh-no-Linc-is-gonna-get-me face}
{or his why-did-he-just-screech-like-that face}

Strolling in the Desert Parks

as well as grass eating, swinging and napping

Well we weren't late to the airport, nor did I forget my license, but I may have forgotten Sawyer's birth certificate.  I realized I had forgotten it as we pulled into the airport, and then I realized there was no time to go back and get it, and then I realized I really stink at traveling by plane. Thankfully for us, a birth certificate isn't needed to offer proof that I am indeed transporting my child and not another person's, it's just to verify that the child is under 2 years, thereby not needing a separate ticket. Yikes.

As usual, Sawyer was an excellent traveler, even winning the merits of the somewhat grungy man sitting behind us who was turning Sawyer's ears red with curses and tales of drugs, sex, and violence for the duration of the flight. He was kind enough to say something like, "I wasn't happy when you sat in front of us, but your kid was awesome." To which I was kind enough to say something like, "gee thanks grungy man" (at least, I said that in my mind).

With a somewhat rocky start, I was glad to get to Arizona and be with my favorite people for six wonderful days.  The more time I spend with family the more I discover how beautiful it is to be together and not only be involved in each other's lives, but in sharing one another's lives. My mom, sister, and I so effortlessly transitioned between bouncing Sawyer on one hip and chasing Lincoln in five steps, then whipping up multiple snacks and bottles and baths.  A friend told me once that she really believes there is something to the whole tribal family living idea, especially when it comes to raising children. We are meant to be together-helping, loving, chasing, patting, feeding, wiping, rocking.  This trip made that observation evident to me.  And nothing solidified it more as upon our return I was inundated with a messy house, an empty fridge, 10 loads of laundry, a sick baby, a sick self, a sick husband, and my back up was still in Arizona.

Here's hoping for another tribal gathering sometime in our near future.

Excuse us....

babe and I are flying to Arizona today to join my mama and sister (and many more) in celebrating my nephew's first birthday. Oh and I suppose there will be a continuing celebration of my birthday as well...after all, it should be called a birthweek, as more than one day is needed to observe such a splendid occasion. (For the record, I feel this way about everyone's birthday, not just my own.  Birthdays are a big deal!) 

We're leaving the fridge stocked for our hard-working man of the house who, thankfully, got NBA Jam for his birthday-so between that and homework and work, hopefully he won't get too bored and lonely. But we're sure gonna miss him!

Wish us luck getting to the plane! I vow not to forget my driver's license or flush it down the toilet in the airport, or stop for baby food on the way there, or sleep through an alarm telling me to get going, or be packing past the designated leaving time. Geez, I'd better get going!

Dear Rachel-

It's been a wonderful 24 years riddled with laughs, giggles, and guffaws, with a few tears and quiet moments peppered in every now and then.  Here's to your first birthday as a mom, your third birthday cancer-free, your fourth birthday as a wife, and your 24 birthday celebrating everything you are, and are becoming.

Happy Birthday to me.

Love,

-Rachel

Weekend Mirths, Celebrating 8 months

Sawyer boy weighs in at 22.4 lbs, is 29 inches long and is a fluffy-white wiggle machine with ticklish feet.

He's looking more like his daddy every day, and growing more smart and sneaky and mischievous like...well, both of us back in our days.

He loves digging through our shoe bin, winding his daddy's spare fishing reel, shoving toys (or anything, really) into his mouth and then crawling around with them dangling underneath him. Oh and books! How he loves books, especially touch and feel books. It's about the only time he'll sit still. He's got the flick of his fingers movement down pat, and he'll use it make everything spin-"the stick", seen in the background above, keys, spinning toys, wheels on trucks, trains, strollers, and laundry baskets, and he'll use it to open drawers.  Sawyer babe loves rifling through drawers! And boxes. And baskets.  And trash. But I try to prevent that one from happening whenever possible.

He takes no pacifier, chews on sippy cups and spoons, and loves drinking straight from the tap.  Besides loving yogurt melts and strawberries and ham, he loves eating paper.  Paper might just be the great love of his life right now.  We have to keep books, magazines, receipts, mail, wrappers, cardboard, and tags all put away or out of reach or things go missing....

Sawyer can crawl, pop a squat, climb up on smaller things, and walk with one-handed assistance.  For those of you who may be interested, his speech is developing nicely. He reduplicates ma-ma and ba-ba, and has started variegated babbling as well. He's getting good at self-feeding and actually prefers it to being spoon fed.  

Such a kingly child deserves a faithful steed, but faithful steeds are in short supply around here so we had to settle for a chariot to parade king Sawyer around in for his birthday celebration. We unwittingly created a chariot monster-he just can't get enough.

Happy 8 months Sawyer! I'm going to go hide the quilt now....

P.S.- Is that robot sweater just so dern cute or what? It's killing me, especially with his daddy wearing his Star Wars shirt at the same time. Ahhh my nerdy men.

If I lived in New York....

image

If I lived in New York this autumn, and if either Jeffrey or I had a real job, I'd be getting this leather pencil skirt.  Leather. Pencil. Skirt. It rocks-and I'm pretty sure I could rock it in no less than 50 awesome ways, possibly more, but then I'll never know. Instead I'll be wearing something like this:

mom jeans, with a little faux leather for some edge.

Motherhood looks well on me, wouldn't you say?

White Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding

If you have a sweet tooth, you may have noticed I sneaked a photo of this bread pudding in at the end of our weekend mirths, and maybe you even wondered what it was...

This, my friends, is White Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding.  When we visited Jeff's parents back in August, we all tried to decipher a cryptic bread pudding recipe that ended up being way too sweet for everyone but my resident decadence lover (you cannot make a recipe that would out-sweet my sweetster, he has a serious sweet tooth).  Jeff even loved it so much that when we were buying chocolate chips for his nightly cookies and ice cream, he said, "hey let's get some white chocolate chips for bread pudding."- this coming from the man who never deviates from the grocery list, and if I do he gives me the stink eye! So we got them. I tweaked the recipe a bit and now you too can enjoy scrumptious, not-overly-sweet bread pudding that lends itself to a caramel sauce or ice cream accompaniment.

White Chocolate Bread Pudding
Ingredients:
8 pieces of Texas toast, cubed
1 package (1.5 oz) french vanilla instant pudding
2 C milk (I used 1%), plus more for thinning
1/3 C vanilla greek yogurt (I used Chobani...it's a favorite around here)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 C brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 C white chocolate chips
1/2 C fresh raspberries

Method:
Butter a glass baking dish. I used a 8x11 rectangular pan. Toss the cubed Texas toast with white chocolate chips in the buttered dish.

Whisk together french vanilla pudding mix, milk, greek yogurt, brown sugar, vanilla, and eggs.  Whisk in more milk if needed until the mixture is the consistency of pancake batter (i.e. when you pull the whisk out of the mixture it will run off the whisk in a smooth, consistent line). Pour pudding mixture over the bread cubes, and be sure every bit of bread is covered.

Cover with foil and refrigerate over night.  1 hour before baking, pull pudding out of the fridge to give it time to come to room temperature.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, press fresh raspberries into the top of the pudding, recover with foil and bake for 40 minutes.  Take foil off and bake until lightly browned and bubbly, 10-15 minutes more.

Serve with caramel sauce or a scoop of ice cream.

Enjoy!