Tuesday, September 29, 2009

1.5, 2.5 & 3.5

This past week all of the boys turned half increments... Josh is 3 1/2 years, Kyle is 1 1/2 years and Jacob is 2 1/2 months. Boy are they growing fast!


The 3 year old funny sayings- "Auntie Mentry" for Elementary School, "Movie Alligator" for Movie Theater, "Alien" for Ambulance, "Moving Lawn" for mowing lawn, "Heavy Water" for the deep end of the pool, using Actually, Probably, Also, Too, etc in most sentences, most of the time in the wrong place!


The 1 year old cute stuff: calls all fruit ‘apples’, notices the little details in books and points them out to us, sings songs by himself in his dark room before going to sleep, climbs on everything, the little prance in his walk, the game of chase he plays when he has something he knows he isn’t supposed to, the scowl he gives new people & the total face light up smile he gives when he is happy...


The 2 month tender moments: big open mouth grin with squeal, big full body stretch with sigh when he first wakes up, the need to grip onto something as he falls asleep (usually my fingers or a blanket), the way his manages to wiggle his arms out of a swaddle wrap to suck on his hands when he is sleeping and hungry, the grunting breaths he makes when he is excited, the sweet toothless breath, the lint that he manages to acquire in his little hands...


Monday, September 28, 2009

I Heart Faces- "Blue"

"Blue" is the theme this week and this picture came to mind as I remember how much my oldest one enjoyed the blue frosting from a pirate birthday party that he went to last spring.  He is a frosting kid and this particular frosting matched his shirt and eyes perfectly!  To see all the other entries for this week, visit http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/2009/09/week-38-blue-photo-challenge.html there are tons of great pictures!



Monday, September 21, 2009

Car Show

This past weekend we attended a car show with the Barkers.  It is a local venue held each year at a north valley mansion (it was a beautiful property and there were way too many garages to count!). Mike has gone in the past, but this time he brought all of us to see the cars that he dreams about. It was a beautiful day out and the boys had fun seeing all the different colors of cars and comparing some of them to the cars in the Disney movie Cars


Josh standing behind Mike's top pick from the show

Front view of it, it is cool how the doors open!

Look at all the red Ferraris!

Mike & his parents


Broad view of the back row

Uncle Adam holding Kyle

Oh look, Josh found a race car & it has green in it (his favorite color)! 

This is Ramone from the Cars movie

And this guy is related to Luigi (from the Cars movie)

Terry and his Corvettes!


You can't forget the Vipers... we counted about 12 of them!

Josh and I enjoyed a cup of lemonade at the end...

I Heart Faces- Completely Candid!

This weeks contest is all about getting candid photos and one of my all time favorite pictures of Kyle is below.  He is such a goofy toddler and this one captures his personality just perfect!  You can see all the candid pictures at http://www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com/


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Loving on Jacob, part II

A few weeks ago, I showed the boys loving on Jacob… Now it is our turn to show some loving to our newest baby!

I Scream for Ice Cream!

We were at a birthday party this afternoon at a local Ma and Pa Ice Cream Shop called ‘I Scream for Ice Cream’. It is stacked full of toys, books, games, records on the wall and other childhood nostalgia. What a fun place to go enjoy ice cream (that by the way was great too and cheaper than some of the big name brands). Josh and Kyle didn’t know whether to eat the ice cream or play with the toys…
Looks more like a play room, than an ice cream shop...
There were shelves and shelves of toys and fun things to look at!

Our BIG Baby

Kyle is stuck in the middle… not a little baby, but not quite a big boy either! He wants to do everything his big brother does, but gets directed elsewhere (to protect him and/or the home furnishings) and he doesn’t like that too much lately. He wants to climb in the baby swing and the baby bed, but is too big for both- he doesn’t like that either! The other day we took out the bouncy seat for Jacob and Kyle spotted it immediately… He climbed in it and took ownership before we even had a chance to put Jacob in it. I guess he needs his special spot too!

Easy Raspberry Cobbler

So you are probably wondering what we did with all the raspberries that we picked?! Well maybe you didn’t really think twice, but I will show you a super quick, super easy cobbler recipe I made with them, since I promised you a recipe (it is from Allrecipes.com):


Easy Batter Fruit Cobbler

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1.5 cup raspberries and ¾ cup frozen blueberries
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Put butter in an 8-inch square or 9-inch round pan; set in oven to melt. When butter has melted, remove pan from oven.

3. Whisk flour, 3/4 cup of sugar, baking powder and salt in small bowl. Add milk; whisk to form a smooth batter. Pour batter into pan, then scatter fruit over batter. Sprinkle with remaining 1 Tb. of sugar.

4. Bake until batter browns and fruit bubbles, 50 to 60 minutes. Serve warm with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, if desired.



 
We enjoyed ours with Auntie Amy as she was in town for her grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary. Thanks for stopping in for dinner, Amy; it was so good to see you!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Raspberries!

We went to pick some red ripe raspberries at Heidi's Raspberry Farm in good ol' Corrales this morning.  Joshua joined us in the fun and got to see farmland (something that isn't too common in the dessert mesa!).  The event was well attended and while the hours for the picking were from 9-3, it was pretty well picked over by the time we got there around 11:30... Next time we will have to show up earlier!  It was still a great experience to share with Joshua and we learned that the wild turkeys that they have roaming the fields, eat the bugs that eat the raspberries and the turkeys themselves do not have a sweet tooth for berries.  So I guess if we ever start growing raspberries in our backyard, we will have to get a wild turkey to keep the pests away!  We stopped by the Corrales Growers Market after our picking adventure and bought some pre packaged raspberries from Heidi's Farm.  Yum, yum- they were good!
Beautiful farmland surrounded by cottonwood trees and in the valley of the scenic Sandia mountains
The crowds were mostly families- what a fun tradition to start!
Josh is ready to start picking
"Is this the right color?"
Red beauties!
Recipe coming soon!

Friday, September 11, 2009

Labor Day Family Fun

On Labor Day, we loaded the van up and headed to the BioPark to see the botanical gardens and the aquarium.  Grandma and grandpa Reinert joined us as we saw the beautiful flowers and plants, working farm & sharks.  The weather was a good indicator that hopefully we will have a nice cool fall, so farewell to summer!
Josh & Kyle had a great time climbing on all the oversided bugs and vegetables at the Children's Garden...
Grandma & Grandpa inside the giant log!
We saw lots of summer flowers in full bloom... poppies, cosmos, holly hawks, daisies, etc!
Josh had fun chasing the chickens at the heritage farm, until they started chasing him!
Kyle referred to all the farm animals as 'Hannah' (after our dog) and in our opinion, if Hannah was a cow, this is what she would look like- what do you think?

Even Jacob enjoyed the fresh air outing!
family picture at the Japanese Gardens
Kyle, was ready to leave the farm and go see the sharks and sea turtles!
Looking for sharks...