The boys' birthday party

Since the boys birthdays are only 2 weeks apart we decided to do a joint birthday party. This year the theme was Mickey Mouse, since Skyler is obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I made 3 different kinds of cupcakes for the party, white chocolate raspberry with cream cheese frosting, caramel apple and these chocolate peanut butter cup ones with dark chocolate Mickey Mouse decorations.

 Here's a close-up of the chocolate peanut butter cup ones. I think they turned out pretty cute!

 I also made Dylan his own little birthday cake to eat. I'm certainly no cake decorating expert but it was fun to make him a cake anyway.

 The cute cake display

 Yummy cupcakes!

 The food! We had a vegetable tray, apples with peanut butter and caramel frostings for dipping, cucumber sandwiches, chips and my delicious chunky avocado salsa dip, hot dogs w/ chili, punch and of course, 

cupcakes. Lots and lots of cupcakes!

 We made little treat bags for the boys' friends. They had bouncy balls, yo-yos, cards, stickers, bubbles and candy inside.

 Time for the party to start...Jack, Corinne, Grandma, Brian, Josh, Eli, Cheryl, Jodi, Carter, Caitlyn & Ethan

 Scott, Ethan, Meagan, Jenny & Titon

 Grandpa, Caitlyn, Chris, Christie & Dylan

 Grandpa with Dylan & Elijah

 Denise and sweet Baby Emma

 Brian, Josh, Christie, Cheryl, Hannah & Noah

 Meagan, Allisha, Denise, Emma, Jenny, Jodi & Carter

 Brian, Grandpa, Dylan, Elijah, Chris, Christie, Skyler & Cheryl

 Scott & Rich visiting

 Grandma with Dylan & Elijah

 Time for the present opening frenzy to begin

 Skyler got this cool tractor from the Fuller's

 New clothes from Grandma & Grandpa

 A cool tow truck from Noah & Hannah

 Dylan got those Mickey Mouse books from Uncle Brian & Aunt Denise and he got that cool monkey (along with slippers and a bunch of other stuff) from the Bippert's

 New bath toys from the Bernard's

 Skyler had 3 very specific things that he wanted for his birthday. 1) his own camera (Grandma got him that one) 2) a bull horn voice changer thing, like the one his friend, Dallin, got for Christmas & 3) squirt guns. Try finding squirt guns in the middle of winter...impossible! All I could find was little party favor ones. Luckily, he was totally happy with the little ones that I found!

 Dylan & Titon with the little jungle animal toys that Mommy got for him

 The aftermath of the present opening frenzy

 The boys got very spoiled by our awesome friends and family

 Time for cake! We never got a picture of Dylan with his birthday candle lit because as soon as it was lit he grabbed it with his little hand and put it out :-(

 Dylan cried all the way through everybody singing Happy Birthday to them because his hand hurt from grabbing the candle and Skyler was preoccupied with his squirt guns

 Waiting to eat his cake

 He didn't want to dig into his cake so I fed him a couple bites of frosting

 And then he decided to eat his cake like this...

 Bite after bite after bite, no hands

 When you have cake you gotta have milk!

 Skyler with his cupcake

 He still has clean hands

 Taking a little break from eating

 "SQUIRT!"

 Mmmmm frosting!

 Eating a chocolate Mickey

 "That little chocolate Mickey was good, I think I'll have the big one now!"

 That's my boy, lovin' the dark chocolate!

 Grandma smashed his hands into his cake

 He didn't like having dirty hands, so he proceeded to lick them clean

 Nice cake goatee Dylan!

 I love this picture! He's such happy boy!

 He kept eating his cake then taking a drink of milk and setting his milk cup down on top of his cake when he was done with it

 Finger licking good!

 His cup was covered in frosting

 That's as messy as he got

 He sure enjoyed his cake! It was so funny watching him eat it. Probably the most entertaining kid I've seen eat their first birthday cake.

 Playing with the new toys

 Chris and Christie got the boys an inflatable ball pit with about a million balls

 Skyler with his new camera from Grandma

 Dylan with the lawn mower from Uncle Brian and Aunt Denise

 He couldn't wait to rip that table cloth off of the train table

 Skyler with his new lawn mower

 Grandpa and Caitlyn playing with Skyler's new puzzle

 Grandpa and Dylan playing on the Ipad

 Caitlyn & Skyler playing with the Angry Birds game we got for Skyler

 All tuckered out after a very fun party but still holding on to those squirt guns

 Setting up the ball pit on Sunday morning

 Watching Daddy blow it up with the air compressor

 Having so much fun!

 This little monkey has turned into quite a climber lately

 Eating left over cupcakes for breakfast the next day

 Playing with the Hot Wheels race track from daddy

 Playing Angry Birds as a family after church

We had a great birthday party weekend! We're so grateful that we have such wonderful friends and family who came and celebrated our boys' birthdays with us!

Dylan's 1st Birthday

Here's my big 1 year old on the morning of his birthday!

We decided to take him to Red Robin for his birthday

I love his silly smirk

We had terrible service and he was so hungry he was trying to eat the menu

Mac N Cheese...Yummy!

Look at that cheesy face

Our service was so terrible that they didn't even sing him the birthday song but at least he got a sundae.

Yummy ice cream!

Happy Birthday Dylan!

Later that evening, Dylan dug out the race track all by himself and found some hot wheels and was playing so cute. He has never played with this toy before. It was like he just grew up over night and suddenly he liked playing with the big kid toys. The boys were playing so well together I just had to take pictures...





At 1 year old Dylan-
- is learning to walk but still prefers to crawl everywhere. Crawling is much faster for him at this point.
-eats pretty much everything in sight. He is so NOT picky right now. He just loves food! Especially yogurt, rice and pasta.
-still babbles a lot. He says "Dada" in a really cute voice whenever he sees daddy but only says "Mama" when he's whining. He also kind of says "More" when he wants more food.
-LOVES to see his daddy walk into the room and always gets excited and gives daddy a big smile.
-still loves his blankets and his binkies. You give him one of his favorite blankets and a binky and he's peacefully sleeping in no time. He always gets excited to find his blankets around the house and loves to bite them.
-stands at the front window and loves to wave at people in the driveway.
-follows Skyler around like a little puppy. He seriously loves his big brother!
-makes funny faces a lot!
-loves to pose for pictures. He totally knows what the camera is.
-waves when you say "Bye Bye" to him.
-gives the sweetest hugs when you ask him for one.
-is such a little snuggle bug.
-loves to torment Skyler whenever Skyler is trying to lay down and rest on the couch or the floor
-has turned into a little monkey lately and is climbing on EVERYTHING!
-LOVES playing peek-a-boo still
-loves splashing in the bathtub
-loves riding his big horse
-is the happiest most easy going baby I've ever been around
-loves wrestling with Skyler on the floor
-shakes his head no and smiles really big when he's doing something he knows he's not supposed to do.
-is ADORABLE!

We love having Dylan in our family! Happy Birthday sweet boy!

Winter 2012 Snow Storm: Days 5 & 6

Day 5 of the storm brought ICE, and lots of it! We had several broken branches on the tree that's out our kitchen window, but no major damage to anything.

Look at all of the ice on the branches!

The cherry tree branches were so heavy with ice and snow that they were touching the ground but none of them broke.

On the morning of day 5 (Thursday), I was watching the news and they were reporting power outages everywhere. Since they were so widespread they said not to expect the power to come back on until Saturday. Our lights were flickering like crazy all morning so I knew it was just a matter of time before our power went out. We were trying to get all of the laundry washed and I was cooking breakfast for the boys and literally as soon as I got the boys' eggs dished up, our power went out.

We got the laundry washed but not dried before the power went out. This was my solution...

Rich took all of our perishable food and put it in our coolers, then packed them with snow and buried them in the snow on our back porch. It worked pretty well!

Pretty much everybody around us lost power. Luckily, we have a gas fireplace and a gas hot water heater so we had heat and hot water. We were just fine. Denise was stuck in her apartment without power and without Brian but with 2 little girls. So, Rich went to go pick them up and have them come stay with us until the power came back on. He got stuck in the ice at the end of the driveway on his way to go pick up Denise and the girls. It took him a good 15 or 20 minutes to dig himself out.

The first day that the power was out wasn't so bad. We had a really yummy dinner of pork chops, mashed potatoes and corn, that Rich made on our bbq. And after dinner we played games by candle light.
The next morning Skyler & Caitlyn had a great time jumping on the futon mattresses.

And there's our little Dylan, happy as always

Jodi offered to let us use their generator, on Friday, so after Rich went and picked it up we all wanted to get out of the house so we went with him to pick up some oil for the generator. When we got back we found it very hard to navigate our icy cul-de-sac with all of these cars parked crazy on both sides of us...

Right as he was getting ready to put the gas and oil in the generator, our power came back on, of course! We were SO excited though! We were without power for around 30 hours, it definitely could have been worse. Skyler and Caitlyn did much better than we expected, I think it was because they had each other to play with. We're glad that Denise, Caitlyn & Emma were able to come stay with us. It made the whole power outage a lot more fun!