Sweet Success

I like to cook.  And I consider myself a decent cook, not a chef by any means, but I can hold my own.  However, there are a few dishes that I have never been able to get to turn out. Namely baked potatoes and cheesy brocolli soup. I know these aren't difficult dishes, but time after time I have attempted to prepare these and failed. (I mean failed miserably as in, "maybe we should order a pizza?")  Colby has continued to request these dishes claiming that cheesy brocolli soup is his "favorite." (although anyone who knows him very well knows that he loves about everything).  I am pleased to announce that after consulting four recipes in three different cookbooks (and taking a little advice from each one) I finally conquered cheesy brocolli soup.  The soup got rave reviews from all my boys (Colby claimed it was so good his "head was going to explode" and at one point said he felt like the guy on Ratatouille). The best part is, my kids actually ate brocolli (shhh, don't tell them).

While I was creating my culinary masterpiece, what do you suppose my boys were doing?

Playing lightsabers and jumping on the bed.  For those of you wondering what is going on with the goggles, I wondered the same thing.  When I asked them they said, "they are to protect our eyes from the lightsabers."  How perfectly logical.

Baby sis was just content to sit and watch.  She is such a good baby!

A name and a blessing

While we were in Utah we were able to have Abbi's baby blessing.  It was wonderful to be able to have our family and friends there with us.  Colby gave a beautiful blessing and afterwards we had a great lunch at Grandma Frost's house.  Thank you to everyone who made the day a special one.

We decided to dress Abbi up as a little 70's baby- 1979 to be exact.  She wore the same dress that I was blessed in 29 1/2 years ago. (until I'm 30 I will still admit to my age!)

Our little angel. Thank you to Uncle Daniel for taking the fantastic pictures of Abbi in her blessing dress, they turned out great!

Posing with Mom and Dad.

Abbi and Mommy.

Abbi with Great Grandma and Grandpa Cisney.

Grandma and Grandpa Stewart.

Grandma and Grandpa Stewart, Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa Frost.

Abbi with Mom and one of my best friends, Kami.

Abbi with Mom and Grandmas.

Sorry that my picture captions are so generic, it is hard to be creative with so many posed pictures of the same event!

Fabulous Five Day Weekend

Thanks to some extremely cold temperatures (negative 37 degrees!), teacher prep day, Martin Luther King day and an ambitious husband who finished his case study two days early; we all had a five day weekend.  We didn't do anything too exciting, but it was nice to just all be home together.  We hit the gym, went to a doctor's appointment, took the kids to the McDonald's playground, had some friends over for dinner and a game night, went to swimming lessons and church, built a snowman and even hit the clearance sale at Old Navy (I have to interject here that I consider myself the world's best bargain shopper.  I got a coat for $10 and jammies for Abbi for $1.74 a pair- sweet)

The boys all ready for church in their new sweaters (thanks Grandma!)

The only picture I took of our game night.  Abbi and her buddy Logan Campbell.

Two month shots!  Poor little girl, she was so sad.  She is still a little squirt, weighing in at 10 lbs 5 oz and 24 inches long.

Our family snowman (who was not built the day it was negative 37)

The boys helping Colby shovel the walk. (I thought it was cute, they got out their beach shovels to go out and help him with the snow.)

I hope you all enjoyed your "Martin Luther King day weekend" as much as we did.

Christmas Vacation 2008

After weeks of debating, checking weather.com on a daily basis and getting teared up whenever "I'll Be Home For Christmas" came on the radio, we decided to make the long trek to Utah for the holidays.  We traveled 17 hours across 3 state lines, through the smallest town in the U.S. and over the continental divide with three kids in tow (and that's a lot harder than over the river and through the woods), but we finally made it to Grandmother's house(s) and we were so glad that we did.  Here are the highlights (and probably way too many pictures, but I had a hard time narrowing it down.)

*New Christmas jammies*Early Christmas with the kids* Packing in a hurry*The Hotel in Grand Island, Nebraska*Doughnuts from Walmart*

*Hanging out with Grandpa* Playing Rockband *Meeting new cousins*Bandaids and Candy Canes from the information desk at the mall*

*Playing in the snow with cousins*A snowball fight with Dad and Uncle Scott*Homemade hot chocolate*

*Being held non-stop*Twilight*Classic family fun center*Costa Vida*Singing Bon Jovi on the Wii*

*Decorating Christmas cookies with Grandma*Shopping with 3 kids at Old Navy*Attempting to go to Quilted Bear with 5 kids*Family Pictures in the Snow*

Madagascar 2*Abbi's first Christmas morning*Christmas bread*Homemade Christmas candy*

Christmas dinner on the farm*Playing with 2nd cousins*Skiing*

*Girl's Night Out*Marley and Me*"Great" service at Z-tejas*Staying out until 2 am*

*Breakfast at Granny Annies*Visiting Grandma & Grandpa Cisney*Skiing again*Checkerboard gumdrops*X-box tournament*

*Riding Frontrunner*Racing Go Carts*Pedicures with the girls*Mamma Mia*Lunch with friends*

*Wrestling with cousins*Wingers*Playing in the snow again*Training Table*Playing "don't break the ice"*Seeing Crystal's cute pregnant belly*

*Going in Grandma's Attic*Chuck E Cheese*Going to Bedtime Stories*Red Robin*Abbi's baby blessing*(more pics to come!)

The Dark Knight on Blu Ray*The T-shirt game*Falling asleep at 11:45 on New Year's Eve*Trying to convince the boys to leave Utah and come back to Iowa (they had too much fun!)*

We had a great trip and can't wait to go back to Utah this Summer!

Two Months Old

It is hard to believe that Abbi is already two months old.  She is growing so fast!  She is such a good baby and we love having her in our family.  Here are a few of her most recent "tricks."

Sitting in the Bumbo chair that Santa brought for her.

Her first pigtails (barely!)

I know that everyone thinks this about their kids but seriously,  

have you ever seen such a cute baby?

Icestorms and Guinea pigs

Over the last couple of years I  have become very familiar with the Midwestern icestorms, and how they can shut down the entire town. It is not uncommon for work to be cancelled,restaurants to shut down or church to be cancelled. One thing I have not had experience with is the school closing procedures.  No one ever told me that if there is an icestorm in the forecast, (but at the present time it is clear outside), they will cancel school, put your 5 year old on a bus and send him home 2 hours early without contacting you.  As a mom, you are supposed to sit home and watch the news and wait for them to post a message that scrolls across the bottom of you television telling you which schools have been cancelled.  Had I known any of this, I would have been home yesterday at 2:00 instead of out trying to get some last minute Christmas shopping done.  I also would not have received a phone call from my very nice neighbor telling me that there was a little boy sitting outside on my front porch in the freezing cold.  Needless to say, today I feel like the world's worst mom.  I am just grateful that Ammon was very calm and collected about the whole situation, I am grateful that I made him memorize my cell phone number and I am grateful that he remembered it.  Thank you to my annonomous neighbor who was kind enough to help Ammon, thank you to Brittany for letting Ammon come to your house until I could get home and thank you to Tausha for explaining to me why Ammon was home at 2:30 instead of 4:00. Sometimes I feel like this whole parenting thing is a big experiment and I have been given three little guinea pigs to test my methods on.  Poor little Ammon gets to be the one who tests out everything first. Sorry buddy. I think I have school cancellations figured out now.

Redundancy

I know I have posted many, many times about the cold winters here in Iowa; but I still can't get over how freezing it is here.  This morning it was negative 3 degrees with a windchill of negative 25.  I thought I was going to get frostbite just walking Ammon to the bus stop.  Good thing I had Ammon all bundled up. (we also added gloves, boots and his coat hood.)

The good news is, by 1:00 this afternoon it is supposed to warm up to 1 degree. Something tells me they are going to cancel first recess again.

I have to add to this post that I just discovered that our heater is broken.  Of all the days for a heater to break.  It is 58 degrees in here, and dropping. We may be going to the mall today.

Smiling!

Abbi has officially started smiling this week.  I had to take about 20 pictures to get one of her smiling, thank heavens for digital cameras!  

When I first got the camera out she got really serious.

Then she started screaming.  I guess we'll have to postpone this photo shoot until tommorow.

That's almost a smile...

Finally,  there it is! 

  Mom is also smiling today because Abbi slept for 5 hours last night,  Hurray!  Now if only she could make a habit out of that...

Little Miss Crazy Hair

Our little Abbi has a lot of hair (for a little peanut) and it is naturally curly.  I haven't quite figured out how to get it to cooperate.  I do know that she already needs "hair product"  (i.e. moose, gel or hairspray) and that it looks much better with a bow or headband.  Still, her hair is pretty crazy and you never know what you're going to get.  Here are a couple of her "do's."

Headband aftermath.

Her first barrette (which barely stayed in).

Rockstar baby.

Colby likes to call this one "the Bernice."

Beanie baby.

Those crazy curls right out of the bathtub.

Colby has told me a couple of times, "you can do better than that!"  I hope eventually I will get the "girl hair" thing figured out!  Until then,  I'm sure having fun experimenting.

The windshield factor

Iowa is cold.  Somehow, even though this is our third Winter here, I had forgotten how cold it gets.  So, how cold does it get?  This was Ammon's comment at dinner last night....

"They had to cancel first recess today because there was a windshield of six..

(after pausing for a moment)... I don't even know what that means."

A windshield of six. Now that's cold.

It's always fun when Grandpa comes, when Grandma comes- HURRAY!

For the past week, we have been lucky enough to have Grandma and Grandpa Stewart visiting us.  Grandma and Grandpa came to Iowa to meet Abbi and to spend Thanksgiving with us.  We had a great time!  We spent lots of time hanging out, eating, shopping and playing.  We were sad to see them leave.

Abbi got lots of attention and was held constantly!

The boys spent lots of time with G & G wrestling, playing, talking, watching movies, and just hanging out.  Having both sets of Grandparents visit this month has been great, but it has led to more than one request to "move back to Utah." 

Thanksgiving day was a riot!  Unfortunately, I didn't have the stamina this year to cook a homemade feast.  We had dinner at the Marriot (which was excellent food- almost as good as mine!) and took the kids to see Bolt in 3D afterwards.  I was kind of sad to miss out on a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner, but it was sooo nice not to spend the day cooking and cleaning.

Saturday we went swimming at the YMCA.

I even got to take a couple of naps while G & G played with the kids.  

My parents braved the portrait studio with me and we took all three kids to get their pictures taken.  I thought Abbi looked like a little doll in her Christmas dress. (The boys also looked very handsome, but I didn't get a great picture of them)

They also braved the cold to walk Ammon to the bus stop in the morning.  I don't know who was more excited about this,  me or Ammon.

Thanks Mom and Dad for the fun visit and the great Thanksgiving.  We would love to have you come back any time.