Happy 29th, Brant!

Happy Birthday to my ridiculously awesome husband!  Yesterday we celebrated Brant’s 29^th birthday.  I think this is the first year that he has actually been bothered by the approaching chronological number of his life.  I didn’t help him any by reminding him that he was really in his late twenties now, while I am still solidly in my mid.  Hooray for supportive wives!

I have a sick obsession with food, so naturally I was all ready to get up on his birthday culinary requests.  You can imagine my disappointment when his requests ended up being skipping breakfast, going out to lunch, and tacos for dinner.  

“Birthday dessert?” you ask.   

“No thanks.  I had a piece of cake on Sunday,” he replies.   

Not exactly challenging my kitchen skills, homie.  Truthfully, I couldn’t think of a less festive way to spend a birthday, but clearly food doesn’t share the same endless love with Brant that it shares with me.  Was that last statement as sad as it sounded?

I had been looking forward to baking for Brant since gifts were minimal this year.  My husband (bless his soul) as this incredibly aggravating habit of making sure he receives his birthday gifts well in advance of his actual birth date.  I’m talking May, early.  This year was no exception, and he got a new birthday phone.  Three months ago.  Drives.  Me. Nuts.

 

I was able to squeeze in a few wrapped gifts under the guise of them being from the kids.  They opted to get him a tie and a wallet.  They were both hugely involved in the shopping process.  What two-year-old and three-month-old aren’t?  Brant’s parents also contributed in the gift pile by buying him a Champ Bailey jersey.  Which I forgot to wrap.  Damn.

 

All of these, gifts, however weren’t opened until after nap time.  Before all that happened I surprised Brant by taking him to lunch.  He may or may not have closed his eyes during the entirety of the car ride in order to add to the surprise factor.  He also may or may not have done that completely of his own accord.

We hit up the Wunderbar deli, which I had only recently heard of via a facebook friend’s rave reviews of it.  It did not disappoint!  Brant got the bleu burger and fries and I got a grilled buffalo chicken sandwich.  They were both super tasty, and Brant told me on the phone today that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking of his burger (maybe he’s got a food obsession growing after all).  It was a bit pricey, but completely delicious.

Evie took this picture and I LOVE it!

 

After lunch we put the kiddos down for a nap, and we got our Criminal Minds on (holla, Shemar!).  Nap time was followed up by present opening and tacos.  “Boo” on the plain jane-ness of that choice “yeah” on how yummy they were.

After dinner we took Evie and Cohen over to my parents’ so Brant and I could go to a movie.  We saw “Moonrise Kingdom” over at the Red Cliffs Theatres but not before we stopped by Arctic Circle to stow a couple of shakes in my purse.

I swear his pants only became high-waisted-old-man-pants after he slid down the couch about six inches.

 It really was a great day.  We don’t need anything fancy around here to make our birthdays fun.  Just give us some contraband in a cool theatre, and we’re happy.

A Mover and a Shaker

My little buddy is on the move!(ish).  I walked into Evie and Cohen’s bedroom this morning and discovered this sight.

Nothing like a picture with no face.

 It might not look like much of anything to most folk and definitely not a good picture taking opportunity but to this mama it absolutely was.  When I left him, Cohen was laying flat on his back.  And when I came back in…not so much.

 

The milestones are always proud moments for the moms.  And this one was no exception.  I wish I had actually seen him AS he was rolling, but I’m sure I’ll see plenty o’ that in the coming weeks. 

 

Love my little man!  Way to swing that body ‘round, Budders!

Such a Blessing

Time is going by ridiculously fast.  How do I know?  My baby boy just got blessed this past Sunday (June 24^th).  It was a proud day for this mama, but it also meant another milestone has come and gone in Cohen’s life.  Time is clearing speeding up in the universe because I know for an absolute fact that time didn’t go nearly as quickly when I was a kiddo as it has since my little one’s made their separate (albeit equally awesome) debuts.

 

I can’t complain about the seeming speediness of the earth’s rotation, though.  I am beyond-words grateful to get to be the mom to these two amazingly awesome and beautiful wee ones and to get to see each and every one of their milestones.

Which brings me to the point of this particular post.  The blessing.

We (and by “we” I mean Brant) opted to do the blessing at home rather than at our church.  And by home I mean my parent’s place because our humble little (emphasis on little) town home wasn’t going to come even close to holding the 50 or so friends and family we planned on attending.  So nice to have parent’s willing to let us use their place.  Even nicer to have so much support from friends and family that we needed a bigger space in the first place.

About half our group.  Most of my side of the family.

 

Our bishop led things by welcoming everybody out and we quickly got underway with the main event.  For not being overly fond of public speaking I gotta give credit to my hubby.  He’s borderline awesome when it comes to giving a blessing to the kiddos.  The words were so beautiful and heartfelt.  A few of the things mentioned were:

• ·         Healthy body and mind

• ·         Thirst for knowledge and understanding

• ·         Finding a wife to take through the temple

• ·         Knowing how much he is loved

Brant’s words were so sweet and were made even sweeter by the emotion that overtook him at one point.  I’m so grateful for Brant and for the amazing dad that he is. 

Brant and (a half-baked?) Evie

 After the blessing everyone stuck around to eat the luncheon that my family had prepared.  We went the semi-easy peasy route (I’m not sure any kind of spread for 50+ is ever completely simple) with sandwiches and salads.  Shout out to everyone who brought/helped prepare food.  Heaven knows I couldn’t have pulled it off without you.   

Good food, good friends, good family, good times, squishable boy!

Kyler, Cambree, Reagan, & Stratton

Treyce, Ja'Kheo, Jurnee, Jamini, & Jayvn

Never Trust a Quiet Toddler

In the interest of accuracy/full disclosure I have to admit that this story is technically about a month old, BUT, I have been meaning to share it on here cause it's definitely one of those that I'm going to want to remember.

Evie and I (this was about two weeks pre-Cohen) were hanging out in my room.  I meandered into my bathroom to start doing my hair and Evie headed to her room where she began reading books.

Or so I thought.

After about ten fifteen minutes I realized I hadn't heard her in a while.  I started to head towards her room to make sure she and her books were doing ok, when I was greeted by this sight.

Yes.  That is homemade cinnamon syrup.  All.  Over.

I stopped short when I saw her.  Evie looked at me and said, "Spilled."  Umm.  Yeah.

My favorite girl had spilled an entire gravy boat's worth of syrup, and was proceeding to eat/smear it with her hands.  At that moment I realized I had two choices.  I could either laugh or cry well, really three choices because clearly I opted to run and get the camera, so I chose to laugh.  And laugh and laugh.  If nothing else, than from her simple explanation of what happened.  "Spilled."  Classic.  A month later and it still makes me laugh.


When it came time to clean up Miss Evie, the table, the chairs, and the carpet below her I wasn't laughing quite as hard. 

The Sunday Dinner Helper

I just had to post this picture because I love it too much not to.

Grandma Pam and Evie

Can you stand how cute that is?!  Me neither!

I also love how much it embodies about both of these chicks.  Evie with her now (in?)famous "cheese" face.  Being a helper.  To Betty Crocker.  Making Sunday dinner.

My Kiddo Turned 2!

 I don’t know when I’ll learn to stop writing posts with plans to finish them up “later that day.”  We all know I’m just not that on top of things.  I wrote this post on Saturday, April 29^th with the intent of adding pictures to it before it went online.  Obviously I failed to add my pictures in a timely manner (unless you count ten days as timely), but I opted to leave the wording of the post as is.  Enjoy!

We celebrated Evie’s 2^nd birthday today.  I can’t believe my baby girl is (almost) 2!  Her birthday isn’t really until May 1^st, but I didn’t think the fam would be up for celebrating too hard core on a Tuesday, so we did it up BBQ style today.

I did a big party for her 1^st birthday.  You know, one that involved invitations, homemade cake, and an actual theme.  But since she doesn’t care (what with her being 2 and all) I decided to keep this year low key and not really do a party.  I figured she doesn’t need a fancy-shmancy party every year, and I thought I’d cut myself some slack and save my post-partum self some stress by keeping things easy-peasy. 

I still wanted to celebrate her awesomeness, though, so I decided to do a family only barbecue at the park.  That guest list would typically constitute my parents, my in-laws, and Holly’s family, but kiddo’s celebratory weekend happened to fall so that we got to have Kem’s family and Garrett here as well.  I love that!  I loved having so many people around to celebrate and love Evie.  I’m aware that I’m not even kind of impartial, but that kid is ridiculously awesome and deserves to have lots of family around to spoil her.

We all gathered together at the park just south of our house where we ate, played, and opened gifts.  Evie loved having everyone there, and so did I.  I love our family so much.  It is SUCH a blessing to be such a close-knit family and to have so much family who live here!

Happy birthday, baby girl!  I love you to the moon!

An Addendum

I have to add an addendum to my last blog entry.  I would just edit my last blog, but I'm not sure if I do that if it will show that I posted today as opposed to the 22nd.  I suppose it wouldn't matter if it did, but I just don't want it to.  I wrote the birthing story post on April 22nd and I want my blog to reflect that.  Does that make me a complete weirdo?  I'm pretty sure it does, but I'm also pretty sure I don't care.

So, my addendum goes as follows...
Brant DID show up at my room before 10 o'clock.  He came around 9:15.  With Evie.  How did I forget that when I was writing out the day's events?  Not really sure, but I do know it made me feel like an inadequate mom who somehow favors her newborn over her first born.  I may be reading too much into it. 

Anyhoo, Brant and Evie came to visit me because I couldn't quite handle the idea of not seeing Miss Evie all day maybe I'm not the world's worst mom.  She, on the other hand, didn't really care.  They came into my room, and quite literally within three minutes of being there, Evie waved to me, told me "bye-be," and started heading out the door.  We made her stick around a little longer before Brant took her to my Dad's, but she wasn't thrilled with room 317 or the lack of excitement in it.

At least my girl is independent.  That's a good thing.  Right?