28 Months!

Here are some fun pictures that I've taken of Henry J lately.

What happens when you let a little boy eat spaghetti by himself?

It gets everywhere. Literally.

We found this cute shirt for him in Colorado. Getting him to hold still long enough for this picture made the shirt all that more true.

Obviously a cardboard box is more entertaining than having a picture taken!

I never thought I'd see the day come, but Henry LOVES watching cartoons. He's never been able to sit still long enough to watch an entire episode, and we now have to pull him away at times. The time he wants to watch them the most is right when we walk in the door from day care. He takes his shoes off, makes us take our shoes off, says 'oons (cartoons), 'eat (treat), 'ink (drink) and 'kie (blankie). His most favorite 'oons are Yo Gabba Gabba, Word World, and The Backyardigans.

It's hard to get his attention once he has everything he needs to watch his cartoons.

He always sits in the same spot, and rests his arm like this on the couch. He's also been known to poke his head around the corner and yell at us once the show is over, or he needs another 'eat.

It's been funny to see all the things Henry is interested in. He is actually quite bossy (have no clue where he got that..) and demanded one night to eat dinner with his 'kie.

Some other things that Henry does are:

When we ask him if he has a poopy diaper he will grab his butt and say, "cucky".
At night time, we ask him if he's ready for "night night" and he'll cross his arms and say no. But if he is in fact ready for bed, he will announce that it's night time and walk into his room.
The first thing he says to me on our early mornings is "bath".
Has an unnatural fear of a stuffed bunny (or any stuffed animal besides his snake) his grandparents got him for Easter.
While driving, he loves to look at all the cars and trucks and will tell me when he sees a new one by announcing, "car".
If he's eating a food that he really likes he will shake is head up and down and say, "mmmm".
When he gets angry at us, he will either find the closest thing to him and throw it, or lay flat on his belly with his face to the ground. This gets really awkward in the grocery store.
Is perfectly content playing by himself instead of a group of kids.
Good luck getting him out of the swing at the park. He could have me push him for an hour straight.
LOVES bike rides, and constantly says to us, "bike?"


This is probably one of my favorite stages. His words are really starting to come out, and I feel like he can better communicate with me. I really don't want this summer to end because I've been having so much fun with him!

Groceries!

This probably won't go down as the best post I've ever done, but it's something that I found interesting and I wanted to remember. So I haven't been grocery shopping in about 3 weeks. We had just finished up the food we had and still had a week left till our vacation. I didn't want to buy a lot of food, just to have it spoil while we left so we bought enough stuff to get us by. When we got back from our trip this is what the fridge looked like. Some condiments, pickles, eggs, and juice. Sad.

This is the cupboard where we keep snacks and cereal. Some coffee filters, bisquick and corn flakes. Double sad.

Because we had just come home from a trip, our pockets were feeling a little on the empty side and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store and dropping a ton of money on food. Alan and I decided to challenge ourselves. We wouldn't go shopping until we got paid (1 week from when we got home) and just eat what we could find around the house. What happened the next couple of days really surprised me.

The first night we grilled up some chicken, had corn, and a suddenly salad. YUM!

The second night we had "spaghetti". It was fettucine noodles, with marinara sauce and mozzarella. We also steamed up some veggies and garlic toast with this.

I also wanted to throw this in there. Alan is a fan of chips and whatever kind of dip, and when a craving hits you can't deny it until you get it. I introduce Alan's most creative dip yet.. in it includes: ranch, sour cream, franks red hot sauce, dijon mustard, garlic chili sauce, and a touch of ketchup. Crazy, right? It really wasn't that bad, but I wouldn't say it's his best creation yet.

I'm not sure happened to me when I became a mom. I thought that ALL mom's could make awesome cookies. For some reason, I can't master a cookie recipe. This was my sad attempt at oatmeal chocolate chip.

Anyway, back to the meals. Awhile back ago I bought some premade pizza crusts at costco so we put a green pepper and pepperoni on it. We also had some buffalo wings in the freezer as a side. I did cheat this day and bought a green pepper, gallon of milk and bread. It was getting scary by this point.

I think a breakfast for dinner was bound to happen. We had a feast that night! Waffles, eggs, hash browns and sausage.

The final night of our challenge was probably the worst night of the entire week. We've had this frozen lasagna for so long that I can't even remember buying it. But I wasn't about to ruin our challenge on the last night. So we made that frozen lasagna and choked it down with some mixed veggies.

It kind of makes me sick to think of all the food we had in the house, and there I thought we had nothing. I am so grateful that Alan and I both have jobs and that we can put a nice meal on our table every night.

With that being said, I ended up going to the grocery store and we stocked up the pantry and fridge again.

Winter Park, CO

It's the time of year when Alan and I get the travel itch, so this year we decided to head to the mountains. We went with our good friends the Mosers' and Atkinsons' and had a great time. One of the main reasons we went is because one of our favorite bands, A Perfect Circle, was performing at Red Rocks.

Winter Park is a lot like Park City in that it's a little ski town, and it so happened to be hosting a big mountain biking event that same weekend. We were able to stand out on our deck and watch all the festivities.

The house we rented for the week was beautiful. Had enough rooms and bathrooms for everyone, and was in a killer location.

The first full day that we were there we went golfing. I was in photography heaven on that course. Everywhere I looked there were flowers, so instead of golfing I drove the cart around to all the pretty wild life.

It rained on and off all week, so we all went down and bought rain jackets. Unfortunately there wasn't a huge selection so we ended up looking like geeky tourists all week.

We rented 2 cars, but if we mainly just squeezed into the one so we could all ride together. Unfortunately 2 people had to sit in the very back without seats.

What happens when you put 2 very hyper boys in the back of the car? A photoshoot.

The day of the concert we walked around the little town of Morrison. Spent way too much money, ate way too much food, and also had way too much fun.

Unfortunately you can't take your camera into Red Rocks Ampitheater, so I had to take as many as I could. It was honestly one of the most beautiful places I have been to.

The last day we were in Colorado, we decided to go on a hike.

Once again, I had my camera out and barely made it through the hike because I was so occupied with how pretty everything is.

We also managed to fit in a tour at the Coors Brewery right before we got on the plane.

We also went river rafting on this trip, but for obvious reasons I did not take the camera. I will say though that it's a good thing I listened to the safety speech before we headed out, or else I would have fallen out of the raft. All in all I would consider this trip a success and it was one of the best times I've had.