Happy Birthday Daniel!

I can't believe it - my little boy is 3!











Where did my little baby go?




After seeing the most awesomest cake my sister made (scroll down) for her 3 yr old's party I dismayed of ever being able to post a pic of any b-day cake I made! But since we were giving dairy a trial I went with my favorite cake - cheesecake! And you just don't frost a cheesecake - blasphemy! So I was off the hook to decorate it! Daniel didn't much like it, Tuan ate a bit, Emma really liked it and I ate at least half! (Well, I hadn't had any cheesecake in nearly 3 years!)

There was no way I could edit the messy table out of that picture. Check out the undies on it - you know you live with a three year old boy when there are undies on your table!!


Daniel is really into mermaids right now. He is going to be a merman for halloween and loves to play with his cousin's mermaid dolls in the tub. But somehow I missed getting a pic of him opening the mermaid dolls - you can see them on the floor in this picture.
Daniel has been showing a lot of interest in the violin and Emma's old one was too small even for him! So we got him his very own. His favorite color is red and so is his violin!


How about a huge tonka truck to balance out the mermaid dolls, eh? lol


This is a Waldorf doll. They sell for upwards of $100!! I say this to let you know how awesome my sister is. I helped her make this doll for Daniel. She provided all the materials and the pattern. She also stitched the face on which is the hardest and most important part.


I crocheted the hair cap and then gave it a haircut. I tried to get it to match his faux-hawk. Maybe a few more snips here and there?


Sweet dreams after a busy, fun day!


Sweet dreams for everyone.

Family visits!

A week after Beth was born my dad came to spend the day with us before his 2 month trip to New Zealand (lucky him).

His got into town and I put him right to work helping me pick up a freezer given away on freecycle (Tuan was out of town for work). The family giving it away had a motorized car that Em and D loved driving around while we loaded the freezer. And when I say we I mean not my 1 week post-partum self!


Emma and Daniel of course found ways to entertain themselves while we said goodbye to the generous givers.

I love this one for their personalities. Emma: "There's a camera! Smile!" Daniel: "virtical object - must climb!"

The next morning the kids were still zonked from their late night playing with Grandpa.



Once Daniel woke my dad got some fun pictures of us making muffins together. I tried to find the picture he took of Emma helping me make breakfast after Daniel was born but couldn't.


And yes, I edited the heck out of these pictures to try to hide my super messy kitchen!

Then we went to Daniel's gymnastics lesson. I'm glad my Dad loves to take pictures because I had never thought to get some pics of Daniel in gymnastics but I really love having them.

First is this one of Emma. Can you tell that she woke 10 min earlier? Well - she did! lol

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed - yep, that's her!

These really capture D's personality.




When we got home Daniel got to open his early birthday present from Grandpa.


Soon after my sister came to visit with her three adorable kids.




And one of us sisters


My sister's "baby" - can't believe how big he's getting!


I planted some flowers last year and the kids loved picking them - the plants couldn't really even keep up with them. This year we planted lots more flowers in the kid's very own gardens and they hardly ever picked any. Color me confused! But not so with my two adorable nieces. Everytime they visit they love to pick flowers and use them in their games.

This is what I often see after they have left - I love it!

Surprise she's here!

Ok, the fake belly shot post - it was a bit of a joke on my part.

The real news is. . . .








Our newest family member decided to surprise everyone and make her grand entrance at just 37 weeks!

She was born unassisted at home in the water. Daniel slept, Emma watched avidly and Tuan helped catch. She weighs 7lbs 14oz and is 19in long. I will update with a name once we decide!

Now to the fun part!

It's flooding!!

Emma has been fascinated with a new game of her invention. It is raining and something (house, boat, castle) is flooding! Quick carry everything out of the rain so it doesn't get ruined. This particular time the toy room was flooding and the sewing/guest room was the haven from the storm. I had to keep telling myself that we could clean it up later so I didn't freak out at the crazy mess and newly unorganized mass of toys. I'm weird that way. But soon I noticed Daniel start to play with toys that hadn't captured his interest for a few months. Totally worth it!

The empty bins which previously held the toys


The toys - now safe and dry! lol


It doesn't look as messy in these pictures. Perhaps it wasn't really as bad as I thought. But guess who did end up putting most of it away? Ha!

Now that's a squash!

I got this yummy squash at our local Farmers Market. Once I had it sliced, roasted and mashed up it made 20 cups of squash! And it makes delicious pies. I forgot what the name of it is though

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Snapshot Sunday - Autumn in Idaho Edition

This actually happened on a Sunday - how convenient. (note the sarcasm!)

I looked out the window this morning to see this. Freak snowstorm in September! I imediately woke Tuan to complain about and bemoan the abrupt end to my tomatoes, cukes and melons. Then I let him go back to sleep.






It wasn't even supposed to freeze last night. And all of this after Tuan had been helping me (the crazy 8 mos preg lady)tuck them all in each night. I must say here that I am the luckiest girl ever to have him. I can't image he was very excited to do this every cold evening but he loves me and knew how important it was to me.



Soon though I couldn't be sad anymore because I was pulling out the snow boots/suits and gloves/hats/scarfs and the kids were having so much fun.






ETA: Our last family picture, 4 weeks before baby Beth was born!

Siblings by nature: Friends by choice

I have been seeing a lot of this lately.







And with this new baby coming in just a month it is so nice to see them playing more together. They also help each other out more. I hope this new baby doesn't get left out when they're all older. No guarantees on another sibling along the way!

Saving sunflower seeds

My niece gave Emma about 6 sunflower seeds two summers ago. She planted 2 in her garden last year but we didn't get a chance to save any. Sometime before planting season this last summer the package got tipped and we lost all but two. So she planted those two in this years garden. One nearly got eaten to the ground by the earwigs - nasties! but it must have loved her because it fought back and grew beautiful flowers for her!



A volunteer cherry tomato plant grew right inbetween them and I helped it vine up their thick stems. (I couldn't find the neat picture I took) It worked so well that I am planning on doing it that way with my garden next year!

Anyway we saved the seed from just one of the plants. It is called a poly-headed sunflower because of all of the flowers on just one plant. As you can see one (my favorite) grew gorgeous rust colored flowers. The one that nearly got eaten grew bright sunny yellow blooms. But it didn't grow as many or for as long - perhaps because it had such a rough start? But my sister and I thought it was very interesting that only one color (yellow or red) grew on each plant and want to experiment and see if that was an anomaly or always the case. And do you only get red from red plants or some red, some yellow? She saved some from her yellow bloom plants for me and we'll see what we get next year!!

Success!!

Remember this failure post?

Well, I have a success! Gluten-free playdough that acts almost just like that other stuff! The secret? Potatoes! I haven't taken the time to really fiddle around with it too much but I use a recipe for potato biscuts. How did I discover this you ask? Well, I decided to try a new biscuit recipe and while I was cutting them out Daniel was playing with a scrap of dough. It took me a bit to realize that he was molding it and moving it around and it was holding up! The actual biscuits, btw, were discusting. I didn't care though because I was so excited about my discovery!

It's a bit hard to work the color through at first and you have to store it in the fridge to keep the potatos fresh longer.

Emma really liked to play with it but Daniel was leary of getting his hands in it.
I asked Tuan to take a picture and Em didn't want to look at the camera. So I told her I would make a silly face if she did.

Mini Concert

Both Daniel's and Emma's interest in the violin has increased. I'm pretty sure that he will be getting a violin for his birthday. It looks so natural in his hands.

I love how I cought Emma mid-word. It really looks lie how it sounded.