Little Baker

Ephram always wants to help me in the kitchen.  He often directs me as I make dinner.  One of his favorite dinners is pasta.  He will tell me to put water in the pot, to put it on the stove, when to pour the noodles in, and then he needs to check it several times to make sure it's cooking.  It is very cute.

One of his other favorite foods is cookies.  And the week after our snow storm, I decided it was time for Ephram to make cookies with me.  He poured all of the ingredients in and stirred them together.  He was very, very excited.  The picture doesn't show it because it was one of the first times I was using the Speedlite.  He couldn't figure out if he should close his eyes for a flash, or if it was okay to keep them open.  (With the Speedlite I can direct the flash away from him.)

He was so excited that he started doing a happy dance and fell right off his chair shortly after this picture.  He hit his head in the fall and got a bit of a goose egg.  We took about a 20 minute break to make sure that he was okay.  (It turns out that this was the beginning of several klutzy days, caused by a double ear infection.)

After awhile he was ready to start again.  We went back to the table and Ephram told me where to scoop all of the cookies.  Then we were ready to put them in the oven.

Ephram had a lot of fun watching them flatten out as they cooked.  He watched the entire time until the timer buzzed.

And then it was time for eating!  I let the boys have as many as they wanted, and they polished off most of a dozen.  Then it was really crazy in our house for about an hour.

Charlie declared Ephram the "Greatest Cookie Master Chef Ever" and kept telling Ephram that he makes the best cookies.  It was really cute.  For his part, Ephram just kept saying "yeah" and nodding his head.

The boys went off to play and mom finished baking the rest of the dough.  It was a successful first baking venture!

36!

I turned 36 this past January.  I am officially closer to 40 than 30.  On one hand I can't believe that I'm getting older.  On the other hand I look at my kids, know that there's another one on the way, and a husband that still very much loves to play, and I don't feel quite so old.

I had a really good birthday.  We knew the snow was coming so we went out for a birthday dinner the day before.  So my birthday was just a really relaxing day spent with family.  At night we did presents and Andy surprised me with something I've wanted for quite some time... A Speedlite.  So I also started taking more random pictures, which will probably end up in a later post.

It was a happy day!

More Snow Pictures

I did actually let my kids out in the snow.  Not as much as they'd like, but we did have colds.

It turns out that Ephram loves snow... when he is looking at it.  Not so much when it is covering his entire leg.  I moved him out to the street where some cars had pressed it down a lot.  He still didn't love being in it.

So he decided that he would be the hat and glove guy.  Whenever Andy and Charlie went out into the snow, he would gather up all the hats and gloves into whatever box he could find and stand by the door/window ready to change out supplies.  It was a very fun game for him.

Meanwhile, Andy and Charlie had a lot of fun.  Unfortunately I do not have a lot of pictures because I was inside with Ephram!

And Ephram?  We found a good compromise.  He would step out onto the covered part of our patio and watch the fun.  He loved watching!

The Big Storm

This January we had the biggest snowstorm I have seen in the 13 years we've been in the Puget Sound area.  It started the day before my birthday and lasted for about a week.

We always measure snowfall on our patio table to see how much has accumulated.  On Day 2 we stuck this ruler in so that we could measure it.

By Day 4 we could not find the ruler anymore.

And it kept piling up from there.  This was the last picture that I took of it.  We're guessing there was somewhere around 18 inches on the ground at that point.

Another good indicator of the accumulation?  Boone.  Boone loves snow.  He typically begs to go outside and eat it all anytime he senses it is near.  Around Day 4-5, he started only going out because he needed to.  I don't think that he liked the feel of it on his stomach, and he was having more difficulty working through it.

It was very fun to watch him rebuild his paths day after day.

Day 1 - not too much snow, just the way he likes it.

Yeah... that's too much snow.

Our area is really not equipped to handle storms like this.  The main streets are plowed, but they don't plow into the neighborhoods.  When you have several inches of snow on the ground and a front wheel drive minivan, this means that you are stuck in your house.  From our house we watched several people try and fail to navigate our cul-de-sac, so we remained inside.  We also happened to have colds that week, so we probably should have been inside anyway.  We did venture out by foot a few times, and it was beautiful.  I love snow when I don't have to drive in it.

We were lucky and did not experience any power outages.  Many people in the area were without power for days.

Front yard view.

Street view.

The branches of this tree are usually nowhere close to the ground.

View of our house from the mailbox.

On Friday it finally warmed enough that it started to rain.  It took 5 days to rain that snow away.  Here is what the patio looked like after a day and a half of rain.

Saturday marked a full week of us being inside the house, and I was ready to be out.  Andy went and shoveled for an hour so that we could all go find something to do away from home.  We ended up at Red Robin.  It was the best Red Robin food I've ever had.

This was an interesting storm.  I am okay with it being a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Ephram is 2!

Now that my "baby" is two, I suppose I will stop doing monthly updates on him.  I still get to do a yearly update though, right?  (And maybe a half-yearly one?)

Ephram has developed a fun personality over the past two years.  He's turned into an active, funny, caring and loving little boy.  Nearly every day there is some moment where he does something that makes me stop and smile in amazement at how lucky we are to have him in our family.

Here are some of his favorite things at the age of 2:
Toy: Blocks (legos, megabloks, anything that can stack), cars, containers of any shape/size, phones, push toys, gadgets (he's an iPod pro)
Book: Anything with Curious George, Snuggle Puppy, any peek-a-boo flap book
Activity: Playing on the computer, playing the piano, dancing
Color: Red (even though he can't name it, he chooses it every time)
Song: The Wheels on the Bus, If You're Happy and You Know It
TV Show/Character: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Curious George


He also really likes Santa Clause.  Anytime he sees a red hat he says, "Santa, Santa ho, ho, ho!"

He is definitely in the stage where he plays very, very hard and can then just drop to sleep anywhere.

And he is starting to compare things and notice similarities.  When he watches Mickey Mouse, he usually goes and grabs Goofy or Mickey to watch with him.  Then he holds them up all the way to the TV so that they can see their animated counterparts.

He is a collector and very serious at play.  He likes to gather things together and stuff them into containers.  He will spend a long time organizing things just so on a particular shelf or inside his tent.  And when he is playing with blocks, he knows exactly how he wants everything to go.  

In my eyes, he is the cutest thing ever.  He amazes me and I can't wait to see what the next year brings!