horsing around

We live near a lot of farm land.  East of us a few blocks there's a lil farm with llamas, emu, goats, etc right on the road.  And right infront of our town home is some pastures for horses.  Often they are far away from us but every now and then they are in the pasture that's right across the street.  Well they were so close all of today that I couldn't resist.  Jake and I decided to give the horses a little treat while on our walk.
It had been a long time since I had interacted with horses-they're cool but very intimidating all at the same time.  They seem gentle until their huge mouths and teeth are coming within inches of your hand.  Don't worry I've since been educated on how to properly feed a horse-put the apple flat on your hand and let the horse suck it up with his lips haha.  It was fun though.  We'll see if they recognize us when we go on our walks from now on.

looking outside of our living room.

sorry, it has some crazy sudden angles etc and at one point a ups truck came and I had to quickly move jake to make sure we weren't close haha.

Other ways that we're keeping entertained around here:

We found one of Jake's xmas presents that we hadn't opened yet in houston cause jake wasn't sitting up on his own quite yet plus the move.  He loves it-it's a farm themed walking/sitting up toy with lots of animal sounds/colors/numbers/songs etc.

as a kid for me fake phones were the FUNNEST and he feels the same way apparently...

We had a fun lil party listening to the BYU vs Southern Miss game last night which we won with authority!  Quarterfinals game Tuesday! It's been fun lately now that we've been playing so well.  I had gotten chicken wings from walmart and some chips/root beer/ veggie dip-classic game type food, but the wings sucked.  So gross-really bad quality.  So we ended up eating chips and soda-yup, we're responsible adults.

....nah we didn't let him have it but he liked holding it

playing with mom's toms

listening to the game!

playing with daddy!

Back on Valentine's Day Cody gave me a really big chunk of money from his entrepreneur account that he has to put towards my movie budget.  It's kind of a long standing joke but I'm constantly getting in the mood to watch a specific movie that I'm sure we have, and then I'm shocked to find that we don't have it (was remembering my parents' collection).  I used half of the money in one sitting but got some great older movies that everyone has to have in their library:

Needless to say we're excited for our new entertainment center that will come out at Ikea starting April 1st so we can store all of our movies neatly (I don't really like our DVD stands-like it when I can close a door, feels neater.)

We walked to the mailbox today and stopped at the little playground on the corner on our way back to try out the baby swing again.  We thought he'd be into it since there were other kids around, but man he gave us this scathing look.  Didn't cry or growl etc, just gave us this look and there was no question that he was NOT enjoying himself haha.  It looked sooo much like my older brother Eric-just a flash, but it was def there haha.  The second we took him out he gave us a smile as if to say, thank you.

(this wasn't the "eric" face-this was when we were on a walk yesterday haha but as you can see, he is full of facial expressions)

8 Months Update

Believe it or not our lil man is 8 months old!  Actually I can believe it cause he seems so grown up now-I'm often surprised at how young he is age-wise cause I feel like he should be 1 already or something.  He isn't crawling yet but definitely wants to.  He does this sort of side slide thing where he'll try to crawl-over rotates his hips and rolls on his side and then rolls back on his tummy, but the process does move him forward a few inches :)


He takes two naps a day now-one in the late morning and one in the late afternoon and goes to bed around 8.  He sleeps through the night still.  He eats up baby food like crazy and seems to especially love sweet potatoes and peaches.  He definitely has a little personality and can be so super focused and somber and then once he's deemed you're ok will never stop smiling at you.  He loves any kind of technology involving screens: phones, computer and will abandon any toy to try and get his hands on them.

He has a tooth coming in on the bottom left side-a lil white spot that's slowly getting bigger and bigger.

I've taught him a few tricks: I'll put my eyes close to his and say bonk and he'll slowly bring his head forward and knock mine.  and 75% of the time I say high five and hold my hand up he'll bring his hand to mine.

We love our little man!

on our walk

BTW, we went to the BYU game tonight and we won! Go Cougs!!

Our Fabulous Friday Night!

So Liz came down from Ogden and hung out with us Friday.  We went to Zupas for lunch with daddy and Liz got the BIGGEST choc covered Strawberry i've EVER seen!! That is not a phone ladies and gentleman that is a strawberry:

I was proud of code and I cause we branched out and got the crab melt panini and it wasn't half bad (i'm not a seafood fan in particular so I'm always shocked when I'm not revolted by a seafood dish).  

After zupas code went back to work and we went bowling at the provo beachresort in the riverwoods.  I can't remember the last time I had bowled so for me, anything over a 50 is respectable.  Liz killed me and got 3 spares!!! She claims she is no good-yeah right!

Jake was so fascinated by Liz's hair.  He kept stroking it and smiling haha.  I guess he's not used to being around girls who style and do their hair regularly *cough cough*

Liz watched Jake so we could have a baby free date night-which hasn't happened in a looong time!  I heard about a local hot spot called the tortilla bar in orem.  It. Was. AMAZING! It's on state street up in orem and SO easy to drive by and never notice it, but SO worth it.  I'd recommend getting there early rather than later-closer to 5 cause 5:30 and on it gets pretty crowded and it's a small place (apparently if you have 4 or more in your party they want you to call in a reservation.)

 I loved their glasses-mason jars. and the tacos???? to DIE for!  I got the hangar tacos which had marinated steak, chopped onions, chopped green apples (yeah weird but so good), and some sort of leaves) and Code was really daring and got the calimari tacos which I thought sounded gross, but they were even better than the steak tacos!!! The calamari were tossed in this spicy batter and were nice and crispy and it also had some kind of sausage in it and tangy tartar sauce and this spicy (moderately so) orange sauce.  It was seriously good-you can trust me, cause I don't like seafood.  As you can see it's not a TON of food but it's really satisfying and doesn't leave you feeling weighed down afterwards.

Afterwards we went down the block to the nickelcade.  Deal or No Deal has got to be the funnest/best game there.  We actually won 50+ tickets from one game.  

This was a jump rope type game- a little girl had to explain it to us haha.

After that we went to the BYU MoA  because they had an exhibit opening that was featuring many works from their permanent collection including our favorite: Fallen Monarchs! (the piece that code had commissioned for me-still have to hang that sucker...) They had apple cobbler and icecream and a jazzy lil band playing in the main lobby.  Always a fun/free date.

After waiting FOREVER for a bunch of couples who were deciding to catch up with each other in front of my fav painting, I've decided that there are 3 camps you can fall into when it comes to visiting museums.  There's the overly-flamboyant/excited ones that ooze pompous statements like: "oh, look at this one and all of it's audacity!" etc and half the time you feel like they're just trying to impress the people around them, then there's the people who seem like they've never been to a museum and don't know the etiquette/annoy those around them.  For example there was a guy who got SOOOO close to Fallen Monarchs and kept pointing at it but his finger was like half an inch away!  I was this close to going up to him and asking him to step away-sigh, you never get closer than a foot-any closer and it's too close (your breathe/body heat etc can damage the paintings).  (Granted I am rather protective of this particular painting but still).  Then there were the couples who were just chatting in a corner that had tons of paintings, and there was a gathering crowd around them trying to get to the different paintings and they just chatted away oblivious to how rude they were being.  Sorry for the edge in this post-i'm feeling hormonal today.  Still, so I'd like to be in the 3rd group- people who are aware of the space around them and make sure they're not blocking someone else's view while keeping their analysis/discussion of the art quietly between them and their party.  There ya go.  There's my 2 cents.  It was fun though-man I love that painting :)

We wandered over to the HFAC and there were some BFA students final shows going on.  I liked the exhibit in the main bottom floor called transcendental by James Winegar.  Randomly enough, Cody was in the dorms with this kid back in the day (our guess is that he had already graduated and this was a professional installation?  cause otherwise- dang boy, graduate already).  There was a bunch of cool photos of him (i'm guessing) in huge beautiful landscapes.  My favorite was one in western ireland

After we got home we watched Redeye with Liz.  It was a great night!  And we woke up to......THIS!

and it's supposed to snow more this evening-oh well, I'm sure it'll be the last snow of the year (knock on wood...)

boring mom

So here's an example of how daddies are more fun than mommies :) I hadn't even thought to take Jake here but one night Code took him out there and Jake has been exploring a lil playground on the corner of our street.  We've discovered that he actually doesn't care about the playground when there's no other kids there.  The first time code took him there were apparently a lot of older kids playing.  One girl in particular caught Jake's eye and he proceeded to smile at her the rest of the time.  We went back cause I was excited to see how happy the swing made him.  Answer?  not very.  He seemed disinterested and bored-our only guess is that he didn't care about the swing, just the cute girl that he could smile at.  He's only 8 mo though so I'm not worried-he'll get into it eventually.  Plus, if he's anything like his mommy and daddy, the slight swaying motion of the swinging is enough to make him car sick (we've never been big swingers).

I think Jake is bored with me.  It's just a hunch, and who knows, maybe he's just crabby-does have a tooth coming in.  Lately tho, it feels like I can't do anything to entertain him for longer than 15 min.  I'm sure I'm just imagining it but I swear Jake does these sighs sometimes like....really mom? the books again? this toy again?  can't you think of anything new?  I'd like to think that he has the memory capacity of a goldfish, and that every day is bright and new and just as entertaining as yesterday's identical activities but maybe he's getting older and needing more stimulation.  I feel like he wines ALL the time/acts frustrated with me and then when code comes home it's all smiles and excitement.  It's hard day after day to stay just as excited and engaging.  I also don't really know a lot of age appropriate activities for an 8 mo old.  I mean...a 3 year old, forget it-I could come up with so much, but an 8 mo old who can't get around on his own and puts EVERYTHING in his mouth...just not sure.

 Oh well, I guess it's inevitable- mom's always turn into the old boring toy and it's hard to keep coming up with new activities (especially when the kid in question can only sit there and has no imaginative capabilities yet).  Just wait kid, you'll think I'm really cool when you're 3.

Around here

Around here things are good.  Things are idyllic.  It's almost like I feel like it's the part in a movie when everything is perfect and happy as they show the happy family laughing and loving each other and then suddenly some tragedy happens-cause for some reason we don't like watching laughing and loving for 2 hours haha.  Nah, but things are really good.  Code loves his job-said that he actually doesn't dread sunday nights anymore cause he's happy to go to work the next day-crazy!  I've REALLY been enjoying my days with Jake lately.  I mean, I always have, but I love them even more lately for some reason.  This week we're trying to alter our eating/napping schedule a bit.

 Lately Jake has not seemed very hungry when it came time for him to have a bottle so we're switching to 4 bottles a day at 8 oz each and two naps.  He used to get up, eat, then go back down for 1-2 hours.  Now he wakes up and stays up-has a nap 3-4 hours later, and then has another nap in the late afternoon and then bed at 8.  We'll see if it'll help him take better naps.  It's rare that he sleeps longer than 30 min and it drives me crazy cause I can't get stuff done.  Yesterday he still only slept 30 min but we'll see if it'll catch up with him and he'll start taking longer naps.  He's getting close to crawling.  We finally saw a lil white spot on the bottom left side of his gums-it's pokin' through!  Time is flying by.

Here's one of our Idyllic moments.



In other news my lil flowers are doing well-there's lil green sprouts in every lil section of my seed starter except for one.

(this is an old pic-now they're all that tall)

And I ran again today-I drank a glass of water first which seemed to help with the whole cotton mouth thing and I was able to run for longer with only a short lil break in the middle.  It really helps that code and I are trying to do this together-I'd so fall off the wagon if there was no encouragement for me to get out of my warm bed before the sun is up and go run in the cold.  We have a goal to reach a certain number of miles running together (We trade off each day so one can be home in case jake wakes up).  When we reach our goal we'll do something fun like a weekend trip or something to reward ourselves :)

Life is good.

St. Patrick's Day

I'm ashamed to say that I forgot it was St. Patrick's Day.  I usually love this holiday-it's one of my favorite (what you might call minor) holidays.  Just look in my itunes-I have a St. Patty's day mix ready to go.  Plus ever since I was a little kid I was fascinated by Ireland-their accents, music, legends/castles/etc and wanted to go there.  My first clue was that everyone at church seemed to have some form of green on.  I had gotten a cute spring skirt/top recently (love all of the modest skirts here!) and was so excited to wear that that I forgot to wear green....yeah, was a bit ashamed.  We had a good day at church tho.  Jake distracted the teacher in sunday school but not how you'd think-he was just smiling at her and she had to stop and comment on it haha.  The whole room started laughing and he looked around with the biggest grin apparently pleased that he had made people around him laugh.

After church I tried to make up for my lack of holiday spirit the first half of the day by changing jake into his St. Patty's outfit.  We had a fun lil photo shoot:

what's on my head???

action shot!

I made some sugar cookies with green sprinkles, and actually found a sugar cookie recipe that I liked-a nice mix of chewy and crispy outside AND my fav part: you could just plop them on the pan without having to roll them out (i'm way too lazy for that):

easy and flavorful sugar cookies

Then after Jaker went to bed we watched far and away-sort of a St. Patty's Day tradition.  It was after 8 when we started so I was 99% sure code would fall asleep throughout the movie (After all it is long and there are slow/quiet parts).  But he stayed awake the WHOLE time, and not just awake, but he was laughing and commenting about the movie the whole time!  It was my lil st. patty's day miracle. :)