all by herself

Grace is all of a sudden so grown up!

She can get dressed all by herself
buckle her car seat by herself
get herself a drink
get Neal away from the toilet
tuck herself in for naps
finish all of her dinner
cut with scissors and a knife
get out her "projects"
knows the first two articles of faith
says beautiful prayers
recites the alphabet
says numbers 1-11
tell you what sounds all of her letters make
tell you what letter your name starts with
tell you what rhymes with what
and can write the letter G

new numbers

little teeth

Each time I get my camera out Neal crawls straight for me and wants to touch it so here is finally a picture of his new teeth. And they are sharp little buggers! Yesterday Grace had something Neal wanted and I saw him open his mouth and try to chomp down on her shoulder, luckily she moved just in time. Grace was a biter, if I have another I will be a sad mom.

Things about Neal:

He has been scared of heights since he was tiny. Josh lightly tossed him up last week and sure enough he is still scared to death. I was holding him this morning and I put him on his back so that I could blow raspberries on his tummy and he grabbed onto my hair as tight as he could and wouldnt let go. I wasnt trying to scare him, I just thought he would like it and laugh. Not the case

Neal has learned to dance and his favorite moves are waving his right arm in the air (like he just doesnt care:) to the beat of the music. Yesterday I had pandora playing and I asked him to dance and he bobbed his head for the first time! It was so darn cute!

Going up and down the stairs came almost on the first try for Neal. He is pretty coordinated.

Sleeping has not been one of Neal's strengths but for the first time this week Neal slept for 9 hours straight.

Neal can say Mom and Dad, and thats it.

Loves his monkey and cuddles with it at night and when he is tired.


We love Neal.

lunch time

date night

We doubled with my cousin Leah and her husband Jonny on Friday night to In n Out and mini-put. In n Out was delicious as usual and we all had a great conversation about healthy eating and whats good for you. Who knew I was so darn bad at golf? I was absolutely terrible, although Josh was a good sport and didnt complain. I think the last time I played was when I was maybe 17, so Josh pretty much carried our team while we played "best ball". It was weird to be without the kids but so much fun!

Thank you Brandon and Hill for watching our babies.

Mae is 2

happy birthday Mae

costumes and stuff

Who doesnt love this time of year?

We had this for dinner. Please go buy some at costco. You will thank me.

pig tails

alpine slides

jared and his girlfriend are so cute together. Hope he keeps this one around for a LONG time.

annual hee haw farms

Vera Belle Petersen

we have the cutest new cousin

favorite place

whenever I turn the faucet on Neal throws his arms around in the air like a bird telling me he wants in!

barbies

Grace was playing at grandma's house and took a strong liking to barbies. Lucky for Grace, I bought some for her a year ago at DI for 25 cents each and stored them in the basement for later. So I brought them upstairs and I asked Grace if she knew what their names were. Grace replied with



"Yah Mom! Cari and Alec!"

love your body 6k

Lorna, Miss, Hill, Hailey, Beth, Nesha (jared's girlfriend) and I all woke early and ran in the FREEZING cold morning air. We had so much fun doing this all together and I think this might even have to be a new tradition. After the race I thought about it a lot, I think I could have done better, so my next race I hope to set a PR.

some new drawings

Last wednesday we were on our way out the door and I had asked Grace several times to hurry and get her shoes on because we were going to be late. She was still distracted and finally I told her that I was going to leave and that if she wanted to come that she would need to RUN! When she came around the corner in the kitchen she was holding these and saying "LOOK MOM! I drew Ellie and Hill!" "can I bring it to them?"

Grace is so creative! She found all of these materials on her own, I didnt even know she was coloring, and using glue and googly-eyes. How cute.

best friends

(thanks for the picture hill)

shots from tabletop photo

The lighting wasn't that great in the hotel conference room we were in, so with a bumped ISO I think these are my favorites that I took in the class. This cake is cardboard that she had made just for photo shoots and its a few years old! I thought that was interesting.

She talked about how for tabletop photography you want the light to always come from somewhere other than directly in front. These pictures are lit from the the left, as you can see the shadows on the right which she said you WANT. Also new and interesting to me.

The last time I thought about a color wheel was when I was in interior design (if you saw my house you would never have known I took it:) in junior college. Anyway, she talked about how you want to pick the opposite color of your subject on the color wheel to complement. This totally makes sense, now I just need to print one off to post on my wall so that I can picture opposites. Im so visual.

Photography

Where do I start?


Maybe I should start by saying that I had always wanted to take photo in high school and learn how to take cool pictures like my friend Hannah. She was pretty good. Anyway I never got around to taking it and when Josh surprised me with a new camera I was pretty excited to start learning how all this Photography stuff goes.

I grilled my sister in laws, Missy and Hill (who are exceptional and worth checking out) and learned lots from them. Then last fall I took photo 101 and really enjoyed learning all about my camera and all the neat and cool things that you can do while in manual settings.

I set a goal this summer to get my camera out everyday and practice a little and I think it really helped me out! Uploading my pictures was sometimes really sad for me (I did a photo shoot with Jenilyns family and when I uploaded them all I realized that I had done a terrible job) and sometimes it was rewarding. But I felt like I was making progress.

So to help with my progress I took table top photography this weekend and I learned so much! I am so excited to see what I can come up with and put into practice with the new tips and tricks I learned. I am also looking into a new zoom lens. I have a few fixed lenses, but a zoom would be so nice to have. Specifically I am looking at the 17-55 2.8, 24-70 2.8, and 24-105 4. Any suggestions out there?

I am so excited to have found a hobby that I love! and that involves mostly my children.

And thats my story.

making the yummiest whole wheat bread on the planet

Whole Wheat Bread

5 cups wheat flour (I use about 1/3 red and 2/3 white wheat kernels)
½ cup gluten flour
2 Tbsp. instant yeast (SAF is my favorite)
4 cups hot water (run sink so it is hot but not scalding)
1 ½ Tbsp. salt
½ cup oil (can reduce this amount if desired)
¾ cup honey (we use a little more, more like 1 cup)
2 Tbsp. lemon juice, bottled
5 cups wheat flour, in addition to previous 5 cups

Add first 5 cups of wheat flour, gluten, yeast and hot water in mixer and mix for 1 minute using wire whisk attachment. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes (if your kitchen is cold, it may take a few minutes longer to rise). Add salt, oil, honey, lemon juice and rest of flour (one cup at a time). Change to dough hook before adding remainder of flour. Let beat for 10 minutes until dough pulls away from sides of bowl (the texture of dough will change during the 10 minutes, so make sure to give it that time).

Heat oven to lowest temperature possible (e.g. 160 degrees). Turn dough onto oiled counter top. Knead together. Divide and shape into 4 loaves. Spray pans with oil and place dough in pan. Place directly in oven to let rise for 10-15 minutes. Once bread is about ½-1 inch from top of pan, increase temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. (Don’t remove bread from oven while waiting for oven to heat up). When baked, butter tops and remove from pans onto cooling racks.

Source: Leah Van Wagenen
Makes 4 loaves.