Walking already?

Well Luke is 2 days away from being 9 months old. Although he's not actually walking, he sure is moving a whole lot! We're just so excited to show him off to the Utahn's in a couple weeks!

Spaghetti

The messiest food that we give kids. Do you have pics of when you ate this when you were little? Here's our boys.

Eat yo' greens

I've recently started watching a little boy in the evenings, providing me with a car so that I can pick him up from school. Having a car and a little extra cash made it possible for me to get a gym membership. So the boys have been enjoying the daycare there, while I have been enjoying trying to get myself back in shape! It has been awesome :) What this post is really about though is an awesome new recipe I found. This is dedicated to those who can't get their kids (or themselves) to eat some good green veggies. What prompted me to find this recipe was actually the little boy that I watch. He's a bit on the picky side of things when it comes to eating, and I was researching ways that I could sneak some veggies into his diet. Thats when I came across this smoothie- which tastes amazingly awesome, and has spinach in it. Yes thats right, spinach, and it's good. I'm one that likes spinach in salad form, fresh with dressing on top. But I would've never thought of mixing it with a bunch of fruits. This recipe has also been good for Isaac. Isaac is pretty good at eating what we tell him, but he's never been a salad fan, or green veggie fan. Except for that one random time when he was a baby and enjoyed a whole can of green beans. That was a one time occurrence though..... so anyways, here it is:

The ingredients:
2-3 cups tightly packed baby spinach leaves, washed
1-1/2 cups frozen blueberries
1-1/2 cups frozen strawberries (or other frozen fruit of your choice)
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup favorite yogurt (or more if you want it a little sweeter)
1-2 cups 100% grape juice or orange juice* (depending on how thick/sweet you like it)

Directions: Pack 2-3 cups of washed baby spinach into the bottom of the blender (use the glass cup markings on the side of the blender pitcher for convenience). Add the rest of the ingredients in the order listed.

( Your blender will only be about 2/3 full if you make the recipe as written.
I always make a one and a half batch for my big family.)

Blend for 2-3 minutes until smooth and pureed. You may need to push down and stir the frozen berries occasionally.

Thin with added grape juice or water if desired. Serve immediately. Makes 4-5 servings. Enjoy!

Taken from this website:

http://recipeshoebox.blogspot.com/2010/05/blueberry-and-spinach-smoothie.html

I've only made the recipe cut in half, and it seems to fill my blender 3/4 of the way when blended. So I don't know how well the whole thing would fit. Anyways, I challenge you all to try it, and give your taste-buds (and your body) a reason to thank you. :)

Daddy's Play Night

With Brad's busy school schedule, the kids rarely get to see him anymore. He usually leaves before they wake up, and comes home after they are in bed. With my calling in Young Women's, I now have to be gone on Wednesday nights. That has allowed at least one time in the week (besides Sunday) that there can be some quality father-son time. Last night Brad was able to get some good videos in of Luke's crawling progress, and just how cute both boys are :) ENJOY!

Luke's First Crawls

Luke has been getting up on his knees, and rocking back and forth for a couple of months now. But his prefered method of transportation has still been scooting and mostly rolling around. Well tonight he actually did his first crawl! He still hasn't figured out that crawling is way better then scooting and rolling, but I'm sure he'll figure it out soon. :) He crawls only if whatever he's after isn't too far away, then he gets just close enough that it's barely out of reach, and lays on his belly and stretches until he gets it.

Isaac on the other hand sure didn't like the attention Luke was getting. As I was trying to record this special moment, he was in the corner of the room whining and crying. Afterwards, Isaac said, "Look Mommy!". I looked up to find him crawling across the floor just like Luke was. I think Isaac is at the beginning of a long road of learning how to share attention and toys. Hopefully I can get Isaac sharing nicely before Luke gets old enough to really care when Isaac tears toys out of his hands. Isaac has been an awesome big brother, and he is quick to give Luke hugs and kisses- and even his toys if he's in control and can choose which toy Luke gets. Its when Luke grabs a toy on his own that problems arise. I guess that's very normal for his age though!

More Spiderman!

I should have cleaned up my house before filming, but this was too cute not to post :)

Christmas Summary

Christmas came and left now and today we're gonna take down the tree, the decoration, and wash some dirty diapers.

So how was Christmas in Houston? Well sorry, I can't really tell you the differences between Houston and Salt Lake because I didn't really pay attention. You see, Luke and Isaac kept us both very occupied. We had two days worth of Christmas dinners with different groups of friends. We got to be with our family through video internet. We got to drive around town showing Isaac the Christmas lights, and decorations. He especially loved the blowup lawn decorations. Sometimes he'd shout out "OH SANTA!" and we'd have no idea what he's looking at until Amy or I spot a picture of Santa posted up on some stores window far far away. Isaac has good eyes! Amy got to eat her mom's yummy meatballs and cheesy potatoes, and I got to eat fun Puerto Rican rice and beans. Many friends and neighbors dropped off candy, cookies, banana bread, and Christmas cards. Amy got to help a sister in our ward sew up a handmade apron for her mom.

In order to teach the true meaning of spirit, I went around the house gathering our old unused clothes, especially the clothes that we're all too fat to wear now, and Isaac and I jumped in the car with those and a loaf of bread. I told Isaac that we were going to give this all away as presents for Christmas. And then I explained to Isaac that there were some very sad and cold and hungry duckies and that they really needed us to bring them bread. So we drove over to the duck pond and about 13 ducks were there quacking at us, we fed them bread and the duckies said "quack quack thank you!" and then they said, "quack quack Merry Christmas quack quack!" Isaac really felt proud of himself and we talked about how Christmas is a good time to help the hungry duckies.

Poor Amy got sick on Christmas Eve. She got a fever, got cold, got hot, and got very weak. The next morning she still felt bad but the worst of it had passed. On Christmas morning Isaac woke up at 9am on the dot. He walked into the living room and found it full of presents! "Oh wow!" he said, "pasents! pasents! PASENTS!" It wasn't until 11am that we finally had Isaac open the last present there were so many! Isaac got his Spiderman toys including a spiderman airplane that he had been begging for. He got a digital camera, some jammies, and loads more toys. Amy and I got help paying for a year of internet and a year of cell phone bills thanks to generous parents who understand that bills paid is the most appreciated gift all year long! I really enjoyed getting a DVD of my mom's family home videos. It's really fun to compare the current me to my mom's dad when he was my age. Also Isaac is very similar to the 2 year old Uncle Gary, and Luke is fun to compare to the 7 month old version of me! Some fun things Amy got was a marble rolling pin, a garlic mincer (NO MORE GARLIC FINGERS) and some crackle nail polish. Santa got me a lovely "Fry daddy." Which opens up my cooking skill to a whole new world of delectable dishes! We all got a little spoiled!

Also, with some of the money that we got from the lovely Great Grandma's we finally purchased a hand held VACUUM! HOORAY hip hip HOORAY! Now we can finally vacuum our couch, the cracks in the carpet, and our car! We're totally moving up in the world!

We are so very very blessed materialistically. We don't make much, but we have it all. Amy's new cloth diapering is about to start saving us some money and she's doing great dealing with all the poo. Which reminds me, Isaac is still avoiding the toilet like a haunted monster. We decided to go back to completely supervising his diet so that he eat much much less dairy, much much less fat and candy and a whole lot more fiber. Oh and I thought I'd mention another strange thing about Isaac. He's an ice cube. I don't know what's up with his internal thermostat but Isaac loves being cold. He'll kick off his blankets at night and sleep beautifully with his toes freezing off. When he takes a bath he'll scream at you if you add one drop too much of warm water. Amy doesn't understand this preference as she prefers to only have the hottest water imaginable all the time. I remember that when Isaac was Luke's age we took him camping in late fall. It became incredibly freezing at night, so cold all of us grown ups buried our head under our sleeping bags. But there was Isaac, head out, no hat, and all of his limbs were freezing to the touch. By the time we realized it, half the night was over and he hadn't cried once. So either we broke something in Isaac that night, or he's just naturally designed to live in the cold tundra of the Canadian wilderness on top of some barren snow capped mountain.

Anyways. I got side tracked. Next holiday coming up is a Happy New Year! Next Year Curtis and Marcie will be getting married and we're so excited for them! Also, Chelsea and Quynn's baby will be born around the same time! Jessica will be graduating from High School! Brittany and Bagi are doing great as newly weds, and we'll have to keep an eye on Christelle and Stephie to see what kinda trouble they get in this year! It's going to be a great year.

I just wanna say that Luke is getting so big. Amy and I were hit with the surprising truth yesterday that we no longer have an infant baby. We have a pre-toddler who's interactive, giggly, thick and rolly-polly. He's so much fun to feed apple sauce to! And as every day passes Isaac begins to be more and more entertained by Luke. They really are starting to interact more! It's so much fun to see them play. Isaac is very much a cutie pie with Luke, he's very loving and caring and teaching.

PS Amy's still a little sick. She's acting like she's pregnant, but she's not. Just wanna get that cleared up before the rumors start! We love you all and hope to enjoy this spectacular upcoming year.

Isaac is singing "Spiderman" all day long now. When we took him home from the hospital as a newborn we dressed him in a Spiderman outfit that Jake had given us. I guess it really affected him. I'm loving it!

Here's the ONLY Christmas pics that we took. We took lots of video though. We tried to post a video but it doesn't work right now. So maybe we'll try facebook. ENJOY

We went and saw Santa!