Thursday, May 22, 2014

Beds, Tulips, and Easter

Around the middle of April it started being difficult to put Tommy down for a nap. Not because of him, but because my expanding belly didn't allow me to lay him down very comfortably. The solution? Turning Tommy's crib into a toddler bed. We removed the front part and replaced it with the shorter half gate you see below. The first week was an adventure. He loves his bed and frequently climbs into it so that he can jump or cuddle or whatnot. But he also loves his toys, which we keep in his room. The first few nights when we went in to check on him we found the door blocked by a mysterious something that wasn't there when we closed the door. He eventually learned that it was more comfortable to sleep in the bed, but I still have to go stop him from playing with toys sometimes when it is nap time. Night time he is pretty good. He will walk right up to his bed and get in it. All we have to do is put the blanket on him and all done. I was a little skeptical initially, but it has been great.

This is Tommy's first time trying it out. You can tell that he wasn't ready to sleep when we took the picture.
 In Utah there is a place called Thanksgiving Point. It has all sorts of venues for adults and children alike. During the spring, they have what they call a tulip festival in their garden area. They import millions of tulips from Holland and plant them each year. We went there with Ammon's parents and his sister's family. This first picture was an attempt at capturing Thomas do something cute. He has a tendency to try and get the camera whenever I pull it out, so the photo isn't very revealing as to what he was doing.
 Sophie is our niece. She is sitting on a post, but not interested in photo opportunities.
Tommy was a little better at posing.

 That's Ammon and Tommy across the stream. Thomas wasn't interested in walking on the path just then.

 Now for some attempts at some artsy-fartsy photos.



 I absolutely loved the orange tulips they had in this area.


 This is Ammon posing for the camera. He's better at it than Thomas.
 I tried to get some closeups of Tommy and the flowers, but as I mentioned before, if the camera's close he wants to be closer. So most of these are either far away, or blurred due to a running child.




 Look at Tommy stand still for Ammon's picture. I'm not jealous at all.

After this picture I gave up. Which is too bad. We saw some other beautiful areas. I guess it stopped being worth it to me. We did have a picnic dinner on the grass after a while. It was a beautiful day and place with wonderful people.

Okay. The last part of the title implies that we did something on Easter. Which we did. Sort of. We invited Ammon's family over the Saturday before for a barbeque. We had chicken and hot dogs with egg salad and chips. Before lunch we did an Easter egg hunt. The kiddos enjoyed it so much that we ended up hiding some of the eggs twice just so they could search for them. The day before Thomas helped me fill the eggs. He didn't know it was candy he was putting in them until later. Because of his insider knowledge when he was gathering the eggs all he wanted to do was open the eggs. He wasn't interested in finding more. It took some coaxing from Ammon and the older cousins.
We had lots of good food and conversation and they ended up staying for the whole day with Papa Murphy's for dinner. It was good to see everyone and catch up. I can't think of much else to say and I don't have pictures from then, so this will be the end. Until next time. Whenever that will be.

Tasty, Jackie-Made Treats

Recently (and by recently I mean the past year or so) I have been practicing the art of making tasty and beautiful treats. This post is to show off my accomplishments, because really why make something pretty and not take a picture of it.

We'll start with my birthday cake. The real challenge in making cakes is that Ammon doesn't like them very much. So this cake is no ordinary fluff cake. It is a layered pineapple upside-down cake. That means that the filling is the tasty pineapple, brown sugar mix typically found on the bottom of pineapple upside-down cake. mmmm... so good. I'm also rather proud of my decorations, though admittedly I'm showing the pretty side of the cake. :)



This next one I made for Easter. We had a bunch of Ammon's family over for a BBQ the Saturday before Easter. I asked Ammon what kind of dessert he wanted and he said trifle. Well, this was one tasty trifle. Fresh cut strawberries, real whipped cream, vanilla pudding with cream cheese mixed in, and delicious butter yellow cake. I also decorated some cupcakes (which I don't seem to have pictures of) so that such deliciousness wouldn't be wasted on unappreciative children. They didn't seem to mind too much. I think.





Have you started drooling yet? I have. 
Okay, the next item was made a while ago. I don't remember, maybe a year and a half ago. Ammon had recently gotten me a bundt cake pan and this was one of my creations. I couldn't tell you what kind it is anymore. It's been too long. Bundt cakes are often moister so Ammon approves of them more easily. Doesn't that chocolate look good?


And now for a less sweet thing. I like to tease Ammon about how he likes salty, greasy things. Whenever I ask him what kind of treat he wants at Christmas time it never fails that he requests a cheese ball. This one is from two years ago. I couldn't tell you what I put in the cream cheese mixture, but I found this neat design online and tried it out. It was pretty delicious. And just in case you can't tell, it's supposed to be a pine cone.


This last picture is not of a treat, but I wanted to put it somewhere. Mainly it is for Ann. Can you find a set? It is a 1 in 2500 chance that there isn't a set here. Still, we haven't found one yet.

That's all for the treat post. I hope you enjoyed it.