Learning to Crawl!

Like I mentioned before, James shows much more interest in moving himself around (scooting, rolling, etc.) than in learning to sit up. This weekend he made some huge progress in learning how to crawl. He alternates his hands and feet just like crawling now, and he can push himself up onto all fours. I've been trying to get a video of it, but like most babies do, he freezes pretty much as soon as he sees me with the camera. I'm going to keep trying to catch it, but until then here's a cute video of James moving around a bit.

It is incredible to watch James as he learns to do things. Paul and I were watching a movie on Saturday and James was playing on the floor. We found ourselves watching James more than the movie! :)

Two More Pies!

So, we got invited to dinner with the same families in our ward again yesterday. When Paul asked them on Saturday what we should bring, they said, "Ooh! Bring the same thing you brought last week!" Now, I couldn't bring myself to make the exact same thing, but I decided to do the fruit pie again with different fruit, and then I found a recipe online for a peanut butter and chocolate pie. Here they are in all their glory:


Once again, there were no leftovers. :) Two of the little girls got very excited about the peanut butter cup pie. When they started eating it, one of them said to the other, "It's even better than I dreamed it would be!" So cute!


And, just because I thought it was cute, here's a picture of James from this weekend. He really likes sitting in his Bumbo (thanks, Aunt Debbie!) at the table with us when we eat dinner. :)

Troublemaker

Yesterday, James gave us a taste of the little troublemaker he's going to be as he continues to get older and more mobile. Paul and I were in the kitchen doing some dishes. I had just cleaned up the living room, and James was playing on the floor. Suddenly, we hear a small crash and look up to find James surrounded by videos with a huge smile on his face. We have a stack of VHS tapes and Xbox games that don't fit into our DVD towers, and James decided he wanted to play with them.


He thought it was pretty funny. :) I didn't even try to get him to smile for the pictures, he was smiling already!



Looks like I need to find a place to put those videos if I don't want to be restacking them multiple times a day. :)

A Balancing Act

So, James is nearing his 6-month birthday (it's one week away), and despite being ahead of the game in many areas such as rolling, scooting, and growing teeth, he's showing basically no interest in learning how to sit up. If you ask me, he just doesn't want to stay still for that long. ;) Anyway, I try and sit him up a little bit every day to work on his balance. Yesterday I managed to get him to stay that way long enough to take a few pictures!

Everyday Dinners

If you're very observant, you may have noticed that I recently added a link on my blog under 'Related Websites' called 'What's for Dinner?' That link takes you to a blog that I just started with my sister to help us with the daily chore of making dinner. :) Both of our husbands get tired of us always asking them what we should make for dinner, so Brian (Paula's husband) thought of this idea to help us know what to make every week and provide a place for us to collect recipes. I'm very excited about it! Every week (on shopping day) we'll post our planned menu for the week. Then, throughout the week, we'll post recipes and pictures (if we have them), and generally discuss how things are going.

Paula and I think that the more contributors we have to the blog, the better (more recipes, more ideas!), so if you're interested in participating, let us know!

Also, if you want the recipes for the pies I posted about earlier today, you can find them there. :)

What's For Dinner?

Two Pies!

Yesterday, we went to a barbecue with a bunch of families from our ward. It was a lot of fun! We had a big joint FHE and ate a lot of good food. It was really nice to get to know people from the ward.

When we asked the family that hosted the barbecue what we should bring, they said we could bring dessert. I was so excited! Dessert I can do! :) So, after going through all my cookbooks and even doing some searching online, I decided to make two relatively easy but summery pies.

The first one I made was a recipe I've had for a long time but I had forgotten all about it. It's called German Sweet Chocolate Pie:


The second one is a recipe I found in a little cookbook my home ward gave out a few years ago of collected recipes from the Louisville Ward Relief Society. It's one of Sister Farnsworth's recipes called French Fruit Pie:


They were both delicious! (I'm so humble. ;) ) They were a big hit at the barbecue. There wasn't any left over from either pie.

Ga ga?

Two posts in one day? I know, crazy stuff! Anyway, I just caught this great video of James' baby talk. Just like every cartoon baby or toy baby you've ever seen, James says "ga ga". Oh yes. He's so cliche, isn't he? We tried to tell him he shouldn't be so stereotypical, but he seems to like being "normal".

At the Ballgame

James and I have had a great time watching Paul play softball this summer. Paul has been playing on two teams: his work team and our ward team. Yesterday was the last game for his work team.

James was in a great mood during the whole game:


Paul's jersey for his work team (He's #23 of course, and he's carried on his nickname from playing with the Knights: Sushi.):


James really does seem to enjoy going to these games. The indoctrination is starting young!

Giving Becca a run for her money...

So, my niece Becca is always falling asleep in strange positions. It's quite funny. However, ever since James started becoming so active, he's been moving all over his crib too. Usually he just falls asleep along one of the sides of the crib, but sometimes he falls asleep in positions that crack us up. This one from his nap yesterday can definitely give Becca a run for the title of Weirdest Sleeping Position:


It was pretty hilarious. :)

Two Fabulous Years

As of Monday, Paul and I have been married for two years. :) Aside from the fact that Paul had to work all day, we had a great anniversary. We didn't have any huge plans, and with limited time and money it seemed our celebration was going to be small. In spite of this, we both managed to surprise each other and have a great evening. :)

Paul walked in the door from work holding these in his hands:


You may be thinking, "That's cute, but oh so traditional. Where's the surprise in that?" Well, you'll all be surprised to find out that this is the first time in our married life (and even before we were married) that Paul has bought me chocolates. Shocking, I know (especially if you know me)! I think he was nervous because I'm such a chocolate connoisseur. ;) Well, he shouldn't have worried, because he hand-picked these, and they are wonderful. As for the flowers, well, they weren't surprising, but they were lovingly selected. (Caution: Those with weak stomachs for cheesy romantic stuff, you may not want to read this next bit. ;) ) The red Paul chose to signify love (and because it's my favorite), and the white he picked for purity. Together they symbolize Pure Love. Aww! Paul's such a softy!

My surprise for Paul was the menu for the evening:


He knew I was making dinner, but I kept the menu a surprise (well, until I started struggling in the kitchen and needed Paul's help ;) ). For dinner we had a spinach salad with strawberries and slivered almonds and Penne with Shrimp and Creamy Tomato Sauce (as you can see from the recipe, I changed the type of pasta, but it was still good). Here are a couple close ups:


These strawberries were delicious! If you ask me, it was a pity to waste them on a salad. Ha ha.


It was definitely a new cooking adventure for me because first of all, I have never cooked shrimp, and second of all, I have never cooked with wine. (Speaking of wine, I now have a mostly full bottle of Sweet Vermouth and nothing to do with it...if you come across a recipe that uses it, please let me know! We'll probably make this recipe again with a different meat because shrimp is expensive, but other ideas are welcome.) It was fun! Shrimp cooks incredibly fast (we're talking like, two minutes). The sauce was very thin--I actually predicted it would be, because the recipe didn't call for any kind of thickening agent--so next time we'll probably throw in a couple tablespoons of flour or something. But it was tasty! I'm glad I went out on a limb and tried it.

In addition to the salad and main course, we had Shirley Temples to drink and these amazing Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies with vanilla ice cream for dessert:


They were incredibly rich. The ice cream helped calm it down a bit. ;) If you look at the recipe, I made mine with creamy peanut butter and didn't put the peanuts in the brownies. I also used cream instead of whole milk for the peanut butter layer simply because I drink skim milk and I already had to buy cream for the main course.

Anyway, it was a great night. I can't believe we've already been married for two years. We've had a lot of adventures so far, and they're sure to continue. :) Oh! And speaking of cheesy romantic stuff, Paul got me the best card! Here's what it said:

She looked at him.
He looked at her.
And everyone who saw that look wanted to throw up a little.

Isn't that great? :)

Special note for Paul: I love you! Happy Anniversary again! And guess what? In honor of you, this entry is the 23rd one in our family blog.

Report on James' Appointment

I took James to the doctor today as a follow-up to his 4-month appointment where James' head circumference was suddenly in the 95th percentile. I'm happy to report that his head has not really grown that much in the last month (75th percentile now), and the doctor thinks everything looks good. Of course we'll still keep track in the coming months, but I'm glad I didn't worry about it too much.


Also, I was right about the growth spurt! James weighs 15 lbs 14 oz now! Four more ounces and he will have doubled his birth weight. :)

Fourth of July in Washington, and a Big First for James!

On Thursday afternoon, my cousin Emily started chatting with me on Facebook and asked if we'd like to come up to their house in Puyallup, Washington for the weekend. I talked to Paul about it when he got home, and we decided that was a great idea! We packed up and drove there that very evening. :) Thanks to Debbie and Brent for having us! We had a wonderful weekend!

Here are some pictures of what we did in Washington:

We went to the Calls' ward Fourth of July breakfast and filled up on delicious food:


We played 3 on 4 baseball at the park behind the Calls' house (poor Ryan got a fat lip...no pictures of that, though):

"Go Dad!"

We played croquet (Debbie and Brent's team won. Paul and I were close though! We even made it to poison status!):


We set off fireworks in the cul de sac (It's hard to capture pictures of fireworks, but it was lots of fun.):


And last, but most important, we took James to his first Major League baseball game in Seattle!
(Doesn't James look like he thinks it's the coolest to be sitting there in his dad's lap at a ball game? :) ):

We had a great time. The game was so fun (the Mariners won), we got a third hat for our wall (for those who don't know, Paul and I buy a hat at each stadium we go to...we hope to make it to all of them in our lifetime), and James enjoyed it. Well, he mostly enjoyed it. The funniest part of the weekend was that James wasn't phased in the least by the booming fireworks--And let me tell you, they were incredibly loud and numerous. They rattled the windows! And yet James didn't care. He even went to bed at his normal bedtime on Friday, and slept right through all the fun--But when it comes to crowds cheering at a baseball game, that is apparently thoroughly frightening. James got scared and whimpered every time the crowd cheered suddenly. Poor little guy! Well, I'm sure he'll get used to that, right Grandpa Peterson? ;)


It was great to see my aunt and uncle and cousins! Once again, I'm so glad that we live within short driving distance (just over two and half hours) of some of our family. It's nice to be able to spend a holiday with family.

Oh, and as usual, there are more pictures than I can post here. The rest of them can be found here.

Also, if you look closely at the picture of James smiling earlier on in this post, you can see that he has two teeth coming in! My little guy is growing up fast! Here's a closeup:

Long time no Blog!

I'm back! I know you were all anxiously awaiting my return to blogging (ok, maybe two of you...possibly three), and here I am! I got back in town last Friday night, had a weekend of fun around the Portland area with some friends from the internet, and things are finally settling down to "normal" (whatever that means). The biggest thing that's been keeping me from sitting down to post here is that I have absolutely no idea where to start! I still don't know, but I figured if I just started writing I'd get somewhere. Hopefully I'll get caught up soon!

OK, I can't think of a better way to begin this blog entry than with a very cute video of James laughing, can you? This one was caught at the airport in Denver. I got to spend an extra hour with my mom because my flight home was delayed:

Unfortunately this video doesn't show the best laughs. He was laughing harder than I've ever seen him laugh right before we got the camera out, but of course he didn't find the camera as funny as my face. ;) C'est la vie.

James and I had an absolutely wonderful time in Colorado with my family. I'm so glad we got to visit! I'm so grateful to Paul for being supportive of me taking this trip. The only thing that would have made it better is if he could have been there with me.

Here are a few pictures from my adventures with James in Pagosa Springs, CO:

I swear, there were no baby boy hats to be found anywhere! We had to improvise...at least we got the team right!


Pagosa Springs is very beautiful. It's in the southwest corner of Colorado (a six and a half hour drive from Louisville!), in the middle of the mountains. We went on two very short hikes to see waterfalls. It was gorgeous!


Like I said, we had a wonderful time. I really like living in Oregon, but it does have one flaw, and that is being so far away from our families. I hope we'll be able to visit (and have people come visit us here!) often in the future!


I obviously have way more pictures than I can post here, so the rest of them can be found here. Don't be surprised if a few of them show up in future blog entries, though. ;)

Oh, and just in case you were feeling bad for Paul for missing out on all the fun, he found a few things to do to keep him busy:


In addition to the white water rafting, Paul also went out to sushi and went to a minor league baseball game while we were gone. :)