Thanksgiving (aka Pie Fest 2012)

This year on Thanksgiving Eve when we sat down to count the number of pies we had, there were a mere 14. Since there were 20 people at dinner this year, having only 14 pies was clearly unacceptable. So we made more pies. Here are some of them.

Here are some of the people who ate the pies.

 

For the record, my favorite pie this year was the Symphony bar pie. For the record, the coconut cream pie I made was the worst pie ever! If Aaron tells you to put in more coconut, don't listen to him!

After our delicious feast, we relaxed, chatted, and played a game called Headbanz. It reminded me of that episode of The Office where Dwight says: "Oh man! Am I a woman?" A good time was had by all.

Liz and Darren were lovely hosts as were my Mom and Dad. Always a pleasure to see those people. 

Before we left, I pulled out some of my old dresses and let Annie try them on. She was in heaven. Klara came and got some good play time in as well. My mom made both of these dresses. Wasn't she a good little seamstress?

Annie's Birthday

Annie turned 3 years old!! Here's a montage of our little lady on her birthday over the years. There are 4 pictures, but of course the first one is of her 0th birthday. 

At 3 years old, Annie is a gentle, happy, and energetic soul. In the last year, she has developed a lot in the "play pretend" area. Her favorite pretend scenarios lately are Diego and Cinderella. With Diego we "save the animals in trouble." With Cinderella, Annie drops a slipper, runs away and hides, and then makes Aaron or I pick up the slipper, try it on the evil stepsisters, and then put it on Annie (aka Cinderella). After that, we dance around the room/palace in complete bliss. Annie still changes her clothes up to 20 times per day. I'm hoping by next year we'll be able to report that she has grown out of that. Annie loves to help feed Scottie at dinner now that he is eating some solid foods. If he is laying on the floor, she also likes to help him sit up and put pillows all around him in case he falls over. Annie will be going into Primary in January. She's definitely ready for the change. She threw a mini-fit at church when I wouldn't let her go up and join the kids during the primary program. Annie is the most cute and fun and talkative in the morning right after she wakes up. After a long night of no interaction, she loves to tell me everything on her mind. And I love hearing it. She's a wonderful person. 

For Annie's cake this year, I found some cute ideas on pinterest and asked Annie which one she wanted. She voted for the "rainbow cake" and never looked back. I thought the cupcake caterpillar was fun, but she couldn't be swayed. So the cake pans I borrowed from Heather and Jason (best neighbors ever) were 9 inches instead of 8 inches like the recipe called for. So we 1 1/2'ed the recipe so we would have enough batter. We ended up with A LOT of cake. There were six layers (who really needs indigo) and frosting and dumdums on top. There were 5 cubes of butter in the final creation. It took me about 5 hours to make, which I was not anticipating. But all those colors did look awfully cute.

We got Annie a Cinderella barbie for her present. When Aaron sees a present like this, he usually makes a comment like, "Couldn't we get Annie some Legos for her birthday?" But he wasn't with us at Walmart when I saw Annie ooh and aah over the Cinderella barbie. If he'd been there, his heart would have been softened. I guess I could be proactive and try to get Annie to ooh and aah over the Legos next time. Based on her current mindset, I'm not convinced that would be effective.

I am one lucky mama. We love you, Annie Jane!

Halloween 2012

To the untrained/non-mother eye, all these pictures look the same. But there are actually subtle yet significant differences...which is why I am including them all. 

I could cut this one, but look at Annie's cute chocolate goatee. And Scottie's pacifier looks adorable.

I could cut this one because of the pillow sticking out, but Annie is looking at Scottie so sweetly.

I could cut this one, but who doesn't like some good, old-fashioned red-eye?

I could cut this one, but Annie is looking up at her dad.

I could cut this one, but I just couldn't.

This one was definitely a keeper. I must say those are two adorable kiddos.

Birthday Man

 Aaron turned 31 years old last week. For his party we invited Alan over for dinner, and I made this awesome cake that I can't for the life of me get oriented properly.

Aaron's loves reading about politics and since his birthday coincided with a presidential debate night, I decided the GOP elephant had to happen. My brother also pointed out that the cake looks like a 3-1 when it's on its side. So this cake was appropriate in so many partisan and non-partisan ways. 

 Go Mitt! And happy birthday to one fun guy :)

Annie the Foot Artist & Scotty the Ambivalent Eater

Annie and I have been going to a little toddler playgroup where the kids learn letters and do activities. One of our activities was painting. So lately Annie has been asking to paint. I take her outside, put her in one of my old shirt, give her the supplies, and let her go for it. The other day I had a she's-too-quiet-out-there moment and found Annie riding a becrowned pony with thoroughly painted feet. What a cutie.  

Scotty had his first official baby food the other night. We've been giving him microscopic pieces of this and that for a couple of weeks now, but he hasn't been all that interested in food. He gets it in his mouth, makes a disgusted face, and then spits it out. He's interested in food as a concept/theory but not as a component of his diet. That's okay with me because I'm all about the water soluble breast milk poop in our cloth diapers. But here are the documented "first meal" pictures.

 

Friendly Visit, Canning Apples, 5 Months

As you can see by the title, I'm going to post a bunch of unrelated events all together. Here goes:

Unrelated Event #1: My friend, Amanda, came for a visit. Sadly, her husband's grandma died. Happily, that event brought Amanda to Utah, and she stayed at my house for two whole days after her husband left for a fancy conference. How I miss that girl. We had a grand time together. Little Annette was here, too. Here are the two little A.J.s.

Do we look like sisters? We aren't sisters by blood, but we are sisters by soul.

Amanda flew home via the Provo Airport. Handy, that.

Unrelated Event #2: For the past 4 years of marriage we have somehow managed to stumble upon free or nearly free apples. You know what they say--when life gives you apples, make applesauce. So we do. This year Aaron's lab mate had a friend who knew a lady who had a cousin whose mother-in-law had a neighbor who knew a guy with some apple trees (or something like that). They weren't going to use them, so we did. We headed up to Mom Dennis's house because she was canning, too. We got 52 quarts and helped Mom Dennis do 100ish quarts. Canning always makes me feel so productive. I love counting those cans and seeing them lined up in a row. Go us.

Unrelated Event #3: Scotty turned 5 months old. What a sweet boy he is. He can now roll over both ways, although he has only fully done the back to front roll once. He weighs almost 17 pounds and has a 45 cm head. Apparently, that's big. Some 12 month old shirts won't fit over his gigantic noggin.

He's a good-natured baby. He now sleeps about 11 hours at night with one feed some time in there. That makes one happy mama. He thinks Annie is funny and loves to watch her do anything. Annie has been really good about entertaining him when I ask her to. What great kiddos. It's fun and rewarding to see them grow.

Crazy Campers

In August, we had a Dennis Family Camping Adventure. Brother Alan planned it all out. We drove through a bunch of tiny Utah towns up to the Uintahs. Then we hiked 4 miles to Grandaddy Lake. I repeat, we (Aaron, me, Annie, and Scotty) hiked 4 miles to a mountain lake. That was a lot of work, people. But we did it, and I will even venture to say that it was fun. Not go-on-a-date-with-your-husband fun, but rather I-just-gave-childbirth fun.

Okay, okay, so it really wasn't bad. And everyone else on the trip (Alan, Russell, Angela, Ma & Pa Dennis) helped us out a lot with the kiddos. Still, I probably won't go on a backpacking camping trip again until our kids are old enough to hike the whole way by themselves. I also won't go on another backpacking trip where we are carrying yogurt and cans of black beans up the mountain in sacks in our hands because there isn't room for them in the pack!! We ate really good once we got there, but on the way up I was wishing we had just brought Cup O' Noodles for every meal.

The Lake was worth all that work, though. Isn't it gorgeous?

Annie became seriously sleep-deprived during the course of our camping. It was physically impossible for her to close her eyes and go to sleep in the tent for a nap during the day. And she wouldn't go to sleep in the tent until we were all going to sleep. So, overall, she had about 5 hours less sleep per day than usual. She did get one 20 minute nap while we were there. She and Aaron were in the raft and, in a drunken stupor, she stood up. Aaron wasn't sure what she was trying to do, but she finally maneuvered herself over to Aaron's lap and promptly fell asleep. She was one tired girl.

The other camping element that proved to be a trial was Annie's fascination with camel packs. She LOVED getting water out of them, and that's what she'd do to keep herself entertained. A lot of water in a little bladder equals MANY trips to the bathroom. Did I say bathroom? We sure didn't have one of those. I meant many trips to make water in the great outdoors. If you were wondering, it's a little bit tricky to keep a squatting 2 year old from getting herself and her clothes wet while she's relieving herself. But we got pretty good at it since she went potty 4 or 5 times an hour. That's not an exaggeration.

So now that I've done all my complaining, let me tell you all the awesome things about the trip. Scotty did great. I lost sleep because I worried about him being cold and the bears that were coming to eat us, but he slept like a rock. I already mentioned the lake, and our campsite was also very green and beautiful with lots of pine trees.

We camped next to a meadow where we saw deer and birds and chipmunks. The chipmunks were very friendly...if you're talking about the kinds of friends who chew through a tarp, a cloth grocery bag, and a ziploc bag (all of which are hanging from a tree) to steal your trail mix. At our campsite someone had left behind a chain mail bag with really strong velcro at the opening. We didn't understand the bag until the chipmunks ate our food. Then we commandeered the bag in order to S.O.S. (save our snacks.)

Another cool thing about the trip was that we got all of our water from a mountain spring. The water really looked like it was just coming forth from a rock--like Moses and the children of Israel. We filtered it with John and Julie's fancy filter. It tasted delicious, and there were no cases of dysentery.

Like I said, we ate really good on this trip. We had tin-foil dinners and chicken burritos and black beans (curse them!) and yogurt (curse it!) and bagels and granola bars galore and dried fruit and trail mix. Good thing we did all that hiking or I would have come home several pounds heavier. Our packs came home several pounds lighter instead.

My other favorite part about camping is that it is so quiet. I did have a moment by myself at the campsite where all I could hear was the sound of silence. It was beautiful.

Annie got really dirty, and I didn't care. That was liberating in a way. In lieu of her oodles of dresses that she changes in and out of all day, she decided her favored clothing object would be her leopard print pajamas. So that's what she wore most of the time. 

And I've got to mention Aaron's awesome brothers who went ahead of everyone and then came back to help us with our kids and our stuff. They did that on the way up and on the way down. They were real hiking heroes.