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.