A Body in Motion

Caden has finally acquired some consistent forward motion. Here he is demonstrating his inch worm technique. (And lest Emilee chide me again for having him in long sleeves in July, these are his pj's, and yes it is cold in our house at night.)

Almost Finished

We are just so excited at our house to have a project nearing completion. Ryan says he is "85% done" with the planter boxes. All that is left is the center decoration, the bottom mounts, knocking out the temporary supports, then painting and hanging! You can see the progress for yourselves.

Exploring

Caden has become an accomplished roller and loves to go exploring. The other day he found the doorstop in the office. It makes a great sound when he pulls on it and its his new favorite thing to do. In the picture you can see him getting ready to flick it with his thumb.

The Bean Crop

We harvested the first of our green beans this week. We were able to get 14 pints plus a little left over for eating fresh. The finished product looks better than the picture - the water isn't really brown like that. Its just a combination of weird light and a slight discoloration in the beans because I used idodized instead of non-idodized salt.

I was thinking today as I spent three and a half hours washing, snapping, washing again, packing, and processing the beans that Ryan and I make a pretty good pair. He loves to garden and I enjoy canning. I'm so greatful for my loving husband who works so hard to provide for our family.

Lake Powell Trip

We spent Wednesday - Saturday last week with my parents and siblings at Lake Powell. It was nice to just relax and spend time with the family. I love going to the lake so much, its almost like the feeling of going home when the houseboat first comes into sight.

We camped in Halls Creek this year so we could have a sandy beach for the kids and it worked out nicely.

Ryan was on a mission to get Caden swimming, so his first activity was to ease Caden into the water. They started out sitting on the beach playing with one of Caden's bath toys, their feet just slightly into the water. Then the bath toy started to float out a little, and Ryan helped Caden reach for it by scooting him into the water a little more. They repeated the process multiple times, chasing the cup into the water until Caden was all the way in. Such a good daddy!

Once Caden was in, he became a little fish in the water. He loved floating around with daddy. He would giggle if someone would float in circles with him, play "motor boat," or ride the waves up and down. Grandma had the touch and got him onto his back. As soon as he figured that out he started kicking his feet and splashing in the water.

As much as he liked the water, kiddo was lulled to sleep by the boat rides. Every time he went out he fell asleep. I guess he didn't find watching mommy ski or wakeboard very interesting. Even once we got back to the houseboat, he would sleep on the ski boat for hours. I think I need to invest in a boat - it cured my cat napper!

I couldn't tell who had more fun playing in the sand - kiddo or daddy! Caden would sit on the shore and watch the waves come up and down the sand. We tried sitting him on the beach in his life jacket, but he could barely wiggle, so we took pity on him and let him out. Daddy buried his legs in the sand and kiddo thought that was pretty interesting.

I bought an inflatable octopus ring toss game before we left. Caden likes to put rings on his feet, so I thought he would enjoy putting rings on the arms of the octopus. He enjoyed playing with the rings and the octopus, just not at the same time. Maybe next year. The box did say 3+, after all.

Kiddo had a good time with his cousins. The three of them actually played really well together. Madisen and Caitlyn were so cute to share with Caden and bring him toys (but no food). Grandma bought them all Lake Powell t-shirts, carrying on the tradition of her mother who used to buy t-shirts for all of us. The shirts say "Toadally Cute," "Lake Powell," and "Sticky Sweet."

Ryan's HDR Photos of Lake Powell

Ryan is pretty handy with a camera and takes some great landscape shots. Recently he downloaded a program that lets him touch up and combine his photos to create HDR (High Definition Resolution?) pictures. It really brings out the colors when he works his magic, check out the blue sky in the first one and the red rocks in the second one.

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Three bags full;
One for the master,
And one for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

Last night I helped Ryan's mom sort through her boxes of fabric. We found a few swaths of wool and after that this nursery rhyme kept going through my head. On a random note, the tune for this nursery rhyme is the same as the tune for Twinkle, Twinkle and the ABC song. Caden really likes the ABC song, so I'm thinking he'll take nicely to this one.

Taking Shape

Ryan took Monday and Tuesday off from work to get a few things done around the house. After much discussion about the pending projects list, we decided he would work on the planter boxes for our bedroom windows. He welded so much he got an "arc burn" (a sunburn from the welding sparks). He wasn't able to finish, but he got a huge chunk done.

Turkey Burgers

Ingredients:
1 to 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
to taste salt

Instructions:
Mix all ingredients together. This mixture will be loose, and will not form traditional patties. Take a large spoon and drop by spoonfuls onto a lightly oiled, hot griddle. Flatten with a spatula.Cook for about 3-4 minutes per side.Serve with baked herbed potatoes or rice noodles.

Review:
We both liked this. We ate them plain rather than on buns, which worked because they didn't need any condiments. They were moist and the pumpkin added just the right amount of sweetness. They stored and reheated well.

Crazy!

Aunt Karlee has too much fun with the color switch setting on her camera.

All Dolled Up

For Kara and Kalina's birthdays Karlee took all the girls to Hazen Studios for a makeover and photo shoot. Shawn occupied Caden for the majority of the time. He's so great with kids (at least he is with this one)!

We had a great time. Thanks Karlee! I can't wait to get the official photos back.

New Toys and a New Trick

In the past few weeks both Grandmas have give Caden a new toy. Grandma Dodds started things off by noticing Caden loves to investigate the tags on all his toys. So she rounded up ribbons and rick-rack and encouraged me to make a tag toy for Caden. You can see it on the floor in the foreground. His favorite tag right now is the red zig zag ribbon.
Grandma Scherbel noticed Caden's love for loud things and combined it with his love for buckets. She saved a #10 can and a few frozen juice lids for us. I covered the can in contact paper and its Caden's new favorite toy. He hasn't really gotten the hang of dropping the lids in the slot of the plastic lid, but he loves to fill and dump the can when it doesn't have a lid on it.

He has also learned to push bottons. When we wakes up in his crib he rolls over onto his tummy and will push the button to start his mobile and music. Then he'll lay there slowly waking up and watching the mobile. The funniest part about this is there are four buttons, each one plays a different classical composer. I always put Caden to bed with Mozart, the 2nd button from the top. The first few days I found him with his music going it was Bach, the bottom button, but after a few days he found the button that plays the familiar music and he gets that one every time.

The not so cute place he has learned to push buttons is on my stereo. The other day I was in the kitchen and my stereo went silent. I went into the family room and found Caden looking very guilty. I put him back on the other side of the room with instructions not to turn mommy's stereo off. About 5 minutes later the radio went silent again. I caught Caden frantically rolling away from the stereo. This time, the power wasn't off, the volume had just been turned all the way down. Its become a bit of a fascination for him now to roll over and push various buttons.

Steel Days

Yesterday marked the end of American Fork's week long Steel Days event. We didn't go to many of the festivities, but one of them came to us. We were suprised around 7:45 when a hot air balloon came through the neighborhood, missing a few of the roofs by a matter of only a few feet. It was pretty cool to see the balloon so close up.

Ryan and his dad went to the pancake breakfast fundraiser for the marching band. They were impressed both with the length of the line and the efficiency of the set up. The line wound clear through the Albertson's parking lot, but moved steadily. Once as the front of the line all you had to do was grab your plate and move on.

More Vacation Pics

I was going through the Picasa albums of Ryan's sisters and I found a few more pictures from our adventure to Blackfoot Res in Idaho over the July 4 weekend. I hope Kalina doesn't mind me lifting them from her. The first is of Ryan feeding the birds, the second of Grandma and Grandpa protecting Caden's ears in anticipation of a sparkler bomb, and the last is of Caden and me wading in the lake. Enjoy.

At the Baby Contest

Caden's spot on his face mostly cleared up, so we went ahead and entered him into the baby contest. This picture portrays fairly well how it went. While we were waiting for our turn to be judged he did fairly well smiling at strangers and giggling with his toys, but as soon as we got to the judges he just started looking around. He wanted to investigate the judges' table, the canopy, the balloons. Pretty much he looked at everything except for Miss American Fork (our designated judge). He didn't flash his million dollar smile, so I'm pretty sure he didn't win. The winners were announced two hours after Caden's age division was judged and we didn't hang around. They said they'd call us if he won. So far the phone has been silent. It was pretty entertaining to see all the kids and moms. Some of them had gone all out with costumes and everything.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

Well, its probably only 15 minutes if you read really slow. In April I was voted in as chair of the Neighbors In Action Committee in American Fork. We meet once a month and I feel like things are going well so far. At our July meeting a reporter from the local paper showed up, took pictures, and then called me later for an interview. This is the culmination of her efforts: http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/273727/. I hustled over to the local newsrack and purchased a copy of the paper for myself. I had to chuckle when I opened it up and saw how big the picture was - it took up nearly 1/4 of the page!

Vote for trees!

I saw this in a Salt Lake Tribune Article this morning.

"The juice company Odwalla is allowing visitors to the www.parkvisitor.com/odwalla Web site to vote on which state they would like five trees to be planted at a state park. One of the eight options is Utah. The others are California, Colorado, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio."

Go forth and vote!

The final pea crop

I mentioned that we pulled out the rest of the peas last Saturday. We decided to salvage what we could for seed for future years. Here is a picture of our biggest plastic bowl full of the peas. They are now drying safely in our dehydrater.

Dumpster Diving Take II

Day two of cleaning out Ryan's old office ended with the following free additions to our family: four large shelving units (4 ft x 8 ft), one small shevling unit (4 ft x 5 ft), three tall filing cabinets (4 drawers), one short filing cabinet (2 drawers), one lateral filing cabinet (4 drawers), and one heavy duty large shevling unit. And yes, it all fit in the truck in one trip. We are going to use them to organize the garage.

Lagoon!

On Monday Caden and I went to Lagoon with my mom and sister. It was my parent's stake Lagoon day so we went and used all the free coupons. We only stayed a few hours because kiddo doesn't have much of an attention span, but we enjoyed the outing. I never realized how many museums they have tucked away in Pioneer Village. We walked through a train museum, a doll museum, and a carriage museum. We rode the wild animal train, but Caden was more interested in checking out the actual train than the animals.
Caden rode the carousel three times - once with each of us. He looked around so attentively at all the moving parts. He checked out the lights, the horses, the poles - everything. I'm not sure he fully appreciated that he was moving as well.

Yankee Doodle

How did I miss this one? We can't go through July without a patriotic nursery rhyme. While the version popular today is actually a mockery of early American settlers, the song has a rich history. Many Colonial era groups used the tune and concept to create thier own verses which were often used as marching songs for the armies. You can read more verses at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle.

Yankee Doodle came to town,
A-ridin' on a pony;
He stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.

Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle Dandy;
Mind the music and the steps
And with the girls be handy.

Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Cap'n Goodwin;
The men and boys all stood around
As thick as hasty puddin'.

Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle Dandy;
Mind the music and the steps
And with the girls be handy.

Garden Update

With the extra cool spring our garden got off to a bit of a slow start. Ryan climbed on the roof yesterday to take this updated picture. He ahs been working extremely hard to get all the weeds out and put mulch between all the rows. The peas are finished for the year, so we took those out yesterday and will plant corn in their place. The first round of spinach and the romaine lettuce are also done for the year. We're about halfway through our second crop of spinach. The peppers are getting close to being ready to harvest and we have two zucchini that will be ripe early next week. The tomato plants have little bulbs on them - we can't wait!

The Allergy Saga Continues

On Thursday we went to a new allergist in Salt Lake. I really liked him. He spent nearly an hour and a half with me, talking about Caden's allergies, testing him, and talking about a plan of action. We did another skin prick test, this time for 21 items. Caden tested positive for all but 5 of them. Positive results in skin prick tests are only 60% accurate, so we have to do a blood test to follow up on all the foods he tested positive for. It requires so much blood they can't take it all from him at once, so we went to the hospital for a blood draw today and we'll have to go back again in a week. We have a follow up appointment on July 31 to get the results of the blood test. In the meantime, we're to assume the results are accurate.

Not allergic to:
Trees (boxelder, birch, juniper, cedar, oak, ash, cottonwood, elm)
Timothy grass
Cats
Chicken
Turkey

Allergic to:
Weeds (sagebrush, plantain, ragweed)
Molds (alternaria, aspergillus, hormodendrum, penicillium)
Dogs
Eggs
Milk
Wheat
Soy
Peanut
Orange
Corn
Pea
Beef
Barley
Lima Bean
Kidney Bean (These were tested because Caden has reacted to green, black and pinto beans, but they didn't have a serum to test those)
Oat (we are pretty sure this is a false positive because we've given him lots of oatmeal)

Muscle Man

Kiddo is getting strong. The other day he was lifting weights in the computer room. You can tell its heavy by the look on his face.

Dumpster Diving

Ryan's office is moving buildings, and today was the last day at the old building. They sent around multiple e-mails warning that anything left in the fridge would be thrown out. Ryan had taken steak and potatoes for lunch in a nice tupperware container we "stole" from his great grandma. He went out to lunch with a coworker and forgot the tupperware in the fridge. He called me to stop and get it (I was in Salt Lake today), but by the time I got there a little after six the fridge was empty already. I gave up and came home. Ryan didn't want to lose his steak or his heirloom container, so after dinner he went back to do a little dumpster diving. He came back with quite the haul as it looks like everyone else forgot their goods as well. The steak was still cold, sandwiched safely between all the frozen dinners.

Crunchy Chicken Dinner

Crunchy Chicken Dinner
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients:
2 cups crushed tortilla chips
1/4 tsp garlic salt
1/8 tsp pepper, freshly ground
1/4 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp paprika
2-3 lbs chicken for frying

Instructions:
Place all ingredients but chicken into a plastic bag. Shake well and set aside. Rinse chicken pieces thoroughly in warm water. Coat by placing pieces, one at a time, in the spice mixture bag and shaking until well covered. Place chicken in a lightly greased 9x13 baking dish. Bake at 375 for 60 minutes or until tender.

Modifications:
I used 2 chicken breasts cut into strips. Instead of baking the chicken, I fried it in a pan on the stove. I used 1 tsp of coconut oil to fry in, which I'm sure modified the taste somewhat but the flavors mixed well. By frying instead of baking I was able to cook the chicken in 15 minutes.

Review:
We liked it. Ryan thought the tortilla chips dried things out a little and I'm not sure I felt like they added much to the flavor, so I think next time I might try making it with just the spices. Also, my chips didn't stay attached to the chicken well. I think it was supposed to be more like chicken nuggets, and what we ended up with definately did not resemble chicken nuggets. The flavor was nice without being too strong. We had it with wild rice and spinach salad and it looked like a gourmet meal. Its the kind of thing you could confidently make for company.

Hey Diddle Diddle

Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

This is a nursery rhyme about the constellations. We just got back from vacationing where the stars were so bright and kiddo stayed up every night to see them. I get the feeling that just as we get hin back on schedule with an earlier bed time we'll be off to the next vacation.

Blackfoot Res. Holiday Weekend

We spent the holiday weekend with Ryan's family at his grandma's cabin on the shore of Blackfoot Reservior. The lake is beautiful and mostly secluded, so its a great, quiet get a way.

We started out the weekend visiting with Ryan's Grandma Scherbel in her Cabin. Grandpa kept Caden busy by swinging him in the wicker chair while everyone chatted. Caden thought it was pretty funny to come up close and get his feet tickled.

Saturday afternoon we drug out the water toys and played around a little on the lake. Since its a mountain lake, the best way to play is out of the water. Everyone rotated through the raft, paddle boat, kayak, and row boat. Shawn and Karlee spent some time in inner tubes, but I didn't get the camera out fast enough for that.

The water was warm enough we tried introducing Caden to swimming in a life jacket. He wasn't so impressed, even when daddy pushed him out into the weeds on his back and yelled "Moses!" He did, however, like standing up in the raft. He grinned from ear to ear.

After playing in the water for a while everyone lounged around on the grass. The weather was perfect on Saturday - about 85 degrees with a slight breeze.

As night falls on the lake it always gets so calm. Ryan took this picture as the sun was setting. Caden and his second cousin Kenedee played together as well as could be expected. Caden hasn't spent much time around other babies and kept trying to claw at her face; Kenedee wasn's sure she wanted to share her toys with this stranger. I always think Caden looks cute sleeping. I didn't get his dog in time, so he cuddled up with his blanket.

Sunday morning it was overcast and stormy again, but we wanted to take Caden out on the paddle boat. His face alternated between looks of concern, confusion, and slight amusement. He kept leaning over the side and staring at the water floating by.

Last night when we got home we let Caden out of his carseat and he rolled all over the floor, rediscovering his favorite toys. Its great to be home again!

Boys will be Boys

Ryan and the other "men" his age at the lake this weekend had a great time lighting off sparkler bombs. They had hours of fun making loud booms, blowing up things (pop cans, water bottles, watermelon, etc), and generally being pyros. Ryan was the official videographer for the group. The first video is one pack of sparklers, the second video is two packs. Notice the difference in sound.

Happy Independence Day!

Learning to Eat

On a whim the other night Ryan decided to see if he could teach Caden to feed himself with a spoon. I think he did a pretty good job, and kiddo looks so cute with that dinner all over his face! I think he got about 2/3 of it in his mouth, which is down right respectable for a first attempt. Notice how at the end he yanks his hand away from me. Our system was I would put the food on teh spoon and he would take it to his mouth. He really just wanted to do it himself.

Epi-Pen Training

I picked up Caden's Epi-Pens last night and breathed a sigh of relief. It will be nice to have the shots on hand, especially as we go out of town and further from medical help for vacations in July. The pharmacist talked with me about how to use it and recommended I teach all "responsible adults who may care for the child" to use it as well. The key things are that it needs to go in at a 90 degree angle, be administered in the outer thigh, and held in place for ten seconds while the medicine dispenses. For a video and more complete instructions, go here http://www.epipen.com/howtouse.aspx.
The Epi-Pen is a valuable, life saving tool should Caden accidentally ingest an allergen that causes him to go into anaphylactic shock. However, even the Epi-Pen Jr. is formulated for a child who weighs at least 33 lbs. Until Caden reaches that benchmark there will be increased risk associated with using the medicine, so we really only want to administer it in an emergency.
We also wanted to express our thanks to everyone who fasted for Caden this past Sunday. We could feel your love and support. As we prayed and studied together as a couple we felt reassured about the situation. Ryan gave Caden a beautiful blessing and we are optimistic about his future.