Warmer Weather

I know it's been a while, so I thought I would put up some more recent pictures.

Gideon can sit all by himself!  Love the smile!

The crazy trio

Heber standing tall

Adorable Eliza

Yup!  I can hold my own bottle!

Maple Syrup and More

For Christmas Scott got some maple taps from his sister, Riki.  He was so excited about them.  Here's proof of that excitement.  It makes me smile every time I see that picture.

So, for a few weeks now we have been collecting sap from our maple trees in our back yard.  Scott tapped three trees, each tree having two taps.  Then as the weather started warming up with above freezing during the day and just below at night, the sap was flowing and we started collecting.

In that two week period or so, we collected nine gallons of sap.  For those who have never made homemade syrup, this would seem like a ton of syrup.  Not so.  Once the sap has been collected, the water needs to be evaporated out.  That was our next step.  We started a fire outside in our fire pit and placed a grilling rack over the fire.  One the rack we placed two foil roasting pans and added the sap to the pans and began evaporating.  It took about 6 hours to evaporate the nine gallons of sap.

After evaporating nine gallons of sap, we got down to this pot of sap.  Then began the boiling process.  The idea to get the right consistency of syrup is to find the temperature of boiling water (in a separate pot) and then boil the sap at about 7 degrees above that.  It took another two hours or so for that process.

And here is our end result!  About a pint of sap with a little left over.  We tried our homemade maple syrup the next day and we fell in love with it.  It tasted so good!  Maybe it's because we worked so hard to make our syrup that it tasted so good, but either way, it was fun!  Thanks for the taps Riki!

Here are just some other fun pictures of our family.  Enjoy!

Burning our Christmas Tree in March.  Loved it!

Me and the kids

Daddy feeding Gideon?  Proof he does help :)  Love you, Scott!

Sleeping with the thumb

Somehow a bird got stuck in our fireplace.
The only thing we can figure is it came down the flue.

And the only way to get the bird out was to let him out of the fireplace
into the house and then out the door.  I think he was happy to get out.

Where's Winter?

It's been pretty crazy this winter.  First of all we haven't had much snow at all and nothing at all for Christmas.  Normarlly that would be a really sad thing, but when snow means Scott has to plow, no snow meant Scott got to stay home.  It was lovely!  Not only that, but we have seen him a lot more this winter than in the past and I certainly can't comlain about that.

Everyone has been having fun riding the 4-wheeler with Daddy in the back yard.  Because of the lack of snow, it's left more of a muddy back yeard, but who can complain too much about that.

A good time we had too was dressing up in our BYU gear to watch the Armed Forces Bowl.  It was fun to cheer on BYU and to see them win.  Sweet!

The kids and Scott have been dying all winter to go ice fishing.  With the warm weather and lack of snow, it's been iffy.  But, we finally got to go.  No, we didn't catch anything, but poor Heber did step in the hole once.  Yup, that pretty much ended the outing, which was okay.  We were on our way home anyway.

 

 

This is just a picture of Gideon.  Too cute to not put in.  Love his smiles!

Raccoon Toons

A family friend of mine, Matt Taylor, has a comic strip called "Raccoon Toons".  Each week he posts a new comic, except this month he will have one up every weekday.  Pretty sweet!  I remember reading his comics that he would post in the school paper.  Anyway, Matt is holding a contest to have yourself drawn into one of his comics.  All you have to do is like or follow his comic strip, post or share one of your favorite strips, let him know, and then eat a cookie.  Yes, eat a cookie.  Love it!  So, here is my favorite strip because it was something similar to what happened to me once.  It was Halloween of 2006 and Scott decided to play a little trick on me.  He placed a phantom decoration in the bathroom of our apartment.  I was pregnant at the time and so I had to get up at night to use the bathroom.  I walked in, turned the light on, and freaked out!  I screamed and ran back to the bed.  Scott laughed his head off because he thought it was funny to watch a prego lady fly across the room and land on the bed as she fled from the bathroom.  I wasn't too happy.  Scott took down the phantom and I made him swear he wouldn't do that again.  Sadly, I don't think I ever used the bathroom that night.  So, here is the comic strip.  Enjoy and check out Matt's website for Raccoon Toons!

Loving Life

This picture was just too cute! I sometimes find it hard to capture a good smile from the little ones. It takes patience and timing and it seemed to pay off for me. I thought I would share this smile with you. It makes me smile just looking at it.

We also had the chance to go to Utah for my Grandma Flack's funeral.  It was sad to hear she passed away, but it was a happy occasion too.  I know that she is with our Father in Heaven and is so happy to be reunited with Grandpa and her son.  It was lovely to have the family all together for the funeral and to also visit family from the other side of my family as well.  I love you Grandma and miss you, but I know you are happy!

Eliza and Heber with Great-grandma Hall

Gideon and Great-grandma Hall

Eliza did a really good job.  She even got a strike!

Heber had a blast and wanted to carry the bowling ball on his own.
We had to keep and eye on his toes for him :)

Some Fun Filled Days

So, some exciting things have happened in the last month or so.  First of all, my brother Brent came to visit us for a few days.  That was so much fun.  We took the train into Chicago and wanted to go up to the Skydeck in Willis Tower to get a good look at all of Chicago.  We got there and were told that there was no visibility up there due to the rain clouds.  Crazy!  So we skipped on that and just walked around the city a little in the rain.  I held Gideon, Brent held Heber, and Eliza walked.  She was a trooper.  The next day we went to Starved Rock State Park.  That was beautiful!  We had fun on our hikes and Eliza liked playing as a troll who wanted a password each time we went over a bridge of any kind.  It was a blast!

Eliza, Brent, Scott and Heber

Uncle Brent with Heber, Gideon, and Eliza

Heber celebrated his second birthday and I made a train cake for him. It was a lot of fun and he absolutely loved it. Every morning after his birthday he would see his cake and get all excited. And he really enjoyed eating cake for breakfast. So did Eliza. Heber really enjoyed his birthday.

We also had a good thanksgiving and both Scott and Heber had a hair cut. Yes, that means that Heber's hair is much shorter, more like a buzz cut. It looks pretty cute. I still miss those curls, but I guess my little guy has to grow up.

Heber's new hair cut

Finally, I have been working on Gideon's Christmas stocking. I have made one for each of the kids and I just finished Gideon's and I really like how it turned out. Each stocking has a theme around an elf. Eliza's stocking is an elf crashing into a candy cane, Heber's is an elf looking into his sock stocking, and now Gideon's is and elf climbing up the chimney. Scott helped me come up with the ideas for each stocking and then it was up to me to figure out how to put them together, without any kind of pattern.  I'm pretty proud of them so I thought I would share.

Eliza's stocking

Heber's stocking

Gideon's stocking

We are excited for the holiday season and we hope you are, too.  Here are a few pics of Gideon.  He has started sleeping through the night, has begun sucking his thumb, and is doing better at sitting up on your lap.  Such a handsome little dude!

This is how he likes to sleep sometimes

Fall Crafts

Here are some crafts that I have been working on recently.  They have been a ton of fun and I'll give credit where credit is due to the original creators.

 Tin Can Lanterns

I made these by first freezing water into cleaned out tin cans.  Then I cut a piece of paper the size of the can and drew a picture on the paper.  I taped it to the can and poked holes along the drawing so that when you take the paper off and place a tea light inside, it glows through showing the picture.

Jack 'o Lantern Jars 

This was a really cute idea and a lot of fun to put together.  For directions, click on the name above to take you to the site for the tutorial at the site http://www.u-createcrafts.com/.  All it takes are mason jars, mod podge, tissue paper, black paper, and tea lights.  Sweet!

 2x4 Turkey

Here is another cute and fun craft created by the same author as above.  These take a 2x4 block, paint stick, ribbon, paper, paint, feathers, decorative paper, craft sticks, and mod podge.

"Fall" Blocks

This fun craft is found on the site http://www.makeit-loveit.com/.  I like her blocks a lot better than how mine turned out.  Still, it was fun and I was just going crazy with it, if you couldn't tell.  And yup, some of the little balls have fallen off.  Oops.

 Fireflies

These fireflies are thanks to the site http://www.ohdeedoh.com/.  The kids had fun playing with these little light up bugs once we had them put together.  Supplies...Easter Egg, flameless tea light, pipe cleaner, silver duct tape, marker for eyes and mouth, and sharp scissors to poke holes for the legs and antennae.

Turkey Hair Bow

This idea came from LiliBugBoutique who is selling a much cuter version on etsy.com.  Follow the link above to find her beautiful creation.

I know there are a lot more crafts out there that I can't wait to do.  More to come in the future!