Jonah's Birthday "Cake"

Ok they are cupcakes this time. For the past two years I have made a 2 layer cake for Jonah's birthday and they have cracked after I frosted them. Very frustrating. I did start a 2 layer for this one and guess what, it cracked too! I dumped the cake into a tuperware container (pretty hard) and started over. I refused to serve another cracked cake to our family. I should have gone with my first instinct and just done the cupcakes in the first place. It all turned out all right, but we had a time eating all that rejected cake (what a hardship!).
Jonah's into cars right now so Mater got to be the cake decoration.

A Great, EASY Snack!

Bekah and I made this the other day and had to make more this weekend. One of my favorite snacks is cheese and crackers, but I quite often add carrots and ranch dressing as well. This snack combines all of my favorite ingredients!

1 cup shredded cheese (we used cheddar)
1 cup shredded carrots
1/4 cup ranch dressing

Mix together all ingredients. Serve with crackers.

We just used Saltines, but my favorite crackers right now are sun dried tomato and basil wheat thins. So yummy!!

Happy Birthday Jonah!!

Ten things about Jonah:
1. He has an independent spirit (I know this will be good in the future, frustrating at times now!)
2. Loves Pixar movies
3. Is a Bob the Builder fanatic! (He IS Bob!)
4. Is very friendly and outgoing
5. Loves to play outside
6. Loves to watch videos of himself being silly
7. Loves potato chips and chocolate milk
8. Loves to have his sister read to him
9. Loves to paint (like Curious George)
10. Is always singing (Tarzan, Hercules, Bob the Builder, Pixar, Curious George and Primary Songs to name a few, sometimes all at the same time!)

Jonah is four years old today! We are so grateful for his sweet and energetic spirit in our lives!!

The Great Outdoors

Jonah has been outside all afternoon. He digs in the dirt, plays on our swingset, draws with chalk, kicks the ball around. Today he has been burying his Lightning McQueen car in the dirt and then having Mater come and pull him out. He'll run to the window and tell be that "Lightning is stuck in the mud!" So cute. Sam is napping otherwise he'd be out too. My kids would rather be outside than inside. They have twice as many things to do inside so I always wonder WHY are they so content outside? I'm not complaining, I love having them play outside, but I wonder just what it is. It is supposed to rain on Saturday so I wanted Jonah to be out all he could today. It is so nice!

Helping Hands

Everytime I get the Swiffer out or scrub the floors (yes, I do both and thanks to Amanda I now get down and do the scrubbing by hand, not with a mop, it gets it much cleaner) Jonah wants to help. I encourage this. I think it's good for them to learn to clean and help out. Of course, if this was a regular chore he wouldn't want to do it, but right now it's fun and a way for us to spend time together. We don't do this when Sam is awake, it's just too hard right now.

Movies

Has anyone else seen Marie Antoinette? I just watched it. I loved the costumes (it did just win an acadamy award for costume design), but it had no story line. I especially thought this after reading more of the history of Marie Antoinette. They really could have done some more exciting scenes with the raiding of Versaille. They also could have showed us a little more of the political drama and the events leading up to her beheading (which wasn't in the movie). It was worth the time for the costumes and interesting to see how extravagantly they might have lived.
We have also recently seen The Prestige and The Illusionist. I liked them both a lot. they both really kept you guessing until the end. I will say that The Illusionist was darker, primarily because he was dealing with ghosts. I don't like to think about, see or hear any ghost stories, they really creep me out. This didn't bother me too much and it was just a short part of the film.

Springtime

There is still snow on the ground, but I'm feeling spring. I always feel like cleaning out my house about this time of year. The boys at church are having a garage sale and I'm going to try to help them with lots of donations. I feel like it is a lot of junk though, why do I hang on to some of this stuff? I'm really going to try to be brutal this time and just get rid of it!

Washington D.C.

I loved this picture from Alan's trip. There was a fresh blanket of snow while he was there and someone decided to build a snowman!
These planes are from the air and space museum. I am glad Alan got to see these things, I've been to Washington D.C. before, but Alan had never been before. He was there for a PA leadership training meeting.
Part of the Smithsonion is closed for two years but they have a few displays like this one in the Air and Space Museum. This had me a little jealous. It is the puffy shirt from Seinfeld. The sweater is from Mr. Rogers. He also got to see C3PO and R2D2, the signpost from M*A*S*H, Dorothy's ruby red slippers and the Scarecrow, and many more things. I love seeing all these kinds of things.

Seeing all the pictures from his trip made me want to go back and see all this stuff again. I would rather go when the weather is a little better though. He was lucky to get back home on time with the snow storm that they had there.