::no pinching::

Nobody could pinch us today.



Well I guess they could've tried, but they wouldn't have had a leg to stand on.

To celebrate the holiday Max and I made cupcakes. Not the kind of cupcakes recommended by all the cooking blogs, filled with some sort of liqour, but just yummy chocolate ones, with greeny green frosting of course.

We packed some up to share with friends. Eating all of those would ourselves would NOT be a good way to celebrate the holiday!

Max insisted on photos of him pretending to eat the cuppycakes.



Goofball.

::sunshine & trikes::

On friday we actually had some sunshine. It feels like a long time since we've seen the sun out here, and even longer since it hasn't been to cold to enjoy the outdoors for very long.
We took Max's little trike out back so he could play around.

It's way way too small for him. But he still likes to ride it.
Unfortunately there really isn't much room to ride out back. There's not much room to do much except step in dog muck and mud.

There's about three feet of sidewalk. He rides up and down it. He's kind of like a lion pacing up and down in his cage.

He hits the fence and then turns around and goes up and down again. Anybody else think this guy needs a real yard to play in?  And maybe a driveway or something to ride on?

He stayed out there for probably two hours, just riding around and talking to himself.
Sultan likes to hang out with Max outside. He takes a seat in the grass--probably in the muddy part, and watches the action.

He's pretty cute.

He's the king of his yard. Which isn't hard, considering it hardly even counts.

But we appreciate what we've got. It makes us all the more excited for the new place we're going to be moving into on May 1st (we finally found a place, yay!!)--it has a real yard! And a driveway! And it isn't on a busy busy street.
I can think of at least one guy who's really going to enjoy it. 

Sounds good to me too.

::cousins+cookies=awesome::

When Max and I were visiting in Utah we thought it would be fun to get the cousins together so they could decorate valentines cookies. So we did. These photos are from the same day as the others I posted a couple days ago, just in case anybody was wondering.
Kathy was fabulous and mixed up the cookie dough in advance, then she and I cooked them up that morning so that when the Parker and KC got there the boys could just go for it.
They were pretty excited.

To go along with the varied personalities of the boys come varied cookie decorating methods.
Parker is very serious, methodical and pretty precise.

He outlined all his hearts with frosting really carefully.

Then we have Max.

He's never done this before, so he's definitely a newbie. I loved eating the cookies he decorated because of the three inch piles of frosting.
It's funny because this is kind of like how he draws. He's not careful and he's not precise. He just likes to scribble. Unless he's writing something. So this didn't surprise me.


I'm not sure what KC's technique was. He's still kind of little for things like this. He did a good job and he got a lot of help.

I love his almost cross-eyed concentration there. And his little tongue sticking out.


Then they sprinkled.

There were lots of sprinkle options, so picking out the exact right ones was kind of complicated.

At one point Max opened up all the little spigots on that big one and tried to pour them all out at once. I intercepted it though, luckily.

And then the finished product.

And the taste test.

I have to tell you, they were extremely delicious. In fact I wish I was eating one now.



I think they turned out very cute. Impressive for a bunch of little hooligan boys! It's not just any boy that can frost a heart so beautifully.

Then Grandma took over and frosted the rest, and they were gorgeous.

I think we should do it again next year.

::old::

So the last couple of days I got out my scanner and starting scanning a whole bunch of old negatives from back in high school. I was in photography class for at least two years, so I have a lot of old black and white rolls that I developed myself. Most of the photos I never bothered to print, so it's fun to see them. They're old and some of them are hilarious. The funny ones are mainly of Murphy.

I've posted most of them on facebook, so if you're my friend you can go check them out. If you're not my facebook friend then you should be!

But here are a few gems.

Murph swinging on our old awesome swingset in the backyard.

Murphy again. So tiny.

Cammon and his friend Ben being so cool.

Murphy and Char and neighborhood kid friends having a blast. I especially love Charlotte's leap there on the right. Woo hoo!

I can't wait to see what else is in there. Now I just have to convince myself that I have things to do that are more important than this.

::more stuff::

Another reason to love Trader Joe's. $1.49 for a little bundle of daffodils. $1.49 for a little package of sunshine? Who could pass that up.
The tags say they came from England, but I'm going to pretend that half of them came from our old neighborhood in Kansas City. I loved that place and I miss it. The other half I'm pretending came from my parents house.
Daffodils are so happy.
They're having a little trouble opening fully because it was so cloudy and rainy today it was almost like the sun never came up. Hopefully we get some sun tomorrow.


On another note. Who's better to snuggle with during Kung Fu Panda, than a Panda?

One with a karate suit on nonetheless.

Thanks for the chubby panda grandma!!

::cute cousins::

One of the many reasons that we love to visit Utah is because Max gets to spend time with his cousins. Cousins were (and are) super important to Kris and I growing up. We'd like Max to have the same close relationships with his that we had with ours.

Max and Scooter (Cammon & Lorri's little guy) don't have a ton in common yet, but I think they enjoyed hanging out together a bit.
Max and Parker (Kari's oldest), however, have quite a bit in common. In fact, so much in common that we weren't sure they were going to have any fun together at all this time.

They both seem to think they're the boss of the world. As soon as they started to try to play together it was evident that neither one was going to listen to the other. One yelled, another grabbed stuff. One pulled another's shirt. One came running up to us and said "so and so won't OBEY me!"

But the good news is, they worked things out after a bit and then had a really great time playing together.

This is so good for Max because being currently an only child, he doesn't have to compromise too much. It's different with friends. Cousins are as close to sibilingish relationship as you can get I think.

Now KC (Kari's youngest currently) has a completely different attitude than either Max or Parker. He's the kind of guy that just goes with the flow. He's a sweet little guy for sure.

He's pretty shy, and up until this visit I really hadn't gotten him to warm up to me at all. Happily, we got along well this visit and I even got a couple of hugs!

KC really loves his Grandpa though.

A lot.

So cute!

Anyway, it's really funny to see the differences in personality between the cousins. There are myriad.
Like Parker really likes to build stuff. Give him tinkertoys or lincoln logs or constructs and he's a happy man. Max wouldn't know what to do with a lincoln log if it bit him on the rear end. Building things does pretty much nothing for him.
This was evident because Parker built this cool gadget when they were playing.

And this cool gadget.

I told Max to go and make one really quick so that I could take pictures of them together with their gadgets.
Parker had to make one for him. It was pretty funny.

But that's why we have different talents and abilities, right? So we can share the love and take care of each other!

Just look at these goofballs.

They couldn't be cuter. Cousins are great, even if they do make you compromise sometimes!