Our week... in pictures

Dallin played the piano with me after church.

He was really getting into it.

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I brought Dallin's old infant car seat out of storage so I could wash it and get it ready for baby #2. I walked away from it for a minute and came back to find this:

Look at him sitting in there drinking a bottle! He think he's still a little baby, but he's in for quite a shock in a few more weeks!

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Dallin likes hummus. He really likes it. He doesn't so much care to dip bread or crackers in it; his preferred method of eating it is pure hummus on a spoon.

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Dallin had a cardiology appointment this week. It was just a follow-up on his existing condition to make sure things are still going well. He still has a soft heart murmur, but his pulmonary stenosis is very very mild. (It seems like the pulmonary stenosis is the source of the murmur, so it's not an additional concern.) The doctor said Dallin is looking really great and we don't have to go back for another year! I'm fine with that because the exam room they put us in wasn't exactly childproof....

First Day of Fall

I was so excited yesterday because I thought it was the first day of Fall. I had been waiting for it all week so I could decorate. When the 22nd finally came, I pulled out my fall decorations.* Then I looked it up and realized the the first day of fall wasn't until the next day: today. Whatever. I started the season a day early.

My new addition this year is the book page pumpkin.

I used the tutorial from this blog.

It was really fun and easy to make, and only slightly tedious to cut through the 400 pages of the book.

*Ok, so those are the only fall decorations I have right now. I have a festive wreath for the door, but I'm having trouble finding our wreath hanger after the move. I have some Halloween decorations, but I refuse to put those up until October 1st. So this is what we get for one more week!

Happy real First Day of Fall!

Can't touch this!

This is a review of what Dallin has been up to... in pictures and videos.

Dallin loves to eat black olives. He loves them in pasta salad, quesadillas, right out of the can... At the rate he eats them, I've starting buying larger cans of whole olives (rather than pre-sliced) and slicing them myself. He'll eat the olives whole too, and I taught him the proper way to eat whole olives: poke your finger in the hole and eat it right off your finger!

(He kept eating the olives too quickly for me to snap the picture in time, but trust me, there is an olive on that finger in his mouth!)

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The boy is obsessed with shoes, mainly because wearing shoes means you get to go outside. Recently, I was going through baby clothes (to prepare for baby 2.0) and Dallin found some flip flops. He's never liked sandals on his feet and never wanted to wear these flip flops, but on this particular day, he really wanted to wear them. I obliged him, and as soon as they were on his feet, he wanted them off.

I took the shoes off for him. Then he came back to me with the shoes, begging me to put them on his feet again. When the sandals were once again on his feet...

...he wanted them taken off again. I guess he really wants to like the flip flops, but it's a feeling he'll have to get used to first.

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Dallin dances when he hears music. His "dance" is usually just bobbing his head with the music, but it cracks me up every time.

Hammer Time!

(Excuse the sideways video. I don't think I can rotate it after it's already been recorded this way. Noted for future filming reference.)

Nevermind, I fixed it! Thanks, Neil!

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Dallin has started speech therapy now and his language skills are really progressing. He's learning a lot of sign language along with it. We've been reading a baby sign language book and his favorite sign in it is "cold." This sign is made by clenching your fists close to you, like you're shivering. Dallin makes a face when he signs it and clenches his teeth too. I love it! You can kind of see the "cold" face in this video.

This second video shows his fists making the sign a little better.

Hoosier Outdoor Experience

This weekend we went to the Hoosier Outdoor Experience in Indianapolis. (We like to throw the word "hoosier" on things here in Indiana to make it sound cooler.) It was this big outdoor event at a state park where we got to try a lot of cool outdoorsy things.

Last week had some really cold, cloudy/rainy days. We went to 3 outdoor activities 3 days in a row and I was freezing at all of them. So this time I thought I'd be smart; we wore longs sleeves to Indianapolis and brought 2 jackets for each person. I was not going to be cold all day this time!

On the drive there, Dallin thought it would be really fun to pile ALL the jackets on his lap.

Of course, it was a beautiful, sunny 75 degree day. I was getting hot in my long sleeve shirt and Dallin and I are both sporting some spectacular sunburns.

We met up with some friends there and took turns babysitting the kids (they have a baby) while the other couple did non-baby friendly stuff, like canoeing.

We got to try shotgun shooting.

Don't mess with this pregnant lady, she knows how to shoot a shotgun.

I was much better with archery than the shotgun. Two of my three arrows hit pretty close to the middle of the target. The instructor told me I have a natural instinct for aiming with a bow. I also did pretty well with bowfishing (shooting a fish with an arrow attached to a line rather than using a fishing pole). I was the only one in our group to hit the (fake) fish and have the arrow stick. I know, I'm pretty awesome.

Dallin loved being outside all day surrounded by people. And he liked riding the tram around the park.

He spent all day working on that apple and ate more than half of it!

We played frisbee golf and Mckay beat us all miserably at that.

We saw that there was a caving demonstration, and we thought that would be really cool. That was until we realized their "cave" was just a huge black trash bag you could walk into with a flashlight. And a black bag sitting in direct sunlight all day is very much the opposite of the cold cave interior you would expect.

But Dallin had a blast in the "cave."

We tried venison jerky, saw some birds of prey, did A LOT of walking, and discovered that between us 4 adults, we were all pretty skilled with at least one weapon. I'm sure that will come in handy someday.

Pepsi Cake

Mckay's birthday was this last weekend. I like that his birthday is around Labor Day because it usually gives us a nice 3-day weekend to celebrate. His birthday was pretty low-key and I didn't really take any pictures. I did take pictures of the food though. You can usually count on me to do that. Before I tell you about the food, I need to tell you this...

Mckay loves Pepsi. It's his soda of choice. We don't buy soda very often though, so it's always a treat when he gets it. A few days before Mckay's birthday, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday cake. Mckay, thinking the question was "What do you want for your birthday?", immediately said, "Pepsi." We had a good laugh over that one and said something like, "Yeah right, Pepsi. THAT would make a weird cake." Then, wondering if such a things as a Pepsi cake existed, we did what most people would: we googled it.

It turns out that there IS a Pepsi cake recipe floating around the internet and most people were saying that it was actually very good. Intrigued by the idea, we decided that we would make a Pepsi cake for his birthday.

Here is the Chocolate Pepsi Cake, complete with chocolate Pepsi frosting.

So, the cake didn't come out of the pan very well, and it may have cracked a little. But it is actually pretty tasty despite how it looks. Chocolate and Pepsi is not as weird a combination as you might think. It's very very sugary though (go figure.)

Lest you feel bad for Mckay, thinking he got an ugly cake for his birthday, I have to redeem myself. I made two small round cakes: the one pictured above with the chocolate icing, and the one below, made with a traditional white frosting.

Now it's really a Pepsi cake.

I think it's pretty close to the real logo, don't you?

The cake is just as tasty with the white/red/blue frosting.

If you feel so inclined to make your own Chocolate Pepsi cake, here is the recipe I used.

Since the next day was Labor day, we had a lazy morning at home. I had some buttermilk in the fridge (leftover from the cake ingredients), so I used it in two of its best applications:

Homemade Buttermilk Pancakes with homemade buttermilk syrup (more affectionately called Fat Sauce).

Delicious!

And just because no post should be without a picture of Dallin...

Here he is taking a nap, on the floor, surrounded by toys: just how he likes it!