Parties, Plants, and Poetry

Hey Everyone!

We've been busy.  

First of all, St. Patrick's Day was a blast.  We kicked off the weekend with eating green.

Green marshmallow pancakes....they look a little moon cratered.

Gooseberry Jam

Green Apple

Asparagus

Ira pretending his asparagus in a dragon tongue

Green Smoothie

We had a mini St. Patrick's Day Party with our preschool coop friends at our place with a clover hunt and counting activity, a pin punch G for Green, and a Rainbow assembly/letter clue activity.  Oh! And of course Irish dancing!  I've decided that with the origin of the holiday, we'll celebrate St. Patrick's day, not only as Irish pride day, but also as International Missionary Appreciation Day.  So, we had the Elders over for dinner with a recent member friend for Corned Beef, Cabbage, and (none-Key) Lime Pie.  Yum!

We are overly ready for Spring.  It's still pretty cold here, and today we got a little snow and hail.  Pleeeaaaaase Spring! Cooooooome!  

In order to somehow summon the season, we've started growing things inside.

Anthony and Ira planted some flowers and vegetables together. 

 Day 1

Notice the snow on the bushes outside.

Day 3

Beginning to show already! Ira wanted to check on them about 4 times a day.

Oh...these boys make me smile.

Day 7!

I don't know what it is.  I've been wanting to throw a Beatnik Party for months!  It probably has to do with my conformist behavior lately.  You know...I'm pushing 30, have a mini-van and house with vinyl siding.  I was just craving a little dose of counter-culture I guess.  

Here's a copy of the e-vite.  

Hey Cool Cats, 

  If you dig poetry reading and black turtlenecks, you are in luck.  Come hang with us for some pre-hippie counter culture.  Here are some tips to enjoy the evening to the max.

 

1. Bring a poem to read.  Serious or humorous, short or long, self composed or well known.

2. Wear some black, maybe a beret or sunglasses.  Make it comfortable, something you can play "interpretive dance charades" in, and participate in finger painting some abstract expressionism. 

3. Be ready to sit on the floor...not only because it seems beatniky, but also because we still don't really have furniture.

4. Bringing your kids is a-o.k.  We'll put on a movie, or let them run wild, or let them participate reading an excerpt from Dr. Seuss. 

5. We'll sip hot chocolate, and have a couple of finger foods ready.  If you feel like bringing something, go for it. 

Also, does anyone have bongo drums, a string bass, or can play jazzy improv trumpet?  Eh, I know.  I thought I'd ask anyway.   

  O.k.  by now this party is probably either sounding really fun, or extremely weird.  If it's the latter, we won't take it personally if you have to "wash your hair" that night.  We'll think of another excuse to hang out soon.  But otherwise we'll see you soon Dady-O!  

  -sharon

p.s.  I only ended up sending this to one rep of your family. Spouses are obviously invited. :) 

Not surprisingly, not everyone was interested in "Interpretive Dance Charades."  But some people were, and it was a blast! Here are some of the poets.

This is one of my good friends who is hard core.  She had her wisdom teeth taken out two days before this, and still came. 

A reading of Billy Collins, one of my favorite poets.

A self composed piece, and commentary on the irony of the situation.

We also had some Calvin and Hobbes, Dr. Seuss, and "Popcorn Popping" recitations.

A poem by Jack Kerouac...actually I think she's "interpretive dancing" the word "think."

 Anthony reading another Collins piece.

 To eat, we had some modern art inspired desserts. 

Peanut Butter Jackson Pollack Brownies.

Piet Mondrian Pound Cake.

 A few people have asked me about the making of the Mondrian cake, so here's a few more images.

Here's the link I used as a guide, only I made 1 1/2 times a Joy of Cooking pound cake recipe.

http://ronnas.blogspot.com/2012/03/step-by-step-mondrian-cake.html

 In other news we've gotten a few things done on the house including finally replacing our ugly chandelier.

Before

After

Ira is a Dragon.  That's right.  Beyond dragon-like and in the actual realm of dragon.  He prowls, scowls, and growls at good friends and complete strangers alike.  But in more pleasant news, he's started eating vegetables!  Two weeks ago, he wouldn't touch anything in the category, and then over night he was suddenly eating broccoli, asparagus, carrots, tomatoes, sugar peas!

 

You get the idea.  It's very happy. 

He's started to dress himself, and likes to wear his pants like this when he gets the chance.  

Don't ask me why.

Eliot is cute as ever.  He has figured out how to go down stairs, which is good, because he can now make his way up the stairs in no time at all.  He really likes to use his bib to play peak-a-boo, loves to play with Ira, and is almost sleeping through the night.  Hallelujah! 

Anthony is making yogurt again!  This time with whole milk and a yogurt maker, which is about a million times better than our old powdered milk and crock pot method.  The kids will eat it without even adding honey or jam, just plain, delicious creaminess.  Ant's been pretty busy with work, but enjoying it.  

I've finally gotten my vaccines and sent in my visa application for my trip to Africa, and am chipping away at my huge long list of fun house and kid projects.  

Peace out and have a good week everyone!

February

Happy March!

February was a month full of....

 Love.

Valentine's French toast.  Ira has been a huge fan of making valentine's ever since the 14th.  He doesn't seem to care that the holiday is long since gone. 

Here are our little love bugs.  This was after a joyschool lesson I did on lightning bugs.  I love Eliot's face here. 

February began with Anthony gone for a week, and ended with Anthony gone for a week.  I know it could be much worse, but we're still hoping he doesn't have another trip for a while. 

During his first trip, we were lucky to have a visit from cousin James who just moved back to Michigan.  It was nice to have some fresh energy for the boys.  James ran around in circles for at least 20 minutes at a time playing "dinosaur tag" with Ira.  And ever since, Ira will occasional say things like, "Mom, I think you should stop being you and start being James."  

 We've had a healthy amount of snow lately.  Fortunately the electricity only went out for a few seconds at a time. 

And yes, those are Ira's shoes on Eliot. 

Ira helping Mom shovel. 

Ira likes to spray the snow different colors.  This particular day he chose yellow and I was too lazy to explain  to him why this was a disgusting choice.

The major highlight of February was a visit from Anthony's parents and youngest brother Mckay.  

I can't believe how few pictures we took while they were here, especially with the amount of playing we did.  We got a tour of the GM building in Detroit, got the Rouge Ford Factory Tour, went to the Henry Ford Museum, the Children's Hands On Museum, and ate some amazing (not too spicey) Ethiopian food in Ann Arbor.  

They were also able to help us reface our old kitchen cabinets to put in the laundry room.  

Let me rephrase that.  By "help," I mean to say they did all of it.  Mckay and Valine did the refacing, while, Paul, Ant and Mckay hung the cabinets.  I was usually playing with the kids, or taking a nap or something.  

Here are the laundry room results. 

 

Before

During

After

 I'm pretty pumped.  This is the first room in the house that we've "finished," probably because it's tiny and requires no real furniture.  We've prioritized working on the house with the most functional places first (kitchen, laundry room, closets) even if those places aren't really ever seen by anyone but us.  My Mom always says "Beauty follows function."  And bringing order spaces like this feels sooo beautiful to me. 

 Ant was rapidly trying to assemble stuff before he left on his trip to Connecticut.  But while he was gone, I was able to assemble one of these, 

and this, 

and this.  

Yep, I was pretty proud of myself.  It's not easy assembling a bed with a 3 year old "helping" you and a baby crawling all over you trying to eat the screws.  But now Ira finally has a real bed, and Eliot can graduate from the pack-n-play to the crib.  It's kind of a sweet bed.  In a year or so, we can flip it over to make it into a bunk bed for when the boys start sharing a room.

Ira did very well with the transition from 5 adults to 2 kids, to 1 adult to 2 kids last week.  He was pretty demanding and whiny when the Quinns were here...I think still recovering from his cold.  But last week he decided to be a helper and was generally very cooperative.  He even finally took initiative in the potty arena. He's been "potty trained" for a year, but last week he decided he wanted to do it all: light, t.p. flush, pants pulling, hand washing...it's a really involved process when you break it down!  And he's got it all down pretty well. Woohoo!

Eliot is a doll.  He's usually so mellow I'm afraid he gets neglected sometimes.  He's definitely improving with eating solids the past few days which is awesome.  He's also started biting people for fun.  Not so awesome. 

Anthony has mastered Valentine's day.  He surprised me with a baby sitter so we could go out to dinner and had chocolates and flowers ready for me.  :)  We were also able to get some cheep tickets with some friends to go to a Pistons (Detroit's Basketball team) game.  Fun stuff.  

Alright, bedtime.  Peace out all!

The End of the Beginning

(Otherwise known as the second half of January)

Well, after an extremely busy November and December, January ended up being a really nice, relaxing month.  Pacing our work on (and specifically spending on) the house has forced us to take a nice breather and chance to get back into a routine around here.

Eliot:  He's gone through a little progressive growth spurt the past couple of weeks and is suddenly crawling with his stomach off the ground (sometimes), cruising, and climbing the stairs.  The stairs are a little scary since the only way he knows how to go down, is falling.  We'll work on that.  He also has started shaking his head "no" when he wants to be funny.  Super cute.  His upper teeth have grown to rabbit proportions and are also very cute.  He's still not eating many solids, and hasn't been his cheerful self since he came down with a cold Thursday. Ira caught it Saturday, and I caught it today.  Since the boys' noses are like faucets and their coughs hacking, we decided to stay home from church and let Ant represent.

Ira:  Grumpy with his cold.  But besides that he's been really fun.  He's really into pirates and dragons as of late.  We showed him Peter Pan after the pirate infatuation began and now I am constantly finding a hanger in my hand and being called Captain Hook.  Social skills have not exactly come....naturally.  He growls at guests, and when he saw a few other little boys at the Library this week, he decided to play dragons with them.  Of course he didn't explain what he was doing when he started running after them roaring.  He came back to me fairly quickly and said, "He said I was a bad boy."  Hmmm perplexing.   He has however had a really fun time with the little preschool coop we've been participating in.

Anthony:  He had a conference in Toronto for 5 days, keeping him busy.  The rest of us survived without him but were exuberant at his homecoming.  He also had some fun presentations to attend yesterday at U of M.   He feels like my knight in shining armor every night he comes home.  ....does that imply I need to be rescued from my children?  Let's not dwell on it. :)

Sharon:  I got a church calling as "Morning Out Co-coordinator," which means another sister and I organize play dates weekly for sisters with or without kids.  I received the calling two days after getting stir crazy and venturing out in blizzard-like weather to take the kids to the Museum of Natural History.  We couldn't find any parking closer than a half a mile, and as we walked I kept getting "you are a crazy lady" glances from people or comments like, "Wow, you're a brave woman to bring them out in weather like this."  Anyway, I'm really excited about the calling.  It's pretty perfect, since obviously we enjoy getting out no matter how inconvenient, and have lots of ideas of where we'd like to go.
  We've also been busy getting together with fun people.  In the past 7 days, we've had friends over for dinner 3 times.  There are a couple of guys I worked with from BYU in our ward, so we invited them over with their cute families for Indian last Sunday.  Friday we had the Elders over for dinner, and yesterday some good friends from our last ward dropped by while their house for sale was being viewed.

  So, that's pretty much it.  Life is good and busy.  Have a good week everyone!
 
 

The Big 3

The past few weeks have been nice as things have calmed down.  Now that we're moved into the house and are taking a break from major house projects we've been able to get back into a routine of normalcy a little.  

Last week we enjoyed celebrating Ira's 3rd birthday!  He chose a train theme, and after inviting some old friends from the ward we just moved from, I decided on a whim to send an open invitation to our entire new ward.  According to RSVP's we had 45-50 people come, but it may have been more than that with uncounted siblings and spouses.  It was really fun, and PACKED.  Below are some lessons learned from the experience, for my own party throwing record.  Don't feel bad for skipping or skimming.   

1.  Our house isn't the tiny apartment we're used to, but 50 people is a little over sane capacity.  :)

2.  If you are going to make a train cake again, add a face.  I probably spent 3 hours on this bad boy (the fondant was being uncooperative), and when Ira saw it, he looked totally disappointed.   When I asked him what was the matter, he said, "Where's the face??"  So in about two minutes I added a little face and he was suddenly in cake heaven.  You can see it below if you squint really hard. 

 2.  It doesn't matter what the cake looks like, just as long as it has Oreos stuck on it.  Those things must be like preschooler cocaine.  You would've thought that some kids' lives depended on getting a cookie piece or not.

 3.  Having kids make their own pizzas is a great activity...for about 3-10 kids, not 30.  Actually they all seemed to enjoy it.  This lesson is more for the sanity of the host.

4.  Our fire alarms are extremely over sensitive.  They went off about 6 times.  Hurry and get an over the range microwave with a vent and fan.

5.  Repeat Balloon Pit activity.  Although we felt a little bad that no-one really had a seat, or that our hanging rod wasn't even up in the closet for people's coats, there are a few benefits to having no furniture when throwing a party this big.  The Balloon Pit was one of those.  Every time I went down to check on the kids, there was probably about 20 of them going wild with the balloons.

 

6.  Also repeat painter's tape train tracks, moving box "round-house" and "box-box carts" for kids to sit in and drive around the tracks.   

7.  Less successful were the structured games I had planned earlier for a smaller group.  Pin the Engine on the Train, and Train Train Caboose will work well another year for 3-10 kids...not 30. 

 8. A homemade pinata is a fun, frugal, way to take care of party favors.  We used boxes left over from the move, and filled it with 8 lbs of candy.  Since we were too lazy to work out the logistics of hanging and beating it with a stick, we played Hot Pinata, which means with 3 year olds, I passed it to one girl and she dropped it on the ground spilling the goods everywhere for the taking, which is what all the other kids were hoping she'd do.

 All in all, I think the party went o.k.  It made me really excited to get to know people in our new ward.  There are loads of married students with cute kids.  We know a couple of them from BYU, and are already getting to know some others.  And since we moved just minutes out of our old ward, we feel blessed to have our old friends so accessible. 

 Ira was excited to get some sugary cereal for his birthday as well as a tiger bank (for the initiation of allowance getting), and of course a few train toys. 

Eliot has been a trooper.  He just got his 4th tooth and has been kind of grumpy lately.  We're trying to teach Ira not to try and pick up Eliot or move him around using his neck.  

In other news, we've quarantined ourselves for the past two days.  Friday night we went to bed feeling pretty normal, but then Ira threw up several times between 12:30 and 3:30, and now each of us has gotten the bug to some extent...all accept Eliot that is.  Finger's crossed.  I still can't get that kid to eat solids, even when his stomach is normal.

I'm preparing a lesson for a little preschool coop/ "joy-school" that a couple of friends and I are starting.  I forgot how easily enthused I am about lesson planning for this age group, and just teaching in general.  It'll be fun. 

So that's life.  We're keeping many of you in our prayers.  

Peace out!

  

Christmas in Utah

Happy 2013!

The Holidays have been a much needed break for us.  We absolutely loved being back in Utah.  Family is just the best.  Need I say more?

Jean cracked up Ira for most of our Christmas Eve Fondu dinner.  Mmmm.  I'm still dreaming of that Caramel Fondu. 

Soccer in the Hopkinson basement. 

Ira can be a little anti-social at times, so it was good to see him bonding with the cousins.  

 But I think he enjoys rough-housing a little too much at times.

We three trumpets.

Grandma and Grandpa Arave soaking in the chaos and fun of the Christmas Eve festivities. 

Eliot's crazed expression Christmas morning. 

 It was especially early Eastern Standard time.

We didn't have much luggage space for presents and we were a little worried about our lack of presents for Ira, but he was in heaven with his marshmallow pop.  Ah the simple pleasures.

I was really blessed to be able to catch up with some Francis cousins, old room-mates, an amazing mission companion, and a childhood friend while in Utah.  I'm too lazy to get the pictures off my phone now, so we'll post those next time along with a good house update. 

In other news...

 Ira's really been into cutting paper lately.

and bath time.

Eliot is now 9 months and still not really eating solids.  He finally completed a jar of baby food, but it took him 4 days!  He's more likely to eat chunks of normal food, but that is still only taking up a tiny fraction of his diet.  Hopefully his 3rd tooth that just came in will help him make the adjustment. 

He's been into standing up using really unstable items for support...empty moving boxes, really light folding chairs, moving dishwasher parts.  It's a little dangerous.  He's surviving though.

We are officially moved into the house and it feels great!  We're excited about our new ward, and also the fact that we're still close to our friends in our last ward.  Life is good.  Many of you with health concerns are in our prayers!  Get healthy everyone.