Blue Milk?

My daughter Evelyn is a very picky eater and it shows. At 2 and a half years she weighs in at 22 pounds with a wet diaper. She rarely will eat meat, wont drink milk or even water. I have had to trick her into eating everything except for the 3 or 4 things that she likes. In the morning i make her smoothies and sneak in soy protein powder and ground flax. Andy was clever enough to tell her that water was "cloud juice" and now she loves it. I have been trying to get her to drink more milk to help her gain weight but she just refuses to touch it. Tonight Andy suggested we put food color in milk to see if she will drink it. I put a drop of blue dye in a cup of milk and told her it was blue juice. She downed it and asked for more blue milk. I laughed that even though she could tell that it was milk she wanted more just because it was blue. What a stinker!

Primary program

Yesterday our ward had their primary program. All of Evelyn's friends are older than her so she kept waving at them on than stand and saying quite loud "there's Rachel" About half way through the program Evelyn decided that she wanted to be with her friends so she started walking up there. I told Andy to stop her but he must have known that it would be funny to let her go, so he did.  I was pretty embarrassed at first, but then all I could see was the top of her head bobbing up and down as she walks across the stage trying to find Rachel. It was funny to watch the heads of the bishopric and stake president turn, one after another, in surprise to see her up there.     I was trying not to laugh too loud, and she came back a short while later. A little while after Evelyn came back to sit with us, a boy stood up to say his part and got the hiccups. Only a few were actually loud but he was kind of embarrassed and alot of people were quietly laughing. It was pretty funny to see his head jerk back a little with every hiccup, but he did surprisingly well at keeping himself composed.

Winter picture time

Well it was time again today to go and take some family pictures. We went up Millcreek canyon to the same spot that Andy and I had our engagements taken.

This is Evelyn in her new winter coat which she just loves! she always wants to take it with her even when she doesn't need it.

Evelyn was so cooperative today, I was able to get some really great shots of her.

I set the tri-pod up for this picture, and like I said Evelyn was cooperating really well so it only took 5 tries to get a good one.

Who's lost kid is that?

Tonight Andy and Evelyn and I went out to get some shopping done. Andy and Evelyn love to play no matter where we are. Tonight at target they played tag and then hide and seek. Here's how hide and seek turned out; Evelyn runs down the aisle and hides at the end, Andy pretends he can't see her but quickly finds her. Next, Andy runs down the aisle and hides at the end. Evelyn really can't see him. She stands in the middle of the aisle, alone(I am in the next aisle not paying attention because I think Andy is with her) saying Daddy? Daddy? Daddy where are you. After a minute my brain tunes into Evelyn's voice and I realize that my baby appears lost. I notice that a woman is standing around trying to find this poor little girls dad.  The worst part of it is that Andy was quietly watching Evelyn the whole time from his hiding place four feet away. When I told the lady that we were Evelyn's parents she looked skeptical until Evelyn smiled and said "Daddy"

2 going on 16

So lately andy and I have been trying to teach Evelyn that big girls go potty in the toilet. We have also told her that if she does go in the toilet we will have a potty party. Well Saturday night she peed in the toilet and we were all so excited. The next morning we had a breakfast potty party with a big breakfast. Now at night when we are putting her to bed she asks to have a party and listen to 'gaga' Which is lady gaga. She also keeps saying 'whatever' with tons of attitude and when we ask her to do something she sighs, breaths out "fine" and slouches away! My baby's a teen already, what happened!?

I have a nephew!

He was born last night, after a long, long labor, but he's finally here and he's so cute. Last time I spoke to Quin he still didn't have a name. Baby boy smith was 8lbs 4oz. 21 inches long, has lots of curly blonde hair and already needs a hair cut, and he is surprisingly not red or squish faced. I only have pics sent to me on Quins cell so here is one. I am so in love and I haven't even met him yet. It's amazing how two adorable nieces and a handsome nephew can completely own me in such a short period of time.

Candy makes it ALL better

Tonight while getting Evelyn ready for bed she started crying and saying "ow, ow, ow" so I started asking what hurt, and pointing at things to see where the owie was and how to make it better. after asking a few questions I still hadn't figured what hurt or how to fix it, so I asked what would make it better. She immediately stops crying and says to me with a straight face "candy" I laughed and called her a faker, at this she laughed and ran off giggling and saying "faker" a couple times.

yummy healthy bran muffins

So I have been wanting something that I can keep around the house for healthy, quick snacks. The result is this recipe for great bran muffins that are 125 calories each, 6 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber and 1/5 gram of fat. This is a recipe that I came up with and took me about two months to perfect. Even kids like them. For those of you who have been to the Greenery in Ogden they taste like the mormon muffins there and they are great with a little bit of honey butter.

4 C raisin bran crushed

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cups vital wheat gluten

1/3 cup brown sugar

2t baking soda

1t salt

2t vanilla

2 egg whites

2/3 cup applesauce

1 cup unsweetened plain or vanilla yogurt

1.5T cinnamon

Mix all ingredients and bake at 350* for 26 minutes. Yield 16

For family home evening Monday we took evelyn to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins.we had planed on getting her a small/medium size pumpkin, but as soon as she saw the little pumpkins her face just lit up. she was so happy that she had one just her size.

Today Evelyn got to paint her pumpkins. She had so much fun with it that After she was done painting pumpkins I showed her how to finger paint. She loved smearing the paint around and then realized her hands were dirty, and that alarmed her just a little.

Well I am fianlly an aunt and I love it. Evelyn and I went up to Moscow to visit the babies and they are so cute. Evelyn was so sweet and gentle with the babies, she would gently stroke their hair and give gentle kisses to the head. Every time she got to hold one her face would just light up.

Emily is Matt and Lyndees Llittle girl and she is the one sleeping in all of the pictures, she is about a month old. Madison is Jay and Camilles, she has dark hair and makes this cute little monkey face where she opens her eyes real big and makes an "o" with her mouth, she is about a week and a half in the pics. And of course theres Evelyn, a pretty little handful.

Debbie and madison

Evelyn's fall photo shoot

Amanda and Evelyn had a good time playing photo shoot at Gardner Village. Here are some of the highlights.

Evelyn here is sporting her first real hair cut. Our little baby is now a little girl.

I mentioned yesterday that evelyn does fun new things every day. Well she has discovered that if she hauls her pink Ikea stool around the house she can get into a whole lot of fun new things. I heard her playing with something that made a crinkling noise and went to investigate. I found her playing with my birth control, and I had to explain to her that she couldn't eat mommies "special candy" that prevents a baby from getting into my tummy. She looked very confused and a little bummed.

According to my dear sisters blog, I have not updated my blog in quite a while, and alot has happened. Andy came home from his year long deployment at the end of february, i've done a ton of school, got a job, that is going really slow, so I rarely actually work, evelyn turned two, and continues to do new fun things every day.

When andy came home, our neighbors put together a heroes welcome for him and lined our street and filled our yard with flags it was really an awesome sight.

Shortly after andy came home we went and spent some time with his grandma, natalie and quin and then took a weekend cruise to ensenada. I had heard alot of great things about the food on cruises, and i am now wondering if most people don't have taste buds, because I thought it was awful.

I got a new car and evelyn loves to play in it.

Evelyn turned two in july and we had a little party with some family and friends. Quin and Natalie were able to make it ot town just in time for her party and it was great to see them again.

Evelyn currently loves Elmo so I made her this Elmo pull-apart cupcake cake. I was surprised that it turned aout as good as it did.
For fathers day andy got a shop vac and evelyn had a ball playing in it and the box.

We just got back form a trip to lake powell. I have never had so much fun camping( I'm not really a camping fan, probably because I suck at it)

We went with some friends the Fiacks, and they are always so fun. Rob (bottom) and Chris (top) were splashing the wall while water skiing. There were a couple times chris got so close to the wall I thought he was going to slam into it.
Here is where we jumped off the big rock, It looked alot higher standing on top of the rock.

Evelyn is a little bit of a neat freak and the first day we were there she would whine that there was dirt on her shoes and she would walk funny to avoid touching the dirt, but once she realized how much fun dirt could be, we couldn't keep her out of it, she had a ball!

Evelyn keeps doing all of these fun new things. It is so much fun to watch her grow and I love anticipating the fun new thing that she will do next. This morning I was cleaning the house and i had the radio on in her room, and since she loves music she was playing in there. When i walked past her room she had gotten the "Daddy Book" ( a scrapbook devoted to Andy) out and was lying on her tummy looking at the pictures saying the names of the people in the pictures. She would point at Andy and say "dadada" and at my dad and say "ampa" it was so cute and she didn't notice me watching so I got pictures(for some reason she stops doing her cute stuff when I get the camera and just tries to take it from me).

I finally got my kitchen clean and took pics. I really love my kitchen, despite the fact that its not quite finished, we are still waiting on some doors.
CAN YOU SPOT THE FOSSIL?

This is my favorite tile and if you look close you will see why.
I'll give you a hint: it's not an animal.
Cant find it?

Alright so I am pretty much the worst blogger ever! I'll do a quick catch-up. We finally remodeled our kitchen, and it is gorgeous, I am in love. I got to do it my way, with nobody at all telling me what to do(actually people did tell me what to do, I just filtered out the bad and annoying advice). I got maple cabinets with a coacoa glaze and the edges are sanded to give it a rustic look. My floor is slate, and it's so awesome, since it is natural stone, there are fossils in it. My countertops are granite and they are great because they wont scratch or burn so they are basically Amanda proof!! Unfortunately I am not any better of a cleaner now that my kitchen is pretty than I was when it was ugly, and my kitchen currently looks like a dumping ground for everything under the sun. I haven't taken any pictures of my completed kitchen yet but my mother in law took some when she was down here. It was great cause she cleaned the kitchen before taking the picture!!

This morning, I left evelyn upstairs for like two minutes while I checked something on the computer, when I got back upstairs she had found a tube of lipstick that I thought was lost, dug it out of the tube and covered herself and her dolls with it. She was so proud of herself, but not very happy with me when I was trying to get it off in the bath tub.

Evelyn's current favorite game is to play peek-a-boo. amazingly I was able to get it on camera.