party party party

We had Jayden's birthday party yesterday. He had a blast!

The most important part, the cake, out on the table, and ready to go!

We rented a bounce house for our little bouncing boy!! He loved it!

Sweet Jacob diving into his cupcake!

Auriel came (!!) and had a good time playing with Eli

Jayden loves, loves, loves guitars so we I made him a guitar cake

Here's the birthday boy eating his cake!


Two old friends...of ours, and of each other. Jenny and Scot. We all go way back.. :)

Opening presents

Oma and Papa got him a drum, complete with drumsticks. He was SO excited

And one final picture of the birthday boy. Stephanie got him a fireman towel. He loves it!

Jayden is 2

I made a video montage of Jayden's first 2 years. Its A LOT to squish into one video so its a bit long. For all you Jayden fans out there, enjoy!! :)


P.S. Birthday pictures to come later on tonight! :)

mmm...salad!!

So today I am borrowing a page from MckMama's book and posting a picture of my lunch!!! This is one of my favorite salads. It is made with: organic baby greens, corn, black beans, chicken cooked in bbq sauce, and garnished with shredded cheddar cheese. Throw on some Catalina salad dressing (or ranch) and BAM you have a TASTY, flavorful, healthy lunch.

Before the dressing

And then after

sick boy :(

Poor little Jayden boy has been coughing for a couple weeks now. We saw the doctor on Wednesday, who said his lungs were clear and there wasn't much to do. But his cough has been getting worse and worse and worse. So last night he was running a fever of 101 so we paged the doctor who said to bring him in first thing this morning. So we did.

Turns out he has an ear infection and needs to be doing his breathing treatments with the nebulizer every four hours. And she added a new med to his nebulizer. Poor little guy! But at least he'll be well by his birthday, which is good news! :)

And just because he's SO stinking cute, here's a recent picture of our tantruming, tenacious, terrific, totally charming, toddling tike.

matching jammies

So you would think that by now I would have bought the boys some matching outfits. But alas I have not. Well that's not true. We got one set before Eli was born but he outgrew them before my sleep deprived brain remembered we had them. ANYWAY....I was at Costco the other day and saw these jammies and the boys just HAD to have them. Here's them showing off their "Irish twin" outfits. :)


And my absolute fave of the bunch we shot.

Jayden boy!

Jayden loves to be outside and LOVES the hose. Hee hee.

10 months

I am a few days behind on this but Eli is now ten months old! Wow! I seriously cannot believe how close we are getting to his first birthday. The first few months of his life seemed to never end. Sleepless nights, so much puke I have no words to describe it, and lots and lots of crying! But the past few have FLOWN by. I feel like the time with my sweet baby is slipping through my fingers, and he will soon be toddling/running around the house with his brother. For those of you who don't know Eli, he is just the SWEETEST little boy. Full of cuddles and smiles, and just so precious. I treasure our mommy and Eli snuggles, and the way he loves for me to just carry him around on my hip.

Anyway, what is he up to these days?
*crawling, pulling up, and cruising.
*working on standing on his own. he'll stand on his own for a couple seconds but that's all.
*just today he started clapping
*he plays "so big" and "peek a boo"
*still breastfeeding, which makes me really happy. i have now made it longer than i did with Jayden. so one year here we come! :)
*eating lots of table food. and let me emphasize LOTS. :) this boy loves to eat.
*in 9 or 12 month clothing. his insane growth has slowed a bit but he is filling out most of the 12 month stuff now.
*he has two teeth..the two bottom ones. seems like the top ones might be on their way. we'll see.
*eli is mellow, mellow, mellow. the difference between him and Jayden is amazing.

Here are some shots from the morning of this ten month "birthday."


and this is from Friday, after we took the boys to the beach

sick, sick, and more sick

For you faithful blog readers, you will remember when our whole family got sick at Thanksgiving.

Well these past few days have brought a toned down version of that adventure with the stomach flu.

It all started on Saturday when Jayden coughed a little and then threw up. Now, our little man tends to have a very active gag reflex so the "cough and puke" is nothing new around here. But it happened twice that day. Saturday night he didn't want dinner. Sunday morning he didn't really want to eat either. Sunday afternoon Eli woke up from his nap and promptly threw up everywhere...many times. Since then, Eli has vomited more times than I can count, we have changed his crib sheet approximately 5,476,289 times (yes, I'm exaggerating, but when you've been cleaning up puke for three days, you need SOMETHING right?), I have changed more diarrhea filled diapers than I care to imagine or count, and the poor guy has just been miserable. As if that wasn't enough, Jayden has been lethargic and not eating and kicked in with the diarrhea today. Stephanie also contracted the illness and has missed two days of school. Daddy got it yesterday, in the midst of studying for finals, and my dad got it today. Thankfully, my mom and I have escaped thus far. Praise The Lord. A full revisiting of the Thanksgiving misery is more than I could bear.

And just so there is some fun cuteness in this post, here's a picture of Eli doing "so big" a few days ago!


Isn't he awesome? Oh, and he'll be 10 months old on Friday! Can you believe it?

sunshine!

I love taking pictures of the boys outside in the sunshine. Such amazing lighting to catch their sweet faces on film.

On this particular day, Jayden and Eli were playing on the slide. Jayden was up top making Eli laugh and Eli was loving every minute of it.





"Ummm...Mom, I was wondering...how on earth did I get this stinking cute?"

Hannah (and Lyndsay!)

Our dear friends Hannah and Lyndsay came to visit us last week. Unfortunately I didn't have an opportunity to snap a picture of Lynds but here's one of Hannah and Eli. Both the girls were big hits with Jayden and he talked about them for three straight days.

Hannah and Lynds are the kind of friends that have become like family. We love them dearly! :)