My angel

Here are some Mason Milestones. (Pictures are all out of order... sorry!)

• Always in 70-75% for height and weight. Woo Hoo Big boy!
  9 Month Checkup - 28" 21.8#
  
• Rolled over at 4 months (6 weeks to start, but at 4 months he consistently did it)
  
• Sat up at 6 months - which he loved
• Started crawling at 9 months - which he loved even more
• First tooth was 8 months
  
• Daddy has been saying for months that he didn't want to be a baby, he wanted to get down and play - he sure became super happy as he learned to be more mobile!
• Started pulling himself up ALL the time at 10 months.
• Says Mama, Dada, tries to say brother, night night, and AHHH! He screams at you when he wants something - usually it's food or to get down in to the office (he fell a couple of times off the step and refuses to get near it again!)
  
• Mason LOVES showers and baths. He gets excited anytime he's around water.
• He LOVES to drink -anything. Juice, water (ice water) milk, yogurt smoothies - whatever!
• His hair is crazy - there is no combing it down- it pops back up!
• He has two bottom teeth with a third coming in and both top ones coming in. Poor guy!
  

Ethan with his new brother! I don't think there could be a better big brother! Ethan is SO happy to have "his baby". His first and last thoughts of the day are of his baby.


First time eating green beans. He liked it, the FIRST time!

Watching Saturday morning cartoons with brother.

Giving his cousin Kayden kisses on his head. :)
Ethan fell asleep holding his brother. Such a sweet, tender moment for me to witness.



Mason at 4 months - yep, he was a chunker!


Mason at 10 months. He is loving the outdoors with his family!
Mason at 8 months! :)

Its time

It's time I start blogging again. I've not done it for a LONG time. I have a lot to catch up on, but instead I think I'll just start from now so I don't get overwhelmed. :) Hopefully I can keep up with it and life! :)

Love my boys!

New Pics

It's been a while since I've blogged. Life I guess... Here are a few of Ethan's new 2 year pictures. Geez, I can't believe my baby is nearly 2 years old! How did time fly so fast when it seemed like eternity waiting for him to get here? Words can't express the love his daddy and I feel for him and we are so grateful to be his parents! He has so much personality, so much joy and life, and he is so much fun to be with! We love you so much Ethan!!!

Favorite Meal

Jeff and I always try to eat healthy at home. That's the problem... We do it at home - but the past year have started eating out constantly. I was so busy, tired or because we wanted to -whatever the reason, we ate out a lot. So our goal of the new year was to eat out only one time per week. We always make that Saturday because we are running around or plan an activity away from home. Jeff has been taking his lunch, we eat steel cut oats for breakfast and since before Christmas, we have only eaten out once a week. Wow, we have really saved some money!

One of the dinners that we have eaten a lot are black bean tostados. We discovered we really liked them and they are really healthy! A few people asked for the recipe, which I don't have one since I just "made it". But here is what I do...


BAKED BLACK BEAN TOSTADA
Shells
Brush corn tortillas LIGHTLY with olive oil. You can skip the olive oil, but they don't get as crispy. But just use a small amount. In a pre-heated oven at 350, place them directly on the rack. Flip often - wait until they are golden brown to pull from the oven. But be careful - they will go from nice and golden to nasty really quickly.

Beans
I used canned black beans. Rinse them well. All of the starch settles at the bottom which is just added calories. Smash the beans with a potato masher and add milk to make it a refried bean consistency. (Whatever you like) I add a little cumin, garlic powder, onion powder and salt/pepper. Let beans heat up and simmer for a few minutes.

Top with Lettuce, Tomato, onion and cheese if you want.

Variation:
We do everything the same except we add sauteed chicken with onion and red bell peppers. Season similar to a fajita.
Place chicken on top of beans & top with lettuce, tomato and cheese.

We calculated 135 calories per tostada. This is the bean only tostada. It will vary depending on the amount of cheese you add, the brand of beans, the shells etc.

2009

This past year has not been an easy one... I am going to journal the last two months and END THE YEAR!

Thanksgiving - we usually go to my Aunt Celeen's for Thanksgiving. We LOVE going. My aunt Laurie and her family come as well as my Aunt Ann. We LOVE going and have so much fun. We play games, laugh, wrestle, and the SHOP the following morning. We love it. This year, sadly, we weren't able to go.
The morning before Thanksgiving my sister and mom woke us early banging on our door. (never happens). My mom was home alone all night. Around 4am, two armed men broke into her home and robbed her. They tied her up, pushed her to the ground and she laid tied up for two hours while they cleaned her house out of any valuables. A very horrifying experience. So we stayed home and had Thanksgiving at our house at the last minute.

Christmas - Christmas eve we had a ton of snow which "ruined" our Christmas Eve traditions. But we were so excited about the snow, we didn't care. It was beautiful! We stayed home and just hung out together, which was awesome. Christmas morning came fast and how fun we had opening gifts with Ethan! He is such a little man and was so excited for everything. He would open it, take the box to his aunt Sarah and then tell her to open the box. Then he would run to the next gift to open. He had so much fun! I loved watching him learn about Christmas presents.
Shortly after opening his gifts, my dear sweet little boy was attacked by our dog. Yes, our dog. She was old and I think senile. Thankfully my sister Sarah was sitting with them and she was able to open the dogs mouth while I pulled Ethan out from her grip. She bit and wouldn't let go of his cheek. We are SOO grateful that she missed his eye, nose and ear. She got only his cheek. Unfortunately, it was a rather deep bite and so the wounds were worse than they looked. We rushed him to the ER. Well, tried to rush. Because of the snow, we were snowed in and couldn't get our van out. Our neighbor, who we have never even talked to, came running out to help and they tried to shovel, dig, push the van but we couldn't get it out. We called a friend that has a truck and was pulling people out, but we were so distraught and it felt like he was taking forever. (He really wasn't -the blood just made it seem that way!) The neighbor said we could take his car (after we got it out of the snow) and so we took off to Mercy. Our neighbor can't know how grateful we are that he let perfect strangers take his car in the snow to take our baby to the hospital.
We spent a good chunk of the day at the hospital. But since Ethan had eaten, they couldn't sedate him so they cleaned his face and bandaged it. We were told to come back the next morning and the surgeon would repair his cheek. The poor little guy couldn't eat or drink after midnight and he didn't have his surgery until almost noon. I felt so bad for him. He was so hungry and in so much pain. The Dr (despite being a MAJOR JERK) did a great job on his face. Ethan had over 20 stitches on the outside and inside. So far he's been back to his office and had the stitches out, but has to wear the steri strips on his face for 4-6 weeks until it heals. We have to ATTEMPT to keep Ethan from crying or playing so that it can heal. He's become quite the spoiled guy because we are trying to keep him from crying. So if he wants something, he gets it. When he's done healing, the poor guy is going to have to go through baby boot camp. Hahaha

Jeff went to the basketball game with James Eddleman and friends for New Years Eve. Ethan and I spent a WONDERFUL evening home alone watching Wizard of Oz, eating pizza and going to bed early.

The last few months of 2009 were difficult to say the least, we are hoping for 2010 to be so much better!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

This is such a wonderful time of year in our home. Both Jeff and I love it and get very in to the holidays. This Halloween was extra fun because Ethan is starting to understand something fun is going on and he gets excited. This year he was a dragon / dinosaur. We didn't see the wings when we bought it so we thought he was a dinosaur.

We went to a church Halloween party on Friday night and then Saturday we spent the day having fun. We went to a fun lunch, made and decorated Halloween cookies to take to neighbors and family, carved pumpkins, and went trick or treating. Ethan loved all of it. He really got in to the trick or treating once he figured it out. He would grab his bag and put it on his arm before walking up to a house, hit the door (his way of knocking) and then when they would offer the candy, he would take it and put it in his pumpkin bag. It was so cute. Then he'd go running for the next one. He loved it! He probably would have gone all night if we had let him. Yay! Mom loves trick or treating and can't wait for next year when we can go all night!

Ethan is off to the races!

Going to his next house

He loves the pumpkins!

Church party - he got his face painted. Surprisingly he sat still and wanted her to paint his face.

Taylor, Nathan and Ethan

"Let me have my pumpkin!"

Taylor and Ethan playing the cake walk game. Ethan loved it becasue he got to pick his candy.

Starting our Halloween cookies.

Build a Dino

When we went to the Disney Marketplace they had a Build-a Dino (like the build a bear). It was inside a fantastic restaurant that was all dinosaurs. Ethan picked his dinosaur and helped to put his heart (s) - he has two - in, his stuffing in, and then he picked out his clothes, including sunglasses. Danny the Dino's little shirt says "It stinks to be extinct". So cute!

Putting the heart in his new friend.

Checking the stuffing level. It had to be just right.

Introducing, Danny the Dino and Little Ethan

Para Sailing

Jeff and Phillip went para sailing and jet-skiing out in the ocean. Jeff went twice and he said he LOVED it. I can't wait to go back so I can try it!

Starting out. They loved it!


They went SO high up. Some pictures all you can see is a yellow dot... The boat drivers would go real slow and let them "fall" down and drop into the water and then pull them back up into the air.

Florida

Heading to the water.
Daddy and E playing in the pool.

Beautiful beach with a wonderful sunset.

Our last night - it was super dark out and a guy offered to take our picture, but it kept coming out blurry. But you get the idea.

ARRRRRg.....

Hold em up pirate - I want your gold. Really.

In front of the Lego store.

Ethan was super excited to share his frog with the dog.

Princess castle. Yes, the boys went in to the girly castle.

Ethan and Momma - we are waiting for our food at Rain Forest Cafe. Poor little E is waiting for the Motrin to kick and help him feel better...

Ethan and Momma on the pirate cruise. What a miserable (although I'm smiling, it's one of the few smiles on the whole adventure!) pirate cruise.

Daddy and E on the pirate cruise. This is the beginning when we didn't know how much it was going to drag on forever, and ever, and ever. Poor little Ethan was starting to get more sick and the heat bearing down on him was NOT a good idea. We had no idea this is what our $80 would get us.

Ethan was so hot he was trying to stick his face out of the boat and into the water.

Sweet little boy.

He was so sick he couldn't really enjoy the water, which normally he would have been so excited! But despite not feeling well, he loved going really far out in the ocean with Daddy.

Looking for sea shells.

Pooped after going to Sea World.

Ethan is wanting everyone to see the dolphins. He was so excited and kept pointing, but making sure everyone was looking at what he was seeing.

Dad and E waiting for the Dolphin to start.

Luke and Ethan at Sea World.

We had the best time when we went to Florida! Our poor little Ethan was sick. We think he had some sort of virus and then got over heated. At one point his fever was 104.2. But despite him being sick and my not sleeping (well, one-two hours a night), we had a blast.