Ray of Sunshine

Soon, many of our days will be, as Ellie says, "dark and doomy."
No worries here though...we have our own little live-in Ray of Sunshine!
(You can kind of see his one little tooth in this picture)

Here's our little helper!

He was so excited to help mop the floor!
How can you help but smile with this little guy around?

One Last Fall Day

We had our first snow of the season today (pictures to come), but here are some pictures of one of the last really lovely days this year.

Little Noah couldn't be happier than outside! We stick him in overalls and let him lose. He consumes dirt and rocks (he's got a big one in his mouth in several of the pictures) in large amounts and really loves playing with the trike--exploring the trunk and pushing it around to practice his walking skills.
Eden loves her "park" in the back yard. She always wants to be pushed on the swing, but when Mom and Dad are busy she swings with her imaginary friends. She is often talking away to one of her cousins or friends from nursery or even pals from the TV. The other day she was hollering at the "man cub" to come push her. She's also getting to be quite the hiker and likes to bring her own pack!
About that last post...we've gotten several protests about it, telling us not to whine and that we live in a great place with some wonderful benefits. We actually really like Bountiful and I'm not sure how that post came about. We were going around enjoying the leaves and Lance wanted to take a bunch of pictures to show off what a pretty place we live in. He said something like, "Besides Park City, I think Bountiful has got to be the prettiest town along the Wasatch Front." He also says things like, "Man, I love driving around Bountiful! I hated going anywhere when we lived in Salt Lake--too much traffic and so many lights." I wrote the text above the pictures on that last post and then turned it over to him. And look what happened! I guess we like Bountiful in the non-winter only! Haha!

Bountiful in the Fall

Being busy with remodeling projects pretty much every moment, we really don't get out to see gorgeous spots as much as we used to. Luckily for us, there is gorgeousness all around us here in Bountiful. These are pictures we took on our evening walks. Just down the street are two rivers we cross, which have fantastic leaves right now. Of course, the beauty of autumn here is nearly eclipsed by the inevitability of the coming hellishness of Northern Utah winters. We try to enjoy the short month of great weather and wonderful colors before the four long months of colorless, lifeless, polluted, bleak, kill-me-now-before-it-snows winters. Perhaps global warming will kick in for real this winter and give us a reason to live up here.

Putting the coming death-of-all-that-lives aside, autumn up here really is spectacular. We drove up the street to Mueler Park/Mill Canyon the other day and the leaves were at their peak. It was really spectacular.

All Hands on Deck!

WooHoo! We finished the deck--no more diving platform! Now we just need some patio furniture and some friends to BBQ...I mean BBQ with!

(P.S. Aren't our wood piles rustic?)

Potty Training!

POTTY TRAINING...
Should those words be accompanied by a clap of thunder and dun-dun-dun-dun type music?
I guess that depends on your experience. I've heard several moms of young kids say that POTTY TRAINING was the worst experience of motherhood yet. With their words ringing in my ears I finally approached p.t. with a goodly amount of trepidation. However, I was hoping this might turn out like childbirth (so many horror stories, but really not at all bad if you are prepared...and best not to listen to those stories at all) and that, armed with a secret weapon, it would be a breeze.

THE WEAPON:This is the book MY parents used to p.t. me and most of my 7 siblings (that is until they got sick of p.ting and just had my oldest sister and brother do it for them).

LAST WEEK OF AUGUST--THE 1ST ATTEMPT:
I read and reread the book, bought 3 versions of a kiddie potty, stocked up on supplies and took the plunge. The night before I crammed like crazy, scribbled reminders on the bathroom mirror and had that sick night-before-a-final feeling. Things went okay, but not exactly like the book said--Eden wasn't really motivated by the psychologically proven motivators. By the end of two or three days (can't remember which--it's all a hazy blur now) stuck in the house I decided to bag it (and had that I-just-failed-a-final feeling).


FIRST WEEK OF OCTOBER--SUCCESS:
The book said that p.ting should be done in a positive, happy, excited manner. I tried, but I think my feeling of "do or die" might have shown through the forced smiles. Our second attempt was totally different. Eden didn't have to be taught the procedure this time and we were way casual about the whole thing. I just stuck her in undies because she wanted to, reminded her she had them on occasionally, set a timer to go off once an hour and had her try going about that often. And she did!...And loved it!...And got to watch the long-awaited "Word Factory" when she was finally able to do her business in the potty (the big potty--she hated each one of the tiny potties we bought her)!

She is now a Potty Pro and does everything by herself! And really, it was not too bad. I think my smiles will be a lot less forced when it comes time to p.t. Noah.

Pure Goodness: Peanut Butter

Pure Goodness Product: Natural Peanut Butter

Ingredients:

Peanuts, contains 1% or less of salt (can get unsalted version)

Lengthy List Loser:

Ingredients: Peanuts, sugar. Contains 2 percent or less of: molasses, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils (rapeseed and soybean), mono- and diglycerides and salt.

Do "choosy moms" really choose Jif (or its counterparts)?

A few notes on Natural Peanut Butter:

Reason you might not love it:
It's not sweet!
Reason to love it anyway:
Unless you are spreading p.b. on crackers or something, you almost always eat it with something sweet anyway (with jam or honey on sandwiches, in cookies...) so skipping the sugar in the p.b. isn't even noticeable. Plus you can always stir in a bit of honey if you need it sweeter and know exactly what you are getting.

Reason you might not love it:
It separates!
Reason to love it anyway:
If you rotate the way you store it, you don't have to worry about it. Just put it away upside down one time and then right side up the next time.


Reason you might not love it:
You have to refrigerate it and that makes it hard to spread.
Reason to love it anyway:
According to one p.b. connoisseur, if you eat it fairly quickly you don't have to refrigerate it (refrigeration is to keep it from going rancid). Also, some brands get harder to spread than others. We love the Adams brand, but it does harden in the fridge. The natural organic p.b. from Costco stays spreadable so we usually go with that one.

Enough said!

Mother of Three!

Who new I was a mother of three? I've got two boys and a girl. My oldest is currently attending Utah State University. He calls home every week or so, shows up here about once a month with loads of laundry, mooches food, leaves his stuff around the house, and is generally pretty dang fun.

SUPE!
Check out the way he slices bread (and that was one of two...my precious homemade bread)!