Fall Brunch

So this past weekend our friends the Benesh's had a fall brunch. Lauren made these super tasty pumpkin pancakes, and everyone else brought something to share. Here's a spread of the food we had:



So, I took more pictures of the food and of people. Sorry guys, I just love food. Anyhow, here's the group shot I took.

So my contribution was a super tasty oatmeal casserole. Normally I"m not a huge oatmeal fan, but the candied ginger in here really makes the dish super good. Thanks Els for passing along the recipe. Here it is:

-1 cup steel cut oats
4 T butter
4 cups water
3 cups old fashion oats
3/4 cup brown sugar
1.5 cups peeled & diced apples
1/2 cup diced dried apricots
1/4 cup crystallized (candied) ginger
1 t salt
2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 t vanilla

1. Pre heat oven to 350 F and butter a 9x13 baking dish
2. Place steel cut oats and butter in large bowl. Bring water to a boil and pour over oats. Cover and let stand for 20 minutes
3. AFter 20 minutes, stir in old fashioned oats, brown sugar, apples, apricots, salt, ginger, and spices.
4. In separate bowl wish together eggs, milk, and vanilla. Stir into oat mixture and transfer to backing dish
5. Bake for about 30-40 minutes...until center is set.

I think next time I make this, I'm going to do a half a recipe in an 8x8 dish.

Anyhow, thanks Lauren and Nathan for hosting. WE had a great time!

Fruits and Vegetables

Yum, food. We like food in this house. The other week we went berry picking with our friends Bethany and Carey and we had a great time. Caleb, of course, picked more berries than I did, but I maintain that I ate more than he did, thus we probably picked the same amount (if anything I picked more…not like we are competitive or anything :-D). Not to mention I had the Hannah factor working against me. Hannah quickly realized that it was much easier to just grab a handful of berries out of my bucket than it was to pick them herself. I only let this mistake happen a couple times before I started to move the bucket away from her when she would reach for it. However, she soon realized that I would allow her to put berries into the bucket. Thus she would pick a berry or two, put it in the bucket, and then grab a handful out. The difficulties I face with having a smart baby. :-D Alas

Well, here is our loot. I’m not sure on the exact numbers, but I know we picked 8+ pounds of blueberries. The crazy thing is that it took us less than 2 weeks to eat them all. I think I’m the big culprit here; putting a handful on my cereal every morning, eating a handful every time I open the frig, etc. They are soooo tasty. The peaches and raspberries were also good.

In our garden things are going OK. Here’s a one of our hot peppers (that actually didn’t turn out to be hot, but it was still tasty, and looks really professionally grown!)

Here are some of our carrots.

I picked some really good looking ones the other week, but forgot to take a picture of them. You will just have to trust me that they, also, looked quite professionally grown (and were super tasty).

Also on the garden front, I made some tasty tomato soup from a bunch of our tomatoes. And here is plate of onions, tomatoes, and pepper that I still have yet to use. Also my broccoli and zucchini plants are still producing. Yay for fresh veggies!

Funny Video

Once Hannah finds something that's fun to do, she just does it over and over again. Check this out:

17 months

So Hannah turned 17 months on Friday. She just keeps growing. It never ceases to amaze me how much she knows. I guess because she doesn’t say any words yet, I expect her not to understand anything…BIG mistake. She understands tons. When she wants her diaper changed she’ll pull out the mat and lay down on it. When I’m done changing her diaper she’ll run to the door, point and say “ahh, ahh”, because she knows that diapers go down the trash shoot. As a side note, I don’t understand how parents survive without a trash shoot for diapers. When we move into a house, this will be the first thing that Caleb will install into the baby’s room! Of course Hannah’s understanding is selective; she has trouble with “come”, “no”, and “we need to pick up our toys”…again, problems that you deal with when you have a smart baby. :-D

She still enjoys sitting in baskets

Hannah loves to eat. If she knows you are making food for yourself, she will run over to the couch, sit on it, and pat the place next to her (signalling that you need to sit next to her). Here's Caleb feeding her some dinner. (note the huge drool spot...we think she's getting some more teeth)

Sometimes she'll get alittle aggressive and you have to do everything you can to make sure her hands don't get into your food!

Here she is cooperating a little bit more.

Hannah also just recently figured out how to get up on the glider. Things that move are exponentially harder to get on, but she's conquered it, and enjoys moving the chair back and forth.

One of the most entertaining things yesterday was when Caleb and Hannah were playing with the tennis ball. Caleb, somehow, stuffed the ball up her fleece and then asked her, "where's the ball?"

Poor Hannah. She was so confused. She looked everywhere for the ball and couldn't find it. It was the funniest thing ever! Finally Caleb helped her find it. She thought it was so amusing that the ball could be "hidden" under her fleece. So for the next three minutes or so, she would put the ball under her fleece, put her hand out as to say "where is it" and then reach under her fleece, grab it, giggle, and then repeat the whole thing. It was very cute!

Here's a picture of Hannah and dad chillin on the couch.

And here's Hannah putting her cell phone (the favorite toy) up to daddy's ear. She's not always the most gentle...we're working on that.

Oh, and Hannah likes balloons. The other weekend we got together with some friends for Damien’s birthday and there were balloons. Hannah had a great time playing with the balloons and beating people with them…I guess there would be worse things to beat people with. She’s a tad bit aggressive…we’re working on that. Anyhow, here are some pictures from that.

So this isn't Hannah, but it is the super scrumptious strawberry cake that Lauren made. YUM!!

Fun with Iris

So I remembered to take my camera with me to "work" one day and I thought I would share some fun pictures with y'all.

Iris has alittle mat that she lays on, and Hannah loves to cozy up with Iris. Sometimes I get alittle nervous, but most of the time Hannah is pretty gentle.

Hannah also likes to be really helpful by providing Iris with her pacifier. She knows exactly where it is suppose to go, but she hasn’t quite figured out how to discern when Iris wants it and when she doesn’t. Those always make for interesting times

One of Hannah’s favorite activities is to go into the plastic bag draw and collect all the twisty ties and rubber bands. She put them all in a bag and now carries the bag around the house with her. She is really insistent that all of them stay in the bag.

I forgot exactly what Hannah is doing here, but you can tell my shutter speed wasn't quite fast enough to catch this girl in action!

As you know one of our (Hannah, Iris, and my) favorite activities is to go to the park. Here are a couple shots of Hannah enjoying the park. Iris normally watches all the kids run around or sleeps. I'm confident that when she learns to walk/run, she will enjoy the park just as much as Hannah and I do.

Hannah loves slides!

Here she is getting in and out of the sand box (another favorite activity). Mind you, playing in the sand is fun too, but she enjoys getting in and out so much more!

At the playground on campus, Hannah loves the car. It is definitely a very close second to slides. She loves to get in the car, turn the wheel abit, then get out of the car, shut the door, smile, open the door and begin the whole process again. She’ll do this about 5 or 6 times. It’s pretty comical for me, the observer. :-D

So that's basically my day at "work."