keeping busy!

I don't know why Addie looks so crazy in both of these pictures!

We've had such a busy January. I feel like I've barely been home (and the cleanliness of my apartment will prove it) but it's been a blast.

(Macie is the oldest here by 3 or 4 months, but she's clearly one of the smallest!)

Jason has been studying like a mad man. His first board exam is in March, so he has his nose to the grindstone. He's concerned there is too much material to review and that he'll never get through it all. I'm positive he'll do well, he always has before! It stinks to have him gone so much, I'll be very grateful once they are done.

I've been dabbling in various things all month long. I can now make balloon animal frogs, giraffes, monkeys, swords, dogs and hearts. Unfortunately, my pump has gone MIA, so hopefully it turns up again soon. The balloons are a HUGE hit with the girls. I've also just finished two more name signs a friend at Stroller Strides is paying me for. I'm charging her $20/sign, but decided that it's not worth my time for that. If someone wants to pay me for one in the future, I'll have to charge more than that. They are just so time consuming! They turned out cute, though, I'm really pleased with them.

Young Womens is keeping me busy. Our Laurel Advisor moved in December, so I've been having to teach each Sunday as well. I'm actually enjoying it. I hated teaching the young women when I was first put in, but now it's not so bad. I'd still prefer to be teaching the primary kids, though.

Addie is a lot of fun. She can speak very well now, my favorite is when she says "No thanks, Mom." I don't know why, I just think it's cute for a two year old to be so polite. She's also very good at doing everything she isn't supposed to do. We love playing pretend together and have been working on potty-training. She's pretty good at #2, but is completely clueless for #1. She Adelyn also is wonderful (too wonderful, almost) at sharing everything with Macie. She'll take out all her toys, one by one, and pile them up around Macie, convinced she needs every toy we have to offer. Fortunately, Addie is also usually good about cleaning up!

Macie can sit up well now, but isn't interested in scooting or crawling just yet. She's great at rolling to everything she needs. She's learning how to pick up food in her fingers and actually get it in her mouth. She's also a little sneak and can snatch up wanted items in an instant! She's very attached to me lately, which hasn't been fun for Jason, but I'm sure she'll grow out of it. She's quick to smile and is so fun to have around! On Thursday we went to the doctor for her checkup and she's still only 12 lb 6 oz. She's so small, her weight isn't even on the chart! Her head and length are normal, though, and she's hitting all her developmental milestones so the doctor isn't worried. I'll admit, though, I have been pumping her full of calories this week!

Sneaking veggies? That's my girl!

Jason and I are doing (yet again) another diet. We're trying to keep an extremely low-fat diet (less than 15 grams of fat per day-much akin to how I was eating with gallstones) and are seeing results. It's been 3 weeks and we've each lost 6 to 7 pounds! Our goal is to be where we want to be by our anniversary and treat ourselves to a nice evening away. We're hopeful! Well, I hope you enjoy the schmorgasborg (sp?) of pictures!

Can you believe we flew kites in January? Memphis isn't so bad afterall...

Chapped hands

After suffering with chapped hands for over 50 years of life (as many of you guys know and now can appreciate), three or four years ago I finally figured out how to avoid them. Someone suggested using St. Ives Swiss Formula moisturizing lotion every night (there are a few different types and they all seem to work about the same; I am using the Vitamin E type right now). I begin when the weather first starts to turn cold and put it on every night before I go to bed. It has worked wonders. There has only been one time in the last three years, once last winter, when my hands chapped up enough to crack and bleed a little. I put on the lotion in extra measures for a couple of days and it had them back in good shape. I swear by this lotion. If you start early enough, before they start cracking, the lotion doesn't sting when it is applied. Take this for what it's worth; this regime works really great for me.

Bryce W. Hill

Brandon and Brianna Hill had a baby boy on Sunday. He was 11 pounds and 2 ounces and 21 inches long! She had him C section, obviously. As far as I know everything is fine, Wayne didn't give much detail. You can check out the baby's picture on facebook, Wayne says. I thought you'd like to know.

delicious recipe!

Mmmmm...we had such a delicious dinner tonight that I just HAD to share the recipe with all of you. My friend recommended it to me off of the website www.ourbestbites.com and it is not to be missed!

Asian BBQ Chicken
1/4 C packed brown sugar
1/4 C soy sauce
2 Tbsp lime juice (about 1 lime fresh, we used the juice in a bottle)
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1/4 t curry powder
3-4 garlic cloves, minced (we used the pre-minced kind, 3 tsp)
1 t grated fresh ginger
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Combine everything but the chicken in a small bowl. Whisk to dissolve brown sugar. Reserve a couple of spoonfuls of the marinade in a small bowl and place the rest, with the chicken, in a zip-lock bag. (If your chicken pieces are extra large and you feel like you need a little more marinade, you can always add a bit of water to stretch it.) Pop that bag in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours, but overnight is best. (We marinated ours for about 5 hours and it was fine.)

Preheat a grill (or an indoor grill pan or broiler). Spray cooking surface with cooking spray and place chicken on it to cook. Cook for 5-10 minutes on each side depending on the thickness.

We LOVED LOVED LOVED it. Our chicken was tender and juicy, and the seasoning on it was perfect. We paired it with a spinach salad and kept mmmmm-ing the entire meal. It was easy and SO GOOD. The worst part (for me, I hate raw chicken) was just trimming off as much fat from the thighs as I could. She recommends making a double batch and having Asian BBQ chicken pizza the next night. We will DEFINITELY do that the next we make this. I can't recommend it enough! Certainly one of the best things we've had for dinner in a while.

Tomorrow we're having our cousin Doug Couregges and his fiance over for dinner and games. It will be fun to get to know them. Wish us luck!

Cute new border!

'bout time

These aren't in chronological order, but it's too late to worry about that right now. We didn't take many pictures for either of our holiday trips this year, which I regret now. Here are a few-

This picture is deceiving. Grandpa was making Macie crack up, I mean really laugh, and then right before we could take a happy picture, she burst out crying. It was too bad, her and Grandpa really liked one another.

Grandpa decided to fix the curtains, rather precariously, right in the middle of the party. After we all stopped freaking out, and after he didn't fall and break his hip, the whole thing was actually quite funny. (For those who don't know them, note Paul and Bronny...er, Bronwin...on the couch.)

Tom came to our party at Grandpa and Grandma's so he could see his grandkids one last time. (He has lost A LOT of weight, I mean A LOT, all from walking up in the mountains nearly every day. After his car accident last year and his depression stemming from it, the mountains may have quite literally saved his life.)

Addie's new weird camera smile. We're working on it.

I got supplies to learn to make balloon animals! I am so excited. Here is my first dog. Pretty good, eh?

A happy first Christmas for Macie!

Let me tell you, balloons make for a very merry Christmas!


Addie just loved unwrapping gifts. Everyone's gifts. She wasn't quite as polite about it as Harvey seemed to be.

Addie did extrememly well on the long car ride out there and back. As long as the DVD player was on (I don't know how many times Jason and I heard Night at the Museum) she was pretty happy.

Macie, on the other hand, was pretty sick of it nearly the entire ride home.

A rare moment out of the car somewhere in Oklahoma, I think. That sun roof does come in handy sometimes.

We had a great time, all in all. Idaho was very relaxing and it was great that Jason's parents were able to spend so much alone time with their granddaughters. They loved it. We drove down to Utah for 3 days and that was hard. There were just too many people to see in too short of time. It was exhausting. Our kids did pretty well considering how many grandmas and grandpas they had to meet, how many times they missed naps, and how many times they were taken in and out of their car seats. They were troopers. On our way home Jason, Addie and I all came down with the stomach flu. It was awful. I eventually put Addie's bib on her and kept asking her to puke in the pocket of it! Not fun. Fortunately, it only lasted a day and the last two days were fairly uneventful, but we will avoid that drive at all costs. Any volunteers to drive out stuff away when we graduate? We're planning on flying! :)

Guess that's it, enjoy the pics!

More Christmas pictures

So here is the link to the rest of our "pictures". Our kids had kind of a drawn out Christmas with opening presents three separate times. The last time was our own Christmas morning, which actually happened on the morning of the 31st. Charlie and I didn't want to wrap all their presents so we just stuck them in separate big boxes and had the kids pull them out. I know we are the most lazy parents ever, but the kids don't really care about the wrappings anyway, right? All in all, our Christmas was great.

Our Christmas pictures

So I could go on and on, but I think I should put the rest of the pictures on picasa and put up a link later. We had a Merry Christmas and look forward to spending it with all of you next year.

Our quiet Christmas

As all of you know, we stayed home for Christmas this year and it was fun, I guess.  I will say that I am excited to spend Christmas next year with all of you.  It was quiet and a little boring, but it was nice.  Noah didn't get many gifts and we got even less, but it was just fine.  I think our best present was the stool that Kurt MADE for us.  We LOVE it!  Noah carries around (no joke) and tells us that it's his chair-it is his perfect size.  So thank you for that and your other presents Kurt and Heather.  Anyway, we had the missionaries over for dinner and 2 families from the ward.  We had the most delicious ham and kraft pudding dessert and we did the puppet show but I haven't gotten around to putting it on YouTube yet.  It isn't that funny because we didn't sing ourselves but it was fun because only the men participated.  The only bummer was that Noah refused to take a nap which made for a fight and a long day.  The last picture is when Noah crashed 45 minutes before our company arrived.  Oh well, at least he slept.  All in all, we had a really good Christmas.  

Christmas

Well, I looked through our camera and we didn't take any pictures at the Hutchinson Christmas this year. Maybe we forgot the camera at home. But I'll put up a few from Christmas with the Wilhelms.



This is actually with my mom's side of the family, the Mathers. My aunt bought my grandparent's house so we got to have another traditional Christmas in Boyne City. We are truly blessed to have the whole family together after a loss. My dad made a toast and we all got a little emotional. On a lighter note, Harvey got a lot of cool presents but these glow sticks from the dollar store that Santa brought him were the real hit of the evening.

This is an image from a video which is why the quality is so poor. This is an ugly little mole on a spring like a yo-yo. My brother brought it back from Germany. Again, this was the least expensive toy Harvey got but by far the most played with while at my mom's house by not only him but all of us. I'm sensing a theme.

Harvey was an expert at unwrapping presents by the end of the day.


We'd tell him who the present was from and then he'd insist on going and opening it with them. It was really cute and I know everyone appreciated his excitement. Christmas is so much more fun with kids around.

Opening another present with Papa.


Now for just some silly pictures. Harvey is getting to be quite the character. He has recently hit a sassing back stage but he's also coming up with some silly ideas all his own too.



Here he's packing up for his trip Up North. He wouldn't get out until I came in and him and Kurt could show me.


Like father like son. Harvey and Simon (Joe's son) in their first gaming session.


I can't believe he actually fit in this basket. What a silly boy.

Hope to see some other peoples pictures soon now that the holidays have settled down. Hope everyone had a joyous time.