Teeth!

The last week was a bit rough around here and we finally have confirmation of why...teeth! Samuel finally popped out his bottom two teeth. He started having an awful time sleeping, waking up during the night to cry, inconsolably, for an hour or two. Not interested in eating, milk or solids. He would do 20-30 min naps and wake crying. And was rubbing and grabbing at his left ear.

He sits!

No more laying around for Samuel, in the past week he's learned to sit all by himself!

Nut Butter Experiments

As we've been jumping into our Paleo journey Jamie discovered some yummy pecan cashew butter at the store. After quickly demolishing a jar we realized that at $13 a pop this might become an expensive habit. So we thought, why couldn't we make our own? Turns out you can and with a little experimenting you can tailor one to just what you like. After checking with the google a bit we decided to use our food processor instead of the Vitamix blender. We also decided to toast our pecans first. We did three batches and varied the cashew/pecan ratios which impacted the amount of time needed to process it to the texture we wanted. (Forgive my handwritten tape labels, my label maker ran out of tape and the replacement is in the mail from Amazon.)

The original $13 jar of pecan cashew butter.

 Batch 1: 1/2 cup cashews, 1 3/4 cup pecan (toasted 4 minutes), processed about 5 minutes. This one had the runniest consistency. It also tasted a bit more toasty. 

 Batch 2: Half cashew, Half pecan (toasted 2 minutes and chilled), processed less than 5 minutes. This one had a nice consistency, not runny, but not to chunky. It tasted pretty cashew-y.

 Batch 3: All pecan (toasted 2 minutes and chilled), processed 5 minutes. This batch too much longer to get even a chunky texture. It tasted very pecan-y.

Flipping over!

Sammy flipped! And I missed it :( I put him on his tummy and went into kitchen and came out to find him on his back! Look how pleased he is.

Cowboy Judah

Judah was playing cowboy with his boots when he found his belt from Ashley. So he had to

Camping with Days!

We finally got to go camping with the Days! We headed up to Snohomish to Flowing Lake County Park. It is a very wooded campground, the type where you don’t see your nearest neighbor, with water and power hookups for the trailer. There was a bit of an adventure getting to the park as the google took us down the wrong road that dead ended at the bottom of a big hill at a huge gated house. We chose to back up the hill into another driveway since we weren't’ sure we’d make the turn around at the bottom. I ended up scratched with blackberry thorns helping with the backing and sent a strongly worded note to the google letting them know what I thought of their directions.

Anyway...we arrived and got settled in, cooked some sausage up for dinner and got Samuel to bed. Day’s rolled in after dark so we used our flashlights to help set up their new tent. Then we settled by the fire for S’mores. The kids were up a bit late but went to bed pretty easily and we had some nice adult campfire time. The next morning we awoke to no power - gasp! Thankfully our coffee timer had been set and made the coffee before losing power. But we were planning to do waffles for breakfast. Thankfully the power came back on before we had to fire up the generator. After all we had promised the kids waffles, even if it meant we had to run a noisy generator. Jentry had made the yeasted overnight waffle batter so they were amazing and our trailer smelled yummy all day.

After breakfast it was still foggy so we went on a bike ride walk down to the lake. We checked out the playground, the beach, the boat launch, ran some races, and hiked back up the hill for some lunch. While Judah was sitting in his chair eating he happened to lean back and fall over backwards. This wouldn’t have been as big of a deal, except that right behind him was a log and behind that a drop off of about 2 feet. He did a complete backwards sumersault, landing on his head. I saw it happen in slow motion, powerless to do anything. The back of his head was punctured by a rock in the gravel and it was bleeding pretty bad. I grabbed #4 of the four (seriously) first aid kits we have to start patching him up. (Why do we have so many first aid kits? 1. Well, back when we first got our trailer we had an incident with our friend’s child having a seizure so we bought a big fancy one at Cabelas. 2. Then I decided we should have something in my car in case we were at the park and something happened. 3. After my fall at church Jamie set up some blood specific first aid kits which I also carry in my car. 4. Jamie forgot or didn’t remember these first 3 and threw in his sport medicine kit when we packed for this trip.) I actually had to get kit #3 as well to get the peroxide for cleaning the wound. (Turns out we need to go through our kits periodically too as the ice pack in #4 did not work, thankfully we had a bag of ice in the freezer, another good thing to always bring camping.) Judah seemed his normal self and so we just kept an eye on his wound the rest of the trip and didn’t pursue any further medical care.

After this excitement we decided that naps were in order with the hope that we would have sun for the beach afterward. And sure enough the sun came out and burned off the fog. Joe and Jentry did some paddle boarding while the kids swam and played in the sand. They kept trying to find worms by pouring water over the dirt, because when it rains all the worms come out, so this must be how to get them out. They were bummed we didn’t have any fishing gear and kept talking about how they might scavenge some. Later at the campsite they kept looking for insects to add to their water bottle terrarium. I think they’ve all been watching quite a bit of Wild Kratts.

Dinner was delicious mac and cheese with hot dogs, a camp classic, and salad. Then another fire with S’mores. The kids headed to bed after Chloe asked to go to bed! Judah had a hard time going to bed so Ally was enlisted to help him out. Us adults made it all the way to 9:30 before calling it a night and heading to bed. The morning came early for the Day’s because of a barking dog. Our night was a bit rough because of our dog, well actually because Judah kept waking up and realizing she had left his bedside and coming to tell us about it. He was up at least 3 times for this reason. Despite that we were able to having a relaxing morning and then start packing up to head home.

Samuel continued to sleep in his bassinet this trip but he is soon to be too big for it. Thankfully he still isn’t rolling over so we don’t have to worry about that yet. He did really well falling asleep for his naps and it was so nice to put him on our bed with white noise so he could get a good nap. Sadly, our next trip we’ll have to figure out a new sleeping arrangement for him. Its wonderful and hard to see them growing up.

Two shirts, just like Dad

This morning Judah was getting dressed with his Dad when he suddenly took his batman shirt off and ran to get another one. When asked why he said, "I have to wear two shirts, just like Dad does." Here he is with his green John Deere undershirt. (And a silly face, he didn't want to smile.)