Friday, December 17, 2010

Gabriel where are you?

The other day Gabriel quietly disappears to his room and after calling out his name "Gabriel where are you?" and hearing no response Josh goes to look for him and finds Gabriel like this...


Hiding!

Cheeky!

I wish I could hide my whole self behind a shovel!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Oma

I think I have mentioned before, but in case you didn't know, my mom, Gabriel's Oma, is his favorite person in the whole world. I think he even likes her more then he likes me... sigh.

Gabriel walks around our apartment most days saluting with his hands saying 'yes sir Oma, yes sir Oma' over and over and over and... you get the idea. Yep, she taught him this. It's cute. He does it every day.

I had a band-aid on my finger because I had a blister and Gabriel asks me if I have an owie, I say yes, he says 'Mama cut chicken? Oma cut chicken.' See last time we were at my parents my mom told him that she cut her finger while cutting chicken, so since I had an owie, it must be the same as Oma's.

Every teddy bear that Gabriel goes to bed with is from his Oma. Two out of the now four blankets Gabriel insists on going to bed with are from his Oma.

Every time we get in the car, Gabriel asks if we're going to see Oma.

When Gabriel sees Oma he about knocks her down with a bear hug!

Gabriel loves his Oma! I think it's cute!

This is Gabriel and his Oma , yes he's naked like it seems he is in most picture... see you don't understand, my kid is messy. I have to take his clothes off to eat and at many other moments... it's rare to see him fully clothed in this house, especially now that's he's potty training. Anyway.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Bentleyville

The other night we went to Bentleyville! The was Gabriel's second time going, though he doesn't remember last year, and it was Eli's first time going.


Gabriel was in pure heaven the entire time we were there. He loved the lights!

This would be him, trying to figure out how to eat his cookie with gloves on...

Mama had to let him take his glove off while he ate his cookie which then started a chain reaction of him continually taking off his glove, but we won't go there:)

This would be Eli, being extremely tired and just watching the lights from the stroller before he fell asleep for the remainder of the time.

The cutest and most fun part of the evening is when Gabriel saw the people dressed up as snowmen, penguins, and reindeer! The first time he saw a big snowman he ran up to it and gave it a huge hug! It was the cutest thing ever! From that point on he would walk slowly, looking at the lights until he saw one of his fluffy friends and then he would take off running for them and give them the biggest hug!

I had the hardest time getting a picture of him hugging them though.
He would be the black blob growing out the penguins side:)

This picture was when all these people were posing for a picture and Gabriel ran right into their picture to give the reindeer a hug! Haha!

We even got to roast marshmallows!

We had so much fun! We can't wait for another warm (well, there's not really such a thing as 'warm' in Minnesota in December, but maybe there will be another 20-30 degree night, hopefully) night to go again!





Bentleyville would happen to be the reason why Eli's name is not Bentley. I love the name Bentley for a boy, but Josh said the only thing he thought of was Bentleyville. Sigh... Oh well, maybe I'll still get it for a middle name if we have another boy someday!

Friday, December 10, 2010

Cute in Hats

Eli decided to try out his fashion sense the other day...

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Best Christmas Tree

I'm pretty sure that we have the best Christmas tree on the block!
See...

I think it is at least !

Monday, December 6, 2010

Coincidence

I bought this shirt at a garage sale this last summer. I thought it looked familiar when I bought it but I thought maybe one of my nephews had the same shirt.


Then when I unpacked Eli's 6-9 month clothes I found this onesie that I had bought at a garage sale about two and a half years ago when I was pregnant with Gabriel.

I thought it was an odd coincidence :)

My first fondant cake!

If you haven't guessed already, I love to bake. To me it's fun, relaxing and a way that I can be creative. I've been known to throw things together to create something new and yummy and I have also been known to throw things together and create something not so delicious and yummy. Still, I love to bake. I love to bake so much that many times, I would bake things just to bake them and then find someone to give them too because I didn't really want to eat what I baked, I just wanted to bake it!

Two years ago Josh and I lived in an apartment that had free basic cable. I found this show called Amazing Wedding Cakes and I LOVED it! I think they only had one season and I watched every episode every time it was on, even if I had already watched it three times. I'm not kidding when I say I absolutely loved this show. Josh thought I was a little nuts but I couldn't get enough of it. It made me want to make cake. I mean, I've always wanted to make those nice fancy cakes that you see at weddings but this show made me really REALLY want to make cake.

Then we moved to South Korea and I never made the cake. It was always in the back of my mind but I never had the chance really to make anything. Then the other day we were looking through Netflix and we found seasons of Cake Boss. Seriously, when we came across it I was way overly excited. Just ask Josh. We've been watching the episodes and it made me want to make cake even more! So yesterday, I made my first two tier fondant cake!



I learned a lot making the cake. Like fondant isn't as easy to make as I thought. I ended up putting too much powdered sugar in some of it so it was a little hard to work with. I also didn't intend my bottom layer to be so dark. I wanted a dark brown and I kept adding brown coloring and it didn't seem to get any darker so Josh put in a dab of black and it turned out to be too much. We also couldn't find edible food paint so I used icing coloring for the design on top. I had intended a more complicated design but the icing coloring wasn't working very well so I just did something simple. And I didn't have a white color to do the bottom half. Anyway, it was a good first cake, I'm excited to make more, I just need to find people to eat it after I make it :)

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Christmas Pictures

This morning we took Christmas pictures. We didn't have anyone to take pictures of us so we had to do it ourselves, which makes things much more difficult! I was pretty surprised how well our pictures had turned out. I had pretty much given up that we were going to have a family picture and I was hoping for just one good picture of the boys so we had something for our Christmas card this year. But with a little briber (yes, we bribed Gabriel with 'chocolate milk' so he would hold still and smile), a self timer on my camera and Mommy being so very clever to put Madagascar's 'I like to move it' video from you tube on her computer right behind the camera we actually got some descent pictures. Well as descent as you can get taking them by yourself! Check it out... 





Thursday, December 2, 2010

Say Cheese... Please?!?!

Do you have any idea what it takes to get a good picture of Gabriel? No? Let me inform you. See Gabriel is not one of those kids that like to have their picture taken and will sit there patiently while you click away on your camera with an award winning smile on their face. Oh no. Gabriel doesn't like to have his picture taken. Actually, I don't even know if it's that because sometimes, rarely, he asks to have it taken. I think it's more Gabriel likes to make it difficult to take a good picture. Really, truly enjoys making it difficult.

Like in this picture, this is when I asked Gabriel to smile and look at me.


So he closes his eyes and half smiles.

This is when I told him he had to open his eyes.

He half lunges at me with a crazy face!

I took 30 pictures before I got this one.

30!

29 pictures of him being his cheeky self and one picture of him being a little angel :) We're going to have so much fun taking Christmas pictures... yep... or at least he will.

*By the way, in case you are wondering. Gabriel's bruise on his nose is from him spinning around in our living room, loosing his balance and crashing into our bookshelf. Poor guy!

My own little Hammy

This is Gabriel.

Err... Wait.

Actually this is Gabriel.

But he acts like Hammy.

See the resemblance?

I do. In more ways then I can count!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Advent

Today is the first day of December! Do you know what that means? It means that it's time for advent calendars!

When I was growing up my family always had advent calendars. My mom came from Germany when she was 5 years old and she had them when she was little so she wanted us to have them too. Advent calendars are more of a European thing then an American thing though. I don't recall many of my friends doing it when I was younger and I still know very few people that do it. Anyway. My mom had quite a few advent calendars and each of us children would get to pick one to hang up in our room and every day we would get to open up a flap and see what was behind it. It was always the most fun thing for me and I wanted to be able to share this experience with my children.

Problem is, America isn't very big on advent calendars. You don't find them all over the store like you do in Europe. So I went online. I was able to find some very cute ones at A Bit of Britain and Vermont Christmas Company. I ended up getting quite a few of them because I couldn't decide which ones were the cutest and I figured that my kids will use them for years to come like I did when I was little. This year though we're hanging them all up!








Gabriel had so much fun opening them up this morning! He wanted to open up more but I had to remind him that we only open up one a day!

I really wanted to get a 3D advent calendar that you can open, like with drawers and be able to put a piece of candy in them. But all the ones that I found that were cute were already sold out or extremely expensive. Next year I'll have to remember to start looking for one earlier before they are all gone! I also had a had time find more cute manger scene ones, so if you know a place where I can go for those let me know!

Do you do advent calendars? Did you do them when you were a child?

Happy First Day of December and Happy Adventing!

my conversation with Gabriel this morning

So if you don't like topics that children talk about and the sheer openness of a two year old, then you might not like this post. But, I had the funniest moment with Gabriel this morning!

Gabriel at the breakfast table, face beat red holding his breath: *Grunt* "Mama, I *Grunt* poop on potty *Grunt*"
Me: "I'm pretty sure you are pooping in your diaper."
Gabriel: "No! *Grunt* I poop *Grunt* on potty!"
Me: "Well we can go poop on potty, let's go."
Gabriel: "Mama, *Grunt* I BIG poopy!"

Hahaha!

On another note. My five and a half month old seems to think that he can put his hand in his mouth the same time he is nursing... he doesn't seem to have figured it out that he can't nurse and eat his hand at the same time.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

It's Christmas Time!

On Sunday night we were able to decorate our Christmas tree! I for one was extremely excited about our tree this year because it was the boys' first tree! I know, hard to imagine that even though this is Gabriel's third Christmas and it's his first tree. See when Gabriel was first born we lived in a tiny apartment and had no room for anything! Our dining room, living room, and my office (I used to work from home) was all shoved into a tiny living room and there wasn't much space to even lay down. Scratch that, there wasn't room to lay down. We also weren't sure if we were going to have to move around Christmas time that year so decorating and having a Christmas tree didn't happen, much to my dismay. We did however make a Christmas tree out of paper and hung it on the wall so we could put Gabriel's present under something.


It was fun and we will probably do it again this year and let Gabriel decorate it and hang it up somewhere.

Gabriel's second Christmas we lived at my parents and yes they did have a tree but it wasn't ours. They let us help decorate it and all but, I mean, it wasn't ours... you know what I mean? I hope so.

Anyway, so this year it's our first Christmas tree as a family! I was bummed that we couldn't get a real one at first. Our apartment building won't allow real ones so we had to buy a fake one. I have never had a fake one before, my whole childhood we always had a real tree, so when Josh came home with a boxed tree I didn't really know what to expect. When he put it together my words were 'it's so ugly' and then Josh explained to me that you actually have to fan out all the branches and what not to make it look like a real tree... oh.

So after we fanned out all the branches and curved them upwards like the little pamphlet said it actually looked pretty good!

So on Sunday after supper we made hot chocolate and popcorn, put on some Christmas music and started to decorate our tree! Gabriel had so much fun! He loved putting the bulbs on and especially the angels, he LOVES angels!


We let Gabriel hang the ornaments wherever he wanted to which ended up with a very interesting tree in the end!

All, and I mean ALL the bulbs were cluttered in one little spot at the bottom of the tree along with the angels and snowflakes! It was about the cutest thing ever! He wasn't even hanging them on the tree anymore, he was hanging them on the string of lights because he was running out of room. I loved it!

Even Eli got in on the decorating, sort of :)



We had so much fun decorating!






It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!