"Deceptively Delicious"

I have been reading about kid's nutrition lately, specifically "Disease-Proof Your Child" by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. And I feel bad about Tanner's diet after learning how critical good nutrition is in the early years. He appears to have asthma, and I've read in many sources that an excellent diet can get rid of symptoms. So I looked up cookbooks that have healthy, kid friendly meals and came across Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. She is sneaky by putting vegetable, bean and fruit purees in all her recipes. I've only tried a couple recipes and they've been a success! I spent an hour this morning blending up a bunch of veggies and am excited to throw them in anything and everything.

Also I have to say how proud I am of Nate. For 2 reasons. First, he is drinking green smoothies with me now! and second, he got all A's last semester. Ok, some were A-, but those are still A's.

After Christmas fun

I was afraid that the Christmas break would be boring for Nate. You know, going from full time school, to nothing. But we've had fun playing with the boys and their Christmas gifts. We got them Hungry Hippos. Tanner goes crazy. Has to do 2 hippos at the same time and yells "GOOOO!!!" Until the marbles are eaten up.

We didn't do much candy, but they got M&Ms. Dallin couldn't eat them fast enough, and Tanner played with them and put them in his car.

A Merry Christmas

First of all, I hope all had a wonderful Christmas. We did. It is getting more fun every year as the boys get older and more into Christmas. Tanner got to be pretty good buddies with the mall Santa this year from us walking there a couple times a week.

We spent Christmas morning at our place. Started with cereal (Fruit Loops) that the boys picked out; a tradition we picked up from the Braggs. Then stockings and presents. I think the boys would have been fine with just the few toys they got in their stockings. I am thinking we shouldn't have gotten as many presents as we did, which really wasn't many. They are so easily excited by small simple gifts. They got a couple games, cars and movies. Santa got them a sled.

I love Tanner's faces when he was getting into his stocking. Dallin's favorite thing was this Mickie Mouse coloring book. He carried it around and flipped through it most of the morning.

We went to Paul and Paula's in Rexburg for the afternoon. We ate good food, watched "Four Christmases" and played Rummikub. I always like to try new recipes for the holidays. I did an eggnog cheese cake that was awesome. Eggnog fudge too. Pretty good, but preferred Paul's chocolate walnut fudge. We had way too many sweets. But that is what Christmas is for right? Back to a healthy diet tomorrow. I am doing an hour and a half spinning class tomorrow morning to make up for it too. :)

Vested Boys

So this is what has been happening lately: I dress Dallin in a shirt that used to be Tanner's and he wants to violently rip it off Dallin. The solution has been to dig through a box of clothes that are a little too big for Tanner, but NEW, to find him something exciting to discract him from terrorizing Dallin. Silly OCD kid.
Here is Dallin in Tanner's old sweater vest, and the new green one I got for Tanner months ago when it was on clearance somewhere. Hope this stops before Tanner is wearing all 4T prematurely.

Santa and Green Smoothies

Dumb stool is in the way of a very cute picture of Tanner with Santa. He has seen 3 different Santas. Wonder if he is confused, or if they are all the same to him.

Dallin drinking a green smoothie: This makes me a proud mom. He just about drank the whole thing by himself!

Swelling gone down

If you don't know what I am talking about, see previous post.

Tanner's lips gradually went back to normal. Still don't know what caused it. The only thing we know he is severely allergic to is peanuts, and swollen lips hasn't been the typical reaction, at least not that big or without hives and itchy throat with it. So who knows. We'll see if it happens again. I recorded what he ate.

"My lips getting big!"

Tanner was telling us that his lips were getting bigger, and sure enough they were. Not sure what brought it on. It is obviously an allergic reaction, but he didn't eat peanuts or anything he hasn't eaten before. So strange. We've had a good laugh though as he talks to us. I think they got bigger from the first picture (top middle) to the last (top right).

Christmas is in the air

I was bored the other day and decided to attempt a gingerbread house from scratch. Not as hard as I thought it would be. Time consuming, but not difficult.



We put up our tree last weekend. We put it in our dinning room because that area is gated off unless it is meal time. We broke 3 ornaments just putting up the tree (each of the boys and I broke one each).

Snow day

Too bad when it snows it is so cold too. The fun didn't last long, and I didn't even let Dallin go out in it. He doesn't have snow pants yet, and he plops right down in the snow usually.

These are a few of my favorite things, lately

I reluctantly took a spinning class a few weeks ago, thinking I couldn't handle it, but it is my new obsession. So fun! So hard, but the best workout! The bikes keep track of how many miles you go and I bike about 18 miles on average per class! And you burn 500+ calories too. Try it. You will like it. I was telling Nate it is like a drug. Try it once and you are hooked.

The other thing I've been into is vegan cooking. It is a whole new world of cooking, and I like it. I am finding that "vegan" doesn't necessarily mean healthy, like you might think. A lot of it is though. One of my favorite recipes is black bean burgers.

"Because I'm busy"!

Tanner is turning into me. Lately when I've asked him to do something he says, "I can't."
I ask why, and he says, "Because I am busy!" It's sad that I have said it so often that he's picked it up. I don't want to be too busy to do stuff for or with him. However, I am not sure he understands what it means. This morning he was downstairs when I was making the bed upstairs, and he asked me to zip up his zipper for him. I told him to do it and he said he couldn't because he was busy. A few minutes later he is climbing the stairs for me to do it for him. Must not have been too busy.

Here are my boys lately.



My mom got these and several other costumes at WalMart after Halloween for $0.10 a piece. These are my boys' version of dress up clothes. Check out the string of saliva coming from Dallin's mouth in the first one. :) Yep he still drools!