Teef (Week 2/52)

Currently on Colin's "favorite things to do list" is brushing his teeth. This kid does it almost 5 times a day. Not a bad habit, huh? All of our dentist friends would be proud :)

Anytime we are near the drawer where we keep his tooth brush, he runs to it, pulls it open, and rummages around until he finds BOTH the tooth brush and tooth paste. Last night while Matt was brushing his teeth before bed, Colin attempted to say teeth for the first time. Although it came out more as "teef," he made a valiant effort.

Yay Colin for having good oral hygiene!

What's Up With Colin (Week 1/52)

Another one of my goals is to blog about the new things Colin is up to every week for a year. I'm a whole year into my 1001 days, so I figured I better get started!

Although not this week, very recently Colin learned how to blow bubbles in the bath. Thanks go to Matt who stuck his own face into Colin's bath to teach him how :)

Missed us?

Would you believe that I haven't uploaded any pictures from my camera since the middle of October? That, my friends, is the reason for the delay. This means that I have Thanksgiving AND Christmas to catch up on. I'm ashamed to say I'm not very good at remembering to take pictures, so here are some of the ones I did manage to take...

Colin up to no good (as usual!) in November

Hanging out with Landon Kundis at Thanksgiving. I wasn't fast enough to take the picture when Colin was climbing on top of him...

One proud grandma! This is Colin with his first cousin on the Tiner side. Landon is about 2 weeks old in this picture.

Colin's cousin Bridget had her 4th birthday right after Thanksgiving, so we celebrated by going bowling. Here, Megan, Colin, and Bridget check out the bowling alley in action.

The birthday girl checking out the bowling balls.

Felicity also enjoying the bowling

 

Uncle Nate helping the kids bowl

We also met some friends, Chris and Karen, for dinner at TGI Friday's over Thanksgiving. 

 Now onto Christmas! We spent several days in Portland with some of my family and had a blast!

Excuse the blurry picture...Nate and I, in matching brown shirts, posed with our kids, in matching pj's, for an awesome family picture.

Attempting to take a picture of 3 small child has proven to be a possible task! 

But it wasn't without its fair share of outtakes...

Here we have the disco apparel! Uncle Mark, seen here sporting a disco zip-up jacket and shorts, was kind enough to get Colin a pair of baby disco pants! Even now, he loves to put them on and run around the house in them. They are a few inches too long on him right now, but you better believe that once they fit him, he will be wearing them out of the house!

I didn't take a single picture from Christmas day. Epic fail. In my defense, we spent Christmas weekend battling the stomach flu. Colin managed to pick up the bug in Oklahoma, threw up on BOTH flights we took to get to Portland, and then passed it on to the other 9 people staying at my brother's house. It certainly was a memorable Christmas :) Aside from the stomach flu, I managed to win our annual family rice pudding game, Megan and I forced everyone to have a Twilight movie marathon, and Megan and I managed to hold the 6th annual bakefest (nevermind no one ended up eating the treats since we were all sick).

All in all, 2011 was a good year for us, and we look forward to all that 2012 may bring us. We started off the year as new business owners, so how much better can it get??

I promise more new posts will be coming soon, so don't stay away too long!

Toothy Grin

Colin's mouth is full of teeth these days. He currently has 14 teeth that are fully through the surface, and 2-4 that will soon be on their way. Luckily, teething has never really been a problem for him, so these 14 have made their appearance without being accompanied by any drama (just lots of drool).

We were able to capture a few pictures of all those pearly whites today while playing outside, so I thought I would share. This boy is just too adorable not to share pictures!

Colin was hanging out in the back of Matt's truck and throwing a golf ball onto the ground, which resulted in a lot of giggles. Don't worry, we took a video for your viewing pleasure!

Halloween Fun

This past weekend we attended 2 Halloween parties to celebrate the holiday. We dressed Colin up as a pirate for both, but Matt and I declined to wear costumes.

Colin is 13-months-old now, so I hope that's enough explanation for why we weren't able to get any decent pictures of him in his Halloween costume. It's also the reason he has a crooked mustache and why he doesn't have a pirate hat. There is NO way he was going to keep it on.

This boy does not sit still for a second. He's always racing from one thing to the next, not to mention trying to play with anything he's not supposed to. Colin knows how to keep me busy.

Other exciting news from our Halloween festivities...

Our ward's Halloween party included a chili cook-off and a pie contest. I entered two pies in the pie contest, and would you believe I won both first AND second place?!

We got 145 trick-or-treaters. We had no idea how many to expect, so we ran out of candy. Good thing we had our giant box of fruit snacks from Sam's Club so we still had something to hand out :)

And speaking of trick-or-treaters, what's the deal with teenagers going trick-or-treating? I'm pretty sure that the sport of trick-or-treating is more about seeing cute kids in their cute little costumes. That's why my philosophy is going to be that once my kids are old enough to go out on their own, they shouldn't be going at all. So take that!

We had a great Halloween full of fun and treats, and now we've moved on to November. Hooray for November!

Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies

Recipe and image source here

Thanks to pinterest, I've discovered a few new recipes that I want to try out. And these cookies happened to be first on my list.

BEST. DECISION. EVER.

And there's no butter or flour in them, so they can't be all that bad for you, right? ;)

Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies
originally taken from epicurious
recipe as adapted by divine-baking.com

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
1 1/2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (about 9 ounces), divided
3 large egg whites, room temperature
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, divided (I used 2 cups)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 2 large baking sheets with nonstick spray. Melt 1 cup chocolate chips in glass bowl in microwave, stirring twice, about 2 minutes. Cool slightly.

Using electric mixer, beat whites in large bowl to soft peaks. Gradually beat in 1 cup sugar. Continue beating until mixture resembles soft marshmallow creme.

Whisk 1 cup sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and salt in medium bowl to blend. On low speed, beat dry ingredients into meringue.


Pour lukewarm chocolate and 1/2 cup chocolate chips into mixture. If dough does not become stiff, stick in freezer for a few minutes.

Place 1/2 cup sugar in bowl. Roll 1 rounded tablespoon dough into ball; roll in sugar, coating thickly. Place on prepared sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, spacing 2 inches apart.

Bake until puffed and tops crack, about 10 minutes. Cool on sheets on rack 10 minutes. Transfer to rack; cool.

Yield: Makes about 18


I couldn't find bittersweet chocolate chips anywhere, so I just bought the chocolate bar and chopped it up. Some comments on the original blog also mentioned using semi-sweet instead and just cutting down the sugar a little.


Make these cookies...you will not be sorry. I preferred them still warm, but Matt liked them better after they had cooled. Either way they are gooey on the inside. Mmmmmm...


Let me know what you think!

Sure as Shootin'

This week I embarked on an adventure that will now officially classify me as an Oklahoman. So much so that I am now allowed to use phrases like, "I'm fixin'," as in, "I'm fixin' to take the trash out." Or adding 'a' to the beginning of words like, "I'm agonna have red beans for dinner!"

I can now shamelessly use these syntactic and pragmatic nightmares of phrases 

because this week I became a real Oklahoman when I went shootin'.

Can you believe it only took me 10 months to accomplish that? Life in Oklahoma is always an adventure :)

Showcasing all but one of the guns we got to shoot with.
If you ask me what they are, I could throw out some numbers and pretend like I know...

Tate and Eleece recently got their conceal and carry permits,
so they were excited to go shooting with us.

Me shooting...some kind of rifle.
But it was so intense that it made both Matt and I make stupid faces :)

We had some targets we were using to practice, and this is Matt showing off his bullseye!
What a stud.

Mostly I wanted to take pictures of our adventure because it reminded me of this season's opening episode of Modern Family where they go to the ranch in Wyoming and Cameron takes a picture of Mitchell holding a gun...

But also, I had to document that I can now cross this off of my 101 in 1001 list. Holla!