Always Growing

Colin will be 9 months next week! I got an email yesterday that talked about Baby Development: Month 9.

Your baby's brain is making quantum leaps right now. Of course, your baby will now use these advanced motor and cognitive skills to try and put himself in the driver's seat. He may demand to be held. Insist on sharing your food. Crawl toward you when he wants you. Or rebel against a diaper change. Revel in his independence, for better or for worse.


Reading that made me laugh because Colin is definitely doing all of those things. It seems like he's always right at my feet wanting me to pick him up. If I'm eating or drinking anything, he wants in on the actions. And trying to change his diaper can sometimes be...next to impossible. Good to know he's right on track :)


In other news, this boy is a pro at eating finger foods, and he has 6 teeth and loves to have them brushed! He loves to play peek-a-boo, he loves being outside (which probably explains his fascination with door knobs), and he loves to laugh and jabber.


He is quite the dare devil...he tries to dive off of, climb over/through, and pull himself up on anything. He will take a few steps around the couch and will walk while holding onto someone's hands, and although the army crawl still makes its appearances, Colin has been crawling on his hands and knees for a few weeks. In this picture he managed to climb through the coffee table at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

I got this little outdoor swing at a consignment store by our house, and it has been a big hit!

Graham crackers and milk make for a pretty good snack. So good that Colin decided to kick his feet up and enjoy them to the fullest.

He knows the things he's not supposed to play with, so he always makes sure to look at you and smile before he starts playing with them. One of those things he loves to play with are the covers that go over the screws that bolt toilets to the floor. Fortunately, there's an easy solution to this one: leave the bathroom doors closed!


Colin keeps me busy! He loves to make messes and get into everything, but we have a lot of fun. I just love this little guy.

Joplin, MO

Joplin is a little under 2 hours northeast from where we are, and to help cleaning up the city, our church has been sending men from the surrounding stakes to do heavy manual labor on the weekends. Father's Day weekend was our stake's turn. Matt wasn't able to go because he had to work, but his dad made the trip up there to help out. All of the pictures he took of his phone got uploaded onto our computer, so I thought I would post some. (Thanks, Mike!)

The pictures are pretty small, so you may not be able to see much, but from what I can tell the damage is devastating.

Mike said on one side of the street there could be a house that was completely demolished and on the other side a house that only lost a shingle or two. It's crazy how tornados work.

After my first tornado season, I can officially say I haven't seen any tornados, and I hope it stays that way. Meanwhile, my heart goes out to all those who have been affected by tornados this year.

oh, and if this post makes you scared to ever visit Tornado Alley, just remember tornados have been known to occur in lots of other places too :)

Honey Butter Biscuits

I wish I blogged about recipes.

So here I am blogging about a recipe. Ta-DAH!

Since moving here, we have discovered the goodness of Church's Chicken. It's a lot like Kentucky Fried Chicken, but we really only like it for the biscuits. We love Church's Honey Butter Biscuits.

As a quick side-story, for one of Matt's Christmas presents, I made him a little punch card stating I would make one treat of his choice each month. 


Matt requested I try my hand at replicating the heavenly biscuits, so like any resourceful cook wanting to try something new, I found my way to Google, which led me to this recipe (thanks food.com!):

2 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

2/3 cup whole milk

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/3 cup honey

1 Preheat oven to 450°F.

2 Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cream of tartar in a medium bowl.

3 Work shortening into flour mixture by crumbling with your hands until the mixture feels like cornmeal.

4 Pour milk into flour mixture and mix well.

5 On a slightly floured surface, knead the dough about 12-15 times.

6 Make dough into balls (about 2 inches) and place on baking sheet.

7 Brush Dough balls with some of the melted butter.

8 Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden.

9 Meanwhile bring remainder of butter and all honey to a boil in a sauce pan, then set honey butter aside.

10 When biscuits are done remove from the oven and immediately brush each biscuit with honey butter.

I cut down the baking powder from 4 tsp to 3 (which I changed above) just because that seemed like a lot, and the biscuits still turned out amazing--better than the real thing. And the best part is that they're drop biscuits, so you don't have to take the time to roll and cut them out. I think the biscuits took about 30 minutes to make. It doesn't get much better than that!

So if you're in the mood for delicious honey butter on a good biscuit, give this recipe a try. You won't be sorry.

The Garden

Matt read up about square-foot gardening, so we decided to give it a try this summer. He built the box,  we planted our seeds weeks ago, and I'm proud to say we already have some fresh vegetables on our hands!

One advantage to the box is the lack of weeds. We spend maybe 5 to 10 minutes a week weeding the garden. And thank goodness, because that is my least favorite part.

We are growing tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkin, carrots, peas, and lettuce. We don't really know what we're doing, but so far we've had success. Hopefully that continues!

Summer

No one in our immediate family is in school anymore, and we've had summer-like weather here since the end of March, so the notion of "summer vacation" is lost on us. However, we used Memorial weekend to go out to Utah and visit family and friends.

Colin and I went out for a whole week, and Matt joined us Saturday night through Tuesday. My sister Jill and her family drove up from Phoenix too, so it was a big party.

Kimberly and Bridget enjoying dessert 

Colin loves babies! Bridget was kind enough to lend him her doll

Colin checking out his newest cousin, Felicity

Colin and Korbin, who I mentioned back in this post.
They looked alike in November, but look nothing alike now :)

Chillin' at the Waldron's

Charlotte loves babies too, and she loved holding Felicity

Practicing walking at BYU

Colin and Grandma Chris. She drove all the way down from Montana just to see us!

 For anyone who has spent at least 5 minutes with Colin, you know how active he is. He will not sit still for a minute, and even when I'm holding him, he's usually trying to climb up me to get to whatever is behind me. This made for interesting travels. We stopped in Denver both going out there and back, but we were lucky enough to have layovers that were only long enough to deplane and board our next flight. Colin actually did really well on all the flights, and we were lucky enough to sit by lots of nice people. Colin was very interactive with all of the strangers, but his favorite was a little girl that sat behind us on one flight that played peek-a-boo with him for half an hour.

Besides peek-a-boo, here are a few shots of what Colin did to keep himself occupied.

Trying to dive off the seat to play with everything on the floor

Sucking on his pacifier

Looking out the window and patting the glass

Other activities not pictured included eating cheerios and playing with the laminated plane menu and tray. Sleeping? Not so much, but despite that, he was still a good little travel buddy :)