Sweet Moments

Brooks and I have two cute and really sweet boys.  Our days are always filled with something new and I'm pretty sure I can say there's never a dull moment around here.  Just wanted to share some of the sweet moments we've had lately.  

Here's Miles eating oatmeal for the first time.  He'd much rather oatmeal then rice cereal.

Miles was worn out from playing all morning.  He couldn't wait til he was put in his crib to fall asleep.

Now that Miles is rolling over, he's started sleeping on his tummy.

Bath time with mommy.

Gavin prefers to be wrapped in a towel like this! Our little man!

 These two goof off during every bath, every night!

Gavin loves reading to Miles before bed time.

Gavin using his sno cone machine to make sno cones.

Getting caught under the couch!

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the BEST daddy in the world!  Gavin and Miles LOVE you! 

A New Do

Do you remember this picture of Miles?  It really gives you a good idea just how crazy his hair was getting as it kept growing into a mowhawk.  Brooks and I had been saying how we really needed to get it cut, but Brooks wanted to be there and, well, he's always at work, even late so there never seemed to be a good time. Until..... our friend, Micah's, mom was visiting Saudi.  She use to cut hair so when I was talking to her about Miles crazy do, she offered to give him a trim.  Brooks and I were beyond ecstatic.  We got together with them the day they left, June 10th, and she gave Brooks, Miles, and Gavin all haircuts!  

Miles did AWESOME sitting through his haircut.  I think he thought it was funny.  Mrs. Marvetta did a great job and was very sweet about cutting his hair carefully and not cutting off too much.  I got a little emotional in the middle of the haircut.  Just made me feel like my little boy was already moving out of the baby stage, even though that's not true at all.  

Check out how much hair she had to cut off!

He even had some fly aways that needed a trim around the side of his head.

Our little man looked really handsome after his first hair cut at 5 months old.  

Lately....

Our friends, The Acords, moved to our side of the world a month ago and they live about 45 minutes from us.  We've gotten to see them a few times already and have made plans the next few weeks to get together more.  We're glad they are here and never thought in a million years close friends of ours would move to this side of the world.  Gavin and Peyton were excited to see each other.  They got to spend the day together swimming and playing around.  We also went and met The Acords at their compound one day and had lunch with another family (who is related to some of our neighbors on our compound).  All the young kids had a blast playing together.  Miles and Graham met each other and got to hang out, too.  

 






We've been taking advantage of our "nice" weather.  It's pretty hot over here, but for a week the wind was insane, which gave us a nice breeze. Last Friday evening, we took Gavin to the park to play.  Miles came along and loves watching his brother run around.  This first picture is just to prove that I'm actually around since I feel like I'm never in pics.  The others are of Gavin and Brooks playing.  They had a ball!

Rollin, Rollin, Rollin

Miles finally rolled over from his tummy to back.  Woo hoo!  He actually did it last week for the first time and both Brooks and I, who were sitting right next to him, we both missed it.  Since then, I've kept the video camera near by at all times and finally caught it on tape!

Our little boy is growing up!

Do-It-Yourself Donuts

These are homeade donuts we made as a family this weekend.  

Thanks to my friend, Christa, and her DELICIOUS recipe for do it yourself donuts, we changed up our Friday morning breakfast routine and enjoyed some dang good donuts.   (Check out her blog for step by step instructions).  

I followed her directions, but wasn't sure if I had the right biscuits or even what size hole to cut out of the middle so that aspect was an experiment for us.  I tried a few different things with one batch, cooked them to see what worked best, then held off the second batch until we knew what worked best.  

I learned that biscuits do expand when you cook them.  If you have a little one, they don't mind eating small donut holes (what you see in the pan). It's better to not punch out too big of a hole in the center because then the biscuit seems to have too much "crispy-ness" to it versus actual donut.  Check out the picture with the dough, that size hole worked great! 

 These donuts are really good with powdered sugar on them, too.   We shook the donuts in a brown paper bag like Christa suggested.  We also covered a few with regular sugar.  They were good too, but we dusted a lot of the sugar off, it was just a little too much sweetness for us.    

If you're looking for a new weekend breakfast idea, you've got to try this one!  You and your family will LOVE IT!  I promise!  I'm willing to pay $7.00 each for cans of biscuits over here.. so go pick up a few $1.75 cans- you won't regret it!!  

 

 

 

Enjoy!

Closing Up Shop for a While

I spent months before we moved over here learning and training on how to make, bake, and decorate cakes and I've enjoyed every bit of it.  I'm still learning techniques and even made an order for some new supplies a few days ago.   It's been a fun hobby and one I don't plan on giving up anytime soon, however, I think I'm gonna close up shop for a while and take a break.  As much as I enjoy having something to do and have a creative outlet, making cakes takes time and I can easily spend anywhere from 8 to 16 hours on one cake from start to finish.  That's a lot of time to spend up late at night or during nap times instead of getting other things done around the house.  It's been great being able to provide for others something that we'd normally have at birthday parties if we were in the states, but being the only who provides this service, is getting really weary.  Plus, I have a really hard time telling people no, so there were some weeks where I'd have 3 cakes due in a weekend.  Maybe in the fall, I'll start out by putting a limit on the number of cakes I'll make in a months time and it will have to be a first come first serve basis.  I do, have one cake order that was placed over a month ago, so I'm going to fulfill that one and then put up a closed sign.  Maybe then, I'll be able to start on Miles baby book or even take a nap if I wanted to.  We'll see.  I might even have time to practice new cake techniques and do some things for fun!  

So, Incase it's a while until I have any cake pictures to post... here are my latest ones.  

A pink castle cake for a 6 year old little girls party.

A beach themed cake for two 12 year old boys party.

A girly themed cake for three little girls. 

Camouflaged cake for a 10 year old boy who loves army stuff...should have charged 2 times the amount for the amount of time it took to make this. But, now I can say I've done this technique.

Beach themed cake for two older men's surprise party.  The wives sent me a picture of the cake idea so I literally just copied it and changed the colors a little.

Cereal.. who knew it could be so good

Miles got his first taste of baby food last week. We fixed him a small bowl of rice cereal and he did pretty good with it.  He didn't seem to mind the taste of it (I mixed in some of his formula in it), but he wasn't quite sure what to do with it once it was in his mouth.  It took a few tries and a few days of testing the cereal out, and now he loves it.  We feed him 1tbs of rice cereal a day to help him get use to it.  We weren't in any hurry to start feeding him a lot of food, we were mainly trying something to help fill him up because he wasn't making it 3 hours between bottles. He's now taking 6 oz of formula, and some cereal and that has helped him a ton!  

What's going on?

Hmmm....

Not bad...

What was that?

No, really, what was that?

Okay, I'll take it!

 Yummy!

Ok, I changed my mind!

A New Tradition

When Brooks first moved to Saudi, last summer, he was here for a short time without us.  He found himself being a bachelor with very few responsibilities and with endless opportunities to do whatever he wanted to do.  One of those things he decided to do was play basketball.  We have a basketball court on the compound, and it's nearby our house so he set a group up and the guys play every Tuesday night-- no matter what.   I can only think of MAYBE one evening where the guys didn't play due to the weather.. not the heat, maybe one of the few times it rained, although I could be wrong.  These guys are pretty die hard about their basketball game.  

So, in the beginning of us living here and having NOTHING to do, Gavin and I would go out to the court on Tuesdays and watch Brooks play basketball.  Brooks loves basketball and he's pretty good at it too.  He's always said he'd love to get back into coaching someday.  Anyways, it got to the point where Gavin wanted to play basketball with all the guys.  That wasn't going to be the best option, since a lot of these guys take their basketball pretty seriously.  So, Brooks and I came up with a plan.  I'd get dinner ready really early on Tuesday nights, so that Brooks could take Gavin out to the court 15-20 minutes before their games started.  That gave Gavin the ability to play basketball, have some one on one time with daddy, and I was left to clean the kitchen up and have 15 minutes of silence (until Miles came along).  

Tuesday nights are a big deal in this house.  Gavin somehow always knows when it's basketball night.  He requests to wear a basketball outfit, his basketball shoes, he has his basketball ready by the door and his new basketball bag (thank you Kimmie for sending him that present- he LOVES it.... and we LOVE getting packages in the mail!)  Gavin has also started asking for his own big boy juice (a gatorade bottle with colored juice-- to be like his daddy).  Gavin's really picked up the game of basketball.  He can dribble, he knows how to stand and shoot, and even gets the chance to make a few baskets every once in a while.  

Here's a few pics of my man doing his thing!  Yes, I was totally checking him out, too!  Haha!