Pancake Day

Today is National Pancake Day at IHOP, the day they give out free short stacks of buttermilk pancakes, which is nice... if you have one in your neighborhood.  Our IHOP closed last year so we're no longer able to partake in the festivities. No matter. I just decided to make some of my own.

 

Thanks to the Neely's and The Food Network, I've got the perfect recipe for pancakes. I love this recipe...it's the only one I make anymore. Sometimes I even use half whole wheat flour or add blueberries and they always come out good. Today I added blueberries to half of the pancakes and left the other half plain.

Then we topped them with all kinds of fancy fruit syrups, just like at IHOP. Well probably better than IHOP, actually.

One happy customer.

And another.

So take that IHOP. We didn't need your stinky pancakes anyway.

January Favorites

Looking back on the month, I wanted to share some of my favorite photos. These are the ones that didn't merit their own blog post, but that I still love to look at.

 

Coco and Carmelita got a new toy/scratching post/lounger for Christmas and it's so cute seeing them put it to good use.

This isn't actually one of my favorite pictures, but it does document what I look like this month. I've had my braces for about 8 months now and this month I had "chains" put on my bottom teeth and I've got rubber bands all over the place.

The weather has been warming up a little bit around here, so I took Kyle to the park to visit the ducks. Those silly things still like to stay on the water even if it's a frozen sheet of ice.

I also took Kyle to Inklings and while I was browsing through the books, I glanced over at him and saw that he was hugging the Corduroy bear. So cute!

Kyle has started to go beyond simply dumping his blocks on the floor and is learning how to stack them. I love watching the boys play together in the evenings while I cook dinner.

Tyler got a paper airplane page-a-day calendar for Christmas and he's been having a great time with it. His bedroom is littered with paper airplanes. No joke. He can't seem to part with a single one of them.

On the weekends Tyler gets to play games on the laptop and the current family favorite is called Chicktionary. You have to spell as many words as you can with the 7 letters provided. It's kind of addicting.

And lastly, a picture of my handsome boys. I could seriously look at this one all day long.

Card Making Maniac

Over the weekend, after some significant arm pulling from Rick, I registered for the Scrapbooking Convention that's coming up in late March. This time I'm going to the one in Portland, rather than the one in Seattle that I've gone to in previous years.

 

After the whole "incident" in 2011, where our car was broken into (in Seattle right before the convention) and all of my supplies were stolen...I've just had a bad taste in my mouth ever since. As far as scrapbooking goes, I really only do Project Life and an occasional card here and there. I let my subscription to Creating Keepsakes expire and my other subscription to Scrapbooks, Etc ended when the magazine went under. So I don't have much care, inspiration, or time to scrap these days.

 

Nevertheless, I still enjoy paper crafting. I always have. I signed up for a couple of card making classes and a few others that involve making layouts, so I'm sure I'll have a good time.

 

Speaking of making cards, I pulled out a kit I got at the last convention, got to work and finally completed the darn thing. Wow, I really should have done that sooner. 

 

The cards came out so nice! Even with my questionable stamping ability.

Now all I have to do to prepare for the trip is to buy some sort of new scrap tote, since of course I don't own one anymore. I'm just going to go super basic this time and not go for a big rolling tote. I saw a collapsible tote bag with pockets and stuff at Michaels the other day and I have a 40% off coupon, so I'll keep that one in mind. I also need a little desktop caddy of some sort for the classes and evening crops. Then an Art Bin Super Satchel for my papers and projects and I'll be all set.

Or I could just go Mr. T style.

I saw a video on Yahoo the other day that referenced how Mr. T used a paper bag to store all his gold jewelery and keep it safe. You know...because nobody is going to look for your precious valuables in a crumpled up paper bag. So by using the same logic, if I just take all my scrapbooking stuff in a brown grocery sack...nobody will even think to steal it. Yes!! Bless Mr. T and his infinite wisdom.

Self Portrait

Today Kyle Bear turns 18 months old.

 

He's getting so big! Ahhh! How did that even happen?

 

I was trying to get pictures of us together so I put the camera on the tripod and set up the timer and what do you know.....he actually smiled! No coaxing or anything. He's a pretty happy boy most of the time, but you'd never know it by looking at pictures. So I was pleased that I was able to capture that grin that he shows us all the time.

 

And of course being the inquisitive one that he is...if there's a button to push, he's going to push it. So while I was off checking the camera, he grabbed the remote, pushed the button and took this picture of himself. A little shocked at first, but....

 

then realized how fun it was to make the camera beep and flash, so he took a few more of himself.

 

Silly goose!

 

 

What We're Reading

Now that I've been going to the library more frequently with Kyle, I've been more inspired to read lately. I got a few books for myself that were hit and miss. Ape House by Sara Gruen was pretty good. Not as good as Water for Elephants, but the style of writing was the same and still an enjoyable read. The Love of My Youth by Mary Gordon, on the other hand...so boring! I declared that one a waste of my time and moved on to bigger and better things.

 

Literally. I spotted Les Mis out of the corner of my eye, while I was walking through Costco to get some milk and put it in the cart without a moments hesitation. It's over 1200 pages long! I'm right around page 60 and just getting introduced to Jean Valjean.

 

Kyle has been reading with his Leap Frog Tag Junior books that he got for Christmas. The system comes with a little electronic reader that you tap on each page and it reads the story aloud. Kyle loves the thing. It's the first thing he plays with in the morning. He uses it all day long and eventually I have to put it away at night so he can go to bed. He only has a few books for it so far, but he loves reading Mr. Brown can Moo, Can you? and If I were...

 

Tyler and I have been reading A Series of Unfortunate Events, a book series by Lemony Snicket. There are 13 books in all and we are right in the middle of The Reptile Room, the second book in the series.

 

In the first book, the three Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with a distant relative named Count Olaf. He's pretty nasty and spends all his time trying to get his hands on their fortune, which they don't even have access to until they become adults. Anyway, the kids end up outwitting him, but now he's back with a vengence in book 2. It's a nail-biter, that's for sure, but a little darker than I'd anticipated. After this one, maybe we should take a break and go back to the happy-go-lucky world of Henry Huggins.

Back to Normal

Tyler headed back to school on Monday, so things are pretty much back to normal around here. We also recycled the Christmas tree over the weekend and finally put away the ornaments and the rest of the decorations.

 

It snowed a little bit over the weekend, but as you can see, it's all pretty much melted away. In fact...it's nearly 50 degrees today, which is super warm for Yakima in January.

 

I don't mind the nice weather one bit...it makes afternoon outings with Kyle Bear more enjoyable. Especially since I've been making daily runs to Starbucks. I like not having to worry about snow or other miserable weather.

 

For Christmas Rick got me the Starbucks 31 days mug, so for each day in January you can go into any Starbucks and they'll fill up the mug with regular brewed coffee for free. Not a bad deal. Rick thinks the regular brewed coffee is gross. He's more of a Caramel Macchiato kind of guy. I don't mind it though...I prefer the less sweet coffee drinks anyway.

New Year's

We didn't have much of a party on New Year's Eve, but Tyler insisted on staying up to watch the ball drop, so that's what we did.

 

Around the house, we're still trying to recover from Christmas and to that end, Tyler and I worked together during the day to take down all the ornaments and lights from the tree. Now it sits bare in the living room and without all the weight of the lights and stuff, it's less droopy and prettier, actually.

Later in the evening, once Kyle was in bed and Rick was home from work, we settled in for a long night. I'm hardly up after 10:30 anymore, so I had a cup of coffee with dinner to improve my chances of staying awake until midnight. Rick's up late all the time and Tyler is so young, that it wasn't much trouble for either of them.

 

To pass some time while watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve, the boys played a friendly game of Scrabble. Tyler's become quite a formidable player, coming up with words like basil, monkey, peeled, and violet, with which he earned a triple word score.

 

Sure enough, with just a few minutes left until midnight, Tyler was still going strong. Once the ball dropped though, I was out. Straight to bed. I had big plans for the morning.

Not that it has anything to do with a New Year's resolution, but XTRAIN (the latest Cathe dvds) arrived on my doorstep just the other day and January 1st was a good a day as any to dig in. I'm following her 30 day cardio and strength combined option, so I started with All Out Low Impact Hiit plus Burn Sets for Chest yesterday and Legs plus Rear Delts today. I have only one word: OUCH!!