We're Thankful For... Jet

"When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way From your first bassinet to your last dying day."

 

Just like Jet's birthday last year, we chose food he'd like for his birthday. However, he got hold of one of Nichole's stuffed animals before dinner and that's all he wanted. We tried to convince him to make the chicken "fly" over to the couch (toss it) for while we ate dinner but then he got the idea to flap the chicken's wings over and over and over... and over and over and over... and over and over and over... Who needs food when you can make the chicken's wings flap a lot?

Everyone else had eaten plenty by the time Jr. was able to convince Jet to let him take the chicken to "eat" its own food. Then Jet ate. Phew. I wasn't going to give him cake and ice cream until he ate decent food.

Here's what we ate:

Jet likes pasta and cheese so we had one-pot cheeseburger pasta. He likes to eat eat eat apples and bananas. I had to hide the bananas after I brought them home from the store because I knew they wouldn't last until his birthday dinner otherwise. He also likes carrots I cook in the instant pot (not so hard as raw carrots, yay). Jet also has a habit of tearing into my fresh bread before it sits long enough for me to put it away. Here's an example:

This was a text conversation with Jeremy one day-

Later that day after Jeremy got home-

Three. He pulled chunks off of three loaves of French bread. So for his birthday dinner we had bread that we could pull chunks off of.

He ate enough dinner so we had cake and ice cream (Jr. made the cake and frosted it for Jet. Thanks, Jr.).

We thought since Jet did such a good job of blowing out Jr. Jr.'s candles when it was his birthday last month, Jet would have no problem for his own birthday. Nope. It took him so long to blow out his own candles and their were less candles than he blew out on Jr. Jr.'s cake. Ha Ha Ha Ha. We sang "Happy Birthday" to Jet then waited for him to blow out his candles but he couldn't get it, so Jet started singing "Happy Birthday" to himself so we all joined in. Then he couldn't get the candles blown out so he started singing "Happy Birthday" to himself again and we all joined in. This cycle happened several times. We laughed a lot.

After cake and ice cream (Brookie ice cream since Jet likes both brownies and cookies), he opened presents and a card from grandparents.

CoComelon presents! I didn't get good pictures.

 

There was a lot of laughing for Jet's birthday. Fun family time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some More Holidays

November 17 was National Homemade Bread Day and National Butter Day. 

Easy to combine holidays that day.

 

November 18 was National Apple Cider Day.

I figured after working for hours on Jeremy's book that day and the day before, I earned some nice apple cider in the composition mug.

 

November 19 was Have a Bad Day Day. Some of us took turns being grumpy for a bit. It never lasted too long. I kept commenting that it was just to celebrate the holiday. Both Nichole and Jr. fell that day. Sigh. You don't always have to celebrate, kids. Sigh.

November 20 was National Absurdity Day and World Children's Day. We talked about that in Nursery on Sunday. The adults did. The children were just absurd at times.

November 21 was National Gingerbread Cookie Day. I've been wanting to make gingerbread men again for years. My father-in-law gave me a recipe for gingerbread cookies so we made gingerbread men for the holiday. Hooray. 

Some of them came out in interesting shapes because they stuck so much to the cookie cutters. This is one that looks different depending on the angle you look at it. What do you think it looks like? 

Lucky and Jr. Jr. had fun with the end of the dough adding embellishments to the last cookies. I didn't make icing so we didn't have gingerbread zombies this time.

The day before, Nichole got a gingerbread man from a teacher at church. Sweetheart that she is, she shared with Jet. Then when she didn't have more to share, she made a gingerbread man out of cardboard for him, and we talked about the story of the gingerbread man. Lucky shared a story he made up about the Antarctic gingerbread man.

Do These Pictures Look Weird to You?

 

Mom is Old

It never gets old... but apparently Mom does. 

Jr.: 65 million years ago...

Lucky: When Mom roamed the Earth.

I Love to Write Day

November 15 was Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. You know what that means. Leftovers Night! Unfortunately a lot of things went back into the refrigerator. It still needs to be cleaned out more.

I bought raisin bran for Raisin Bran Cereal Day that same day, but I forgot to get it out. Sigh. Sounds like me.

That day was also I Love to Write Day. Nichole happened to have her Creative Writing class that day. Jeremy did some writing that day as well. And since it was a special writing holiday (and because it's November- NaNoWriMo), Nichole had some hot chocolate in our composition mug.

Spicy Guacamole Pickles

November 14 was National Pickle Day and it was Spicy Guacamole Day. Since avocados were a decent price when I went to the store, I was able to get some and actually made guacamole this time (it wasn't too spicy, though). Last time I got avocados I forgot to make guacamole for our nachos. 

We had pickles already in the fridge. #shelfcooking 

I was so proud of myself for making the guacamole then wondered what we were going to eat it with. I searched around and found an unfinished bag of tortilla strips that I had put away so the kids wouldn't just snack on them til they were gone. Hooray. There was enough for our guacamole.

We rounded out our sides with some garlic bread and for a main dish- carbonara. Yum.

Must Drive Faster

While the kids and I were celebrating at home last week, Jeremy was at a fair convention. He built this:

 

Great for photo opportunities.

Even though the convention was in Utah, there were long enough hours that Jeremy just stayed there instead of coming home. He came home the first night but didn't get enough sleep because of it so he stayed there the other nights.

We were all happy to have him home when it was over.

Baby Shower!

Our neighbors had a gender reveal/baby shower. They invited any of our family to come (it wasn't just a girl thing).

Jr. Jr. and I went to the gender reveal, played some games, had food, and found out... they're having a girl.

Then I took Jr. Jr. home so I could do some shopping for cute girl stuff.

After shopping, I went home and picked up Jr. Jr. and Nichole this time. When we got back to the baby shower, they were decorating onesies. How fun. On one, I stenciled in "Baby Bear" and Nichole painted a bear.

On another, Jr. Jr. wrote, "Happy Birthday," with a fun design. Creativity. Love it.

 

That was fun and I'm glad we got to support our neighbors that way.

 

Hug a Bear Day and Friends

November 6 was National Nachos Day, not to be confused with International Day of the Nacho which we celebrated on October 21. We ate nachos both days.

November 7 was Hug a Bear Day. I said we should hug anyone who was being grumpy that day. We hugged teddy bears. Not that the teddy bears were being grumpy, it's just that they were the kind of bears that we did hug.

That day was also Color the World Orange Day so we had fajitas with orange bell peppers.

November 10 was Vanilla Cupcake Day. I made vanilla cupcakes. It was also Guinness World Records Day (GWR Day). I encouraged people that day to watch my playlist on YouTube of when Jeremy and Thanksgiving Point broke a world record in 2015.

November 12 was Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day. I made the dough and Jr. made a BBQ chicken pizza and a pepperoni pizza for us.

Bison Day 2022

Sadly we broke tradition and didn't go to Antelope Island for National Bison Day this year even though it was on the calendar for months. Jeremy had to work and I didn't know how a couple of us would do on the trip as we were trying to get over our colds so we didn't go. Sigh.

Instead, "Otter the Bison" joined in some of our daily activities:

 

Attempting "sliced baked potato loaded nachos" from shelfcooking.com but I think I need to cut them thicker next time and not layer them on the cookie sheet. They still tasted good.

Slicing bread.

Snuggling... quite a bit.

Joining us in watching a Friend to Friend broadcast from churchofjesuschrist.org for Primary age children and their families.

Guarding treats brought over from a friend. Unfortunately Otter the Bison didn't do the best job as Jet got hold of the last of the Butterfinger like treats and Jeremy didn't get any when he got home from work. Sigh.

I would have liked to have gone to Antelope Island to celebrate by seeing the bison there but you celebrate how you can, right?

November Began

And then November began. As you already know I was sick at the beginning of November. Blah. So not such great celebrating.

November 3 was Men Make Dinner Day and National Sandwich Day so I already had on the menu plan "Men make sandwiches," meaning the boys. Jr. made me a sandwich. Thanks, Jr.

He also made chocolate chip cookies substituting peanut butter for the eggs. Yum.

Baby Cuteness

The rinse water was full before Jet got to it.

 

He found a box and put it around his waist so one of the kids handed him a steering wheel and told him to walk around like that.

How can you be so cool and so cute at the same time?

 

Jr. is Jet's favorite.

 

Mom: What is that you're holding?

Jet: Pteranofork.

 

What do you mean I can't go to camp with my brothers?

We got a new salad spinner. Jet loved pumping it. His dinosaurs loved it, too. Of course he had them sticking their heads in it to eat the lettuce. Hey, stygimoloch is an herbivore after all.

 

First long day after the kids went back to school: Played with toys, read books, sang songs, had snacks, snuggled.

Another day we played at the park when it started raining. How exciting.

Big helper cleaning the door. Of course he wrote on it with a dry erase marker in the first place. Yay for Magic Erasers.

Big helper cleaning the table. He didn't spill anything on it. He was just a big helper.

The elk has your nose.

Jet wanted to help me mix up the Tang. I showed him how to pump it up and down and told him what drink it was. So he started saying, "Up and down orangutan."

When you're sick and miss church, you color finger puppets and tell the story of Daniel and the Lions' Den at home. 

Mom: Do you want to color some pictures? What should we color?

Jet: Pumpkins!

Selfies

Baking Buddy

 What is wrong with this picture?

All tuckered out