Pie vs. Cake

For Ryan's birthday (which is in January) every year we have banana cream pie (his favorite) instead of cake. Riley finds this perplexing.

Last night we had belgian waffles for dinner. When we were done Riley said, "Lets invite all our friends and have and eating party! An eating party is where you get to eat whatever you want!" This led to a discussion of what one should have at an eating party. Riley said waffles with strawberries and whip cream (apparently he really liked his dinner). Ryan said Katsudon and banana cream pie which reminded Riley of the cake vs. pie debate.

Riley got a thoughtful look on his face and said "You know Dad, next time its my birthday, I'm going to have cake and I'm going to let you have some. You see, I had pie once, and it was pretty good, but not quite as good as cake. I think once you try cake, you'll decide you want it for your birthday too."

Boys Love Mud!

Last week the weather was nice and so we went to the park by the hospital before meeting Ryan for dinner. For some reason, I thought the boys would stay pretty clean just playing on the playground equipment, but of course, they found a muddy area and before I could stop them they started covering themselves in it. This picture was taken at the beginning, by the time I got them both away from the mud their clothes were filthy and we had to go walk through the hospital to the cafeteria looking like swamp animals. Not even oxyclean was able to save Riley's light grey shirt from the southern red clay dirt.

St. Patrick's Day Fun

For lunch on St. Patrick's day I made the boys green pancakes, green eggs and sliced cucumbers. The cucumbers were Riley's request - he loves cucumbers, although he usually calls them zucchinis. The boys gobbled up the pancakes, but looked suspiciously at the eggs. Riley finally tried a bite and then said, "Hey they taste just like regular eggs!" Teddy at first announced he was not going to be eating those eggs, but after watching Riley eat his he decided to give them a try too.


We had a regular food for dinner except we kept up the three year tradition of having green kool-aid instead of water to drink and wore funny looking shamrock hats I made with the boys in the afternoon. We went outside and picked real clovers to glue on them, but I forgot to take a picture of those.

The pictures of the boys in this post were taken exactly one week apart. One Monday (March 2nd) we had snow and low temps in the teens. Ryan was on a family practice rotation away from the hospital and so he was able to stay home until about 10 and play in the snow with the boys. Teddy was recovering from a 72 hour stomach flu and despite joyfully running around the house yelling "Its snowing!, its snowing!" he insisted he would rather stay inside and watch Riley and Dad play. I thought for sure he would change his mind, but he was happy to just watch until his brother came in and we could drink hot chocolate.

The next Monday (March 9th) we had 80 degree beautiful weather. Riley is so proud of his new found tree climbing abilities and Teddy reminds me of Christopher Robin with his shorts and boots. He loves those boots.

The warm weather started on Friday and luckily Ryan wasn't on-call this weekend so we spent all Saturday outside. We did yard work while the boys played and ate lunch on the deck without seeing even a single bug or flying insect. In the afternoon we went to Boyce Park and played on the playground and took a hike, again, in perfect weather without a bug in sight. It was heavenly!

Of course, I knew it wouldn't be long before the bugs showed up, but I was still surprised when we got home from church on Sunday and there were little mounds covering our front yard. They look like 1 -2 inch wide mole hills and there were little flying bugs hovering all around them. It is like a mini-zombie horror movie - Night of the Living Dead or something, except with insects instead of dead bodies coming out of the ground. I'm not sure what they are, but I think it might be some kind of burrowing wasp. Lovely. Luckily, they are predicting cooler temperatures over the next week and so maybe the cold weather will zap 'em before they can get warm underground again.

Father/Son Date

After months of begging to learn to ice skate (he got the idea from the library book "Cam Johnson and the Ice Skate Mystery"), Ryan took Riley on a Father/Son date to the rink out in Pineville. Riley loved it. It usually takes Riley awhile to warm up to sports, but he happily hit the ice as soon as his skates were laced up. He only started holding on to the edges after multiple falls. Being the overprotective mother that I am, you can see that I sent him with a helmet, knee and elbow pads. It turns out that what he really could have used was a pillow strapped to his backside! He never got discouraged though. He told me over and over when he got home that he needs to practice and then he won't fall so much. I think he would be a hockey player if we lived closer to a rink. He keeps asking when he gets to go again and I am doing my best to give vague non-committal answers as it is a 40 minute drive and costs $10 a person for a session.

Finally! Caught up with the photo albums!

I haven't posted in awhile because I have been working on getting our last 5 years of pictures printed, organized, put into albums and labeled. Previously, I had only done Ryan and I's courtship (beginning with Freshman year at BYU), early married life and Riley's birth. We didn't have a digital camera for the first year of Riley's life so we mostly have home videos of that time period. In the future, if I have the time/desire to scrapbook everything and make it cute, I can, but at least for the time being I have something the kids (and most likely future grandkids if the past is any reliable indication of my future interest in scrapbooking) can look at.