Dry pack soup

So, my friend Deruchette is in charge of the extra Relief Society meetings in her ward and recently they did an activity where they used Food Savers to dry pack dehydrated food into glass jars. They made two different soups so that they could have a fast and shelf-stable meal. Before returning the last Food Saver, we decided to do a few more.

We had a lot of the items already but had to get some dehydrated corn, peppers and celery. Luckily our Wal-Mart carries some food storage items like these.


We measured our ingredients...

Hooked the jars up to the Food Saver...

And ended up with a bunch of soup. We even dry packed the extra dehydrated foods.

I had a dream after this that brown sugar was on sale and I bought a ton so I could dry pack it and store it forever. Too bad it was only a dream.

Last few months...in photos

Playing in the snow.


Cora and Ryan

Cleod, ready for lazor tag.

Ryan.

Grant getting ready.

Cora playing computer with Daddy.

Grant "helping" with dinner.

Cora and her cousin Garrett on his blessing day. (She was falling asleep.)

Angry Birds cake made by Joy for Silas's 28th birthday.

Silas with his cake.

Cora's new quilt from Gma Aitchison.
Kindergarten registration for Ryan.

Funny face from Cleod...taken by Ryan.

Homemade burger on homemade bun. Yum.
Cora being adorable.

Ryan finished a big boy pizzle by himself.

Cleod and his friend Kyle, weeding the yard. (It was their idea.)

Boys...being boys.
Robyn's new sunglasses. (I haven't had sunglasses since high school, so it was a big deal.)
Getting Beetle towed back home. (Long story.)
Ryan's last day of preschool.

Dying eggs.
Cora's Easter dress.

Orange Chicken and Fried Rice. Be jealous.

My cousin Jodi's son Blake had a birthday party at this fun place called Creative Minds in St. George. Here's Cleod at the "grocery store."

Ryan on the pirate ship at Creative Minds.

Grant playing with the tools at Creative Minds.

Cleod reading to Ryan, Kianna and Leksi.

My 5 CENT purchase. Woot!

Fans drying the bathroom that Cleod flooded. (Another long story.)

Grant holding one of Chette's chickens.

Ryan jumping on Chette's trampoline. Big deal, because he has been scared to jump in the past.
Cora looking up at Brett.

Best Mother's day present ever

For Mother's Day, my mom and dad came to Cedar for a visit. My mom had asked me a few days before if there was anything I wanted my dad to do around the house while they were there. I have her a short list and mentioned that I wish I could get shelves in my garage. Well, a smart father, helpful husband, one ENTIRE Saturday, 4 trips to the Home Depot, and a little over $100 and I got my garage shelves!

Garage wall before...


Completed shelves


Cleod "helping" with the garage shelves.



Yea!


Now I just need 30 matching totes and I'm good. ;)

Cora Lily

Haven't blogged for a while...and I can't forget to write about my sweet, baby Cora.

She makes life happy.

She is about a week away from being 5 months old! She's only about 13 lbs, which is in the 25th percentile. I can't remember her height but it is in the 75th percentile, so hopefully she'll be tall and skinny like her dad.

Cora is a happy baby. She sleeps through the night most of the time. If she wakes up it's at 3 or 4am and she goes right back to sleep after eating.

She spent a lot of her early months sucking on her fingers and her thumb a little, but the last few weeks she hasn't been doing that much. She does grab her blankie and suck on it for a minute still though. It's pretty cute.

Her big brothers are very good to her. They get diapers and toys and blankets when she needs them and they will play and talk to her when she needs entertainment. This is good most of the time but I still have to keep her in sight...just in case.

Silas adores Cora and the feeling is mutual. When he comes home, she lights up.


For the first few months I was feeding her every 2 hours, but about a month ago I started stretching her to every 3 hours and it has been much nicer. She eats and then stays awake for an hour or so and then naps. Most of the time she'll sleep until it's feeding time again, but not always. She's such a good baby though and will be very patient with me.

Heavenly Father knew that I needed a good, easy baby right now. I feel very blessed that she is mine and that she makes life more bearable.

Oh, and I LOVE dressing a girl. Really. And bows. I love bows!!!

Grant-O

First of all, the 3rd boy sure makes the house noisier, smellier, and naughtier. That's all I'll say about that for now.

Grant is cute. He has a killer smile. Today he told me he loved me several times. He even said, "Guess what?" before it once. He's really starting to talk like a big boy which is fun because he didn't really TALK until about a year ago when he was around 18 months old.

He has to do everything himself. He tries to dress himself lately which is pretty funny. He takes off his diaper before a bath which cracks me up because the other boys never really did that. He doesn't like baby things anymore so the booster at the table is gone, the bib is forbidden and the lids on cups are starting to be uncool. I guess he can't be my baby forever.

He's a climber. The other boys never ventured into that arena, but Grant has climbed on about everything from the kitchen counter to the sink in my bathroom. The good part of this is that he is very able at the playground and can do everything his brothers do.

Right now he's learning his colors and it's pretty cute. He always asks for blue dishes, so I guess that's his favorite, although today he told me that he loves pancakes and then said that they were his favorite color. Funny.

He likes Lighting McQueen although he's never watched the movie all the way through. This is weird because he does sit through movies but the couple of times I've put it on for them he ends up ditching the movie and finding me.

Grant loves to help around the house. I give him a wet rag and he thinks he's pretty special. He also likes to empty the clothes from the dryer into the laundry basket. He also likes to help put laundry away, which is hard because he doesn't know where stuff goes really, so I will give him Silas's socks or something and tell him to put them on our bed. Whatever makes him feel helpful.

He has a cute face. Seriously.

When he wakes up from his nap, the first thing he says is, "Mom, I wake up!" I love it.

The timing on this post is a little ridiculous. If I would have written about Grant two weeks ago it would not include this: He doesn't listen to a word I say. I guess he has finally entered the terrible twos. Bleh!

All in all though, I am pretty happy to have him in our family.

Ryan

Ryan is...funny. He's the class clown of the family. He loves to boss us all around when he's pretending. "Mom, you say..." and so forth. He quotes movie lines a lot, which real emotion. I can imagine him getting into drama someday.

He's pretty athletic although he hasn't been in any organized sport yet.

He's my fashionista, so far anyway. He is quite creative. For example, he often wears his cowboy books with shorts. The cutest part is that he doesn't know that it's weird or whatever. I love this about him.

Ryan is very musically inclined. Since he was a baby I have thought this. Sometimes I wonder if I should get him into some kind of lessons now (he's only 4) but mostly I think that we'll wait until he's a little older. He loves listening to music and memorizes songs really fast. Just like with the movie quotes, his singing gets pretty intense. He makes serious or sad faces and then gets a little embarrassed when I watch him. In the car he is always asking for me to turn on the music, which means the CDs we've made. Some of his favorites are: Pop! Goes my Heart from the movie Music and Lyrics, Come to my window by Melissa Etheridge, The Great Beyond by REM and Free Falling by Tom Petty. He also sits at the piano and sings Primary songs with me. Love that.

Speaking of primary, he LOVES it and is the kid that raises his hand for everything, just to talk about something. His teachers love him and even when we visit, the teachers say how good he was.

Ryan's birthday is August 9th, so he will barely be old enough for Kindergarten this fall, but we decided to put him in because he's been reading for about a month now. It makes me a little nervous because he'll be the little guy, but he is very social and smart so I think he'll be fine. He is super excited about going to school.

Ryan loves to figure out someone's relationship to another person. For example, if I say something about Grandma Aitchison, he says, "You mean Dad's mom?" Little nerd.

Oh yes, he STILL sucks his thumb but only with his blankie so I try to have him keep that on his bed. It doesn't always work. Luckily, he doesn't push on his front teeth so it's not causing any of those problems.

He's getting to be a screamer. He's loud and yells at his brothers a lot, but being the middle boy is hard for him sometimes I think. I'm trying to teach him to talk nicely when he has a problem, but he's 4 so it's a slow process.

When Ryan laughs, you can't help but laugh too. And his smile is adorable.

I could go on and on about this kid. He has such an interesting personality. I'm glad he's my boy!

Cleod

I've been thinking for a while about posting something about each of my kids...but when they drive you crazy it's a little hard. Tonight I was thinking about how I focus on the negative a lot and I need to look at the good in my kids. So...here goes.

Cleod is smart. That's the truth. He's a crazy, good reader. We've known this for a while, but now that he's starting to do more math at school, we've realized that he's good at math too and already can do much more than his age/grade level. I have been printing out first grade math worksheets for him because he likes doing homework and doesn't get much from school. I like this because I want to be in control of his education and not leave it all up to the school. I am a little worried that he's going to be just as bored next year as he has been this year, but that's another story.

Cleod's favorite song from church is "I Lived in Heaven."

He loves his sister and helps me out a lot. He's always willing to get diapers or blankets, or hold her for a bit while I do something (like clean toilets).

He loves watching movies, TV and playing computer. We do not have a video gaming system for many reasons, but one of them is that Cleod would want to be on it all day. He is really good at getting his "jobs" done before computer or TV time though, so it's not really a big deal.

He's a "gleaner" as my mom would say and he has an excellent memory. He learns from everything and remembers everything. He'll tell me random facts he's read in books or tell me about something he watched a year ago.

Cleod loves pizza, crepes, and hamburgers.

He's sensitive and cries more than your average 6 year old boy, but that's ok.

He loves playing with friends. I haven't figured out if he's a leader or a follower because really, he's both. He's the oldest so he leaders a lot, but I think he wants to be accepted at school and church so he follows the stronger personalities (not always a good thing, but ya know).

I'm not sure why we've been butting heads so much lately, but I sure don't know what I would do without my Cleod.