My Jake is 2!

Some of what we love about Jake at 2 years old!-

Cuddly and sweet
A great head of hair!
Obedient about going to time out when told
Great eater - love this guy's appetite!
So handsome in his Sunday clothes :)
Has a love of Buzz Lightyear, Mickey Mouse, and trains
Unpredictable and often hilarious
A fun and energetic little brother - the girls love him!
Loves music to dance and sing to
Reminds us to pray at meal times if we forget
Has an infectious smile :)

Jake's birthday was really great! It was made especially fun since Ben took vacation time this week. :) And it was nice to have the extra help to make Jake's day more special. For birthday breakfast, we had cinnamon french toast (with powdered sugar and maple butter!), strawberries, and chocolate milk.


And afterwards, Jake got a bubble bath in the big tub! :)


After lunch (we had grilled hot dogs, chips, and apples... we called the hot dogs "Jake dogs" in honor of the birthday boy), we did cake and presents. Ben spent a chunk of the morning making Jake's birthday cake from scratch! He's so awesome! Ben's been trying to get into baking lately - he's always been a great cook, but not so much a baker... but turns out he really is a great baker, he just didn't know it. :) So, Ben successfully made Alton Brown's Devil's Food Cake and it looked exactly like Mr. Brown's, and tasted absolutely amazing! :) Truth be told, Jake probably wouldn't have cared or noticed if it was a box mix or a made from scratch cake.... but the rest of us ate cake too, and it was fun to have a delicious cake to enjoy.


Jake got lots of great gifts on his birthday to open... Ben and I gave him a big truck (which he rides around on all the time!!), a Thomas the train magnadoodle, a new lamp for the cute star shade his Grandma Dangerfield gave him a while back (we had an old lamp base we were using a while ago, but it broke), and a new swim suit (just in time for swim lessons that start on Monday!). Grandma and Grandpa Szymanski sent Jake a cute birthday card and some money, so we used the money beforehand to get him a Buzz Lightyear slip and slide (the kids LOVED it... I'll be putting up a post later about that), a big blue ball, and a bubble wand. Emma and Becca both picked out little gifts for him as well - some crayons, and a squishy ball. :) Jake was a spoiled boy, and we loved watching him open his gifts... he was pretty good at ripping off that wrapping paper... I doubt he even noticed the paper had cute robots on it ;)


Then we dived into the cake - Jake pretty much did that literally. The second extra messy picture is him enjoying his SECOND piece of cake. I mentioned earlier that we love Jake's big appetite, but I neglected to mention that Jake is NOT tidy about it. :)




To finish off Jake's fun day, we headed across town to Makutu's Island. It had been at least a couple years since we'd been and we thought that Jake would be just old enough to really enjoy it - and he definitely ended up loving it! We picked up cousin Adam and took him over to play too - and Grandma Dangerfield and Uncle Peter showed up soon after we arrived to play with the kids as well. It was so fun! Even though I have a big, big belly, I carefully went down a couple of the slides. The big yellow slide is crazy! Every time I go, I forget how fast that thing is! Ben and Peter were awesome at climbing up to the very tops of the climbing structures over and over again with the kids - I mostly hung out with Ben's mom at the bottom and took pictures and watched kids (and adults) pop out of the slides everywhere. It was great!


























Happy Birthday to my awesome Jake man! I love that you are finally TWO! :)

Really Jake?!!!

Jake is officially 2 years old today! This isn't his birthday post... I'll work on that soon, but I thought that this little incident would be appropriate to post on his birthday in honor of the "terrible 2's". haha. We spent Sunday evening with Ben's family for dinner and to visit. The kids often all play upstairs, but when all the kids except for Jake came downstairs later, I wondered what Jake might be up to to keep him upstairs all by himself. Well, in the span of less than 5 minutes, Jake managed to get himself into quite a sticky greasy mess...


I thought it was lotion at first, but no, it's bag balm... you know, that really thick, medicated petroleum jelly. He grabbed the container off a counter upstairs and pretty much emptied the entire thing into his hair and happily spread it around like shampoo and rubbed it over much of his clothes. AHHHH!!


With Ben's mom's help, we immediately stripped his clothes off and started wiping large clumps of bag balm out of his hair with towels and then plopped him into the tub to wash and scrub. We washed his hair with dish soap (you know, like they do with the ducks when there are oil spills!)... I probably washed his hair about 8 times and it still looked BAD... greasy and clumpy. When we got home I washed it 5 more times in our sink with the faucet sprayer and more dish soap... I'm almost annoyed that he seemed to like getting a bath in the sink, but the circumstances were pretty amusing, I admit. :)

I look grumpy in this picture... probably because this was at 9:00 at night and I was stuck washing a greasy Jake in my sink

The next morning, I washed his hair 5 more times, and it finally almost looked normal, just really well conditioned. :) Moral of the story: don't let your kids put large amounts of bag balm or Vaseline in their hair... it'll likely take almost 20 washes to remove it. Happy Terrible Two's!!

Proof that the Arizona desert is quite lovely...

So, I mentioned that I'd been trying to get a culture pass to the Desert Botanical Gardens for the past month (fyi- a culture pass is a pass you can get from some of the libraries here in AZ, that allow 2-4 people to get in for FREE to many local museums and other city attractions, such as the zoo... they are only good for one week at a time). Anyway, you often have to wait in line outside the library before they open in order to get one of these passes, especially during spring break time. Well, I finally lucked out this week and got to the library a bit early and the people in front me all were getting passes to the zoo and science center, so yay for me! Sometimes it's a little crazy in the line and this older lady tried to cut in front of me! About 5 minutes before the library was going to open, she shows up and tries to start up a conversation with the girl in front of me (whom she definitely didn't know), and then when the library opened up, she sidles up next to this girl and tries to pretend she's supposed to be there in line - luckily, she says to this crazy lady "I think this girl (me) is supposed to be right after me"... so then the lady says "oh really? oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't see you there!"... um, ya right, you couldn't see the big pregnant girl with a 2 year old in a stroller and a 4 year old holding my leg... ha! Well, it's a good thing she found her right place, because I got my Botanical Garden pass and then I hear her ask the librarian if she can get the same pass, and the she tells her "sorry, we're out of those" - haha... nice try crazy lady trying to steal my culture pass! :) Sorry, I get worked up...

We started by eating a little picnic lunch in a shady spot and then we headed off to look at the cactus, aka Succulence (Ben loves to see the succulence, because he loves to say the word succulence)...



This is called "creeping devil"... an appropriate name because it really does creep me out - Ben teased that he wants to plant this stuff in our front yard... eek!


I was happy to see that the Butterfly Exhibit was going on again - I took the kids through it last year when my sister was in town and they really loved it...




You can't really tell from the following pictures, but the butterflies were really fluttering everywhere... when we first came in one kept landing on Jake's leg and from that point on Jake decided that he was really scared of butterflies - anytime he would see one get too close he would point and scream and run away... hahaha!



















Emma and Becca modeling their new butterfly necklaces daddy got them after finishing up with the butterfly exhibit. Good thing Ben enjoys spoiling his girls, 'cause there's another little lady on the way! :)

After the exhibit, we wandered through some other paths of more cactus and lots of wildflowers - we also saw some rabbits, lizards, and a cute little prairie dog. Then we stopped for a quick rest and Emma tried her hand at taking a picture of me and Ben together ('cause we so rarely get pictures of the two of us together... how sad is that?!) - well, this is what happens when we try to take pictures together...


Second try...


Better - but oh my goodness! I really am pregnant aren't I!! eek!

Ben being the great dad that he is... taking time to teach the girls from one of the informational signs :)






When we were done exploring (and very tired out), we stopped in the gift shop and got some prickly pear cactus candy for the kids to try out - Ben had been talking about it earlier as we looked at some prickly pear cactus, and the girls were very interested to try tasting it. Well, I thought it was delicious! Just like a really yummy soft gummy candy with a lemony berry flavor - Emma kind of liked it and Becca took one tiny bite and licked it a little before saying it was yucky. Jake loved it and a second after I took the pic of him below, he popped the rest of it in his mouth and covered his face in purple juices. :)





Hooray for a successful family outing! I'm thrilled because Ben started up a week of vacation time today - he's off through this coming Friday. We aren't planning on going on any trips this week or anything, but there are some fun events in the next few days - Jake turns 2 on Tuesday and Ben and I will be celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary on Wednesday! Big milestones! :) We kicked off his vacation time last night by getting to go the temple - it really felt like a date with a quick dinner at Chipotle prior to our temple time and then a stop at Bahama Bucks for a treat afterwards. mmmm. Ben's parents watched our kids and took them to see the movie, Rango. So, it was a fun evening for everyone... and hopefully more fun to come this week with Ben spending it with us. :)

A great day at the park

We went to the big park in Anthem on Saturday and enjoyed the lovely weather. We even ran into some fun friends, the Hanchett's, there! We packed a lunch and ate out on the grass and then the kids (and Ben and I) played on the playground for a while. The girls really wanted to spend some time playing in the little splash pad that is there, so I changed them into swim suits... but it was not that hot outside and it was a bit windy, so they all played in the water for probably 5 minutes and then were done. oh well. :) It was a great afternoon!















This kid is missing a flip flop again! That drives me nuts