Special Cupcakes for the Big Game

The LDS law society at GW decided to rent out a sports bar for the Utah v. BYU game this past weekend. It really was a great event considering both the turnout (we had just over 40 BYU and Utah fans) and the outcome of the game. Sarah was especially supportive of our differences in perspective dressing our children in both red and blue clothing.

There were two true highlights of the evening from my perspective. The first came when I attempted to give Ethan Blue tortilla chips on his plate. He looked at me and said, "I don't want blue Dad, I want red!" I'm so proud, I've already won the heart and mind of one of my children.



The second were our cupcakes. Sarah got a really nifty book, if I do say so myself, on how to design cupcakes. Hopefully many of you will be the benefactors of cleverly designed cupcakes in the future. In honor of the game, Sarah designed special cupcakes to mark the occasion. I contributed the BYU and Utah helmets to the creation. Believe it or not, everything was edible. The goal posts were chocolate dipped pretzels, the grass and lines were frosting, the helmets were Dots dipped in frosting. It really was a lot of fun.



I gained some degree of respect for the "Ace of Cakes" folks as I attempted to balance the cupcakes on the drive to the sports bar. We sort of one-upped them in fact, because we managed to get 27 cupcakes, arranged in a sculpture, to our destination still in one piece. Anyone can transport a solid cake, I mean c'mon.

Keeping us laughing

Just some funny stories we have to write down so we can tease these boys when they're older.

Isaac has become very sneaky. He loves playing with our computer mouse because of the laser on the bottom. Friday he waddled into our room, looked at me with a little grin and then proceeded to grab a law book off of Taylor's book shelf. I told him "no, no" and got up to take it away from him and put it back. I turned around to find that he had sprinted over to the computer desk and had the mouse in hand with a triumphant look on his face. I then took that away from him and he started the whole process again. He went and got a book off Taylor's shelf, gave me a little smile, and then waited for me to come take it from him. This time I was smarter than the 11-month old though and I put the mouse away! He was pretty upset that his rouse didn't work the second time.

He has also started climbing which Ethan never did (literally, Ethan NEVER did. He slept in a crib until he was 3 and never once climbed out. We even used to make him sleep in the bathtubs at hotels because he thought it was a crib and wouldn't try to climb out.) We are not so lucky with Isaac. Twice last week Ethan yelled across the apartment for me to come "see". Once Isaac had climbed from a kiddy chair onto their play table and was climbing along their play kitchen (2 feet in the air). The second time he scooted Ethan's bathroom stepstool over to the toilet, climbed onto the toilet and was trying to climb from the toilet onto the sink (a good foot away) when I found him. He just laughs when I pull him down and say "no, no".

Ethan was also funny tonight. He has lately been rushing through prayers and we can barely understand him so Taylor reviewed the prayer process before he began... what do you want to say thank you for? what do you want to ask for? When asked what he wanted to ask for, he replied "to save". Taylor asked "what would you like Heavenly Father to save?" Ethan's reply: "the dinosaurs". Taylor's reply: "go ahead and ask him, it might be a little late."

New York, New York!

I was doing calculations the other day and realized that I've lived in DC longer than I've lived anyplace else my entire life. It's kind of crazy. For 4 of those years, Taylor's brother has lived on Long Island while he's going to school at Hofstra University. Taylor's been up to visit twice but we've never wanted to pay for hotels and I've never wanted to stay in the frat house. So this summer when he bought an apartment in Brooklyn, we started making plans to visit. Mack and Sam were so gracious to let us crash with them even though the boys wake up at 6am and they chased their 2 dogs around the apartment the whole time.
Mack didn't have class on Friday so he toured us around the city. We saw the World Trade Center site, walked around battery park, the financial district, Times Square, FAO Schwartz, and the Mac Store. The only real bummer was that the big piano and legos were closed at FAO Schwartz because someone had rented them out for a birthday party (how much would that cost?).

We also took the ferry out around the Statue of Liberty. We didn't get off because you can only go into the pedastal and not up to the crown or the flame.

I thought DC was a big city, until I visited New York. It's monstrous! I can't believe anyone lives there with all the traffic and masses of humanity, but to each his own.

We did go visit Ellis Island which was amazing. Taylor's grandmother actually came through there in 1948 so it was interesting to see the actual rooms she walked through and learn about what experiences she had there. This is the main hall where judges would sit behind the desk and all the immigrants had to file off the boat, up the stairs, and then into lines to wait their turn. It made me wonder how long she stood there staring out these windows. Was she scared, lonely? She was by herself but we hope someone on the boat befriended her. She must also have been scared and afraid of being persecuted for being a jew because on the official record, she changed her middle name from Rebekah (sounded too Jewish) to Renee.

Sadly, she passed away last year so no one can ask her those questions now. It was her first step into America though, a country that offered her a new life with new opportunities for education and occupation, and a new family to fill a long, happy, full life. I'm grateful for places that remind me of what an amazing country we live in and how blessed we are to have the freedoms we do.

The Perfect Birthday

I have to give a big thank you to my hubby for out-doing himself on my birthday. I was somewhat bummed last year when he decided to go to Business school which added an extra year, knowing that I would be 30 before he even graduated. Two weeks ago he took a midterm in his Monday night class and thought he bombed it so he came home and announced that he didn't think he'd be able to skip class for my birthday. So I was totally surprised Monday morning when he announced that he wasn't going to class (he didn't actually bomb the final- but got an A-, crazy guy). We spent the morning together as a family and then he arranged for one of our friends to come watch the boys so we could go out on a little afternoon date. If you haven't been to the Library of Congress in DC, it's well worth a trip. It's honestly comparable in ornateness to the cathedrals in Europe- only there's modern lights so you can actually see the paintings and sculptures well. It's still a working library so you can't go in all the parts, but it's amazing to see.

These cheribum (little angels) line the double staircases in the main hall. In an American twist, they couldn't just be angels sitting peacefully, they had to be working. So the sculters gave them each jobs. One had grain representing the harvest, one had a graduation cap and diploma representing learning, etc. I don't remember all of them but it was interesting to see all the work as well as thought that went into this building.

In addition the library has a complete Gutenberg bible (no pictures allowed because it would damage the book) as well as Thomas Jefferson's library collection. Pretty amazing.

To top of the night, our friends who had babysat the kids in the afternoon took us all to dinner. Crazy with 3 toddlers but at least they stuck us in a corner of the restaurant.

Chillin' with Mrs. Gilbert Arenas, her kids, and her BLING!

The Jazz were in town last night playing the Wizards, but I wasn't really planning on going to the game. A friend of mine called on Monday to tell me that he could get me tickets. I'd already planned to go out to dinner with a friend for his 40th birthday, so I told him I couldn't unless he could get me 8 tickets so that I could redirect the birthday party from the restaurant to the Verizon Center. Amazingly, the 8 tickets came through and we showed up at will call to pick them up. To our surprise, we were sitting lower bowl, about 6 rows from the court, with all the player's wives. A friend of mine from India, who watched his first B-ball game, was especially shocked to see the sticker price of the tickets - $235.

The Jazz ended up losing in the last 2 minutes after what was a pretty exciting game.

The eye opening event of the evening was observing the player's wives.



They all had babysitters that were busying watching their kids while they watched the game and chatted with each other. The other thing they had in common were enormous, seemingly very expensive diamond rings on their hands. Gilbert Arenas's wife was sitting right in front of us with her two kids. She was sporting at least a 3 carat diamond mounted on a gaudy white gold setting. Even her little 4 year old daughter had diamond earrings. Quite a sight to be sure.

Periodically, Gilbert Arenas would make little peace signs up at his son who would make them back. I hope he didn't think it was weird that I was making peace signs back at him as well. No one else knew that he wasn't actually making them to me?

Dragon-Dinosaur and a Duck

I have to admit I can't resist the urge to dress my children up at Halloween. Honestly I think they're the cutest pictures from the whole year! Taylor's mom has been hinting that she wanted pictures of the kids in their costumes all month so I finally got around to taking them outside to let them play in the beautiful fall leaves while I snapped a few shots.

When I was pregnant with Ethan (and we thought he was a girl) my mom found this costume on clearance and sent it to us thinking he'd wear it the next year. I thought it was absolutely adorable but when Ethan turned out to be a boy, Taylor banned the costume as un-manly (a few people did actually call Isaac a girl on Halloween so I guess he was right). Anyways, I conceeded with Ethan, but just couldn't resist with Isaac. Taylor didn't put up any fight this time so here he is, an adorable little duck. Too bad he can't say quack yet.

This has been the year of the dinosaur for Ethan so of course that's what he had to be for Halloween. I looked for months to find a strictly dinosaur costume (no wings) but they literally don't make them. All dinosaurs are also "dragons" and vice versa. I guess they assume the kids won't know the difference or else won't care. But you'd be wrong! When I brought the costume home for him to try on, he announced that it wasn't a dinosaur because it had wings. So I told him it was a dragon-dinosaur. He accepted that explanation and every time someone asked him what he was, he proudly declared "I'm a dragon-dinosaur" and roared in their face! They all gave him funny looks and laughed a bit but he's right- he was both.

I realized in taking these pictures that since we don't have a backyard I've never really taken either of them out to play in the leaves. This was truly a novel experience for both of them and they loved it. I've never heard Isaac laugh so hard and it was hard to drag Ethan away from rolling, kicking, and tossing leaves in the air.

Day Light Savings

This past Saturday night I was reminded that Sunday morning was Day Light Savings time and we would thus be blessed with one more hour of sleep. Did someone forget to send that memo to my kids? They were up bright and early at 6:20 AM which was really 5:20 AM. Joy! And in trying to switch them over for Monday morning, we invited some friends over to dinner so that Ethan and Isaac would be entertained and stay up later and hopefully sleep in the next morning. A half hour past him normal bedtime, this picture was taken.
You see the glazed over eyes? Yes, both children actually stopped playing, laid down on the couch and announced that they were tired. Not ten minutes later Ethan announced that he was tired and going to bed. He then walked into his room, turned off the light, closed the door, and actually put himself to bed for the first time ever. How bizarre! So much for that extra hour of sleep.

Trick-or-treated OUT!

Since it's our last year in DC, I'm trying to do all the activities I've heard about in the past but haven't found the time for. That meant going trick-or-treating 3 different times this year. It was actually really fun, but a lot of walking and tragically I forgot my camera for 2 of the times so this is all you get. (pictures missing are of trick-or-treating at the embassies and then down the Stirlings street Halloween night)
Thursday morning we went up to a strip mall where the kids got to trick-or-treat at the stores. Ethan especially loved it because all his friends came along. L to R Isaac (duck), Summer (Dorothy), Rosemary (lion), Ethan (dragon-dinosaur), Damon (Incrediboy), Elijah (horse), Elise (princess).

Isaac was absolutely content to stay in the stroller as long as he had his little bucket of candy he could reach into and play with. Nerds were his favorite because they make a great shaky noise. Suckers ran a close second because of the stick.

Ethan ran around saying "roar" to anyone and everyone that would look at him.

The mall even had people doing balloon animals. Ethan loved his elephant and Isaac loved "eating" Elmo's nose.

Anybody want some candy? I have buckets full you're very welcome to! No really! It's not like Isaac can have chocolate yet and Ethan's the only child on the planet who doesn't like it. Seriously- it's the 4th of November already and Ethan has asked for a treat once- and then he picked out the bag of goldfish crackers to eat!

Carving Pumpkins with Dad

Ethan is 3 1/2 now and finally seems old enough to really be interested in some of our favorite holiday traditions. In past years we've carved pumpkins but he's mostly just run around or watched. This year he was so excited to help cut the top off and make a "hat" and then he actually scooped out his entire pumpkin. He especially loved banging his metal spoon on the metal bowl.

Taylor did most of the carving but Ethan picked out the design and insisted on having a "skeweton" face. My mom also sent us a kit with plastic scary eyes to stick inside and they actually make the pumpkins look really neat. Tragically our pumpkins were too small and the eyes started to melt from the heat of the candles.

It was great to see Ethan really enjoy the experience. He's so enthralled by the pumpkins here that he wouldn't even look up to smile for the camera.

Glow Sticks are not for biters

One of my favorite parts of Halloween is the glow sticks. I feel justified in buying a few for safety purposes while we're trick-or-treating, but then even I can't resist playing with the extras. Ethan has loved them the past few years so I thought nothing of getting more this year. The one difference is that Ethan never put things in his mouth as an infant. Isaac does- anything and everything goes right in his mouth!

And being the not so smart mom that I sometimes am, I didn't think of this until after they'd been playing with them for a while and Ethan picked up one Isaac had somehow broken open and started screaming bloody murder and rubbing his eye. Many tears and much loud screaming was followed by a call to poison control and then to top the torture off for Ethan, we had to hold him down with his eye under running water for 5 minutes (they wanted us to do 20 minutes but we'd have needed a sumo wrestler to pin him down any longer and our neighbors may have started calling the cops thinking we were truly killing the child). Thankfully everyone is okay and all glow sticks have been removed from the house. I guess they can wait til they're teenagers.

Annual Hogwarts Party at the Gilberts

For the second year in a row, our friends the Gilberts threw a Harry Potter themed Halloween party. And let's just say they went above and beyond the expected.
If you can't tell, the sandwich snake is really a Basilisk. There were pizza witches hats, chocolate cauldron cakes, pumpkin pasties,

cookies shaped like Grifindor quiditch players,

mandrakes made of powdered sugar and peanut butter (they looked so real and gross that I'm not sure anyone really ate them- the kids wouldn't even touch them).

Sadly no ear piercing screams when plucked from their "soil".

All sorts of potions to try.

Their apartment was decked out with every other Harry Potter thing you could think of from flying brooms, to Scabbers the rat. They had even painted "the chamber of secrets is open" on their wall in glow in the dark paint.

Truly over the top and an excellent party!