What do you see?: January 2012

Monday, January 30, 2012

ah-quar-mum

That would be the AQUARIUM. A tough word when you're three and a half. TheCincinnati/Newport Aquarium to be exact. Gabe had a night trip to Cincinnati for work, so we tagged along. And we appreciate him giving up a quiet car ride and a full night's sleep in order to spend some time as a family! We made it a water themed overnight trip and swam in the hotel pool and went to the aquarium. This kids "soaked" up their Daddy!

After a little bit of a rough night sleeping in the hotel - including Mommy hiding under the covers with the laptop to pretend like she was going to sleep! - we headed to the aquarium with Aunt Allison.

First up, the penguin parade! This crazy penguin guy danced with the kids before the aquarium opened, and this was the first time Henry has been really excited about a character and pretty willing to go up to him.

Dancing with the penguin before the parade.

The term "parade" itself was a little misleading. We thought the penguins would actually waddle around, but it turns out they just bring the three penguins out in a stroller with the kids walking behind them. A little anti-climatic, but Henry thought it was great.

Then on to see some fish - Henry really loved Nemo and Nemo's daddy.

And Maggie found her own fishy friend. This little fish really did love Maggie, as she kept swimming over to say hi to Maggie. And Maggie squealed, smiled and kicked her little legs. She definitely wanted to touch the little fish and didn't understand the glass stopping her. She loves fish and it's so fun to see her get excited about them and interact with things more now!

The big tanks are pretty cool - they had a huge old sea turtle with a damaged foot

And lots of sharks swimming around

This doesn't even look real but man look at those teeth!

At one point the shark came swimming towards us with his mouth opening and closing. Henry was pretty scared and buried his face in my shoulder. But what was even more scary were these scuba divers. They were cleaning the tank and when they saw the kids gathered they swam over and waved. Henry was petrified, poor guy! I tried to explain that they were people wearing masks to help them breathe but he thought the masks made them too scary. Even later asking him what he thought of the aquarium he said "I didn't like the scary guys, the scuba divers." No SCUBA for him any time soon

Making shark faces with Mommy and measuring yourself against a shark was less scary

Me and my fish loving baby!

We were at the aquarium a few years ago when we first went to Cincinnati and Henry was only one. It was good to be back, was a whole new experience for him, and we had our little Maggie with us!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Top Chef Masters: Shawnee

Top Chef Masters: Shawnee, 2011.

Girls vs. Boys.

The Parameters:

Girls' secret ingredient for the boys: pumpkin

Boys' secret ingredient for the girls: coconut - that turned out to be rotten :(

Competition parameters - cooking for 30 friends at a holiday party

Costumes: Cute matching aprons. Boys, where's the picture of your cute matching aprons?

Allez cuisine!

I know, that's Iron Chef, but it's really just like what she's saying here!

Whoa, wait a minute, what's everyone cooking?

Boys' Menu: Pulled Pork Nachos with Tomatillo Sauce, Spicy Shrimp Po Boys, Vanilla Ice Cream and Pumpkin Cookies

Girls' Menu: Japanese Beef Rolls with Ginger Lime Sauce, Artichoke and Roasted Pepper Risotto, Truffle Bar

We were awfully busy in the kitchen (read: all day!) so we didn't get to take many pictures during the cooking or even of the finished dishes, but some highlights:

The boys roasted tomatillos for their salsa, and it was de-lish!

Mushroom cluster for the Japanese Beef Rolls

Pretty Truffle Bar with Toppings

(coconut, pistachio, peppermint, cocoa powder, almonds, toffee)

And since us girls are the Top Chef Masters that we are, we cooked a few extra dishes to supplement the heavy hors d'0euvres menu:

Peppered Candied Bacon

Panzanella Bread Salad

Cute Cheeseball Snowman

Winning Dish - Japanese Beef Rolls with Ginger Lime Sauce!

Overall Winning Team - Girls!

Next Battle - 2013

Bring your aprons!

Hungry yet??

Thanks Allison for some pics! :)

Thunder Up!

I've never been to a professional basketball game, and Gabe has been to only one. So while in Oklahoma, we took advantage of some Grams babysitting (thanks Grams!) and headed to the Thunder/Mavs game. We had top row seats in a huge stadium. I was *just* a little scared.

Our view from the top

The atmosphere of the game is really exciting, with lots of cheers, songs, and things to pump the crowd up. I'm not a huge basketball fan - I don't understand a lot of it - but it was really fun to watch! And a fun date night for us. I practiced with my really zoomed in camera to try to capture some fun action shots.

This is my favorite

The end of the game was really exciting, as the Thunder made an a-the-buzzer three-point shot. Amazing! And Thunder Win!

Fun in Oklahoma

Continuing to try to catch up from our Christmas trip in Oklahoma. Besides all of our Christmas festivities, we had a lot of fun doing some non-Christmas-y things too.

Just a few minutes from Gabe's small hometown, there's a really cool Children's Museum. The Jasmine Moran is actually getting ready to welcome it's one millionth visitor. If you're ever in Seminole, OK, Kids Town is a lot of fun! The kids had a lot of fun fixing cars with Grandad

And Henry is following right in his grandfather's footsteps with a love of grocery shopping :)

This bubble room is really cool - Henry landed one on his head!

Maggie giggled and giggled! I love this picture!

There is a really cool climbing structure that is a huge next probably two stories tall. Henry and I had a blast climbing all the way to the top together and sliding down. Then, we were really impressed when he did it again on his own. When we've been to other museums with similar structures, he's been too intimidated to do it, let alone on his own. Pretty proud of his maturing!

Maggie was satisfied and tickled with the little slide

Henry also spent some time romping in the woods behind Gabe's house with the dogs. Hurry up Indy!

Brown Dog stare down. Cuties

We also had a great time swimming at the YMCA a couple of times; they have a really fun indoor pool that is great for kids with water sprinklers, a water slide, and a dragon slide. This is a big hit with Henry! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera both times, but the mental pictures are great :) Maggie also had some tummy time at the pool in the very shallow end, and she did wonderfully and stayed on her tummy for a long time, and got herself spun around 180 degrees for the first time. More on her progress toward crawling later.

Hard to believe we squeezed in so much fun in such a short time!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

A few good holidays

So my last post was from Halloween. This is by far a new record here on my blog, and not a good record - the longest length without posting. In fact, does anyone even still read this blog? Probably not. But I've long given up hope of anyone besides Gabe reading anyways, so I'm mostly recording things online just to remember them in years come. Still, I've done a bad job in the past few months. No excuses. If I were giving excuses, I'd blame it on my camera or computer. But I've had a brand new computer for over a month that works great, and a nice camera
that works just fine. Really, I've been busy with the holidays and trying to spend every spare minute reading files to make a little extra money. I should have been able to post a few cute pics.

So, here's to 2012, more blog entries. To start it off, I'll just give a few quick pics of the holidays between Halloween and Valentine's day. They are good ones, you know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our family gets to celebrate Hanukkah thanks to Grandad! Henry took his menorah lighting responsibilities very seriously. Maggie enjoyed some latkes and applesauce

Next up, Christmas! We also get to celebrate Christmas a couple of times - once with one side right after Thanksgiving, once at home as a family before we travel, and then with the other side of the family for the actual holiday. Three times the fun!

Some brotherly instruction about Santa. And our Christmas card this year! I love this picture!

So excited about presents!

Maggie digging right in and she loved ripping the paper

We decorated some sugar cookies when we went to see Santa at the bookstore. We also made a few batches at home

Gingerbread house construction workers

Maggie and Mommy Christmas Eve

Can we open presents yet????

Santa's toys Christmas morning! Trains and Jessie and Bullseye. Henry proclaimed "he came, Mommy!" and "I ALWAYS wanted a Jessie!" So sweet, excited and genuine!