Happy Halloween

Happy Birthday!

Ryan turned 26 yesterday. We had so much fun celebrating. We went to Tucanos for lunch on Tuesday with Julie and Christian. We were so busy stuffing ourselves that we forgot to take a picture with Julie and Christian inside, so we just took a picture by the sign outside. It was freezing cold.

We opened presents.

He got more than just Reese's peanut butter cups, but this is the only one I remembered to take a picture of. Then we had a party at night. There was lots of yummy food.


And we played Rock Band.

The babies played in the swing together.


All in all it was a lot of fun. I hope Ryan enjoyed it as much as I did. Happy birthday to my wonderful husband.

Fall Leaves

The other day Lucas and I went on a walk to the library. On the way we ran into Sarah and she helped us take some cute pictures. The fall colors are so beautiful right now. Lucas was in heaven with all the leaves to play with.

5 Months Old

Lucas is 5 months old now. The last 5 months have been so much fun for us; Lucas has brought so much joy to our lives. He is such a little sweetheart and hugging him makes us so happy, even when we've had a really hard day - even when he's the reason we've had a hard day. We can't believe how fast he has grown. He learns how to do things really quickly and he's so smart.

Recently he has been trying to figure out crawling. He can turn in circles on his stomach and roll to get around, but lately he's been trying to get his knees underneath him to lunge at stuff. It's pretty funny to watch. Sometimes it works and sometimes he ends up scooting away from the toy he's trying to get at.



The other day he was fussing on the floor and a few minutes later he stopped fussing so I was worried he had gotten into something he wasn't supposed to. He already knows when he's playing with something he shouldn't and it always makes him happy. Well, I went to check on him and it turns out he had worked his way over to his pacifier and stuck it in his mouth. That's another thing he's learned, he can almost always get his pacifier in his mouth on his own.

Lucas has also been talking a lot more lately. It's so much fun. He just has this cute little voice, and it's always a lot lower after a nap which cracks me up. Here's a video I took of him talking. He blows raspberries when he talks. It's pretty funny.

And the most recent milestone for Lucas is that he's sitting up. He's been working on it for a month now but just in the last week he's really started perfecting this. A week ago he could barely stay up for more than 10 seconds, and now he's almost a pro. We let him sit up in the shopping cart last time we went shopping and he thought it was so much fun. I think he likes being able to see the world from this new perspective.


And this isn't really a milestone, but Lucas really loves eating his socks. He can usually pull them off for easier eating. Here he is in the process of trying to get his socks off.


Lucas has changed so much since he first entered this world. He looks so different now than he did when he was only a few hours old. I think the jump from one month to two months is the most obvious change.

Newborn
2 Weeks Old
I love how fuzzy he looks here with uncle John.

1 Month
2 Months
3 Months
4 Months
5 Months

Happy 5 month day, sweet little baby.

Happy Birthday and a Recipe

My sister Julie had a birthday last week. She came over for a little party and I wanted to make something special as a treat. I found this recipe for Mascarpone Cheese Cupcakes. It was delicious. I wasn't a huge fan of the glaze on top, though, so I'm going to experiment with other toppings. You should definitely give the recipe a try, though. It was really easy and so good. I couldn't find mascarpone cheese at the store so I used this as a substitute -

1 8oz package of cream cheese
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
2 1/2 tablespoons sour cream

Here's the birthday girl.


She got a pink piggy bank from our mom.

We had fun taking pictures with it.

Lucas was asleep but Dallin got to meet the pig. Happy 30th birthday Julie!

Park City Date

Last night Ryan and I got to go on a date. It had been a month or so since we'd gotten a babysitter and went out. It was so nice to go out with just the two of us. We dropped Lucas off at his grandparent's house and headed up to Park City.

I got to push my seat in the car all the way back and recline because there wasn't a car seat in the way. :)

We went on a date to Park City to ride the alpine slides 3 years ago when we were still dating, so we thought it would be fun to recreate this date. Here we are three years ago.

And here we are last night. I think we look so different. We were both more tan back then. It was so cold last night up in Park City. We did not dress warm enough, but we still had so much fun.

Ryan dragged my sled for me. He's so sweet.
The colors were so beautiful.
Here we are getting ready to ride the alpine slides.

Since we had a gift card we were able to go on both the alpine slide and the alpine coaster. We hadn't ever been on the alpine coaster before. It was amazing. You're hooked onto the track on the alpine coaster so you can go so much faster, and there's more intense turns and dips. It was so much fun. I forgot to take a picture to give you an idea of what it looks like, but I found this one online.
Seriously, if you ever get the chance to ride the alpine coaster, you should do it. And don't put the brakes on.

After we got done with all our alpine sliding and coastering, we went to RedRock for dinner, the same place we went three years ago.

We had so much fun. It was fun to sit and think how different our life is than it was three years ago. We've been blessed with so much. Thanks again to Ryan's parent's for babysitting. It was so nice to get out, but also so nice to come back home to our baby. We missed our little sweetheart.

We Love Getting Packages!!

Ryan orders his books for school online, so the last few packages we've gotten have been boring books. I get so excited when I see a package, and then so disappointed when we open it and it's just a book for school. So, today when there was a fun package, I was really excited. Lucas was excited too, cause it was for him.

He tried to climb in.

Thanks for the snowsuit Grandma Crapo! It's a little big, but the winter is long and I'm sure he'll grow into it.

Sausage and Lentil Soup

I got this recipe off the food network a few months ago and now that it's cooler outside I finally had the chance to make it. It was fabulous! I loved it. The recipe calls for leeks. I'd never used leeks in anything before so it was definitely an adventure, but the soup was delicious so I would recommend trying it with the leeks if you can. Otherwise I think you could just do the onion.

Sausage and Lentil Soup

• 1/2 lbs Lentils
• 2-6 T Olive Oil
• 2 C Chopped Onions
• 2 C Chopped Leeks
• 1/2 T Minced Garlic
• 1/2 T Thyme
• 1/2 tsp Cumin
• 1/2 T Salt
• 3/4 tsp Pepper
• 2 C Chopped Carrots
• 2 C Chopped Celery
• 1 1/2 quarts Chicken Broth
• 2 T Tomato Paste
• Sausage or Kielbasa

Pour Boiling water over lentils and let soak for 15 minutes.

Pour olive oil in bottom of soup pan, enough to almost cover bottom. Add onions, leeks, garlic, thyme, cumin, salt, and pepper and saute in olive oil till onions and leeks are tender.

This was the leek I used. I'd never even seen one before.
This is what it should look like when everything is added together.

Add all remaining ingredients and the lentils, except for sausage, into the pan. Simmer for about an hour. Add the sausage during the last 10 minutes.

I used fully cooked, smoked beef sausage. You could use what ever you wanted, just make sure it's fully cooked.

Serve with parmesan cheese on top.