Malachi's New Skill

This weekend our baby turned one and our big boy learned to ride his bike without training wheels. Whew! Now if we could just get the middle boy to use the potty so we can cut down on the amount of diapers we have to buy...

 Malachi is SO excited about and proud of his new skill - we could barely get him off his bike when it was bathtime!

Happy 1st Birthday, Jonas!

Our baby is ONE today!

These pictures are from the cake smash photo shoot Aunt Kelsey did with Jonas a couple weeks ago. It was so much fun even though he wasn't too interested in eating the cake.

His brothers were excited about eating (and playing in) the cake. They tried to encourage him to do the same...

...but this is what happened when we gave him some to eat and got his hands messy!

It's been such a fun year! It has been so neat to watch Malachi and Elliott become such great big brothers and Jonas absolutely loves both of them. He gets really excited whenever they are around. His personality is really starting to show more and more every day. His newest milestones are shaking his head no whenever we say "no" to him or when he does something he knows is not allowed. He's also starting to say a couple of words, "whoa!" and "bbbbbah" ("ball") are the two most often used. I hope I don't jinx myself by saying this, but we've had an entire week of full nights of sleep! He usually goes to bed around 7:30-8:00 and will sleep until around 6:15 or so. After I nurse him he will go back to sleep for a couple more hours and then will take one long nap in the afternoon. Jonas is still extremely picky when it comes to food. He likes crackers, bread, goldfish, yogurt melts, Life cereal, Cheerios, Frosted Mini Wheats, curry chicken, chicken nuggets, peanut butter, Nutrigrain bars (sometimes) and GoGo Squeez or Buddy Fruit pouches (sometimes). That may look like a long list, but I worry a little about variety! He isn't walking yet but goes wherever he wants pretty quickly on all fours. He does pull up, cruise around furniture and will stand alone for a few seconds. Life is busy and crazy most days, but we are having a great time and wouldn't have it any other way!

Happy Birthday, Jonas Brandon! We love you so much!

The Knight in Shining Armor

Malachi and his friend, Carson, would like to present their very own original movie, The Knight in Shining Armor. Enjoy!

 

Part 1: The Shining Sword

 Part 2: The Bad Guy Breaks In

Part 3: The Battle of Death

THE END

Curry Chicken

I've talked about what a picky eater Jonas seems to be, and while that is still true it looks as if he can officially be part of the family - he loves curry!

This is a very big deal since we eat curry chicken quite often around here. This past week I started "meal swap" again and this time there are nine families participating! That means that we only fix our meal once every three weeks and receive three meals each week during that time, but when we fix we have to fix enough for 9 families - that's 36 servings! Curry chicken was the most requested of my recipes so last Saturday I spent the afternoon making a huge roaster of it. I think our house still smells like curry but it was worth it. It was very tasty and the other two meals we received (chili and chicken & dumplings) were also delicious!

Football Season!

We love football season in this house and the boys are enjoying learning about, watching and playing the game with their daddy. I'm starting to get used to this activity in my living room every evening:

Thankful for our Basement!

We are expecting quite a few friends for a cookout this evening to celebrate Labor Day and it's been pouring down rain ALL day...so today I am VERY thankful for our basement! That being said, it's been well over a year since our basement flooded and we had to rethink everything about how to finish it. I haven't done lots of updates, but it's finally getting to a point where I can decorate. Yay!

 

My first project was completed last December as part of Erik's Christmas present, his running wall:



It's fun to have all of his running awards displayed so they can be seen easily, and I'm glad they aren't cluttering the top of his dresser in our room anymore!

 

The other side of the room was always going to be a play area for the boys, but it originally was also going to be an office area. Lucky for them we had to scrap that plan after the flood! Now they have lots of room to spread out and have fun.

We completely cut out the bottom part of the drywall/insulation and replaced it with a plastic roofing material bordered by PVC boards that serve as baseboards and chair rails. It's not the look I really wanted, but I must say I'm very pleased with how it turned out. And the best thing is that everything is waterproof!

 

I've been scouring Pinterest for a year now trying to get decorating ideas and I've finally decided on a few and taken the time to do them. The first was the art wall for the boys:

The letters are made with an outline of nails and yarn wrapped around them. Then I just screwed binder clips into the wall so the boys can easily hang their drawings and change them whenever they want...without using all of my tape!

The second project was to make big, canvas-like pictures for little cost. I thought about getting engineer prints and making them really big, but finally decided that 12x16 was large enough. I simply printed the pictures at Sam's for less than $3 each, glued them to plywood that was cut to size, spray painted the backs and edges and mod podged over the entire thing. I also glued square dowel rods to the backs of them so that they would stand off the wall when hung, which adds a good touch in my opinion. I was able to do all three pictures for less than $20!

Last but not least, my favorite project to date! This is a combination of about 5 different ideas I found that I liked. I wanted a way to display pictures of the boys and their family and friends, especially all those random snapshot pictures that tend to pile up. I had decided to do a big collage board but wasn't sure how to execute it until after I did the picture project above. Because I liked how it turned out so much I wanted to do something similar. I finally decided to get a big piece of plywood (4'x4') and let the boys fingerpaint it. They obviously enjoyed that:

After they finished I sprayed the sides with black spray paint and added a couple clear coats to protect it. This is how it looked once hung:

 I was already so excited about it I almost didn't go ahead with my original plan of making it a collage board, but then I remembered all the pictures and the special memories they represent so I started adding them:

The idea is to glue on pictures as we get them to create a huge collage of memories. Malachi is already liking the idea - last week our church hosted a few interns from Cypress Wesleyan Church in Columbus and we got to know them because the girls stayed at my parents' house. They came for dinner one evening and Malachi asked to take this picture so he could add it to his board in the basement!

Sarah, Natasha and Bethany - it was so fun getting to know you! Thank you for playing with our boys, taking cute pictures of them and supporting Malachi's Rock Shop! Best of luck with the rest of your internship at Cypress!