Jackson's one-year pictures

We got Jackson's pictures back and thought we'd share our favorites! We LOVE them! Chantri Keele from Studio CK Photography (http://www.studiockphotography.com/) did an awesome job for us again. She also took Jackson's newborn photos. I think she did a great job capturing his personality and she was very patient considering he was not at all interested in keeping still :) I love them all and I think the cake pictures are so much fun!

And then the party REALLY started...



I think this is such a perfect "cake eating" shot!
I can't decide which I like better... this one in color or in black & white. I love them both.

I love his little smirk in this last one :)

Nike sportband

I've heard a lot of buzz about people starting to train for marathons, 10k's, relays, etc. lately and I wanted to share my opinion about a product I really like.

After running my half marathon last August, Sean surprised me with this Nike sportband. It is a little watch you wear on your wrist that keeps track of distance, calories, average time, total time, etc. It also keeps track of your entire running total. It works by coordinating with a micro chip in the sole of your shoe. It's extremely lightweight and user friendly. You do have to buy Nike running shoes, but the ones I got were relatively inexpensive and I LOVE them. I know everyone says Asics are the best running shoes, but I would highly recommend the LunarLites from Nike (cheaper too...).

The coolest part about the sportband is that the face detaches from the watch and plugs into your computer. It pulls up the Nike sportband Web site and keeps track of all of your runs, your fastest times, calories burned, etc. When you look at an individual run you can see on a graph the parts of your run where you ran faster, slower, etc. For example, here is my run from this morning:

You can also set goals for yourself, compete against other sportband users, etc. One of my favorite features is what they call "levels." You make it to certain color-coded levels depending on how many total miles you have run. For instance, I am currently on the second level, or the "orange" level. I have about 20 miles to run until I hit level three, or the "green" level which covers 155-620 total miles. The levels go all the way up to "black" which is anything over 3,107 miles-- yeah, not getting there any time soon. It's funny to me that something as simple as wanting to make it to the next level helps keep me motivated.

Anyway, I know this sounds like an ad for Nike, but I've really loved this thing and thought some of you who are training may be interested. Now, with all this running talk I think it's time for a cookie... hahaha!

Sledding!

After all of the snow storms rolled through last week, we decided it was a good time to go sledding. We ended up at the golf course in Cedar Hills. It turned out to be a great spot! Here are a couple of videos and pictures:

I love how you can hear Jackson giggling in the video with Sean!

Big horn sheep!

A sweet ending to a busy week

Well, not a whole lot has been going on in our household as of late. Jackson got some random virus resulting in a nice mix of puking sessions nearly every night and diarrhea during the day (did I mention this lasted for a WEEK AND A HALF?!) Poor poor kid. Our house was not pretty. I was also not pretty. I was sleep deprived and it was all I could do to even get a shower. I think I washed all of the bedding in our household more this week than I have our entire marriage. You know, since the nightly ritual was he’d throw up in his crib, then throw up in bed with us, then throw up in the spare bed. Good news is the little J man is feeling great now and life is back to normal. Such a relief! It was hard to see him so sick.

Since we haven’t done much due to the aforementioned plague, I thought I’d post a recipe for the best homemade hot fudge I've ever tasted. Chocolate makes everything better! This recipe is courtesy of my sister who got it from her sister-in-law. We had it on brownie sundaes tonight and it really is SO good and easy to make. Try it!

Hot fudge:
1 12-oz package good semi-sweet choc. chips
1 c. butter
2 2/3 c. evaporated milk
4 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Melt chocolate chips and butter together. Blend in remaining ingredients except vanilla. Boil 10 min. stirring constantly. Take off heat and add vanilla. *You can refrigerate any leftovers and use it again later!

Monster towel

I received a bunch of awesome new sewing stuff for Christmas and I got to test some of it out making this cute new hooded towel for Jackson for his b-day! He was outgrowing my favorite pig towel that my sister-in-law gave to him, but it was just too soon to move on to boring old plain towels. I love it because you use an adult sized towel for the bottom and a washcloth for the hood-- in other words, there is room to grow.

I think he likes it :)


I was going to try to write out the instructions and post them, but I didn't know if I would be able to describe the steps very well. Heck, I don't even know if I can remember what to do. If you're interested in making one, come on over and I'll make another one too!

Party time!

Jackson's first birthday party was a hit and we had a great time celebrating with family!

Cousin Isaac helping Jackson open his presents:

Sweet new shoes dad helped pick out:

Reading a new book with a stuffed animal to match!

A lot of people have told me their kids wouldn't dig in to their birthday cake. We'll just say Jackson was not timid in the least! He loved it!

I mean REALLY loved it!

Thanks to everyone who came and made the party so much fun!