TWO!!!

Jackson turned two yesterday! His birthday was 1/1/11 this year-- pretty cool!

We started the day off with his favorite breakfast-- Mickey Mouse pancakes drenched in syrup. This kid LOVES syrup.

Next, Jackson got to spend some time with his dad picking out an R/C car for a birthday present. When Sean told him they were going to go pick out a new car, Jackson kept saying, "two cars!" He was pretty excited about the number two I think because we kept emphasizing it all day. Needless to say, they came home with two cars- the R/C car and a small monster truck. They ended up picking out this Jeep and Jackson loves driving it around the house and jumping it off of the binder:

Next it was off to Kangaroo Zoo (another of his favorites) with his cousins. They jumped to their hearts' content!

Max and Jackson climbing the ladder to the big slide:

After heading home it was time for a pizza and presents!

Opening his gift from grandma and grandpa:

A gift from mom and dad:

And from nana and papa:

He got lots of great new toys and genuinely seems to love them all. I think between Christmas and his birthday he should be set!

Finally it was time for cake. It had been a long time since I'd decorated one so I decided to take a shot at Mickey. Mickey and Pooh are in a close tie for first place in Jackson's mind, but Mickey won out because I thought he'd be cuter on a cake.

I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. Don't let the cake fool you though-- it may look nice and flat, but that is only because there is a good 2" of frosting in the center making it level... I tried a new homemade cake recipe and let's just say those cakes were definitely not winning any beauty contests!

Time to sing!

Blowing out the candles with a little help from mom.

It really was such a fun day and we had a great time together. Jackson seemed to have a blast all day, which was ultimately all we wanted. We are so grateful for this little guy! He has blessed our home in countless ways and we feel so lucky to be his parents. We love his enthusiasm and loving nature and wouldn't change a thing about him!

For memory sake-- some notes about Jackson at two years old:

-Wears mostly 3T clothing and size 7 shoe

-Very vocal and is speaking more in sentences--will repeat pretty much everything

-Favorite t.v. shows: Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

-Favorite movies: Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Monsters Inc., Princess and the Frog, Cars, Jungle Book

-Loves books and some favorite include: Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?, The Foot Book, Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh books

-Still loves any type of ball, car and airplane

-Has an almost scary good memory and recalls things he has only seen once or hasn't seen for months

-Likes counting and is close to being able to count to 10 correctly

-Favorite songs: the bumble bee song, Twinkle, Twinkle (Winkle, Winkle as he calls it), Popcorn Popping

-Not a fan of vegetables but loves pretty much all fruit

-Always eats a good breakfast and lunch but usually picks at his dinner

-Takes a nap from 1 to 3 or 4pm every day

-Goes to bed at 9pm and wakes up between 8-9am

-Loves swimming and the Lehi Legacy Center Pool (especially loves talking about the big water bucket that splashes)

-Likes to name his friends and cousins

-Has to put his nose in the corner when he is naughty but seems to enjoy doing it

-Pretty good about saying "please" and "thank you." On the flipside, still laughs when he passes gas ;)

-Likes to see what I am doing in the kitchen and will pull up a chair and help me

-Hates climbing up the stairs at just our house for some reason

-Calls gummy bears "donkey bears"

-Likes riding his tricycle (scoots on it)

-Loves all of his stuffed animals (all of which have names) and likes to throw them in his crib and tell them "night, night"

-Hates having his teeth brushed and hair combed through

-Is scared of going to the doctor. As soon as you put him on the table he goes crazy!

-Still loves bath time

-Enjoys nursery now!

-Loves to jump-- on trampolines, on the floor, off of furniture, etc.

All in all, we think he is a pretty cool kid :)

Christmas recap

As usual, we headed to Idaho Falls for Christmas. We stayed with my parents and tried to spend a lot of time with both families. Sean's entire family was home for Christmas this year, which was way cool because it has been years since they have all been together. Jackson got to meet some new cousins and had a blast playing with all of them.

On Christmas Eve we participated in the live nativity that is a tradition of the Ricks family. Jackson was supposed to be a sheep, but he wouldn't wear the costume and was absent for most of the production-- he was a lost sheep per se! ;)

Sean decided to pull out his awesome Christmas sweater (complete with shoulder pads) for the occasion. I asked him to give me a Zoolander pose and here is what he came up with:

There's our little sheep!

Christmas morning smiles. Jackson kept saying "Santa came!" over and over for the next few days.

Unwrapping Pooh Bear

I think he likes it :)

Checking out some of his loot

Sean surprised me with gift card for three maternity massages-- score! We both received some really nice gifts this year. Thank you everyone!

I always look forward to my mom's Christmas dinner and she never disappoints. She always makes prime rib and her famous rolls and everything was really yummy!

Jumping on the bed with a bunch of girls

All of the Ricks grandkids

Finally, this is a random shot I'm throwing in. I took pictures of my belly every month I was pregnant with Jackson starting at 4 months. I missed month 4 this time, but here is my 5-month belly shot I took on Tuesday.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas! As for me, it is time to prepare for Jackpot's big 2nd birthday tomorrow!

Christmas card 2010

There are a few addresses I never rounded up so I thought I'd post our Christmas card and letter. We're off to Idaho-- Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Merry Christmas! We hope you have had a happy 2010 and find this card in good health and good spirits. We are grateful to have been blessed with another great year.

We started the year celebrating Jackson’s first birthday and it is hard to believe in a few weeks we will be celebrating his second! It has been a lot of fun watching him achieve many milestones this year. He spends his days running all over the place and talking up a storm. Some of his favorite things right now are movies (or “DBDs” as he calls them), swimming, cars, his tricycle, making messes, and playing with his dad. He is becoming more and more independent and makes us work harder for hugs and kisses. He continues to be the light of our lives and we are so happy to have him in our family.

We found out in early September that another little one will be joining our family in the spring! We are thrilled to have another baby on the way and are so grateful this came without any doctor assistance. We are excited to find out if it is a boy or girl mid-December—we’re happy either way!

Sean has had a busy year with school and work. He entered his final year of law school this fall and is looking forward to finishing in the spring. It’s strange thinking there really is life beyond school. He continues to work as a legal clerk for APX and really enjoys it. We were thrilled when APX extended Sean a job offer to join their in-house legal team after graduation. We know he is very fortunate to have such a wonderful job opportunity in such a difficult job market. Life for Sean this year hasn’t been all work. This summer he joined a karting league at Miller Motorsports Park with one of his friends and absolutely loved it. He was also able to go with a few friends to the second installment of a driving school in Alabama. He got to let out his inner-racing demon—thankfully in a somewhat controlled environment!

Jenny is staying busy running after Jackson and trying not to let her waist expand too rapidly. During free time (a.k.a. naptime), she has enjoyed working in the garden and a few sewing projects. She is an activity days leader for church and enjoys planning and attending activities with the cute girls in her neighborhood. She also survived enjoyed girls camp this summer as girls camp director. Ready for a vacation, she suggested a family trip to Yosemite National Park and San Francisco this fall. We saw some beautiful scenery and had a great time exploring together.

We are so grateful for our family and friends and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We're really enjoying the fun stuff to do this time of year!

Lights at temple square

Reindeer at Thanksgiving Point

Building our own snowman (some little guy we know is a big fan)

New snow!

Ready for Christmas!

Outnumbered!

It's a BOY!!!

We had our ultrasound this morning and it appears I am becoming more outnumbered! And I couldn't be happier about it :) We are so happy to have another little man in the house and excited for Jackson to have a brother.

Everything looked great on the ultrasound and he was very cooperative in revealing he is a boy :)

Picture of his cute lips and nose (and flashing a gang sign):

Hard to believe we're at the halfway point-- excited to meet this guy!

Gingerbread and lights

We decided to decorate our annual gingerbread house tonight. I made all of the gingerbread yesterday so we could focus on the decorating tonight. It started off well...

Making the royal icing with a little helper in his cowboy apron:

We got the gingerbread house all "glued" together and thought it was stable enough to start decorating. We were wrong... it collapsed. The royal icing was also giving us trouble-- somehow we got a hole in the piping bag and icing was everywhere!

I'll be honest, at this point I was ready to throw in the towel and just eat the candy. Sean was more optimistic and he engineered a way to make the house more stable. We used supports until the house dried just to be safe.

Jackson thought he was in heaven when he saw the big pile of candy in the middle of the table. We pretty much gave him free reign :) He seemed to have a lot of fun helping us decorate.

He also ate a lot of candy already on the house. I'm pretty sure I caught him red handed in this picture:

The finished product:

Nothing fancy, but this ended up being one of my favorites so far!

Not more than 30 minutes later, this was what was left of our gingerbread house:

Apparently some little boy was sneaking candy off of the finished product and the roof collapsed (I take full responsibility for leaving it within his reach-- doh!) I tried to put the roof back on and the whole thing fell! hahaha the only thing we could do at this point was laugh. Glad I snapped a picture before the apocalypse.

Moving on...

Every year we put up Christmas lights on our balcony. Not really sure why, but we started calling it our "fiesta." The time for the fiesta arrived and Jackson and Sean spent some quality time putting up the lights. It was freezing outside so I opted to stay inside and make cookies :)

Jackson thought the lights were quite amazing and he squealed each time Sean plugged in a new strand.

ooooohhhhh, aaaahhhhh

Good job boys!

Rubio's fish tacos

We're big fans of Rubio's 'round these parts-- especially the fish tacos. Strange considering I don't typically enjoy fish, although battering and frying it is likely the the key to my fondness.

When Sean went gluten free I felt sorry he could no longer order fish tacos. A few weeks ago I was craving them so I looked for copy cat recipes online. I figured since so many things are battered in rice flour, it might just work for fish tacos.

I found a recipe that looked pretty good and got good reviews so we tried them out. Success!!! They were SO easy to make and more important, delicious. They seriously tasted just like the real thing. Anyway, I wanted to share the recipe in case anyone else wants to try it. Sorry my picture isn't great-- I'm no food blogger!

Here is the recipe with my notes:

Fish Tacos Recipe

• 11 pieces of “taco sized” (1-2 ounce) Pollock (any mild tasting fish such as cod fits the bill, mess around with any kind of fish you want)
• 11 corn tortillas (if you get flour, you’ll be sorry)
• Plenty of vegetable oil (enough to douse the fish completely in your fryer)
• 1 Cup flour (I used a gluten free blend)
• 1 Cup of a dark beer (I used Ginger Ale with great results)
• Garlic powder to taste.
• Black Pepper to taste.
• 1 Cup of Rubio’s White Sauce (1/2 c. mayo mixed with 1/2 c. plain yogurt)
• 3 Cups of shredded cabbage (the more finely shredded the better)
• 3 medium tomatoes diced
• 1 medium onion diced
• 1 cup of chopped cilantro
• About ½ a cup Lime juice, fresh limes will taste much better, about 2 will suffice

Cooking instructions

1. Mix together your flour, garlic, and pepper in a bowl. Stir thoroughly and then add in the dark beer. After it is mixed more or less uniformly, let this settle at room temperature for an hour. (I did not wait a full hour and mine turned out fine)
2. In the meantime, clean your fish. This helps with the “fishy” taste especially if you don’t have the freshest fish. Use a bit of lime juice and salt water when washing. (I just ran my fish under the tap)
3. Also in the meantime, you can warm up your oil to 375 degrees. Be careful not to overheat the oil.
4. After the hour is over whisk the batter vigorously. Doing this will give your fish a lighter crispier taste on the outside and that distinctive Rubio’s texture.
5. Dip the fish into the batter and cover all sides. Then quickly dunk the fish into the hot oil. Leave it in there until it is golden brown. You may need to turn the fish once or twice to help it cook evenly, depending on your fryer.
6. Next make the pico de gallo salsa. Dice your tomato and onion and chop that cilantro, then just mix it all together.
7. To assemble: Put fish in center of tortilla and drizzle with white sauce. Spoon on some pico de gallo and a small handful of shredded cabbage. Squeeze some fresh lime juice over the top. Fold in half and enjoy!

Original recipe here.