Pictures

I know I've been blogging a ton this month, and somehow there's still lots of pictures I'd like to post. So I'm not gonna write a lot, just put up some of my favorite pictures that haven't already found their way on here.

We had a little photo shoot this day because the sunlight was so bright and natural, and I took tons of pictures of her, so here are some of my favorites.

 

She asked to play with the hat, and so we had a fun time with her pulling it off and and me putting it back on her over and over.

 
I think I already mentioned how much she likes playing with her new chair. She'll sit and try to buckle herself and get the tray on for a long time.

Please ignore her giant drool spot. I need to buy or make some bibs with buttons so she can't just pull them off like she always does. We think she's teething again, even though she already has 16 teeth and she's not supposed to get her last 4 molars until about 22 months.

Her favorite book, "Go Dog, Go!"

This is the beginning of her signing "car."

The end of the "car" sign! She's very enthusiastic when she signs it.

 
And her signing "work." It's really cute when I ask her where her Daddy is and she signs "work."

She was playing with all the leftover ties that we cut up to use for Easter Eggs.

 
Lily hardly ever falls asleep in her car seat anymore, but we'd had a long day at my parents' house and it was past her bedtime. She fell asleep with her baby like that, I didn't put it there. She really likes her baby.

So tired she didn't even wake up when I got her up and out of the car.

So festive! Don't worry, I was watching to make sure she didn't choke herself or anything.

Right before we left to go camping, I was trying my socks on her to see if they'd work well as leg warmers.

At Marymoore park again, only it was just Lily and I this time. She only kept the hat on for about 3.2 seconds. Oh well.

Showing me her flower. I like how she already likes to give her mommy flowers. :)

 
Picking more flowers, and pinecones too.

 
Just the other day when we (Ben, Lily, and I) went to Red Robins. She's almost always a really good sport when we go out to eat, which is such a blessing.

I love my little girl!

First camping trip of the year!

Ben has been dying to go camping for months now, but I kept telling him that it was way too cold. But it finally started warming up and a couple of weeks ago we decided it was definitely time to go. So we called our friends Ashlyn & Peter, and Katie & Ryan, and together we all decided to go camping last weekend. It was such a blast to go as a group like that, I can't wait to do it again. We went to Deception Pass State park and stayed for two nights (except the Adams could only stay one night - it was sadness). The weather was supposed to be fairly warm, but it wasn't quite as nice as we were hoping for. Still, we didn't get rained on, and in Washington that means it was nice. :) And without any further ado, here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip!

I just love her outfit here. The main thing was trying to keep her warm, but I think she looks pretty styling. :) This was Friday night as we were setting up the tents. Lily had a such an awesome time playing in the dirt the whole time.

Saturday morning. Yup, she's wearing sandals over  her footie pajamas.

That's a plastic knife in Ben's hand, trying to stir eggs around, because SOMEBODY forgot the cooking utensils! (ok, ok, it was me. Shhh! )

Trying to get a very close look at all the "wocks!" She's really into rocks lately.

 
Pretty beach, and it was only a 5 minutes walk from our campsite.

Me. One of these days I'll remember to get a side angle shot - hopefully I'll remember while the baby is still in there!

My handsome husband with my cute daughter. I'm so lucky.

Lily really likes flowers too, and always wants to smell any flower she sees.

 
This little guy kept hanging out at our campsite eating all our crumbs. He was pretty fearless, and adorable at the same time.

Lily showing us where her dimples are. :)

 
We went back to the beach to try to get sunset pictures, but it was too cloudy, and Lily started getting really tired, so we weren't there very long.

This is grumpy Lily, about 10 minutes after she woke up Sunday morning. She was definitely grumpy and clingy for the first half hour or so after waking up each day.

Now she's happy!

I wish I'd gotten a good picture of how dirty she got, cuz she was definitely (I just decided I use that word too much, but I can't think of a good replacement - eh) the most dirty I've ever seen her. But I didn't. I also didn't get any good pictures of anybody else really. Which is silly, but I think I'm just not used to taking everybody else's pictures without asking first, and usually I only remembered to get the camera out when Lily was doing something noteworthy. Anyway, I know Katie got some really great pictures, so I'm hoping she'll share with me. :) It was a really fun weekend.

Easter Egg Hunt

I meant to post about Lily's Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday, but have been distracted with other things. Fortunately, Ben keeps reminding me so I don't forget, so here I am now!

In Ben's family growing up, the Easter Bunny always visited on Saturday so that they could concentrate on Christ on Easter Sunday, and we decided to let the Easter Bunny know that we'd like him to do that for us as well. So Saturday, after dying the tie-dyed eggs, Ben got the plastic eggs filled with Lily-appropriate goodies - bits of licorice and animal cookies. After the eggs were outside on the grass, we went out, about 7:30 pm. Yeah, kind of late, but it was still light and was nice out still, so it worked. Lily had a really fun time looking for the eggs and putting them in her basket. She can say "eggs" and "basket" and it was really cute. We had introduced the concept of putting eggs in a basket a couple of weeks ago because we really wanted her to get into it, and it worked well, I think. Here are the pics.

Still walking to where the eggs were. I just thought it was so cute how she carried her basket herself at this point. After she saw the eggs though, I pretty much had to carry the basket for her.

 
Just starting out - if you can't tell, Lily is making her "oooo" face cuz she was excited.

 

Hoarding her eggs. She really had to be persuaded sometimes to put the eggs in her basket.

 
I just loved her outfit that day. Yes, I picked it out, but I still think I'm allowed to think it's cute. :) The pink shirt was a new shirt she hadn't worn yet, and I was excited it fit.

 
Action shot! She had just figured out that there was stuff inside some of them and started shaking them each time she picked one up.

This was the closest to a smile we could get her to give us, but she had food in her mouth, so it didn't work so well.

I thought I'd include the next couple shots because we caught her doing some her her signs, which was cool because we don't have a whole lot of pictures where she's doing her signs.

This is bird, only she always does it backwards.

This is how she does Mama., which is pretty close to how it's really done.

And this is cold! Understandably, we went in after she signed that!

Lily had a really good time, and it was lots of fun for us to watch her too. We also went to a ward playgroup Easter Party on Thursday, where they also did an Easter Egg Hunt. Lily really enjoyed herself there too, but I forgot to bring my camera that day.

My Peach Cobbler

Happy Happy National Peach Cobbler Day!! I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy some peach cobbler today. If not, make my recipe tomorrow and tell me what you think! ;)

After dinner today I got started on my peach cobbler. I began with my biscuit recipe that I use from an old Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. But I changed it a little to make it sweeter. So here's the recipe for those that are interested.

Ingredients:

• 3 cans peaches in light syrup
• 1 Tbls corn starch
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 2 1/2 Tbls sugar
• 1/4 + 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 + 1/8 tsp cream of tarter
• 1/8 to 1/4 tsp cinnamon (your preference)
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/3 + 1/6 cup milk
• cinnamon sugar mixture (sorry I can't be more specific, I keep a spice shaker full of cinnamon sugar to sprinkle on toast and just used that)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Drain peach syrup into small bowl, and place peaches into a larger bowl. Add cinnamon sugar mixture to taste, until slightly sweeter with a hint of cinnamon (personally I didn't want it too strongly sweet or cinnamon-y, cuz I knew I'd be adding more to the dough that goes on top, but use however much floats your boat).
3. Take about a half cup of the syrup and mix cornstarch into it until smooth (or just mostly smooth) and pour into peaches. Peaches should be liquid-y but not drowning in the stuff.
4. Place peaches into an 8x8 glass pan, and place into oven. Cook for 10 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, combine flour, 2 1/2 Tbls sugar, salt, cream of tarter, baking powder and 1/8 to 1/4 tsp cinnamon. Using a fork cut shortening into flour mixture until it looks like coarse crumbs. Make a bowl in the middle and pour the milk into it. Quickly stir together just until the dough is moistened, but don't over-mix. You don't need to knead it, it's better not to in fact.
6. Once the peaches have cooked for 10 minutes, take them out of the oven, and using your finger, make rough balls of the dough (not t0o big, about the width of a nickel) and place evenly over the entire surface of the peaches.
7. Generously sprinkle with more cinnamon sugar mixture, and place into 450 degree oven. You might want a pan underneath it to catch any drips. Cook for 22 minutes, placing foil over the top the last 5 minutes so it doesn't get too browned. Let cool for 15 to 20 minutes before serving.
8. Enjoy! Delicious with whip cream or vanilla ice cream. Or in our case, homemade strawberry ice cream, cuz that was all we had. Makes 4-5 servings.

This was very much enjoyed by us, Lily included. Earlier when I mentioned that Ben and I have different definitions of the perfect peach cobbler, apparently I misunderstood. I asked him what he thought of this, and he said that besides adding more sugar on top, it was the perfect peach cobbler. Yay!!! I agreed, so... no more searching! I now have my recipe, and I'll need to find a new life mission. :)

The finished product!

It was pretty dang yummy.

Lily enjoying my masterpiece.

Here's a video showing how Lily has recently started saying and trying to sign "hot." It's pretty adorable.

Lily noticed I had the camera out and immediately smiled like this. You know, I'm sure I'm not biased at all when I say she's pretty much the cutest little girl in the world.

National Peach Cobbler Day

Who knew? I don't know who comes up with these random national day things, or why, but I fully plan on celebrating this one. I love peach cobbler, and am constantly trying to find the perfect recipe. Unfortunately, Ben and my opinions about what makes it perfect differ, so it's an ongoing search. I tried one when I had some friends over for dinner a few weeks back, and I thought it came pretty close. Anyway, before it's officially time to plan and cook dinner, I thought I would encourage everyone to celebrate National Peach Cobbler Day with me and make some for dessert tonight! I'll update with pictures once I've made mine. :) Enjoy!

I hope you all dye...

Eggs! I've always loved dying Easter eggs, and this year, a few weeks ago, I came across this awesome idea on the site ourbestbites.com on how to dye your eggs using old silk ties. I thought it was such an awesome idea and her eggs looked really great. I couldn't wait to try it. I bought some ties at Value Village awhile ago and today Ben and I did it together. Here are our results:

Here are the eggs with the ties tied around them. I thought they looked pretty cool just like that, actually. The instructions said to pick out darker fabrics that would show up, but I couldn't resist the pink tie, and I hoped that the yellow tie would have really cool splotches of the blue and red.

And here's what we got! Not quite as vibrant as I was hoping for, but it was a really fun activity. The reds are gorgeous, and the two blueish ones in the back I really like as well. The mustard ones were a total surprise, since the ties weren't that color at all - they came from the second tie from the left in the above picture. Cool though. As you can see, the pink ones... aren't pink. Oh well.

So go tie-dye some eggs!