Ava's Book

Ava created this completely on her own. All I did was video her explaining to me everything that was in it. Such a creative girl!

Amazing Memorization

We have known for a long time that Ava has some pretty amazing memorization abilities/skills, but today she blew me away. Each unit we do in her homeschool kindergarten is 6 days long. We started Unit 1 last Monday which means we were finishing the last day of the unit this Monday. One of the daily things we did in Unit 1 was read this poem, My Shadow.

So we read this poem a couple times each day last week Monday-Friday. No school Saturday-Sunday. Today we were supposed to read it one last time before we start a new Unit tomorrow, but Ava told me she already knew it and just started rattling it off.

She recited it almost perfectly without me even reading through it once since Friday! She finished having no idea how awesome that was and was ready to move on to the next thing. I just sat there like WhAt!? Needless to say, I am going to be expanding her collection of Bible verses to memorize and get her going on some whole Psalms. She is such and sponge! And she loves learning! 

Cade's First Birthday

Seriously, all but one (decent) picture I got of Cade all day is of him eating something. I intended to get some shots of him being cute or actually SMILING, but I guess these food shots say a lot about where he is growth-wise right now.

Anyway, we never have done huge, all-out planned birthday parties for the first few years (they don't know or care anyway), so it was pretty much a regular fun day with some EXTRA fun added in. It was a long, full day yesterday. School in the morning, cake-making and naps (for all 3 kids) in the afternoon, then a quick peanut butter sandwich dinner and out the door to get to our first night of Awana! The girls did great and had fun. Richard and I volunteered and ended up helping out in a very full, chaotic 4 year old class. Cade used his good looks and great fussing abilities to milk all the ladies in his room and be held the whole night. (Lots of stories within this one paragraph here, but I shall move on…)

So we got home around 8:45pm tired, still hungry with our half-dinner long gone, and Cade was one cranky fellow. So here's the awesome video footage from his cake time:

He was yelling the whole time we were singing and then when I tried to prevent him from burning himself on the candle I scratched his hand. But once we got past that he sure did enjoy that frosting. I cut into the cake a bit after the video stopped and he ate a ton of that too.

So after the traditional singing and cake we did baths and all. Cade loves bath time, splashing, running around naked afterwards, etc and he's always in a pretty good mood when he gets his jams on too. Here's some fun we were having before bed. (He gets more stumbly than usual when it's late and he's tired.)

After this little game of chase we all sat down for some Bible reading, memory verses, and Cade's last time nursing (there will be a whole separate post for that whenever I get my wits about me). It was a great day and Richard and I are so thankful to be this little guy's parents.

First Birthday Cake

When Ava was turning one she had never had the slightest bit of sugar and I wanted to make a cake for her that we would all like and that wouldn't blast her into a sugar high. After a brief search for "healthy" cakes, I decided on this Applesauce Healthy Cake. I can't remember where I found it so I can't give proper credit, but here's a picture of the recipe itself that I copied down into my personal recipe book. (You can probably google it and find where it originally came from.)

It was a total hit. On her first birthday, Ava ate like literally half the cake all by herself. So it became our traditional first birthday cake and now it's also the one we make at Christmas each year to sing happy birthday to Jesus. Looking at the recipe above, I personally use 4 T sugar, no walnuts, and good old frosting rather than confectioner's sugar.

Today Ava, Raina, and I made this Applesauce Healthy Cake for Cade! It was so fun to bring this tradition out again and the girls are no strangers to the deliciousness of this cake so they were pumped about helping. All three kids are down for naps right now (!!!!!!!whoop!!!!!!!) and the cake just came out of the oven to cool. I am about to get myself ready to take everyone to Awana tonight (kick-off night for the year) and then I'll frost the cake in a bit.

Speaking of delicious recipes, we had a few families over for dinner and just for fun the other night and my new friend, Jen, brought some cupcakes that night. Unfortunately she left them here for us to share with neighbors finish off as quickly as possible. They're called Banana Chocolate Toffee Cupcakes (which doesn't even sound like something I'd like, honestly) and they are AmAzInG. Here's the link to her blog with the recipe for those too. Enjoy!
http://www.bakedbyanintrovert.com/banana-chocolate-toffee-cupcakes/

Cade is Almost ONE

I can't believe our sweet baby boy is almost ONE YEAR OLD! This year has flown by with a big move, trips, and lots more coming to plan for. I will definitely be posting about Cade's cake smashing/eating next week. We're not planning on doing a huge party or anything; just making an Applesauce Healthy Cake like we did for both of the girls and letting him go to town on it.

And here's a little about what I'm doing as Cade passing his one year milestone...