Anders' Birthday Party and Drew Singing

As usual, it's taken me a while to get a new post up. So I have pictures I wanted to post, but I can't necessarily remember what I wanted to write about them.

Here's Drew loving on Foudy last week. You can see she's not completely comfortable with him leaning on her, but she handled it and was such a good girl. Drew sure does love those dogs. Lately he sees them and just starts laughing. That, or he goes over and gives them as big of hugs as they'll allow.

Last Monday was Mike's sister Katherine's last day home before returning to St. Olaf for her sophomore year, so we decided to have Grandpa Kevin, Grandma Cynthia, and Aunt Katherine over for dinner and dessert. I decided to try something new, and I found a recipe for a chocolate raspberry ganache online, and it sounded easy enough, but the picture is what totally sold me. So after I got Drew down for his nap, Zach helped me get the ganache going. He was a great help, and we had a lot of fun. Probably the most fun was licking the beaters and the bowl after mixing it all together. And there were no eggs or anything, so I didn't even have to feel bad about my kid possibly getting salmonella or something else. Here you can see that we both got a little ganache on our faces.

Here was the finished product. And yes, it tasted as good as it looked! I'd like to make some more right now!!!

As soon as Grandpa Kevin, Grandma Cynthia, and Aunt Katherine got there, Drew wanted to go to Grandpa. He just snuggled right up and got comfortable. It was very sweet.

We had a lovely dinner and dessert, and enjoyed spending the evening with Kevin, Cynthia, and Katherine. Zach had Aunt Katherine put him to bed, which I think they both enjoyed. Now Aunt Katherine is having fun up at college, and all set to start classes tomorrow. Have a good year, Katherine! We'll miss you!

This is a picture from Grandma Linda's camera of the boys hanging out there one day last week. I don't know for sure, but I imagine in this picture that they're watching the really old cartoon version of The Three Little Pigs. Zach loves that video and wants to watch it every time he goes to Grandma Linda and Grandpa Curt's, and he's constantly singing, "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, big bad wolf, big bad wolf?" Tonight after baths Zach started singing it, and Drew joined in with, "Ba ba, ba ba, ba ba!" It was cute and made me feel less annoyed by the fact that I knew that song would be in my head all night long.

Here's a great one of Drew's silly face.

On Friday we all headed out east to Mike's grandpa's house. We stayed with him Friday night, and on Saturday Mike and Zach headed out early to go to Iowa City to meet up with my sister Sandy, my brother-in-law Will, his brother Rob, and Rob's wife Carrie, so that they could all go to the first Hawkeye game of the season. Grandpa Curt, Grandma Linda, Drew, and Pa went into town for coffee, and I went out for a 5 and a half mile run. I had mapped out my run beforehand since I'm not real familiar with the tiny town of North English, but I got confused about 2 blocks into it, so I made up my own route. Originally I had planned to do my long run for the weekend in North English, but I am glad I abandoned that idea. It was hard enough to squeeze 5 miles out in such a small town without going way out on the country roads, let alone getting 9 miles in. Anyway, it was a great run, and while I was gone, Drew apparently was very good at coffee entertaining all of his great-grandpa's friends. Later on we watched the very stressful Hawkeye game, which they barely won. For any of you who didn't watch it- it ended with the Hawkeyes blocking 2 field goal attempts right in a row in the final seconds. I was shocked when they blocked the first one, but I was completely dumbfounded when they blocked the second. What a win!

Right after the game ended I woke Drew up from his nap and he and I headed into Iowa City to meet up with everybody to celebrate my nephew Anders' first birthday. The party was at City Park, which was a great location. I forgot to take my camera on this little weekend trip, so a huge thanks to Linda for letting me borrow hers!

Here's Rob pitching to Zach. I'm sure Zach would say he hit a home run off this one, but I'm guessing it was one of many foul balls.

Then Drew got in on the action when the bigger boys moved on to throwing the football.

Here's the birthday boy with his dad, enjoying one of his balloons. Drew and I were the first ones at the park, and shortly after we got there, Mike called me to tell me he lost the balloons out the sunroof of the van. Oops! When I quit laughing, I told him not to worry about it, as he didn't know where to go to get more balloons anyway. Thankfully Anders' Grammie Jean came through and got some other balloons for Anders to enjoy.

Anders isn't quite walking around yet, but he does this funny crawl sometimes where he's up on his hands and feet rather than being on his knees.

Isn't he cute?!

Anders had two cakes to choose from, and this angel food cake was closest, so he decided to just go for it. He ran his finger across the frosting, but then wasn't sure what to do with it.

Finally his dad showed him that he should put the frosting in his mouth.

I think this is a sweet picture of Anders and his mom enjoying his first birthday.

Finally Anders got a piece of cake on his tray, and then he got a better taste.

And then he got some of the chocolate cake, too, which he obviously enjoyed.

After the cake-eating, we went and rode some of the rides in the park. It was really difficult to take a picture of Mike and the boys on the carousel with Linda's camera. It is a great camera and I appreciated having it, but it really made me realize how much quicker our new camera is at getting those action shots. So aside from Mike's head being cut off, I think this is a great photo.

For some reason towards the end of the very long carousel ride, Mike decided to put Drew on Zach's horse. Looks like the were having fun!

It seems to be a tradition now to get a family photo taken when we're all in our Hawkeye gear, so I had Will take one for us with his camera. None of them turned out great- mostly thanks to Drew and me. I'm not sure what I'm laughing at here; I don't remember anything particularly funny about all this. Maybe we'll have to try for another family photo next time we're all Hawkeye'd out. Seems like that will happen about every Saturday during football season, so it shouldn't be too hard.

We headed home after the party and got back to our house pretty late. Sunday morning we all decided to work off our cake and ice cream, so Mike and the boys went for a bike ride, and I went for that 9 mile run I'd been planning on. Mike and the boys rode their bikes up to Mike's parents' house, which is 2 miles away. I was a little worried about Zach making it all the way there, especially because there are a couple of decent hills, but he did it. Then they rested there for a bit before riding the 2 miles home.

On Monday Zach and I helped Mike get ready for a class he's going to teach to the PT students at DMU in a couple of weeks. Zach was the model and I was the photographer, and we took a bunch of pictures showing the techniques Mike will be teaching the students about. Here's Drew checking out the work.

Finally, I wanted to post this video a while ago, but never got around to it. Drew is becoming a little singer. He sings the ABC song with me while we wash his hands, and he often (though not as often now as he used to) sings the Amen Song with us when we're getting him ready for bed. Here is a video of Drew singing that with me a few weeks ago. It's really more of just an audio thing, because it recorded in his room with the lights off, because it was bedtime. I tried to get a recording one night when Mike was getting Drew in bed, but Drew didn't sing that night, so you're stuck with listening to my off-key voice, which is even worse than normal because I was trying to sing very quietly so as not to be picked up by the microphone of the camera as well. That obviously didn't work. Don't worry- I don't sing in public if I can avoid it. This video is typical of Drew's singing- just a bunch of "ahhh ahhh" sounds. I think it's sweet, though.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com