A visit from Uncle Matt

Uncle Matt came over for dinner last week.  Jack loves when uncle Matt visits!

Thanksgiving part 2

On friday we went over to Lacy and Steve's house for dinner. Carmen and Toban brought their daughter Vada as well. We had a great time and it was fun to see the kids play together.

Vada, Jack and Mary

Mary giving Jack a hug. Aww!

The fix-it fair

Every year the city puts on a day of classes on home repair, gardening and a bunch of other things. They provide lunch and child care. This is the second year Lance has gone and this year Jack got to go too! They went to some classes together then jack went to play with the other kids.

This is the first time Jack has ever gone to a child care setting and he handled it like a champ. Apparently they had some music playing so naturally Jack had to bust out some of his best moves. He also had some snacks.

He tried to break into some kids locker...

Had another snack with dada

What a day! Time for a nap!

Jack loves the water!

One of Jack's very favorite things to do is go to the pool. We go to Mt. Scott Community Center which has a big water slide, a current channel and a whirlpool "vortex".

                                                         What a happy boy!

Piggyback ride down the current channel!

                                                   Jack loves to go down the slide!

Baking

If I am in the kitchen  jack has to pull up a chair so he can watch. I decided it was time to put him to work so we made crackers!

Jack kept on pushing my hands away as I was rolling the dough out. He wanted to do it himself. Yes he is almost 2.

Jack cut out the crackers with a heart cookie cutter.

Our heart shapes started getting a little abstract

The crackers turned out a little spicy but jack didn't mind!

Hanging out with Amanda and Andres!

Today Amanda and Andres came over to hang out.  Andres is 10 weeks old now. What a big boy! Of course he still feels tiny to me because I'm used to my 30lb jack! 

Isn't he cute?!

Amanda was kind enough to let me monopolize her child and soak up some tiny baby cuddles for most of the visit

Jack even got to hold him!

Jack loved him. He showed him all of his toys and said hi to him a dozen times. He didn't even mind that Andres never said hi back.

Painting with marbles

  I saw a fun painting technique the other day on a blog I read called The Artful parent and I thought we would give it a try. It involves lining a sheet pan with paper, dipping marbles into paint and shaking the pan around to make pictures.

 Jack still likes to put things into his mouth so I chose a large marble and a hard spiky ball I found in a drawer.

Digging for potatoes!

I love digging up potatoes in the fall.  It is a bit like an easter egg hunt, digging through the dark dirt looking for the light brown skin of the potatoes. Jackpot!

I enlisted jack's help this year. He was responsible for putting the potatoes into the box

He preferred to dig in the dirt and look for "erms". We talked a lot about how to hold them gently and not cut them with our spades. Our worms are huge this year which always makes me happy. I know they are working hard converting our heavy clayish soil to lovely rich dark soil

This is about half of the potatoes. We will leave the rest in the ground for now. Not a bad haul considering we didn't plant any new potatoes these are from the little baby potatoes that we missed last year

Unrelated but cute pictures of jack! I couldn't decide which pictures to cut out so you get to see them all!

Play date with Mary

Jack and I met Lacy and Mary at OMSI last week and as always had a good time.

We have hired a new dishwasher...*

*Yes I know he shouldn't be holding a microplane, I don't know why no one took it away from him...
So much for mother of the year!