Baking

River gets so excited when he sees/hears the mixer come on. He knows a little treat is in store :) I think he prefers the batter over the baked good too-just like his momma!

Puppy Love

Meet our new additions!

Lupita

&

Banjo

We now have 18 chickens, 2 cats and 3 dogs. Rufus' days are numbered here on the ranch, sadly. We did find him a good home, no kids and lotsa room to run so he should be pretty happy. With his departure coming up we needed to get a replacement: a dog who can protect us from wild beasts out here, have fun with our kids but also understand his place BELOW them and be a good companion for Seth at work. We wanted to train up a puppy, not an older dog, so that we can really be sure they understand their place in our family from the very beginning. Our friends have cattle dogs/queenslands and we really like their personality so we decided to look for one and found them pretty quick. Went in to get one and came out with two. They are sooo sweet and adorable. Just like newborns, they just want to be held all the time right now-pretty sweet. So these are our new guardians. And like so many of our neighbors small animals, we are hoping they don't become coyotes next meal ;)

Cute videos

that family may only enjoy sitting through ;) My kid makes me laugh all day. He's seriously hilarious. He LOVES making these little videos with me and then watching them. (as you'll hear him say "watch, watch!") He's 18 months now and surprises us everyday with new words. More videos to come very soon, like later today. 

Untitled from Hock on Vimeo.

Untitled from Hock on Vimeo.

Happy belated Christmas!

I'm lagging a bit on this blog, for good reasons: i'm exhausted all the time. Totally contradictory to what all the "expecting" books prep you for: "You'll have SO MUCH ENERGY your 2nd trimester." Lie. For me at least. It may have something to do with mothering a very active 1.5 year old. 

Christmas was great-spent out here in California with good friends. Not the tradition for us-very non-climactic but a nice change. Kinda like any other day, except for the whole savior's birth thing we celebrated ;) 

The day started with River's favorite activity: a four wheeler ride with dad. They cruised the property for a bit and after many tears were shed, dad finally convinced River to get off the vehicle and come inside to eat and open gifts. 

Next we opened presents. He was more taken with sitting in the middle of his new train track than actually playing with it. Then he moved on to the box in which it came-that was much more fun.

We then went to our surrogate family's house to eat, chill, eat some more and open more gifts. Very relaxing and so fun to watch our friends' kids get all wide-eyed and hyper excited about their presents. 

In other news, River has taken to singing. He sings all over the house, outside and at the grocery store. I'm not sure what he sings but he certainly seems confident. He's also obsessed with balls. He has too many to count, all different shapes and sizes. It's the first thing he asks for most mornings and the one word I know I can say to get a huge smile out of him. Pretty cute. Hope this isn't how OCD starts, cause we really fuel the flame. We usually can't get out of any store without picking up another one. 

Holiday cards

Decided to make my own Christmas cards this year with a little help from the Stampin Up collection and inspiration from some very crafty friends. It's been pretty fun and giving me more to do than chase a toddler. So in telling my neighbor/friend about my endeavor, she asks if I could make her business some gift card holders for Thanksgiving. I say sure and start fiddling around with ideas for the construction of the cards-it turned out they are quite easy to design and produce-so I made 10 in about an 2 hours and she loved them. Anybody need gift card holders this season lemme know!

 

Halloween goofballs

I love dressing up - always have - so it's no wonder when October rolls around I start to get a little giddy about who I'm going to be come October 31. We decided to be the Scooby Doo trio of Scoob, Shag and Velma this year. River was never thrilled over this decision. I think he had his hopes set on being Charlie Brown but I nixed that once I found my incredible wig. 

When I was growing up, there were always mobs of kids all over town from about 6-8pm on Halloween night dressed up in all sorts of costumes. Quite the opposite in SLO town. We were one of two trt-ing groups we saw that night. I don't know what the story was but it was different. We still had fun and got lots of candy. I had forgotten how much I love tootsie rolls until that night. Good times!

River brushing teeth...well kinda from Hock on Vimeo.