A Beautiful Day

Last week we had a couple of gorgeous days. The temperature got into the 50's and 60's! That is unheard of for February in Iowa. I took the boys for a run in the jogging stroller on Wednesday and Thursday. I haven't been running since last summer and that was only a few miles at a time. I really want to run a 10k race this spring and hopefully the Dam to Dam 1/2 marathon in June. I was hoping that losing 30 pounds and all the cardio I do for kickboxing would help my running. It did! I had no problem running 3 miles while pushing the boys (60 pounds) in the jogging stroller. There were even hills and on the way back I was running into the wind. I was pretty sore (who knew you use totally different muscles when you run compared to kickboxing?) Now it's cold again, and I don't run outside when it's freezing, especially with the boys. I can't wait until it warms up for good and I can look forward to a good run everyday!

Ayden is getting so tall! I don't remember him looking this big last fall.

Ready to go for a ride!

Fun

Cael now spends more time pulling himself up on things and cruising around then he does crawling. He loves looking out the window and opening his mouth and licking the window.

Cael also has started playing with cars, trucks, and tractors and pushes them around on the floor back and forth. He must watch Ayden do this a lot!

Valentine's Day

I made the boys pink chocolate chip pancakes for Valentine's Day, and gave them some books as a gift. It's so funny how excited a 3 year old gets over having pink pancakes. We also added whipped cream on top, can't forget that!

Ayden ready to eat!

Cael liked them too.

Pretty flowers I received from Joel.

Visit to Grandpa and Grandma Wendling's House

We took a trip to see my parents last weekend since we haven't seen them in awhile. They took us out to lunch at Okoboji Grill and then we relaxed the rest of the time. Joel and I were going to go see a movie that night, but we were both pretty tired and the movie selection wasn't that great. The boys got Valentine's Day presents from my parents and my sister. My dad took Ayden sledding and outside to play on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday. They even built a couple of snowmen. Here is the snowman they made on Sunday, but it was pretty warm so it was starting to melt. Ayden had a blast and got lots of fresh air. It was nice to see my family again and to relax and have lots of good food!

Heart Cake Pops

Finished heart cake pops!

I received a book for Christmas on making cake pops. Some of them looked pretty difficult, but the heart ones looked somewhat easy. I showed Ayden the picture and he wanted to make some for Valentine's Day. A cake pop is a cake ball with candy coating on top and it's on a lollipop stick. They were so good! What you do is make a cake and then crumble it all up and add 3/4 a container of frosting and mix it together. You form a bunch of small balls and put them in the refrigerator for awhile to firm up. After that I took them out and used a mini heart cookie cutter and made the cake balls heart shaped. Then I put them in the fridge again. I melted the candy coating and then got the cake balls out and stuck lollipop sticks in the end. Then you dip them in the candy coating, stick the sticks into styrofoam blocks and they harden up quickly. I found edible markers to write on them so they would look like conversation hearts, but they ended up not working well at all on the candy coating. I will have to find some better ones for next time. They turned out really cute! It was easy, but time consuming with 48 cake balls and trying to do 3 different colors. Ayden loved them too!

The heart shaped cake balls.

The blue cake pops drying.

Mischief of One Kind or Another...

Now that Cael is very mobile he gets into a lot of stuff. He is quite adventurous and always on the move. Among his favorite things to do are: eat toilet paper, stick his hands in the toilet (no pictures of these since I am trying to quickly grab him and wash his hands before he puts them in his mouth! EWW!) climb into his carseat and hang out, climbing up on stools, climbing into the dishwasher and trying to grab all the utensils, etc.

Cael climbed up the steps of Ayden's stool, and much to my surprise when I looked beside me, I saw Cael was standing up at the counter on the top step. He didn't get any help from anyone.

This was cute, until he started bouncing up and down. We can now only unload the dishwasher if he's not around or in his high chair.

Driving the Cozy Coupe

This car is one of Ayden's favorite toys, and the other day Cael crawled into it and was pretending to drive. Ayden is such a great big brother, he even volunteered to push him around. I love how he looks like he is concentrating really hard on driving...

Love the hand hanging out the window!