Taking after Daddy...

Soon, we'll post some pictures of our new, decked-out aquarium.  When we told Grant's mom that we had gotten one, she sent him all of his old books on the subject.

Turns out, he's not the only one interested in those books...

It's true what they say, the apple doesn't seem to fall far from the tree.  :)

Refining the skillz

Recently one Sunday afternoon I was feeling quite poorly and took a nap when we got home from church.  On this very same afternoon, Grant was feeling quite creative--apparently it was time for another foray into the culinary arts!  A couple of hours later he crept into our room with a basket of fresh, warm homemade bread sticks, excitedly but gently roused me from my slumber and we had ourselves a fun little picnic in bed.  It was a very sweet little time.

A few weeks later, he decided to expand his bread-baking knowledge and whipped up a loaf of french bread.

Beautiful, no?

And oh-so yummy to boot!

However, there have been a few rules put into place for the budding baker...quite necessary for his wife's sanity.

1) Baking projects are not to be started unless they can be completed before 7pm--I don't like eating after that and especially late at night and I don't have the heart to offend the cook by not generously partaking of his confections because of my eating preferences.

2) All projects that involve the sprinkling of flour are to be completed with all cabinets and doors closed.  We still have a strange gnome that follows us from apartment to apartment and opens them.  Every.  Last.  One.

But we're the only ones who have such a gnome, right?  It's not such a frequent phenomenon that they joked about it several times in Date Night, is it?

And that's about it.  I'm very supportive of everybody else in the family cooking...as long as I can stay sane while it happens.  And I can't be sane if there is flour in all of my cupboards and drawers...I just can't.

Hodge podge post

I decided to just clump all these together into one post instead of doing it one at a time.

Enjoy!

First, we found the oldest school laptop ever at a garage sale for a couple of bucks.

She loves it.

Next, recently, she has taken to carrying two animals around.

 And for a while it had to be these two.  Kids, right?

And here she is just chillaxin with Daddy.

 We didn't pose her like this, it's really how she was sitting.

 But it's not always fun and games around here.

Oh, no.

Kendra has about a million things to do in any given day.

Luckily, she's quite a multi-tasker.

(She paced around our apartment for a solid 10 minutes "talking" on the phone while dragging the base behind her and jingling her toy keys.  Hilaaaaarious.)

Kendra still likes to start the morning with a nice glass of milk, and she must have it warm.

(Even this past summer when it turned to cheese if it set out for an afternoon, she would not take it straight from the fridge.)

And she has a favorite perch while she waits for it.

Kinda reminds me of this time.

She also has a new buddy.

She originally saw this puppy in the store and fell.  In.  LOOOOVE.  (Okay, so I showed it to her because I thought that it was cool and wanted to see if she liked it.)  But it retails for $20 at Wal-Mart so I picked him up used at a resale thing they do twice a year here for $5.

She loooooves this thing, it was so worth it!

I think I caught this last shot when I was trying to capture something else, but she stopped doing it when I pulled out the camera.

Stinker.

But not too much of one, clearly.  :)

Our little engineer...

Well, if I were really on top of it, this would be the post where I put up pictures of our new place.  And while I've finally got it pretty clean (it was scary this morning...)...this ain't that post.

However, if it were, I might mention that there are a lot of pluses with this new place and very few minuses, especially compared to our two previous apartments.  But one of the very few features they both had that this one does not is a full-sized utility closet (in addition to a hall closet by the door).  In this one, it's quite small and significantly less deep so I've had to find other homes for all the stuff I used to stash in our "utility" closet.

Like the toilet paper we buy in Sam's Club quantities.

Having no other spot for it, I've just had to stack it behind and around the two toilets in our apartment.  And being huge quantities, that means there is a LOT of toilet paper stacked up around the toilets.

And since they're just out, they're free game for playing with, right?  Right.

She makes us SO proud!  :)

Safety first!

In our house, we take bicycle safety very seriously.

And some of us look darn cute doing it, too.

Darn cute.

Daddy and Daughter

One thing that has always struck me with awe is the relationship that Kendra and Grant share.  They absolutely adore each other.  Sometimes I sit back and watch them with tears welling up in my eyes.

And sometimes I have my senses pulled together and grab the camera instead.

*Melt.*

Evolution

It doesn't seem like that long ago I was posting about Kendra sitting in the front of the cart instead of in her car seat, like a big girl.

Well, for whatever reason, for the past couple of months or so (about the time we moved), sitting in the front of cart just doesn't do it, anymore.  (She might even scream bloody murder most of the time if I so much as try to put her there.)

Nope, not this even bigger girl.  There will be no sitting in the front by Mommy.  LAAAAAAAME.  Apparently the view leaves much to be desired.

Apparently the prime spot for shopping is at the other end of the cart.