Finn and Food

I will start with food, since I have done so many Finn posts lately.

I have eaten at some AMAZING places the last little while! Notably, SmashBurger and Pizzeria 712 have been my favorites. SmashBurger is apparently a chain, but I have no idea where any others are. They have amazing burgers, but even more amazing than the burgers are the SIDES! What, you say, better sides than burgers? That doesn't sound so great.... But it is! They have these fries that are tossed with garlic and rosemary, and they taste so potatoey and delicious! I have a huge thing for potatoey fries, and usually you have to get steak fries to get that good flavor. But these fries are incredible! They taste just like roasted potatoes, and you can never go wrong with rosemary! They also have flash fried veggies (not breaded) that have green beans, carrots, and ASPARAGUS! (And in case you were curious, yes, I can still smell asparagus pee. I had forgotten that I could. Oh well.) The great thing about these veggies, is that they are perfectly cooked. It's hard to get perfectly cooked veggies at restaurants, let alone fast food. So, yeah. I recommend it!

Pizzeria 712 was written up in Salt Lake Magazine and won all sorts of awards. We went with Heather and Jason, and we all ordered a different pizza. They were ALL good! The pizzas have extremely thin crusts, and are blackened a bit, which I love. I ordered a pizza with mushrooms (they were specialty mushrooms, I know, but I am not sure what kind.) goat cheese, and basil. Jason (my Jason) ordered one with potatoes, garlic and arugula. I love me some arugula! Heather ordered a margarita pizza. Jason (Heather's Jason) got one with Speck, which I guess is somewhat like prosciutto, Italian sausages and fennel. They were really delicious!


Now, on to Finn. Guess what? Jason got a picture of him smiling! And, serendipitously, I am also in the picture, and I look cute, well, kinda! I am pretty impressed! We weighed Finn the other day, and he is now 11.5 lbs. He is starting to look like a major chunk! Well, not really. But he does have a nice double chin, and he even has a roll on his thighs. We are also starting the weaning process. Well, we just started today, but we have seen no problems yet. I must say, bottle feeding is about a million times faster than breastfeeding, which is nice!

Awww- the little round belly! I am glad he isn't so skinny anymore.


I love this face! Plus, I think this photo is cool because Finn is exactly lined up with Jason's head. It was odd. Finn loves to just be in his diaper. I think he will be very happy when summer rolls around...


Daddy and Baby Feet. Always cute! Of course, Finn was screaming...


I think this photo is also pretty cute...


Here is his thigh. You can sort of see the roll, but it's easier to see from the inside. Oh well...


Finley has such cute feet! And they are so long!

Baby Shower #2 and #3

On Saturday I had two baby showers! (How did I get so lucky?) The first one was at 10am, and Faith was a fantastic hostess! (She didn't get in any of the photos, because she was in charge of the camera. I should have noticed and fixed that, but wasn't thinking. All the blood is going to the uterus, you know!) We played a game where you melt candy bars in diapers and try to guess what they are, and also a game where no one can say "baby" or "cute". Basically, we all had five clothespins, and if someone caught you saying the taboo word they got to take one. I lost horribly! :) Lauren won it by about 7 pins or so.

It was crazy! Then we opened gifts.
Lauren made me a teddy bear! Isn't it cute?
Melanie got me a gift card.
Britney also got me a gift card. Also, I have to say that this was the first time I had seen Britney in at least 6 years, so it was so fun having her there!

Heather got me a goodie bag full of all sorts of fun things! It had some white onesies, diapers, a pack of gum, a cute birthday banner that she made, a really soft blanket with polka dots, some shower gel and a loofah, some toys, and I think that was it. Sorry, Heather if I have forgotten something. I appreciate it nonetheless! Also, her Jason always writes Roses are Red poems in cards and he wrote:
Roses are Red
Oceans are Blue
Babies look funny
There's nothing you can do!
But don't worry, they usually grow out of it. .......usually.
We all had a good laugh!

Kaylee got me a cute set of pajamas with duckies on the feet.

Faith went in on a group gift, and got me a travel system! Yay for that!

The second baby shower was at 1pm. It was at the church, and the theme was "What will it "bee"?" There was a really cute cake that Krystal Walch made me that looked like a beehive and had bees on it made with twix bars and marshmallows. It was really adorable! I don't have any photos because I was dumb and forgot my camera. (Ditto on the blood thing again) Devera made me a cute quilt that was yellow and black striped and we tied it during the shower with black ribbon. Her girls, Sheralyn and Madelyn made me a soft yellow fleece blanket with a Winnie-the-Pooh border. We played a guessing game, to see how many of certain types of snacks were in a baby bottle. Shockingly, I won the one with the cheerios in it! I have always been awful at those. Although I was still over 150 off. Oh well! :) They also had a pinata that I had to break. It was hilarious! It took me probably a good ten minutes to break it open, and some of that was without a blindfold! And I had a BASEBALL BAT! It was very well reinforced!

Then we opened gifts!
Carrie Garner and Amy Peterson got me some Dreft (which is sensitive detergent just for babies) and some handmade burp cloths.
Marilyn, Celeste, Natalia and Tatiana Hernandez got me a reall cute Arthur book (that we read out loud, and all had a good laugh about), some cute puppy pajamas that are really soft, and a cute and soft teddy bear.
Dardree and Jessica McClellan got me a cute purple sweater with a bunny on it, some PJs with pink and purple flowers, and a pair of booties in yellow. The shoes are SO tiny!
Alison Pack got me a check, which is always nice!
Krytal Walch got me some Infant Tylenol, a medicine syringe, Bordeaux's Butt Paste, and Vaseline.
Devera, Sheralyn and Madelyn got me the aforementioned blankets. And also they were in charge of the shower. It was loads of fun!

Birthday Fun!!

Well, yesterday was my birthday, and it was a crazy but good day. I guess birthdays are usually like that. It started out with a phone call from Suzanne (who is the choir director in our ward) who was wishing me happy birthday (I'm not even sure how she knew it was my birthday...) and wanted to know if we wanted to go over to play games in the evening. Then I had a meeting, and I got sung to. Then Devera (one of the other Beehive leaders) came over with a card. It was very sweet of her. Then I went to babysit Jack, and as I was getting there, Marilyn (another YW leader) sent me some texts telling me how great I am and also wishing me a happy birthday. Then it all calmed down some. Jason Acosta also sent some birthday wishes my way. Then I got home and I was surprised with flowers and a cool pancake-waffle pan from Williams-Sonoma (shown above) that I have been lusting after for a while. Seriously- delicious. Then we went over to Suzanne's for games and had a great time. It's so fun getting to know people! It was a great birthday!
But of course, birthdays tend to bleed over a few days. It started with my mom's gift arriving about a week ago, which was all sorts of cool spices and a cookbook and some recipes. I might do another blog jst about that. It is oodles of cool spices! Mostly Indian and Morrocan. Sunday, Lauren and Adam came over to hang out with a cake (it had strawberries on top and between the layers- yummy!) and a cute pink sweater, some beads, and a cute zipper pouch she made. Today, I am going shopping with Faith, and she will be getting me a present, but I don't know what it is yet!! It will be so fun!

I Am Unable to Stick to my Guns!

First of all, I should really start taking more photos. I am so bad for not having photos in my posts- so apologies all around. I am a bad blogger. I guess I am just so busy lately, and even though I have oodles to blog about, I never find the time to do it! Here is a quick recap:

Last Wednesday, Jason and I went to see John Bachar with Adam and Lauren. For those of you who don't know (I certainly didn't!) John Bachar is like a super famous climber. He free solos (which is without a rope!) and I think he's a little crazy. But it was cool, they had a raffle and gave away tons of climbing gear. None of us won anything, but it was still fun. Also he had tons of crazy photos, which are always neat to look at. And he held the door open for me, so I guess I have that claim to fame now. For climbers, anyway...

Last Friday- I went over to Faith's house, and we did pedicures! It was so much fun! We also did her two-year-old Grace's toes. I taught Faith how to do flowers, and we did each others' toes. She did an amazing job for a first time!

Last Saturday- It was Jack's 2nd Birthday party. His actual birthday was on Monday, but the party was on the weekend for obvious reasons. Heather and Jason went all out and even rented a bouncy castle. It was kid heaven! Then Heather and I had a great rest of the day doing stuff for free! She had a bunch of gift certificates- which I did feel bad for using, so Thanks, Heather!- and we went to see Monsters Vs. Aliens in 3D (which was Heather's first 3D movie and way fun) and went to Chili's. We also did a little shopping, which was not free. It was a really fun day!

Sunday- Lauren's birthday was on Saturday, but since Adam was working then, she decided to do her birthday thing on Sunday. We had fondue at her house. Fondue is always a blast, and it was very delicious! I especially loved the strawberries in the chocolate. The strawberries were so tasty! I love strawberry season! I have been thinking that I need to go to Costco and buy me a giant thing of strawberries!

Tuesday- Jason and I went to the Small Business Development Center to talk about our business. Everything is going really well. In two weeks, we are supposed to be able to do a proposal or a sales pitch. A little scary, but pretty exciting as well. Also I taught our Mutual activity, and it was a good meaty scripture-y one, which are my favorite kind to teach. And the girls enjoyed it! One actually came up to me and told me that she loves it when I teach the scriptures because I make it so easy to understand! So that made me feel really really good!

I guess that is all that has been going on since I last posted. I promise, next time I will do a whole post for each activity. And maybe even take some pictures!

Oh, the shame!

So it has been over a week since my last blog post. Oh- you say- did you just have a really boring week? Why, no! Actually it was a very full and busy week, so full in fact that I cannot remember what happened before Thursday, so let me start then...
Thursday was Heather's birthday!! (Happy Birthday, Heather!) I thought I would be all sneaky and pretend I didn't know her birthday was coming up and surprise her at home. Because OF COURSE she would be home when I dropped in unexpectedly, right? Like she might have other plans for her birthday! (scoffing) So, I drop by, and, lo and behold, no one is home. Uh-oh! So I called her Jason and asked if he happened to know where she was. I didn't have much hope because he was working, but I was proven wrong. (Yes, Jason, I said I was wrong!!) It turns out she was getting her hair cut! So, I got directions and headed off to the hairdressers. Now Heather had REALLY long hair, and she had 17.5 inches chopped off, and it's still just slightly longer than my hair. It is a super cute hair cut! Then we hung out for a while and when Jason (Heather's, not mine) got home from work we all (minus my Jason who was STILL at work) went to check out this new restaurant called Smoked Apple BBQ (or something REALLY close to that) and it was super delicious! They had a sweet cornbread that was like a coffeecake, with streusel and everything! It was a fun day!
Friday, Dan and Faith plus kids and Jason and I all had a barbecue at the lake. We were slightly delusional about the weather, but we had a good time anyway. We made shashlik (shah-shleek) which is a Russian type of pork shish-ka-bob. It is delicious, although to be fair, not as good as usual as I ruined it by not adding enough black pepper. It was still good, but not quite as tasty. It was super windy and we all lost a few plates. Then they came over for a bit and played a game. And you all know how I love to play games!
Saturday I made some tasty chocolate chip muffins, and today I made some tasty lemon blueberry muffins. Both from scratch- no mixes!! They are both very tasty. Seriously.

Jason and Jack

As a side note, I have been doing TONS of fun things lately, but have not been taking my camera. Why did I want one so bad if I don't take it anywhere. Note to self: strive to take more photos.

On Saturday, we were hanging out with Heather and Jason, when all of a sudden, Jason calls out "Not It!" Heather follows right after, but not being used to this, Jason and I are a bit behind. Jason loses the race. (Note: As there are plenty of Jasons in this story- My Jason will now be notated with a "My.") We have no idea what this is for. But, Jason happily informs us that My Jason has lost, and he gets to bathe Jack. Now- you have to realize that My Jason has never been around kids (except for Jack) and has NO idea how to do anything. Like- couldn't figure out the onesie. Yeah. So, Heather, Jason, and I are all giggling as My Jason loudly complains that Jack is not HIS kid- why should he have to give him a bath? Jason decided to stay by him and give him pointers so that Heather and I could go play- but we couldn't resist the show. My Jason did just fine, and under duress, later admitted that it wasn't that bad. It was pretty funny to watch, though! I think Jason has decided to prepare My Jason for fatherhood by making him practice on Jack. It makes me laugh. I am sure My Jason will figure it out eventually. (And no- that is not me giving hints that I am pregnant. I will tell you straight out, mmkay?)

The Acostas

As a HUGE favor, the Acostas came over yesterday to help with our flooded room. They lent us an oscillating space heater that is working wonders for the floor. And of course, they decided to stay and hang out for a bit, and -surprise, surprise- I fed them. It's a compulsion. The first thing the Jasons do, any time they get together is pull out guns. This time they did some mystery thing and reloaded some ammo.
Jack had a lot of fun. We played on the piano quite a bit, and I took a really cute video, but decided not to upload it, as he is not actually my child... so here's a photo instead.
Then, while I was cooking, the Jasons were reloading, so I decided to let Jack help me. Here he is, cooking like the little chef I am sure he will grow up to be, if genes count for anything. (Don't worry, the stove was not actually on. Well, his side, anyways.) He also washed his hands every time I did, ate plenty of veggies, and cut when I did. (With a butter knife.) It was gosh-darn cute! Also, not cute, as I look awful, but eh! And somehow he figured out the pepper grinder. I am sure they will be finding pepper in his clothes for weeks.
Then, Heather came over after work, and we ate us some artichoke chicken. I love how she stuck her finger up her nose.
We are so lucky to have such great friends that do us crazy favors.

A bit about my amazing past week....

So, last week (well, I guess continuing into this week) was the best week ever! It was just amazing. Let me lay it out for you.
Sunday: We had the most amazing lesson ever in YW (church). I cried over and over. I just really, really felt the spirit and I think it set the tone for the week.

Monday: I finished my Christmas Shopping, which was good enough. But THEN, Jason came home as a surprise! Which was surprising, as I was not expecting him until Wednesday.

Tuesday: I went over to Heather Acosta's, and we made chocolates and had a wonderful time. We also had a delicious dinner of pizza. Which, okay, was not as good as the dinners we usually have over there (as we all share the love of cooking and good food) but I didn't have to cook it after hours of Chocolates. We made almond joys, truffles, toffee, and the following cremes: mint, orange, raspberry, coconut, and cinnamon. I think the cinnamon cremes were my favorite.

Wednesday: We had Adam and Lauren Wilson and Carl Armstrong over for Christmas Eve activities. We watched A Christmas Story, ate Grilled Cheese and Cocoa, and opened presents. I got a Dominos set (Double 15s- sweet!) and a present that I will receive later. Also, I got to open a present from Jason and it was a really nice silky robe. Oooh- it feels so good! Also, UPS called and said they had a package for us that they needed to deliver. I told them our new address, and they said it would be there Monday. But we weren't expecting a package. So what could it be?

Thursday: Christmas morning was fun, as I am sure you can guess. Big gift- a digital camera! Most surprising gift: A wedding band! It was really sweet! Then we went over to Heather and Jason Acosta's for a DELICIOUS prime rib (bone-in) and other tasties. That was more on par with the normal dinners. I can't get over how good it was! Then, we also opened presents with them. I got a game called Partini- which is SUCH a fun game! We played it, and I recommend it to everyone who likes games!

Friday: I went Day-After-Christmas Shopping with Lauren, where I got THREE really cute skirts, a Really cute pair of black heels (FOR FIVE BUCKS!!) and some soap, body butter, and cinnamon-mint lip gloss. Then, Dan and Faith Burk came over! We- can you guess?- opened presents! I got a really good, tear-jerker of a book called The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck, some chocolate covered pretzels, and a gift certificate for Jo-Ann's. We played assorted video games, played Partini (again! SO fun!) and also played a game similar to The Newlywed Game. We also had Pizza. They didn't want to leave, we were having so much fun! They finally had to leave around eleven because Grace (their two year old) was having a total meltdown. After about an hour of "Go? Go?"

Saturday: Jason and I went shopping, and I got a cute case for my camera. I also looked all over for a cute purse, but couldn't find one. So, I went online, but still couldn't find one I liked. Then, I remembered Etsy (which is a site for people to sell handmade items) and found TONS of cute purses. So I found one I liked, and found out I could customize it! Sweet! Then, because my new band was pinchin my finger, and also because I can't wear a band with my ring, we decided to got trade in the band for a whole new ring, which I got to pick a setting, and then put any kind of stone I want in it. So, overall, it was a very customizable day.

Sunday: We had friends over for dinner, and I invented another dish. I also worked on my purse.

Monday: Got the package from UPS- it turned out to be my two free copies of the bead magazine I am in!! Yay!! So, now I have those to show off! (BeadStar, if anyone wants to go buy it. I will probably dedicate a post to it soon.) Also, we got RockBand 2 and played it (it's waaaaaay better than Guitar Hero World Tour), and I ordered my purse. You can see it below. (The inside is also the brown fabric.) I can't wait for it to be delivered! Oh- and I spent my Jo-Ann card, and I also found some fun beading stuff at a hardware store. (Nuts, Washers, and O-Rings). Plus, I found out Jason will probably have this week off as well.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing week, don't you think? I can't wait for tomorrow!