The Woods meet the City of Trees

My parents came to Boise this last weekend which was awesome. Even though I had to work both days they were here, I had been sleeping really well and was able to spend some time with them during the evenings and also at work. The first day they were here I opened up shop then Lauren and my Dad came in at lunch time.  My Dad and I then commenced to make over 100 lbs of granola, 2 types, cranberry blueberry, and cranberry almond coconut. Lauren worked the rest of my shift up front while we made and bagged it all. It's awesome.

Besides frosting some super cute pumpkin sugar cookies my Mom also learned how to knead bread and roll rolls.

The production side of the bakery.  Our mixer bowls hold 140 quarts. 

Parents, thanks for coming up here even though it was so quick, late Thursday to Saturday afternoon.  You guys helped us get a lot done including; granola, cleaning the back door of the bakery, frosting sugar cookies, brainstorming and recon on honey-butter production, figuring out that the wheels I bought for our broken subaru don't fit, supplying us with a car for the last month, a game of NERTS, and last but certainly not least eating at two really good restaurants. In fact, I will have to make that last item it's own post...

i love fall- a collection of photos

This fall has been beautiful. We went peach picking about a month ago but i haven't written a post about it yet. Maybe it is the car wreck that happened on the way home that has made it a bitter sweet experience that I wanted to forget!







A few friends and I started a little preschool group for our 4 boys. It's really not a preschool but we call it "play-school" and we each take a turn having it at our house once a week. We have a theme every week so it makes it simple to make a quick lesson (and by quick i really mean quick- 2 year olds don't have an attention span-heck my 28yr old husband doesn't have an attention span!) and then we sing some songs, have a snack, and play. It has been really fun for Liam and he looks forward to it every week. Last week we took a field trip to a pumpkin patch. Liam kept calling it a pumpkin catch which i thought was awesome.










Liam really loves his pumpkin. It has been by his side ever since we brought it home. The other day he had it on my bed and i heard him say, "What pumpkin? (silence as if he is listening to the pumpkin tell him) You wanna go home? But pumpkin, you are home!" He just cracks me up lately.

Summertime and the livin's easy......

Big thing of the summer? Liam turned 2! He is cracking all of us up. I just can't believe that my baby is already 2. I love him so much and he brings so much happiness into our lives.


This is him so "esided" for his birthday! (all of the birthday footage in on the flip video camera that i can't find so more birthday to come)

One of his birthday presents was a tool kit. He cracked me up this day when he found Wil's bike helmet and his tool box.

He was saying in the picture- "ok mom, I'm leaving" so funny

Liam's favorite summer activity? Bubbles. Specifically a bubble gun.




could life get any better? I can't imagine it.

our new planter

Here is Liam and Laur in front of our front door. The garage is in the back so we don't really see the front as often as rear. Anyways, we bought a planter and we planted a hydrangea and some ivy. I'm pretty stoked to watch it grow. We also have some bamboo in the back to go with our new craigslist special patio furniture. We'll save that for next post.

A very quick post

Hello! It's very late and I HAVE to go to bed but I thought I'd share some pictures from the last few months.

This is Liam swinging. He could really do this all day

This is the transportation to the swing

Liam and his best buddy Logan (Liam has made up the nickname "MINGO" for Logan- we don't know why but that is what he calls him)

Me and my best buddy

This is Liam one morning in the process of brushing his teeth.

This is Liam saying "Cheese"

We love this happy kid. Someday soon we will "write" a blog posting rather than put all pictures, but until then...

So this is a little late but a week ago my mom and popcame up and spent a day with us. It was awfully pleasant. My dad and I made granola which was quite tasty. Here is the photographic evidence.


Yah I still don't have a permanent tooth but at least I know when it's going to fall out.

This next photo just shows how well Lauren feeds me. I'm eating an open faced buffalo burger on High 5 fiber bread with feta and garlic beans. Quite tasty. The hot sauce is Sriracha. It's an Asian hot sauce. Super good. I'm usually a sucker for anything with tomatillos or serrano chiles or both. I don't know what Sriracha has in it but it tastes great and the spiciness is perfect.


Did I mention I'm totally addicted to kart racing. Not really, I go once every month or two. But I sure have fun when I do go. I got the 7th fastest lap-time in October. I taped my FLIPvideo to my helmet and this is what we got. My bro-in-law jon is right in front and then Gordo is in the very front. enjoy.

Hello to the blogging world. We made it through the holidays just fine and this week is the end of the "week" off that I had. We didn't travel anywhere or do anything spectacular, but that is what made it so spectacular. We got a ton of things done that have been on our list below the high priorities like eat, work, sleep, bathe, etc.. We are a very happy family. Liam is becoming more coordinated. I taught him how to climb up onto a chair without any help and he got it first try! I think he's got a pretty good strength to weight ratio. He also has a lot of new words. He knows some signs, he's watched the first two signing times over 50 times each. I'm serious! I could sing and sign those puppies all the way through if I had to. We have a little DVD player in our car and he watches movies while we drive. Because he knows signs he won't say the word and he'll point or do a sign. But, the other morning, he was sleeping with us, he woke me up and pretended to still sleep. You see, as soon as I'm awake I'm fair game to entertain him. So as I lay there in bed he whispered, "Eyes. Nose. Mouth." Touching each feature gently with his finger. Mouth wasn't pronounced correctly, but I knew what he was saying.

Lauren is the hardest worker in the family. She works three shifts at the Harv, takes care of Liam, does all the books for the business, and manages to keep me happy as well. She just colored her hair so just when I thought Laur couldn't get any better looking she surprised me. Unfortunately, we won't be graced with a photo of her. I do have some of Liam though! This first one is when we went night skiing a couple of nights ago with Lauren, Mary, and Eric Jensen. For all you Loganites Mary was a Grewe. It was really fun and I got a few WOOOOOs out of Liam. He was in a backpack on my back.



This shows the cute gap in Liam's teeth.



We don't have huge Mountains in Boise but sometimes the sunrises and sunsets are really pretty.

Old Picture, Same Cute Face!

Mom and Gordo

Last weekend my Mom and Gordo came up to Boise. I have to say it was one of the funnest weekends we have had in a long while. It's so nice to have people so genuinely excited for us. They both came in and helped me bake the sweets. My Mom made the lemon bars completely by herself and ran to the grocery store twice to get stuff I had run out of. Woops!

The first night we went out to eat at this place called the Bitter Root Alehouse. I think that's the third time I've been there and I love it. The service is fast and the food is all local and not too spendy Lauren gets a grilled cheese with tomatoes, basil, and some other yummy things. I get to veggie burger (I know guys sounds sick but it is GOOD!) and I add avocado.

Anyway, if you come up- get excited! Not only will you get to work at the bakery you'll get to eat out at some delicious places! :)

videos

Wow! These took forever to upload. Goodnight. There is a tag under the movie if your interested.



I was tagged by ABBY!.... Wil and I totally splurged and got a $12 rabbit ears from Walmart. We have 4 channels therefore my shows are very limited, but nonetheless
Oh and mine are in no particular order

8 Shows I like to watch:
1. The Office
2. So You Think You Can Dance
3. The News (any news that we can pick up)
4. Ellen
5. Saturday Night Live
6. Biggest Loser (I have actually only seen one episode adn it was last season but I think i'd really like it)
7. Dr. HOUSE
8.

8 Things that happened yesterday:
1. I worked
2. We had our "best" monday so far!
3. Wil got sick
4. Did the "books" for the bakery before work
5. Folded laundry
6. Read nursery rhymes with Liam
7. Talked to Dani
8. Watched "the Visitor"

8 Favorite Places to Eat:
1. At my mom's
2. At my mother in laws
3. Callaway's
4. Logan's Heroes
5. Charlie's--- OH MAN I WOULD LOVE A SHAKE RIGHT NOW!!
6. Fredricos
7. Cafe Sabor
8. Both Grandma's Houses!

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:
1. A Visit from Any family! :) hint hint
2. Halloween
3. Thanksgiving
4. Christmas
5. Thursday (I get thursday's off and we may go to a pumpkin patch!)
6. having a yard
7. Have more than one Car
8. Bran Muffins tomorrow at the bakery yumyum


8 Things on my Wish List
1. A paycheck! :)
2. A house
3. Health Insurance
4. A second Car
5. More drive
6. more time with my husband
7. More patience
8. More Christ-like

8 People I Tag
1. Melissa
2. Sarah
3. Kami
4. Brit
5. Cash
6. Stacia
7. Andi
8. Sade

Howdy

Oh boy... I love my little family so much! We are definitely busy with the bakery but we also have many fun moments with each other. The following pictures are in McCall ID, our house, and our back yard...

The next is Liam doing one of his "tricks." He is very proud when he does this...

Riding his bike- this is serious business!

The next two are in our "yard" or shared green space. We have a little kid play thingy- which liam LOVES! He can even go down the slide by himself.


Family outting to the zoo...We NEVER get off work earily enough to go to the zoo so one Saturday we made it a point to try and go. We got there at 4:30, it closes at 5, and the lady was like," Um.. we close in about 25 minutes." We were like, "ya we know! Isn't it so great we made it before close?!" She said, "I'm still going to have to charge you full price." We replyed, "SWEET! LET US IN! WE only have 24 minutes now!!" Despite only having a few minutes we had a great time. I'm not sure either of my boys attention spans would have lasted much longer than that!

This is McCall... It's about 1.5-2 hours from our house. It is a really fun town and close to 2 ski resorts. We had so much fun one sunday just walking around the town. It was nice and cool- oh made us miss home a lot.

Liam is walking and jumping!

So maybe it's more like controlled falling but it's a start. I'll post another video to more properly demonstrate his walking abilities.

Dang Cute Carrier

So... Grandma's, I'm sorry, but this will be a boring post for you..
I saw this on McKenzie's blog and thought it was to die for! It is a baby carrier and is made by Baby Bisou. It is so darling and can carry a kid up to 40 lbs. At the rate Liam is gaining weight, i'll be able to carry him in this until he's in 5th grade!

Love you all,
laur

I've got another

liam vids

I got a flip video for my birthday and it is pretty fun. i take it every where. We have got Liam doing some funny and cool things.

Happy july 8th!!

To feel like a a semi-responsible blogger i feel like i need to update the blogfest. Well, we had a an awesome weekend in Utah. The highlight was for sure seeing liam tear up his birthday cake and make a huge mess real quick. That kid just makes me so proud. We also watched two movies, ate at least three meals a day, and usually slept longer than 7 hours a night. it was awesome. I got to go dirt jump with the brothers Rupp, and jump out of a tree naked into 2nd dam with some of my friends. It was surely a success. we crammed a lot of fun into a few days.

Life at the Bakery is good. Summer always slows down, i guess, but we're still busy with everything else. We've started doing some new breads: Sundried Tomato Pesto, Santa Fe Cornbread, and Apple Crumble. I'm getting the baking systems down pretty well and I'm trying to impliment them upon my bread bakers. The dudes i've got are going to be great once they're all trained up with everything and know everything I know.

Man, Liam is so funny. He's not saying many words besides Uh-oh, mama, and dada. but he's really good at mimicking sounds and intonations of words. I think he'll pick up a second language fast. haa! My favorite Liamism is when he sticks his head into a bowl or a box and makes funny noises. I taught him how to yell into a mixing bowl a few weeks ago, now anytime he sees something that will bounce sound back at him he'll indulge himself. Liam and I were entertained by some storage item in ROSS dress for less today for a good five minutes. I love my fam they're the best.