Little Chef

To say Neal likes to cook is an understatement, he LOVES it! If there is a toy kitchen he is playing with it the whole time. He always wants to be in the kitchen with me and if I ever ask him if he wants to help me cook he eagerly replays "yes!"

So when we went to the Children's Museum here in Raleigh Neal quickly descovered their kitchen and continued to spend the next hour cooking away and making all sorts of interesting dishes.




His favorite food to "make" is toast & eggs or peanut butter and Jelly and french fries. He even takes "orders" over the phone. His most loyal customers (besides Tyler and I) are Elmo, Grandfather and Super Grover.


I sure wouldn't mind having a chef in the family. Maybe as he gets older he will take over making a few dinners for me...I can dream at least, right?

Silly Singing

Here is Neal performing one of his favorite songs....can you tell what it is? Don't worry if you can't figure it out by his singing (he mumbles most of the words) I have written the song below to help you follow along.



"Zacchaeus"
Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see
And as the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree...
And he said, "Zacchaeus, you come down!"
For I'm going to your house today
For I'm going to your house to stay

Dreaming of Baseball

Thank you Grandma and Papa for the baseball bat and ball for Easter!


Neal has hardly stopped playing with it since he got it...


He even keept it with him during movie night. We may have a future baseball playing on our hand (which makes this mommy happy)


He does need to work on his batting skills...keeping his eyes on the ball is not his strong point.

Our Easter

We had a wonderful, sunny, warm Easter this year. The first Easter in a long time without snow outside. This year we drove from NC to Ohio to spend the holiday weekend with Neal's Aunt Jessi and soon to be Uncle Wes (Congratulations to on their engagement!)

I believe the most fun part of the whole weekend was decorating eggs on Saturday night. I had no idea how much fun Neal would have with the egg decorating. My favorite part was watching Neal drop the eggs in the dye (not very gently), stirring them around and then pulling them out and saying "oh no" as he noticed all the cracks (he had no idea he had made these cracks by dropping them - he was just very worried that they were cracked).


After dying 18 eggs and wanting to dye more I had to tell Neal he had to stop. We then moved on to coloring the dyed eyes with markers and adding stickers.


Neal got almost as much dye on himself as he did on the eggs. It took several washings to get all the dye off of his hands and chest.



Tyler even got creative and came up with a few of his own designs...


It was a wonderful weekend with family and friends enjoying food, fun and rejoicing in the remembrance of Christ's sacrifice for us.

Snakes and all sorts of other bugs...

There have been a few things that we, as Alaskans, have to get use to here in NC. One of those things is bugs. We aren't really use to so many flying, crawling or slithering creatures. Neal loves watching ants and tries to catch them. He also was very interested in a wasp that got in the lodge the other day. That interest of his was quickly stifled, by me, as I informed him that the wasp is not an insect he wants to ever be near and made him sit on the couch until I killed it.


Now I have been warned that there are snakes around here. That is something that we are definitely not use to seeing, so for the time being I have told Neal that he cannot touch any snakes. So far we have only seen one. Neal and I were taking a walk on the bridge between the TWR lodge (our current home) and the TWR office and saw a snake move in the leaves from the bank of the creek into the water. Neal was fascinated by it. Now every time we walk on the bridge Neal says "mo snakes pease". Thankfully we have not seen any more. However, Neal has named these seed pods (I think that is what they are) on the bridge "little snakes" and likes to point them out to me every time he sees them.


I guess they look a bit like a snake, really more like a worm, but to him they are on the bridge and therefore are "little snakes". These are only a few of the many things we have seen here and it is only spring.


I am really hoping to find a home with a screened back porch so we can enjoy some time outside as a family, without the bugs.

Early Easter Project

On Friday I decided to have Neal help me make a special Easter treat. Neal didn't know what to expect but was excited anyway and walked around for the next several minutes chanting "special treat". I found a recipe for some cute little Bird Nest treats online and thought they would be simple enough for a 2 year old to help make.


Neal had so much fun. He stood at the kitchen counter with me, mixed the "nest" ingredients together and then helped me scoop the mixture into muffin tins (this was all done between licks of the spoon and lots of chocolate spilling on his shirt) but we finally got most of it into the tins.


The next step was to fill the finished "nests" with "birds eggs". I made the mistake of giving him a bowl of candy eggs and turning my back to grab something.


When I turned around he had a mouth full of candy eggs and was saying "nummy". We finally got into a rhythm and would put a handfull of eggs in the nest and then one or two in our mouths.


Eventually we finished filling all the nests and even added a few birds to complete the look.



Neal brought these over to his friend Eli's house the next day and they enjoyed some "nummy, birdie treats" together. I know not on the healthy side of snacking but what is a holiday without some "special treat" to enjoy with friends and family right?

Catching Sunbeams

It has been so beautiful here this spring. I still cannot believe that we can spend the day in shorts and it is still only March. Yesterday Neal and I went outside and sat in the sun while enjoying an afternoon snack.


This morning while I was making breakfast Neal was standing at the end of the table looking at the sunbeams that were steaming through the window. As he stood there he decided to try and catch them. He would hold his hand in the sun and then close his fists. Then he would run over to show me the sun he had caught followed by saying "oh no" when he would open his fist and see that there was no sunshine there. He tried this several times, so determined to catch these sunbeams. It was fun to see his determination in trying to catch the sunlight in his hands.