Christmas Tidings

Merry Christmas! 

Jack got in on the preparation of our traditional Christmas Eve boullabaise (seafood stew.)

We gave Jack a camera. Expect to see some of his photographs up on the blog sometime soon. I'm hoping to teach him how to post blog updates so I can retire.

I'm still recovering from Christmas so I'm too tired to summarize all the wonderful festivities. Maybe some more Christmas photos will appear on here over the next month or so. But isn't our little Isaiah growing up? He's starting to get that big boy look about him.

Here's Patrick modeling his "tiger teeth" (a straw.)

Toys Shmoys

There are presents aplenty under the Christmas tree. And we, especially the boys, are all excited to open them. But sometimes I wonder if we really should have gotten them all those new toys. They really have the most fun with the most random items -

Such as goggles.

And paint sticks. Yes, it is a sword... tucked into his underwear.

Decorating cookies is almost always more fun than playing with toys.

The boys watched Davey Crocket for the first time last week. Those are cardboard hatchets and that is a "coon" skin hat on Jack's noggin. They've been having a blast with all sorts of tools and weapons fashioned out of the cardboard boxes their gifts were shipped in. 

And blanket forts are a big hit these days -

But I suppose we'll still give them their Christmas presents. I'm almost positive their tinkertoys set will be used primarily as swords and daggers. 

O Tannenbaum

We drove out into the wilderness on Saturday (which is not very far away, considering we're in Idaho) and found ourselves a nice little tree. 

 It was very cold (seasonally appropriate) but snowless (not seasonally appropriate.)

 Dan abandoned tradition this year and picked a white pine. I think it's rather cute.

And here's my Christmas decorating. Not much going on but for the train tracks all over the ground. Just keeping it real, folks.

Baby Hank

This weekend we went to Seattle to mourn the loss of a great man - Dan's grandfather, Henry Bakken. Words can't express what an amazing man Grandpa was and he will be greatly missed. While it was a sad weekend we were able to rejoice too, knowing that he is with Jesus. 

We've always thought that Isaiah took after the Bakken side. When we pulled out Grandpa's baby pictures this was made quite obvious. 

       

Isaiah's been recently dubbed "Baby Hank." I think it's obvious why. Maybe in another 20 odd years he'll look something like this?

We love you Grandpa!

Dressing up a bit

 Grandma Mertens sent Jack this awesome costume as a belated birthday present. He slept in it the first night. He's especially fond of the whistle that came with it. (Oh yay.)

 Patrick didn't feel as though it came with adequate weaponry so he modified the outfit.

Our church had its annual Reformation Day carnival last night. Jack was in Seattle for the weekend with Dan so Patrick got to wear his SWAT costume. Isaiah went as a cranky little lion. 

And completely unrelated to Reformation Day or costumes, here are three little cookie makers helping me in the kitchen (aka Sugar-Eaters.)

Bishop's Orchard

We went big at Bishop's this year and picked 120 lbs of Macintosh apples. So far I've made 15 quarts of applesauce.... I'm not even half done. Maybe we were a little over-enthusiastic but I'm pretty sure we'll have no problem devouring the applesauce, dried apples and apple pies this winter. 

 While we pressed cider the big boys tested out the tractor.

This guy's been rather tired and cranky recently from a cold. This in turn has made me tired - but I hope not cranky. 

Still alive.

Sorry folks, I'm a bad blogger. Not only do I go for weeks at a time between blog posts, but when I do blog I lack exciting pictures. I rarely remember to pull out the camera when we go places or do anything particularly exciting. Perhaps if I had an iphone this would be remedied ;-) But atleast I have a few pictures to satisfy the most faithful fans.

   

Okay so bear with the weird formatting. Nothing centers perfectly or at all. I might lose some of my OCD readers. I've had a hard time with the new blogspot editor. Ugh, it just deleted a cute picture I had with the boys in some new pjs from Grandma Mertens. Since I'm a bad blogger I will not bother to reload it. Sorry guys. 

  

I found this chunk of cheese on the countertop. I'm pretty sure those bitemarks would match Patrick's - my little cheese-lover.

Guess who's walking! This is the only way I could get a picture of our speedy little guy.

Jack's 4!

Blogspot has updated and improved and now I can upload more than 4 pictures at a time! Hang onto your swivel chair, folks. Here's a bunch of pictures from our week!

Here Patrick is savoring his orange snowcone between rides down the slide.

                                     

Sneaky sneak!

 "It's a tewascope!"

And here's our traditional "Lick the birthday cake batter" pictures:

Jack is VERY excited about being 4. Or maybe it's just the cake.

 Jack got his antlers he requested. 

 And a bike from Grandpa and Grandma Bakken!

I mentioned in my last post that Isaiah loves to pick my green tomatoes. Here's proof. Earlier this morning Patrick ran inside and tattled "Zayuh's in the matos." Sure enough.... this boy did not clean up the scene of the crime too well.

I found these tomatoes tossed through the fence into our neighbor's yard (how thoughtful.) And about 15 cherry tomatoes squashed into the dirt.

                                    

      

      

Thankfully we enjoyed this beefsteak before Isaiah got to it (though he did manage to poke it several times with a stick before it was rescued.)

Still alive... and quite well!

 He knows he's cute. But don't let that bashful grin fool you - he's a Trouble Maker (aka Toilet Splasher, green Tomato Picker, Mess Maker.) But he's forgiven due to his absurdly cute and squishable arm rolls.

 Here is our newest Potty User of the Bakken household. In place of his diaper he has donned his "Superman Cake." He is very good at somersaults and sitting still for 5 seconds at a time.

 We explored our local forest on Moscow Mountain last week. The boys, big and small, enjoyed climbing all the fallen trees. As the boys get bigger I'm sure we'll be doing more activities of this sort.

 And here's some flora a bit closer to home - just feet off my back porch. I measured one of my plants - it's taller than my tape measurer could handle so I estimate it between 7 and 8 feet tall. More importantly, it has yielded hundreds of sweet tomatoes that I just can't keep Jack from. While I'm looking forward to cooler weather I hope fall doesn't come too soon as I still have many tomatoes working on their color.

Doesn't this boy look older and wiser? He will be 4 next week! He has requested salad and chocolate cake. No doubt there will be his favorite cherry tomatoes in that salad. He has also requested antlers, a megaphone (hah yeah right), and various other boy things that I just can't recall (and unfortunately means he will likely not receive.) He started (home)preschool this week and loves sitting down every morning to read, sing, color and cut paper.

Before and After

When we bought our house we were overwhelmed by how much work we had to do to make it pleasing to our eyes. Or atleast make it so we didn't want to gouge then out.

Ready for this?

1 1/2 yrs later -

Yay we didn't have to gouge our eyes out! So far we've removed dead trees, removed mulch, rocks and ugly stuff from the yard, grown grass, planted new shrubs, installed new windows, painted the house and just today I painted our front door red. Whew. We still have a lot of work to do as far as landscaping goes..... but that may take a few more years.