My Best Friend

This sweet little boy just gave me a big hug and said

 "you're my best friend."

It's been awhile since I've had a 2 year old and I guess I forgot how sweet they can be.  I remember my two older boys doing the same thing.  It sure does make my day when my sweet boys tell me I'm their best friend, it's just to bad that after about age 4 they quit doing it!  He sure has brightened up this cold snowy day.

Hayden, you made my day.

Thanks buddy, I love you!

It seems like I just don't have much to blog about these days. The weather has been really Spring like, snow, sunny, snow, sunny.... supposed to snow tomorrow and the next day even. I know you don't want to hear me complain but GEES, it's almost May quit snowing already. Because I can't think of anything to say I am just posting some pictures of my crazy/sweet kids!

Hayden really does love his sister, he loves to lay with her and is very protective of her, it's very sweet.

Hayden also loves to fix things. He has a bag of tools that he carries around with him looking for something that need to be fixed. It's the highlight of his day when he gets to help his dad. He will tell me that he is going to help dad "fis-ick" or fix-it!

This is how I found Cameron asleep on his bed the other night. He must have been laying like that to make Colby mad because it DOES make Colby mad. Is it just my boys that fight like brothers or do all brothers argue and bug each other?!

Tuff got to come up to our house with my mom and dad for the weekend. My boys didn't know he was coming they just woke up to him sleeping on their floor on Saturday morning. They said it was like Christmas, best suprise ever!

Fudgy Pudgy Cake

Another cake!!  Yes I love to bake, someday I hope to attend school to be a pastry chef but that day is a few years away.  Until then though I will practice making everything that gets my interest, lately that seems to be cakes.  A couple of weeks ago I made this cake.  I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.  It was really really good, and quite easy to make.  Give it a try and let me know what you think.

My cake is on the top, but just to do the cake real justice I included the picture from the magazine where I got the recipe.  I also included the recipe below.

Ingredients

1/2 cup baking cocoa

1 cup hot water

3/4 cup butter, softened

2-3/4 cups packed brown sugar

3 eggs

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

FILLING:

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup 2% milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup butter, softened

GLAZE:

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 tablespoons baking cocoa

1/4 cup 2% milk

2 cups confectioners' sugar

Chocolate curls, optional

Directions

In a small bowl, combine cocoa and hot water until smooth; cool. In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk and cocoa mixture, beating well after each addition. Stir vanilla.

Pour into three greased and waxed paper-lined 9-in. round baking pans. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks to cool completely.

In a small saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Gradually stir in milk until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat; stir in vanilla. Cool completely. In a small bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in cooled mixture.

Place one cake layer on a serving plate; spread with half of the filling. Repeat layers. Top with remaining cake.

For glaze, in a small saucepan, melt butter; stir in cocoa until smooth. Add milk. Bring to a boil. Remove from the heat. With an electric mixer, beat in confectioners' sugar until blended. Cool for 15-20 minutes; spread over top of cake. Garnish with chocolate curls if desired. Store in the refrigerator. Yield: 12-14 servings.

Cakes & Kids

TRES LECHES CAKE

I made THIS cake today as our Family Home Evening treat.  It was super simple to make and is SO SO good.  Click on the link and give it a peek on The Pioneer Woman's blog.

I LOVE THIS KID!
Yesterday, Sunday, all 6 of my family were at church together for the first time in a couple of months. It was Clara's first trip to church and it was so nice to be there all together.  I had intended to only go to sacrament meeting and then take Hayden & Clara home, I'm just not ready for all of the germs, plus Hayden HATES & I mean HATES nursery.  He loses all control if we even attempt to leave him there.  But after sacrament meeting was over he said he wanted to go to Nursery, so I thought I would let him try.  As we neared the classroom door he would run the other way, but then would turn around and come back.  I finally convinced him that mom & Clara would sit in there with him (so much for wanting to avoid the germs!) and he agreed to go in.  When we get in there though, he clings to my leg for five minutes before venturing out to get a toy.  Well....after about 20 minutes Clara was getting fussy and needed to be fed I knew Hayden would not last w/o me, so we headed home. 
When Colby & Cameron got home from church an hour or so later Hayden says to Cameron, "I tried to go to Nursery but I just cried." 

I think I will miss having a 2 year old around the house, they are just so darn cute!  Busy Yes. But fun to have around none-the-less.  I mean who doesn't love a kid that looks like this (see below) and whose favorite toys are golf clubs, credit cards & "low low's"(phones). 
I don't love that he can unlock every door in our house and head outside whenever he feels like it. It's gonna be a long summer :)

Cameron & Clara

 I think these two kids look so much alike.  What do you think?

pictures

When we were in SJ last month my sweet cousin Jaime was nice enough to take pictures of my kids for me.  I had planned just enough to remember to bring their new shirts but not their new pants or shoes. Oops.  Oh well, their old ripped, dirty jeans and shoes have lots more character anyway!

It's not an easy task to get pictures of four moving targets but I think J got some really good ones.  For the sake of my family who live far away from us this post is gonna have lots of pictures.  I didn't know until looking at these pictures how grown up my boys are getting.  Holy Cow Colby and Cameron look so grown up!

Getting newborn pictures is not very easy when the newborn wants to be wide awake and wiggly while you are trying to get sweet sleeping pictures! We didn't get any sleeping pictures but I think her big eyes are great anyway.  How precious is this baby?!

I love this last picture of my Nana Heap and Clara.  Clara was named after Nana's mom Clara Sherwood and Nana kept saying that her mom sure would love baby Clara.  Nana didn't know that Jaime was taking pictures of her and when she looked up and noticed she was so mad at Jaime, it was kinda funny!  It was worth Nana being mad though, the pictures are precious.

Thanks so much to Jaime for the great pictures.  If anyone is interested in having Jaime take pictures for you I can get you her info.  She lives in St. Johns and I'm not sure if she travels to do pictures or not, but we can always ask! 

Easter

We woke up to snow everyday all weekend.  It was really cold too.  So all outside Easter egg hunts were out of the question.  Finding brightly colored eggs in the snow just isn't much of a challenge!
  I ususally get really into Easter but this year I just didn't have the desire to go all out.  My poor kids didn't even get to color eggs!  And if it weren't for Aunt Emily they would not have even had an inside Easter egg hunt. Thanks Aunti Em!
I did enjoy cuddling on the couch with my sweet baby and watching General Conference on Saturday and Sunday.  Some of the talks I can't wait to read when the new Ensign comes out. As my kids get older I find myself needing more and more help as a parent and it seemed like most of the talks were about parenting.  It's a huge blessing in the lives of us parents in today's world that we have the guideance and inspiration from our church leaders to help us be the best parents we can be.

This is the only Easter morning picture that I got.  Colb and Cam were too busy to let me take thier picture lucky for me Hayden still likes to stop and say CHEESE!

I saw this Easter Bunny bread in a magazine years ago and always wanted to make it but was scared of it, it looks like so much work.  This year I finally read the recipe and was amazed at how easy it was and I think mine turned out pretty good for the first time!

I was planning on transferring the bunny to a nicer platter but when I tried to get him off the pan he was sticking, so I decided that I would just leave him on the ugly pan.  Next time I know to grease the pan better so I can get him off.

I filled the bunny's belly with spinach dip and cut up some veggi's to go with it.

The little kids all thought this was so cool!
If any of you are brave enough to make this bunny go ahead and ask for the recipe, you'll be amazed at how easy it is!

I also had been wanting to make a Carrot cake and what a better day to make it!  I also found out that it's my father-in-law's favorite kind of cake so I was happy to make it.  Despite a couple of the layers being in multiple pieces and had to be glued together with frosting, and the cake being quite lopsided, it looked somewhat presentable and it tasted SO GOOD! It's on my make again list now.

2 Months Old

April 3rd this sweet little sister turned 2 months old.  My older boys were actually the ones to point that out to me, they sure love this baby girl.
Clara had her 2 month check-up today
and she already weighs

11 lbs 14 oz

24inches long

She is at 2 months still my smallest baby by one pound, but holy cow is she long!  I guess it will should come as no surprise that Mark and I have tall kids!
I love her big blue eyes and I love the smiles and stories that she tells me.  When she starts sleeping longer than 4 hours at a time I will love that too!
I think she looks just like Cameron in the picture below.  I will have to post the picture of Cameron at this same age and sitting in the same position and let you be the judge.

She sure is a pretty little thing though.

Colby also had a 9 year ole well child check-up today too. 
He is 4'7" tall already.  Yep, TALL kids. Colby had to get a shot and despite being terrified wanted the pack of GoGo's I promised him more than he didn't want the shot.  Try as hard as he did to convince me that he would do the shot in December, he got the shot today and when it was all over asked the nurse if she would just hurry up and give him the shot.  He didn't even know that she already had given it to him and put a band-aid on it!  This boy is one AMAZING KID, I sure do love him.

Somehow I ended up with all 4 of my kids with me at the doctor today.  Cameron was supposed to be there to help me with Hayden but he was more concerned about Clara getting shots and being just plain nosy that he would not leave the room that meant that Hayden wouldn't leave the room either.  It was one NOISY dr. visit that I am SO glad to have over with.   Cameron really is SO great with Hayden, so great in fact that I'm afraid that we expect too much of him when it comes to watching/playing with Hayders.  He sure is great with his baby sister too!

Hayden LOVES Clara so much and tells her so lots of times everyday.  It melts my heart to hear him say "I love you Cara."  If you ask him if his baby's name is Cara though he says, "NO! It's CAAAARA!"  He can't say the L sound and it's so cute!  Hayden had to get two shots today too.  From the moment he knew we were going to the doctor he kept telling me that he wasn't going to lay down on the table.  Poor boy really hates the dr.  He about lost it when I had to hold him down on the table so the murse could give him the shots.  He needed extra band-aids and extra stickers before he would quit giving me the evil eye! He even tattled on me to his dad!

In the last month Clara has been able to meet all but 4 of her first cousins.  The picture below is of Clara and Parker a couple of weeks ago in SJ.  Parker's pj's say "I LOVE MY AUNTIE", I gave them to her so Kacy put her in them just for me!  These two sweet babies were born only 6 days apart.

This past weekend Marks brother and his family came up to Utah for Conference and Easter.  Julie had baby Annie three weeks after Clara was born so it was fun to get some pictures of the two babies. Somehow Julie and I have managed to have 3 of our 4 kids within weeks of each other. Having so many cousins the same age is so great though, I loved it growing up and I'm excited for my kids to have it that way too!  I never did figure out how to have babies with lots of hair though, just look at all of Annie's cute hair, it's so soft too.  

My sweet baby girl in her Easter Bunny jammies! 

I really hate that there is no spell check, so please excuse all of the spelling errors :)