I E I will always love you!!!

Love is a many splendored thing! Love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love!!!

Happy happy Valentines day!! Growing up my mom always made a big deal on valentines: cards for everyone, decorating the table and house with hearts-galore, heart-shaped pancakes, meatloaf, potatoes, etc. In high school I didn't date much so Valentines day was a day for LOVED ones: dear friends and family. We would shower each other with pink tulips, chocolate, treats, cards, and glitter. (Or maybe not glitter but you get it. This is the girliest I ever was.) now that I'm married to the man of my dreams, I get to be super gushy romantic too. And I got Fred started early as he glued a million paper hearts on a card and let me trace his hand for Collin, and enjoyed a few suckers and sugars cookies himself. I love love! Happy Valentines Day, all!! 

 

 

 

and some oldies circa 2009...

Love, right now, is me changing a super stinky poop diaper even though I really don wanna.

Shots of Fred

This little man had a check up and a shot on Friday. He's now (at almost 17 months) 32 inches tall and 23.2 lbs!!! What a grown up little toddler. He tries and succeeds at copying everything we say and do. He loves mimicking animal sounds, small words, scolding the cats, and playing loudly with toys. He says, "wow," "hi," "mommy," "dada," "dottie," "kitty," "doggie," "ahma" (grandma?? I think!), "no!" "no way," "com'on!" "uh oh!" and waves, claps, kisses us on command! His somewhat slimy open-mouthed kisses on my cheek are the best thing ever. He LOVES being outside and running more than anything in the world! Currently I follow him all around our apartment complex and we always end up in the parking lot so that he can back up and sit on a curb. He loves it. It's just his perfect height. It's pretty obvious he loves to dance! He has serious rhythm!! Here is one of his favorite moves: 

Dance from Nikki smith on Vimeo.

He's really starting to love drawing, painting...creative things with his hands. I want to set up some art stuff on our porch so he can go at it. Ill post pictures from our recent trip to the children's museum soon! He spent the most time in the art studio, water coloring and painting a giant rocket ship! He loves books, and brings them to me to read, but after a few, he gets impatient and leaves.

I love these photos of him:

super silly fake smile face....ha....

love my babe.

Nutballs

Collinfred from Nikki smith on Vimeo.

The wonderful world of vacuuming from Nikki smith on Vimeo.

I love my family.

PS. Do you have VINE? I LOVE it.

I love my mom. I love doing crafts with her, running errands with her, and mostly talking to her. She is one of my best friends.

childrens museum, dyers!

The dyers moved down the STREET!!!

amazing BBQ pizza!

The other night we made this delicious pizza! Here's the super easy recipe...

Collin's incredible homemade sweet BBQ sauce with crockpot Pulled Pork recipe here

Get your favorite dough. Years ago we used to make our own, but we've found that lots of restaurants will sell you their dough for super cheap and that's a lot easier for us. When we lived in Provo we got it from Pizzeria 712 for like 2 bucks. That was amazing. Lately we have been using a really good whole wheat dough from Fresh and Easy that's under $1.50. Either way, grab your favorite dough.

Preheat your pizza stone in the oven at 550 degrees. You'll want to preheat it and then let it sit at that temp for at least 15 minutes to get nice and super hot. This will take a while. At some point sprinkle a little flour on the counter, take your dough out and let it rise on top of the flour for 20 minutes.

In the mean time, cook your chicken. We used boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces. Heat your skillet on the stove with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Cook the chicken for 3-5 minutes on each side, pour some BBQ Sauce in with it. Cut into the chn pieces to make sure they are cooked through. Set aside.

Roll out your dough; poke it with a fork a couple of times; rub it with some olive oil; sprinkle a little garlic powder around the crust. Then get it on your pizza stone and cook it for 6 minutes.

Chop up 1/4 to 1/2 of a sweet onion. When the dough is done, take it out, put on the onion, then the cooked chicken pieces, then pour a bunch more BBQ sauce all over and top with mozzarella cheese; be generous. Grind salt and pepper over the whole thing, then stick it in the oven again for about 5 minutes. Just watch it and when everything is melted, switch your oven to broil on high for just a few minutes till the cheese gets a little brown.

Take it out (turn everything off) and enjoy!!!!!!

What a morning.

So I joined a gym! And today I took a Zumba class which means Fred had his first day in the kids club. He cried hard. It was hard on me. They said he would settle down but every time a parent would open the door to drop off their child, he would start crying again. It was hard but after a lot of reading, advice from experienced moms, child care attendees and breastfeeding groups, talks with Collin and PRAYERS, I do believe that he will be okay and that it won't be a damaging traumatic experience in the long run. It's not the same thing as leaving him alone in the dark to "cry it out." There were sweet women who were holding him and comforting him. This will be good practice for going into nursery next month at church.

football and babysitting photos. babes babes babes.