The Sweet More Than Negates the Sour

Tonight we went out to eat, something we haven't done a lot of since we moved to Oregon really, particularly as a family.  Both of our kids were having a rough night to some degree, but Matthew was particularly having a hard time listening to us and behaving.  I'm sure he was a bit wired up from being in the house all afternoon, and it showed.  We (Karin and I) were both clearly frustrated to varying degrees.  In his typical Matthew way, though, even on a night where he was giving us kind of a hard time, we were reminded of some of the reasons we love that kid so much.  On the way from the restaurant to the car, he asked Karin, "When you are mad at me, do you still love me?"  She assured him that she did, and he thought about that for a bit and then asked, "Would you still love me if I was a walrus?"  Classic Matthew.

I had told him earlier that if he starting listening and was good, he could play a game on my phone on the way home, but he didn't follow through on that, so for the first 10 minutes or so on the drive home he was crying and begging us to let him play.  Then I started talking about other things to try to get his mind off of it, and at one point he kept interrupting me for some reason when I was trying to tell him something.  Finally, he said, "OK, you can go ahead.  Say your words."  He then settled for playing the guessing game (a simplified 20 questions, I guess - you don't ask questions, just guess), his favorite thing in the car.

Isabelle's favorite thing in the car is to listen to the kid version of this Dynamite song.  I mean, she wants to hear it over and over.  That could probably drive us crazy (I think it's already starting to drive Matthew crazy), but it is tough to be too bugged when you look back and see your not-quite-2-yr-old dancing and signing along to her favorite song.  We love her spunk and creativity, even if that means having draw with crayons on just about everything in the house including her own face.

We are grateful that even on days when our kids are driving us a bit crazy, they are healthy and generally happy and seem to genuinely love each other.  Even though Matthew gets a little bugged when Isabelle destroys his Lego creations (usually Batman related, using some real leaps of imagination), he can be really sweet to her.  A while back she fell off of a chair and was crying, and Matthew sang her a rainbow song he learned (the entirety of which is "Red, orange, yellow, green, blue. Don't forget there's purple too. Rainbow colors for me and you!").  So now anytime she is upset, he starts singing that.  On the way to the restaurant tonight, he wanted to sing that after we got done singing another song Isabelle had asked us to sing ("Popcorn popping on the apricot tree..."), and when Karin suggested we sing something other than the rainbow song, he said, "But it's beautiful!"

Bottom line... there are times when our kids push our buttons a little bit, but those things are more than offset by the genuine little moments of happiness they bring into our lives every day.

Curious George

Isabelle is my Curious George. In Arizona we had baby locks on our cupboards that you had to unlock with a magnet. That was so great in keeping this girl out of everything. Well, in a rental you can't really do that! She is killing me. Everytime I turn around she is into something new. She likes to play in my measuring cups/glass prep bowls drawer and loves playing with our oven toaster that is under our island. She seriously keeps me running from the time she wakes up until she takes a nap and then again once she wakes up.


Boo!


She's just patiently waiting for dinner and wanted her picture taken. So cute!

Isabelle - Scrapbook Layout

I haven't taken the time to scrapbook much lately, but since I've been taking photos of the kids lately I decided to put together this collage of Isabelle. These digital paper flowers really inspired this layout and even better were on sale for $.99 at my favorite website - Designer Digitals.

I really love digital scrapbooking. It has freed me of feeling like everything needs to be absolutely perfect when I sit down to scrapbook. I have a digital camera so it's super easy to take my photos off my camera and boom create a layout. I don't have to print until I want to and if I don't like something in my layout I can just delete it or keep playing with it until I like the way it looks. I can upload my layouts to Costco and I currently have a ton needing to be printed. This Christmas I created a memory book for Jordan's family of our summer vacation. I just created layouts, uploaded them to Snapfish and they printed and bound it. It was the perfect little reminder of all the fun things we did together this summer.

Anyways, just trying to remember the cute things she's doing at this stage and what some of her favorites are. I shared some of them (listed below) last week along with the original pics.



Fruit Snacks - Some moms may not believe in these little treats of yummy sugarness - but we do at our house! They seem to be the calming treat that can settle down my screaming, fit throwing kids at the store. Most of the time they are eaten while out and about and Isabelle knows I ALWAYS have some on hand.

Yogurt - Isabelle AND Matthew both love yogurt. It's often the first thing she requests to eat in the morning. We also introduced them both to vanilla yogurt with grape nuts mixed in and both of them love it. It's surprising what they take to.

Coloring - Isabelle is a girl through and through. She loves to color and wants to do it all the time. The hard part is she wants to also color things she shouldn't. She has found markers a few times, namely on Christmas while I was taking a nap (they are hidden now) and colored her brand new christmas clothing, books, cloth ABC book that my mom made, one of Matthew's presents and various other things I've found or keep finding. She is only allowed to use washable crayons and even then she's having a tough time staying on the table and only coloring the paper. She gets them taken away often, but I think it's starting to sink in.

Laughing (at Matthew) - this girl has the cutest laugh ever! When Matthew gets her going it's pretty funny. She is pretty happy most of the time and such a delight in our home.

Eating - Like I mentioned last week, this girl can eat! For example tonight she had: 1/4 PB sandwich, almost a can of peaches and a can of oranges. I'm not saying her food is high in calories, but shouldn't her tummy be hurting from all the food inside of it? Matthew on the other hand forcefully had 2 little pieces of chicken and then a can of oranges as well.

Reading Books - She loves to read and we have so many books that they got a book holder for Christmas. It has helped our books stay way more organized. When we had them in a basket, she would just take them all out and read them all, but scatter them everywhere.

We were reading the Mr. Brown Can Moo book tonight and she can pretty much make all the sounds. What does an Owl say? Hoo Hoo - so cute!

Binkie & Blankie - Oh my do we have a BIG problem on our hands. Isabelle LOVES her binkie and blankie (any thin blanket is good). If she finds her blankie she wants her binkie and visa versa. They are very comforting to her and I'm letting it go right now. She's pretty cute though if she's using them in the car and we get to the gym I tell her I need them so we can go play and she gladly hands them over.

Singing & Dancing - She's pretty good at singing and knows words to several songs. She loves to dance around and often I wonder how it is that children are so carefree and as adults we lose that capability? She's a pretty good little dancer and I can't wait until she's old enough to get into dance. I just got Kids Bop 19 the other day and both kids have been loving to listen to it in the car and wiggle around. So fun!

Fridge Magnets - She got these animal leap frog magnets for Christmas and inherited Matthew's old leap frog ABC fridge magnets. She loves to push the buttons to hear the songs and almost knows the ABC song (we just found the ABC magnets at the end of Dec.).

All in all so fun to see this little girl grow up. She is saying a lot of words and will try and say anything really. She's starting to put 4 word sentences together and often exclaims happily "I did it myself".

Matthew...not Matt, Matty or anything else

Matthew DOES not like nicknames or shortened ways to say his name. He is Matthew through and through and if you try and call him anything else he'll tell you that his name is Matthew or sometimes Matthew Jordan Stephens.


It's tough to get a good pic of him lately because he just wants to be silly and/or make silly faces but I managed to get this one the other day.


He really loves to laugh, joke and just be silly. It's definitely fun around here, but sometimes the silliness is too much especially when trying to get ready for school. He definitely makes us laugh though and is too smart for his own britches.





This kid hates to eat unless it's candy, cookies, chips or treats. Not too hard to convince him to eat some swirly soft ice cream from Costco.


He was just veging out watching TV with his shades to "protect his eyes". He is such a creative soul and really makes us laugh often with his antics.

Silly IsaBelly

This sweet girl of ours is really such a joy to have in our family. She definitely is fiesty and opinionated, but most of the time sweet and cute. Just wanted to share a few pictures that I've taken of her lately.


She got this farm fridge magnet set for Christmas and loves dancing to the music and putting the animals together. I just wanted to catch her in the action.

Isabelle LOVES reading books! She looks at/reads them several times a day and books are always scattered throughout the play room. I'm hoping this will stay a love throughout her life.

Isabelle also loves to color. She definitely is a girl. She wants to color, loves stickers, likes to be pretty (that's how I convince her to sit still while I do her hair). It is really fun having another girl around here.

She has the cutest giggle ever. The one person that can really make her laugh is Matthew. He can just be running around the house or hiding from her and she thinks it's so hilarious. It's cute to watch them both play together. Matthew is a really good brother for the most part and really loves his sister.

One other thing that Isabelle loves to do is eat. She can out eat Matthew at almost every meal, but is still so tiny. She is 21 months and wears mostly 12-18 month clothes.

I can't believe she'll be 2 in just a few months. It seems like yesterday that I was going in for my c-section with her. We are so blessed she's in our family.

In the Kitchen...with ME!

I have been wanting to do a food blog for a long time, but with work and the kids it was just too much to tackle. Now that we've moved and I'm taking a break from work I decided it was time to start my food blog. The purpose of my blog is to:


1-Share my yummiest and newest recipes I've found.
2-Get YOU to experiment more.
3-Give you tricks and tips for more successful cooking.
4-Share my favorite cooking tools.


I'm way excited! Feel free to sign up as a follower and you'll get an email when new posts are posted. Also, feel free to share my blog with your friends.


In The Kitchen With Karin

Are These My Pants?

A couple of weeks ago Jordan told me that he accidentally put on my jeans one morning and even though he could get into them they were very tight in an important area. He took them off and realized they were mine. When he told me that I thought it was so funny and couldn't imagine how he got them mixed up.

Fast forward to this past Friday. Jordan did laundry (yes you know where this is going) and lots of pants were in our laundry basket folded nicely to be put away. I grabbed a pair of boot cut 1969 gap pants out of it and put them on. They fit really well but were a little loose in the thigh and crotch area and were a bit different of a wash than I remembered. I thought it was all weird but went on with my day. My brother Brent and his wife Sam were coming into town and I needed to finish getting ready for them, Matthew had preschool and I had gone to the gym so it was a very busy day getting ready for the weekend company. When I went to bed that night at 1 am I went to look at what brand my jeans were again and saw a 31/32 size and started busting a gut.

I had worn Jordan's pants all day and didn't realize it. Yes they were looser and a different wash than I remembered, but I was sure they had said bootcut and 1969 gap jeans which they did say they were just Jordan's. I also have the same brand of gap jeans but mine are the womens cut.

All in all I guess we both like to get in each other's pants....:) :) :).