It has recently been suggested that, as in the days of yore, I should post on the blog more often than, say, we have children.

It’s been a real joy watching Natalie grow up more and I’ve really been enjoying how well she’s able to communicate and interact.  Watching Ben learn to laugh or to hold on to us when he is scared has reminded me how far she’s come in just two years!

Natalie has recently “learned” to sit through a feature film from start to finish, and it’s amazing the things she takes away from her new favorite movie, Disney’s The Jungle Book.  Hardly an hour goes by now that she doesn’t remind Mollie or me that “Nata stay in the jungle!”

Today I found Natalie outside, playing on her slide, and she promptly told me, “Uh-oh, ant.”  I gave her a quizzical look, and didn’t think much of it until she leaned up to the plastic to lick an ant off of it.  “Natalie,” I asked, “are you eating the fancy ants?”

“Yes!  Eatin’ fancy ants!”

Now, that’s not ants she’s eating in the picture.  A few minutes later, Mollie caught her eating dirt out of the raised garden, under the pretense of “fancy ants.”

Apparently, it was quite tasty.

She followed that up with threats to go play in the garden (which she knows she’s not allowed to do).  She knew we were in a playful mood…

She’s definitely turning in to a bit of a smart alec, so Mom, I suppose you can rest assured that I will, in fact, have at least one kid just like me when I grow up.

High quality versions of the pictures above are available by clicking on them.

I had the best intentions of dedicating a post to Andy on Father’s Day, but life has been crazy busy lately and I haven’t had time to sit at the computer long enough to blog!

We did have a very nice Father’s Day though.  Before church, Andy got to open his gift from the kids.  “They” got him this awesome Maglite flashlight.  It will be a handy weapon light for when Andy walks to the Spooner’s house at night– in case he bumps into one of the weird dogs that sometimes roam our neighborhood!

After church we hosted a barbecue at our house, with both of our dads and their families in attendance.  I made a special dessert– Mocha Rum Cake!  I saw the recipe a while back and saved it because I knew I’d have to make it for Andy some day. It has all our favorite ingredients:  coffee and rum (Andy), Ghiradelli chocolate and three sticks of butter (me).  Good thing we were sharing, right??

It turned out soooo well and tasted amazing.  I thought the rum flavor might be too strong for our non-drinkers, but everyone really liked it.  In case there was any doubt as to how rich and dense this cake was, here is a close-up.

This was Andy’s 3rd Father’s Day, but each year he shows us new ways that he is an awesome dad!  In 2009 we have learned that

1.  He can fix hair in pigtails really well!

2. He’s way better than me at getting both kids to bed by himself.

3.  He can deliver a baby with just 15 minutes notice.  Sorry honey!  Just trying to keep you on your toes.

A couple favorite pictures of Andy with the kids:

Ben is 11 weeks old now!  He was a little bit out of sorts today, but was happy to watch big sister playing outside this morning.  He smiles and laughs so easily these days.  He is soooo ticklish!  Just taking his shirt off makes him giggle!  Isn’t he a cutie?

This year we planted our first garden!  It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but always felt a little hesitant about because I don’t seem to have any natural talent for gardening (I’ve killed my fair share of plants).  But anyone can learn, right?  Two weeks ago we planted some seeds and seedlings, and I am happy to report that they are already growing happily!   It was very exciting to see cute little lettuce plants pop out of the ground this week in their tidy row, and the tomato plants already have some yellow flowers.  So far, so good… I can’t wait to make a salad with our home grown veggies.

We decided to start with some family favorites.  We’ve got two types of tomatoes, red bell pepper, green bell pepper, zucchini, onions, two types of lettuce, and jalapeño peppers.

This year’s garden is kind of experimental… we will see what grows well, and what sort of problems arise.  We’ve already had someone snacking on one of the tomato plants (probably a snail), and in the morning I often see the neighborhood rabbits hanging around, but at least we’ve taught Nata to stay OUT of the dirt!  That will help a lot.

I’ve had a couple requests to post some of my best recipes.  This is not my healthiest bread recipe, but it’s a great one for a special occasion or when you have  company coming over.  I’ve been challenging myself to make good use of my bread machine and never buy bread at the store, so the other night I made my favorite recipe for rolls.   It’s based on a recipe from my bread cookbook, but I changed a few things so I call it my own, hehe.

Rolls:

1 egg at room temperature + enough 80 degree water to equal 1 cup

1/4 cup melted butter

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

1 and 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

2 cups AP flour

1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

I just throw it all in my bread machine in no particular order and use the “dough” setting, but obviously you could mix it in your mixer and then be sure to let it rise.

Topping:

3 tablespoons meted butter

grated orange peel or a spoonful of orange juice concentrate

spoonful of sugar

1. After it rises the first time or the dough cycle is done, divide bread into pieces and shape into rolls.

2. Mix topping ingredients, dip pieces in mixture.

3. Place in greased baking dish, cover, and let rise in a warm place 1 hour or till they are doubled in size (I like to put them in the oven (NOT turned on!!) with a bowl of boiled water).

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until done.  If you have any topping remaining, brush it on top while they bake.  Serve them warm if possible!

Do you like how I turned the dish to make it less noticeable that I devoured THREE rolls before even stopping to take a picture?  That’s how yummy they are.

On Saturday we headed down to my aunt’s house to celebrate the birthdays of my brother Mike (13) and cousin Ryan (6).

There was some serious “June Gloom” going on outside, the fog was so thick it felt like it was raining.  But we grilled fish tacos anyway!

Natalie had such a fun time with her cousin Kate!  I love it because Kate is just enough older (she’s almost 4) that she can supervise Natalie, making sure she doesn’t go anywhere she’s not supposed to.  And Natalie admires Kate so much that she does whatever Kate says without throwing a fit.  They were so sweet playing together!  I thought this was a cute picture of Kate guarding the door.

My contribution to the party was these rainbow cupcakes!

I had fun making them, I’m always up for making dessert.  I just try to reserve my baking for special occasions when there is someone other than myself to eat the finished product.  They have cream cheese frosting, with Skittles and rainbow sprinkles on top.

Little Ryan is the most grateful kid you’ll ever meet, he must have thanked me 25 times for making him cupcakes!  Gotta love appreciation!

So today our dear family/friends are en route to their new home in Virginia.  We sure enjoyed having them live a mile away from us for the past 8 months or so, and will miss them terribly.  Here’s a few pictures of the kids hanging out for the last time before they left for their road trip.  I can’t wait to see how the kids change between now and the next time we get together!  (Click here to see how they’ve grown!)

And just because I happened to be looking through old pictures the other day… a blast from the past:

Three (really only three??) years and 4 kids ago on their LAST cross-country trip when they stopped and saw us in Texas.

So, today I was hanging out in the backyard with the kids while we waited for Andy to get home (I pretty much count down the minutes till he drives up) and was reminded of something I find very funny/ironic.

Natalie was wearing my “Mommy Race Medal”, as she calls it.  She loves to wear that thing and pretends she is starting a race, crouching down and saying “set… GO!”  before running off.   It’s a 3rd place medal for a 5K run I did last October.    I ran that race when I was 3 months pregnant with Ben, and  got a horrible time (I don’t even remember!), but hey I still placed!  What you need to know is that I NEVER win any prizes in all these races I run, this is literally the only one I’ve ever received.  As usual, we left before they announced the winners,  but a friend who was also running picked mine up for me and brought it over later that day.  It took me about an hour to notice it wasn’t a participation prize, it actually had “Mollie Wilkinson, 3rd place, Women 20-24″ engraved on it.  I was laughing the rest of the day week over the fact that my one and only prize for running came when I was slow and pregnant (obviously there was a shortage of 20-24 year olds in that race).

Natalie seems very impressed when I tell her about it, but she wasn’t at the time.  You can’t really tell in this picture that was taken after the race, but she was super grumpy at us for getting her up so early.

I am currently training for my first 10K run since Ben was born, so wish me luck.  I will definitely not be winning any prizes in that one, it is a much bigger race and I did just have a baby 2 months ago!

This week my sister Jamie graduated from college!  She got her degree in Music Performance (Violin) at CSUN.  I didn’t attend the actual graduation, because that is just not an appropriate place to take your new baby and energetic toddler.  But here’s a picture of the graduate I stole from my other sister’s Facebook:

My funny family:

Afterward I met them at a more kid-friendly place to hang out, a park in Northridge.  Natalie had the greatest time chasing squirrels (the ones at this park are NOT afraid of people, or soccer balls, or anything!) and blowing bubbles.

It feels a lot more like summer in Northridge than it does in Camarillo!  Notice Natalie’s PINK cheeks and me squinting, it sure was hot and sunny there.

Even though Jamie has her music degree now, I selfishly hope she will never quit her day job at Anthropologie. I love taking advantage of her employee discount!  She just transferred to a management position at the Thousand Oaks store (she was previously in Simi Valley) and will probably be moving to the area soon, yay!

This camera is pretty much my prized possession, my third baby, my Nikon D60 dSLR.   I am known to get anxious about leaving it in the house while we are gone because someone might break in and STEAL IT!  It is the result of nearly two years of saving most of my spending money.  Sadly I have not even begun to tap into it’s potential,  but hopefully that will change.  This week I bought this book to help me, because after several attempts to read the manual I have realized that it is too technical for me.

So perhaps someday you will see some improvement in my photography on this blog.  Here’s one of my favorites that I’ve taken so far:

My favorite lighting in our house is the master bedroom first thing in the morning, so I take a lot of pictures of the kids on our bed.  I try taking the camera off the Automatic setting and see what I can do… Ben is a much better subject for me to practice on these days, he doesn’t move as much as Nata does while I try to adjust the settings!

These ones were taken in honor of Ben’s 6-week birthday!  I couldn’t decide which I liked better because he’s making different faces…