Liam - always full of excitement

Liam lives life to its fullest and is full of passion. He is also always up for a joke - whether it is getting hit on the head and suddenly dying (which happens often) or pulling out his ears to look like the guy from Mad Magazine.

Liam LOVES Fishy, his killer whale. A highlight of the year for Liam was watching Free Willy. He could hardly sit still as Willy jumped to his freedom.

Even when he sleeps, she snuggles Fishy tightly!

Even Liam's mouth is full of excitement - to dentists, at least. He has an extra tooth - fused to another one! It took many dentists and specialists, but they ended up cutting it free and then extracting it.

Liam's enthusiasm and zest for life is contagious and brings smiles to all around him.

"Special Breakfast"

A new Sunday tradition has become "special breakfast." Jared has started to get creative with his special breakfasts. Recently, Dani was out Saturday night, so Jared got to work making breakfast - lemon curd and liege waffles.

 

In addition to liege waffles, Jared made Dutch babies. They were bot super delicious!

Another day, we made a little scrambled egg and bacon wheel with Pillsbury crescent rolls.

39

Simple pleasures for the 39th birthday. Paddle boarding on the Little Miami

and a nice lemon raspberry layered cake. 

Dani decided to take care of the paddle boarding part and outsourced the cake to Nan. It turned out beautiful!

Masks are the latest part of COVID life, and blowing out candles with a mask on is a challenge!

Pictures of quaratine

We are at home basically all day every day, meaning we need to be creative with what we do.

We have set up hammocks and rope chairs in the backyard - a great place to hang out!

The teenagers like hanging out with mom and dad in their room until late.

Nana and Papa are part of our "quarantine circle"

We got WAY too much mulch - enough to do our yard and the Suttons, which the kids did without a complaint.

Daddy can take breaks in his day to read a short story with Torin

Jared's runs are now all in the Montgomery and Blue Ash area.

Masks are now a fashion statement.

With the $1 discount from Kroger rewards, gas was very inexpensive

 

Home church outfits

One of our favorite parts of having church from home having the kids dress themselves. Torin is especially creative with his outfits. We love his style!

Fun at home

We're finding fun ways to entertain ourselves while at home. Kaci gave us an escape room board game to play from home, and we successfully escaped!

Nana gave us a bunch of 'faces' that randomly show up at various occasions.

14!

The first birthday of COVID was a little ... different. We were socially distancing with Nana and Papa, so they came over and celebrated outside.

One of Claire's friends, Maddie, dropped off a box on the front doorstep.

Jacob and Claire had a virtual party with their Oregon friends, playing Jackbox. We could hear them laughing basically the entire time!

For dinner, Claire and Jacob requested some of Jared's homemade pasta

and Dani's homemade bread. Yum!

And for their cake, they wanted the chocolate peppermint tort. Complete with mint chips!

These two kids are good friends, support one another, and are so much fun to be with as they get older.

 

Cooking during COVID

Jared loves trying new recipes so this weekend, he made sous vide ribs - they cooked in the sous vide for 36 hours! The ribs were fall-apart good - so amazing!!! The kids all loved them.

Another brilliant creation we have been making more frequently is peanut butter and chocolate and peanut covered frozen bananas - DELICIOUS (and healthy?)

Jared has recently made homemade pasta a few times. The kids love to help whenever Jared makes pasta. They roll the dough and press it through the pasta maker.

 

Jacob and Claire apparently liked it enough that they requested Jared's spaghetti carbonara for their birthday dinner.

Dani decided to try making homemade hot dog buns for our hot dog dinner - a big step up from the store-bought hot dog buns!

The buns were super hearty, but they were absolutely delicious!

The pretzel bites she has started making are buttery and delicious - and she brings them up hot and fresh out of the oven to Jared!

Dani has also been frequently making homemade bread recently. She starts the dough the evening before and makes it the next day.

I guess we'll throw the Valentine's Day cookie decorating in here.