Oreo's, Ornaments, & Christmas

Luke again.

Recently my Dad got sick with a thing called Guillan Barre and he and my Mom are in Bakersfield, CA until my Dad gets well enough for them to come home. Andrea and I were thinking of how we could help them have a better Christmas and we devised a plan that involved making salt dough ornaments. I ended up really enjoying making them, and so I made like 30. If you want to try it, I think it was 1 cup of salt, 1.5 of flour or something . . . you know, I don't remember. If you need the recipe contact Heidi Williams, that's where I got it. This is what they look like before painting:

Heres what some of them look like afterward. I had a big set of nice acrylic paints that I bought for a class last year, and they really make the ornaments pop if I do say so myself:

While I was making my ornaments, Andrea reminded me that when we were at Mt. Vernon (the home of George Washington) She found ornaments of George and Martha Washington as gingerbread people. They were $10 each and I refused to let her buy them, so she made me promise that I would make them for her for Christmas. She went online and found them and I copied them for her and they turned out pretty fun:

The other project Andrea and I had were our oreo treats. We went to Zupas one night with Andrea's Parents and her Uncle and Aunt. Uncle Derek bought some of the Zupas Christmas treats for us. One of our favorite items were the chocolate covered oreos with crushed candy cane sprinkles. We decided that those ought to be easy and inexpensive enough to make ourselves since Zupas charges like $15 for a tin of them, so we tried it and they turned out very well! All we had to do was melt chocolate chips in our handy electric fondue pot, dip the oreo's in it and sprinkle the candy cane. We had so many they they ended up being our neighbor-treats. Easy shmeesy! Here's what they looked like when they were done:

As for what they tasted like, maybe you'll just have to wait for next year:)

We spent Christmas Eve at my sister Sarah's house in Herriman. Sarah had lots of "horse de orvours" as usual and we had a delicious dinner of potato soup made by Caleb and Lauren, bowtie alfredo with bacon in it, some fantastic jalepeno things wrapped in bacon, and salad. Oh, and pumpkin spice egg nog. After dinner we were able to talk with my parents on skype. It was sooo cool! It would've been so sad to go through all of our Christmas Eve traditions without Mom and Dad, it wouldn't be the same. But thanks to Skype they could be right there in the living room with us watching us perform the nativity play, sing hymns, read stories, and open presents.

Peter had fun playing with his uncles.

Blaze has caught up with Peter! Hopefully they will both become huge Perkins-ish men.

Andrea and I were Joseph and Mary . . . again. I think for the past three years its been us. I have other talent you know. I've proven it in the past! I'm a great inn-keeper, shepherd, wise man . . . and nobody can argue that I was practically born to be the star.

Grandma Perkins got a lot of her Christmas shopping before she went to CA to be with Dad. She bought Peter his first Christmas present, a jumper! He can't handle it for too long yet, there's just so much going on with all of the toys and boy-yoy-yoings, but he has been quite the bouncer lately and I know he'll come to love it. here's a little clip:

After the evening was over we went to the Wright's house. We woke up on Christmas morning and we had received several wonderful presents including lot's of clothes, a new nutri-mill wheat grinder, some games, etc. We spent the day playing all of the games and eating sweets. It was a wonderful Christmas!

Our Beautiful Baby, and other things

I love his juicy smiles!

It's Luke again. Andrea says that Peter does not like to blog with her during the day, and at night we usually don't feel like it, but I've got a moment so I'll catch you up on a few things.

Peter is AMAZING!!! He is the joy of our lives! We love him, we love hearing him laugh, we love hearing him cry, and recently, we have LOVED having him in bed with us at night. It's so fun to see how much he loves Andrea. I guess it may have something to do with the fact that she's got the food, ya know? But he cuddles into her all night long. Even when she puts him next to me he ends up over by her somehow. It's fun to see this little beautiful creature who can't walk or talk or anything, but he knows one thing, he LOVES his mommy and he want's her always! And I get smiles when I come home from work, so that's nice.

Some stuff happened in November. I won't go into great detail. Sarah, me, my Dad, James . . . and maybe someone else had their birthdays. Caleb made a candy land cake. Andrea took me out to gelato. It was SOOO good! I think the place is called Dolcetti Gelato and it's on 9th and 9th in Salt Lake. I recommend the lemon.

School is over! It's very nice to not have so much work to do, but I do miss it!!! I had the most fantastic graphic design teacher during the ladder part of the semester. He kept us sooo busy but it was so much fun. He was one of those teachers that makes you think "oh yeah, I AM in college. This is why it costs so much to go to school."

Andrea has been reading like a mad-woman. We have a library within walking distance so . . . yep. Every week she has a new stack of books and is just bursting at the seams when I come home to tell me what she has learned about that will change our lives. She's fun.

One of the things that Andrea learned about that we have been implementing is Elimination Communication, or EC-ing for short. Or, as I like to call it so people don't get so confused, infant potty training. Basically, babies have little cues or times of the day that they need to go to the bathroom at, and if you pay really close attention you can pick up on them. Then, you just hold them over the toilet and make a "pssss" sound or a grunting sound and they go pee or poop. WHATEVER TO EVERYONE! I know you all think it sounds stupid and crazy and awkward, and the first time that Andrea wanted to me to take Peter potty, I felt like such a dork. "what in the world am I doing, he doesn't know what to do, why do I have to make this sound . . ." but then guess what? HE PEED! And other times HE POOPS! That's right folks. In the toilet. It's pretty cool. I'm not saying that we catch him every time or anything, but I think it's safe to say that . . . at least half of the time we do and the books that Andrea has read about it say that if you are diligent about it, your infant could be trained by the time they are like 18 months to 24 months old!

---hold on! Coming to you live! Andrea was just holding Peter and all of the sudden has jumped out of her seat headed for the bathroom . . . I can hear it! He's pooping! It works people!---

She's a lot better at picking up on the cues than I am, she spends more time with him . . . but anyway. That's one of our new deals that we do.

Peter had a play-date about a month ago. Andrea's friend in the ward brought her 7 month old over for us to watch for just a few minutes while she did something. It was fun to see them interact a little bit with each other. here's a bunch of Peter Pictures:

Recently, if he gets tuckered out, he will put himself to sleep by sucking his two fingers.

I think he's 27 inches and 17 lbs.

Andrea sings in the ward choir. She likes doing that. I take Peter home and it's just us for an hour or so until she comes home. a few times Peter has gotten very desperate for a snack, but usually by then Andrea is already on her way.

Do I/we sound like the most typical new parents in the world? Completely absorbed in our little baby like we're the only one on earth who has ever had one? Well YOU WILL TOO, or you already have :P

I'm going to end it at that. We're excited for Christmas and we hope you all have a good one yourselves.