Our Week in Pictures

Nothing really crazy or exciting happened this week for us. Ryan had Monday off and then work and school and work and work and school and work and work and work and then slept and then worked some more and then took a little break and then worked some more and is currently sleeping.

Rose and I were sick and sick and then sick some more and then tried to stay at home to keep other people from getting sick for most of the week. I cheated a little bit and went to the Provo Rec center to play with her at the indoor playground for a bit and exercised once leaving her at child watch (and I know that makes me a terrible person, but I'm pretty sure that's where she GOT sick, so I'm just paying it forward! and also how can you expect a mom and a baby to be stuck inside for a whole week with only each other as company, huh?! That would make ANYONE crazy! And, for the record I waited until the end of the week to take her to child watch... so there's a chance she didn't have any germs to spread. *fingers crossed* We just had to get out of the house and it's been very cloudy and gloomy around here this week and we live in a basement. So, please don't judge us.)

AAAAANNNNYways, so our week was boring, but we got a few cute phone pictures throughout the week, and I'll just share those and include explanations if necessary.

Happy Sunday!

Rose stopped being cuddly when she was able to start moving, and it's very exciting that she is just barely starting to cuddle with us again. AND she has learned to give "big hugs!" Isn't she cute?

Rose saw my camping hat under the passenger seat and would not rest until I handed it over to her. She put it on and left it there for the entire drive to the grocery store (this was before I got sick). 

Two sickies, cuddling some more. (really, this so rarely happens that I can't help but take a picture when it does.) Also, Rose found her Halloween costume and had to put it on. Of course. 

We found that one magical way to get Rose to sit still is to give her raisins. Other snacks don't do the trick, but raisins are magical. Give her a cup full of raisins and she'll sit with you for at least half an hour (last night she made it an ENTIRE HOUR before she was ready to be up and moving again.) Yes, Ryan is asleep here. Did I mention that he works a LOT? 

Dalmation selfie. 

We attempted to get out of the house yesterday afternoon, so we went to a pond that has a million ducks. However, the pond was drained, the ducks were all still there but they weren't in the water and it was really cold. And do you see that fog? It felt like Washington! We only stayed out for about 30 minutes before going back home. 

More raisins, this is the hour long sitting still session. We were watching Despicable Me 2. 

And last but not least, here is Rose posing in her church clothes because she is just so dang cute and I had to get a picture of her outfit. Also, I wish it was as easy to look stylish as an adult as it is as a baby. 

Is she really happy here or is she plotting something mischievous? We'll never know. Probably both. 

Oh, and if anyone wants to know and praise me for my efforts, I also managed to get the laundry done, and keep the kitchen somewhat clean throughout the week. So, I'm pretty much a super lady over here. I am pregnant you know! 

Sunday Cookies

As part of my goal to be more intentional with my time and as a mom, I decided that we should make chocolate chip cookies together as a family. I had read somewhere that a good way to help with toddler development is to let them help in the kitchen. And I am running out of ways to keep her and me from being bored while we are stuck in the house and I thought baking cookies could be a fun way to break up the monotony.

We don't have any kitchen chairs currently, so I just put all the baking supplies right on the floor and we used the floor as our counter top. :)

Rose helped me dump the regular sugar, brown sugar, butter, and vanilla into one mixing bowl. She also snuck a clump of brown sugar very quickly. She didn't even ask if she could eat it. She just plopped it right into her mouth as fast as a toddler can (which is VERY fast when it comes to sticking food or non foods into her mouth). We delegated the mixing to Ryan.

While he mixed we measured out and combined the flour, baking soda, and salt.

My favorite part about making cookies is eating the sugar and butter mixture, but I found out that Ryan is a little bit of a control freak when it comes to baking. (I had no idea because we've never ever baked together before! In all three years that we've been married!) He let Rose have the tiniest speck of sugar and butter and only let me have a teeny tiny amount too! We had a bit of contention for the next ten minutes while I kept trying to get more (I'm pregnant! I deserve all the sugar and butter I want!) and he kept demanding I bring him the eggs (I wanted to eat it before the eggs were added obviously because you're supposed to be a little more cautious with what you eat when you are pregnant. No raw egg. Sigh.) and saying things like "Baking is chemistry! If you eat too much of this then the cookies won't turn out right!" (I have eaten MUCH more of the sugar/butter mixture while making cookies in the past and they have always turned out just fine.) Eventually, he put the bowl on the highest shelf in our house (no kitchen chairs means I can't reach anything higher than 6 feet. Sigh.) Grabbed the eggs himself, and put them in the bowl and moved the bowl around until every inch was covered in raw egg. He's a monster!

By this point, Rose had lost interest in helping with the cookie dough and was more interested in trying out all the different baking ingredients. I managed to get the flour, vanilla, and baking soda away quick enough. But while Ryan and I were calmly (haha) discussing the matter, she found the open bag of brown sugar and stuck a cherry sized clump of brown sugar right into her mouth before I could get to her.

She then helped us slowly add the flour mixture to the egg contaminated mixture and only missed the bowl a few times. (I was pretty proud that we managed to keep the amount of flour on the floor and us to a minimum. Only about 2 tablespoons, unlike the cloud of flour that I was imagining when I decided to brave this endeavor.)

Her favorite part was probably "helping" me measure out the chocolate chips and putting them into the cookie dough. She was kind enough to taste about 10 chocolate chips (maybe... probably more) to make sure they were safe to use in our cookies.

We then scooped the dough out onto a cookie sheet, placed them in the oven, and then promptly forgot about them and burned the first 12 cookies.

Things we learned:

1) Ryan and Kinsey can't bake together.
2) Maintain constant supervision on toddlers who are very interested in sugar and chocolate. And put away the harmful substances like flour, vanilla, and baking soda away right after using them.
3) Timers are a good thing.
4) Rose doesn't have very good aim when it comes to dumping things into a bowl, and we may need to continue practicing that.
5) Baking cookies together was still a fun family activity and we should do it again.
6) Oh, and all this actually happened a week ago and I ate some cookie dough and the baby is still kicking and I didn't get salmonella poisoning. So, I'm just going to add that to my tally: 
       - "times I've gotten salmonella eating raw cookie dough" = 0 
       - "times I've eaten raw cookie dough" = 65810473534874937138403

Also, in case you are wanting to make cookies yourself, I think the Nestle Toll House Chocolate Cookie Recipe makes some of the best chocolate chip cookies so here is the link to that if you want to try it out. (chocolate chip cookie recipe) By the way, I don't make any money off of my blog, I just do this because I want to preserve memories for my family, so this is not a sponsored post, I honestly just think this recipe is the best. (Except for my mission mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe which is actually the best, but I haven't figured out how to make them turn out right here in Utah, so when I figure that out, maybe I'll share.)

First Ever Warburton Family Reunion

This year was my family's turn for Christmas and ideally we would have stayed in a log cabin somewhere in North Carolina or New Hampshire, but things didn't work out: Emily (my sister) feeling like she needed to stay on her mission until January and not be home for Christmas, and job changes that made it so that getting time off wasn't as easy, and the fact that flying all of us to the other side of the country might cost just a little bit to much for all of us poor college students.

I still really wanted to go somewhere else because every other time my parents have flown up to Utah to visit all of us, they've stayed in Provo or Lehi which makes it very easy for all of us to just keep working and going to classes and just stopping in for a dinner or two and then other than that visiting with my parents whenever we have the time. This time I was determined to get far enough away that we would all be trapped in one spot with no way out. :)

So, we rented a nice little house for a week all the way down in La Verkin, Utah (near St. George and Zion National Park). And it was SO fun!

We celebrated Christmas together on our first full day together (December 29) by getting stockings and doing a gift exchange. My parents thought it would be hilarious to give us all money, but we had to get to it before it belonged to us. They had found these funny little puzzle boxes where you have to get this little metal ball around a maze to a specific spot that makes it possible to unlock the box. It was super difficult! And super funny to watch everyone trying to figure it out. I gave up, and had my dad try, and then ultimately Ryan solved my puzzle box. :)

Oh, and look at these adorable monster slippers my mom got for Rose. Have you ever seen cuter monster feet??

On Monday, my dad took everyone that wanted on a 16 mile bike ride through Zion National Park. I didn't go because I am totally out of shape and my lungs are being compromised by a little alien baby inside of me. But those who went seemed to have a lot of fun. Those of us who don't like exercise drove down to the little town at the opening of Zion to have lunch and wait for the bikers to come back so we could have bumbleberry pie. (Except they all wanted real food, so I'm the only one who had bumbleberry pie.) On the way back home we stopped at a rock shop, because I love rock shops and who doesn't have a little child inside of them that tells them that rocks are cool and worth picking up and sticking in your pocket? (except I didn't pick any of these rocks up to stick in my pocket because that would be called stealing.)

On New Year's Eve, everyone was a little tired and grumpy so we decided to find a video of the ball dropping in a different country so we could watch it at 9 pm instead of waiting until midnight. We watched the Dubai New Year's Eve video and I have to say that I really enjoyed watching that one. The music was much nicer than whatever pop music normally plays here in the US. The house we rented had shot classes so I filled them all up with Martinelli's Sparkling Cider and we all toasted to the new year. We also bought those fun cracker things to pop at midnight (ahem 9 pm) and we got those out too. They all came with colorful paper crowns that everyone was required to wear for a group picture and then we played games until everyone decided to go to bed.

Rose was actually asleep for the celebrating of the new year, but I just love this picture of her and my mom. 

We ruled out actually hiking through Zion National Park because Carson isn't much of a hiker, but one of my favorite hikes ever is at Red Cliffs State park and I dragged everyone along to that, even Carson, who declared after walking about 10 steps that he "hates nature!" haha He's a good sport. ;) Ryan took me on this hike on our honeymoon 3 years ago, and it's so fun and pretty! You have all the beauty of the red rock, and there are little caves and nooks that you can crawl around and a giant old dead tree that's hollowed out that you can stand inside and another cool tree that braver people than I can climb (Ryan and Jared) And at the end of the easy part of the hike there is a little pool of water and a waterfall. It's the perfect hike for a family like mine that grew up with basically no hiking. And it even turned out to be the perfect hike for me, with my pregnant belly and compromised lungs.

On the last day, just before leaving, a group of us drove to Grafton, a small ghost town in the middle of nowhere. There's an old church/schoolhouse, and a handful of houses. It was super cool to walk around and the sunset was so pretty. We didn't stay for long, but I would like to go back again and explore a little more.

Rose gets a little nervous when she's separated from me, so she was a bit upset when my dad took her into this dark building to capture this picture, but how sweet is that smile when she saw that I was right there? My heart! <3 

The only downside to the trip was a stomach bug that decided to make it's way around. I spent all day Monday throwing up. After a shopping trip in St. George I asked my mom to pull over so I could throw up on the side of the road. People in St. George are nice, because two cars pulled over at different times to make sure we were alright. I thought it was just morning sickness, so we told them everything was fine and they went on their way. I threw up 2 more times for the rest of the day and never really felt better so I went to bed early.

On Thursday night, Ryan and my mom spent the whole night throwing up and were sick for most of Friday, so obviously it wasn't morning sickness that was going around.

Other than that, the trip was the wonderful mix of eating lots of good food, playing games, relaxing and exploring the area. We didn't do anything crazy special, but I think it was a perfect break from the reality of life. I didn't have to cook anything or do any dishes, my mom didn't have to take care of my grandma for a week, Carson got to watch lots of tv, Rose got all the attention she loves and deserves, and everyone else got a break from work, school, and homework.

Carson missed his friends and Texas, and Ryan missed his music but other than that I hope we get to do another vacation like this someday and it will be even better because Emily will get to be there. And we'll have another little girl running around with Rose. <3