Healthy no bake cookies and treehugging

Is it wrong to teach my son to hug trees? I think it's hilarious, especially when I get to roll my eyes and shake my head and say "Darn treehugger" to the other parents at the park. Of course to teach Porter to hug trees, I've had to hug a few myself...

Tried a new recipe today: Skinny no-bake chocolate chip cookies

Basically you replace the butter and sugar with a banana and some honey. They turned out okay, but I definitely miss the butter and sugar. Porter likes them a lot. I think next time I'll dial back the cocoa, also add sugar, some butter and cut out the banana and the honey.

 Here's a link to the healthy recipe if you are interested: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/04/02/skinny-chocolate-peanut-butter-no-bake-cookies/

So, a whole year has gone by since I last drew a paycheck. My repertoire of pureed vegetables has increased exponentially, I know most of the dogs by name on the way to the park, I am on a nodding acquaintance level with half the mom's at the library baby storytime,  I am on a first name basis with half of the childcare staff at the YMCA, own the title of the worst blogger in the world, and I can handle the stroller like a Formula 1 driver. I wouldn't trade the this last year of staying home with the little man for all the money in the world-granted I didn't make all that much to begin with. We are truly lucky to have been blessed by such a wonderful wife and mother who has  provided us this opportunity-hooray for Brit!

Just a little something to embarrass the kid 14 years or so down the road when he starts dating...

One of our favorite new activities is feeding the goats at the zoo. Porter is fearless, he will stick his whole
hand in the goats mouth. He is also a bit of a tease as it often won't have any food in the hand, or even a food pellet shaped rock.

Who needs a wagon? 

A lot has happened since the last post.

As you can see from the photos, Porter has developed an attitude. Turns out he doesn't like the sound of the vacuum cleaner anymore. It probably says something about my housekeeping that I vacuum so infrequently that his outlook on the subject has flipped 180 degrees since the last time. After our run today (about 5 miles through the parks) I had taken off shirt off right before I decided he stank more than I did and needed a diaper change. Mid diaper change he took his revenge by pulling on a few of the sparse hairs on my tummy-excruciating. He is also crawling like a pro now and pulling himself up to stand. He is threatening to start walking any day now. It's crazy how fast he is progressing.

I started Anatomy and Physiology on my quest towards a career in some sort of medical field. So far so good. We just took our first test and I did pretty well. I also actually found the rat dissection slightly more interesting than disgusting.

I paced a friend of my brother, Jayk Reynolds,  for the last 30 miles of the IMTUF 100 mile race up in McCall. Jayk is a beast, he ended up getting 3rd place overall. Luckily for me he'd already run 70 miles before I joined him. We ran together from about 11pm to 7:30. I am told the course is beautiful, but I didn't get to see that much of it(the starts were pretty amazing though). The aid stations/volunteers were great-I'll have to try baked potatoes and bacon mid race more often. To Brittany's relief, this experience has not made me want to do a 100 mile race myself. As they say; any idiot can run, but it takes a special kind of idiot to run a 100 miles in the mountains. 

Picked up another garage sale special. Granted, it's a "Jenny Jump-up" and not the more traditional and more appropriated "Johnny Jump-up," but I think it's healthy for the little guy. Apparently I'm still

We recently returned from our first major road trip with Porter. The car top carrier worked great and we had plenty of room in the trusty Subaru. Brittany kept me from running off the road and we made it all the way to Yachats, Oregon for a beautiful wedding. Can't help but look back at our own wedding and think of all the hard work that Brittany and friends and family put into our wedding and the receptions. I hope they know how grateful that I am and how awesome that it was. Who else had a bounce house at their reception? I wouldn't have it any other way, the last four years have been the best of my life.

Well, we've made it to six months. As you can see by the photo, we've started Porter on solid food. So far he has had rice cereal, yams, wooden number 6s and peaches. I may have jumped the gun on the peaches (I have learned that the citric acid might be a little tough on the tummy at this age). He seems to like everything so far, but I think yams just edges out wood.

Porter is increasingly mobile. He doesn't quite crawl, but he is getting super close. He'll get up on his hands and knees-then fall over. He does manage to get all around the room via the face plow and rolling over. He even managed to roll off the couch once (just once). He's going to be a serious handful once he figures out the crawling thing. It's a good thing for him he's so darn cute.

Loving the summer grass.

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