Happiness

Old School

I stumbled across this picture of Eliot from just before his first birthday. It makes me laugh every time.

Sandside

While I realize that I have not been a very prolific blogger recently, I thought it only fair to tell you that the Butters are on vacation on the eastern shore this week, and will hopefully return with lots of photos, and only 8th degree sunburns.  

From the depths

In an attempt to work as much as humanly possible given my other job as Grower and Nurturer of Eliot, I have neglected my blog. I will likely continue this trend until next week when we are on sweet, sweet vacation at the b-e-a-c-h. Hang tight everybody, I will post pictures of your most favorite Butter soon.

I wanna hold your hand

Eliot is a born traveler.

320 stickers, 15 library books, 4 lollipops, 5 packs of 'fruit' snacks, 2 bags of Veggie Booty, one portable DVD player, 2 oranges, 4 strawberries, 3 bananas, and 5 iced coffees equals an 11 hour solo driving trip with a two year old.

And we survived.

And dare I say it? It was fun. We had fun. A lot of it.

And that was just the drive. We had a week of lots of family, friends, and ice cream cones. In 6 days we managed to see: Jonah, Lucy, Emmett, Parris, Bronte, Lila, Rosalie, Sylvia, Easton, William, Christina, Madeline, Ruby, and Henry. Those were just Eliot's friends. And sadly we didn't have enough time to see everyone we would have liked.

There was a lot of hand holding:

Eliot and Lucy.

Bronte, Eliot, and Parris.

Eliot and Ruby.

The trip itself seemed to mature Eliot. He was up for anything. He started noticing and playing WITH his friends instead of beside or against them. He shared.

Part of me felt like we never left St. Louis. But something was missing. Oh yeah- it was Justin. We both missed him. A lot. And I even missed Pittsburgh a little.

Eliot and I survived the drive home with as much ease as the first trek and I feel confident that it's a trip we can take again. As soon as I replenish my stockpile of lollipops.

Lovely

Eliot and I were having lunch outside yesterday when he looked at me and said, "Mommy, we are beautiful. The whole wide world is beautiful."

In that moment, I had no choice but to agree.

Still Alive

Eliot and I just returned from a whirlwind 7-day, 1200 mile roundtrip adventure to St. Louis. Here's a picture of Eliot holding our brand new baby cousin Madeline to tide you over until I can tell you more....

The Caped Crusader

Costume design by Eliot Visnesky.

Please excuse my heavy breathing - I ran down and up 3 flights of stairs to grab the camera in order to capture this amazingness.

Mini Update

How to have the best birthday/Mother's Day weekend:

• Plan to sleep in and wake up early and refreshed instead
  
• Snuggle in bed with your boys
• Let Eliot open your presents
• Eat Indian food at every available opportunity
• Stop for a drink at an outdoor patio when you are supposed to be running errands
• Eat homemade chocolate cake with peanut butter icing
  
• Watch cousins play
• Eat lots of white bread with butter
• Drink good wine
• Repeat
  

Suzy Homemaker

Last week before the incident, I went into kind of a baking frenzy. I made, from scratch, for the first time ever, homemade (did I mention they were also handmade?) bread rolls. With yeast. AND FLOUR.

After hours of rising, they are ready for the oven.

The finished product.

There is nothing more satisfying that watching your child enjoy something you worked hard to make!

We also had a huge crop of brown bananas that I didn't want to banish to the back of the freezer with false hopes of bread and muffins, so I set to work. I went a little overboard and ended up with about 2 dozen muffins, far more than our little family could eat. I put them in a container on the counter and Justin took some to work to share. I should have just put the leftovers in the freezer.

And then we were invaded and I had to empty my pantry to protect our dry goods. I tried my best to 'organize' all the remaining food, but was forced to stack some things. And I forgot about the muffins. Until now:

Muffins anyone?

What a cute little bunny! I mean, what? I know it's kind of a hard to see in this picture (I'm still figuring out my camera) but this muffin seems to have sprouted a little cotton tail. It looks like actual hair. It's gross, I know, but at least I'm not posting a picture of a RAT BIGGER THAN A KITTEN.