Mardi Gras

Happy pi day! In honor of the event I made a tamale pie for dinner. Actually it was just a coincidence but oh well. Maybe next year there will be a real pie. We did however celebrate Mardi Gras last Tuesday. As some may recall, Chris served his mission in Louisiana, so we feel like we are justified in our New Orleans celebration. The previous week we made gumbo and jambalaya to get into the spirit. We broke out the beads (we only have two pair-but one has sweet rubber chickens) and the babies loved them. Jack tried to play with Levi’s, which left Levi sad and Jack trying to look innocent. 

I also followed our tradition of making a king cake, complete with a baby inside that I found on the very first slice.

Last time we showed Jack’s primitive steps, so now we can officially declare: Jack can walk. It was on his 10 month day when he decided to walk to things on his own accord. The motivation was to get goldfish from the Bishop’s wife during relief society, which he went and got several times during the course of the meeting. Since Jack never crawled (and still doesn’t) it has been fun for us to see where Jack wants to go and see him get there on his own. He can walk any distance he chooses to now, but still has some trouble picking himself up if he falls. We have seen him get from laying to standing on his own, he just doesn’t remember that he knows how to all the time. We still laugh as we see him walk, he always has his arms up in the air and twirls his wrists as he goes.  

In other news, the tie is back! I am so excited to be in a new clothes size because he can wear a white shirt and tie again. Jack doesn’t seem to mind. 

And now some random other pictures:

Jack likes to increase the entropy in our house by always pulling anything on any surface he can get to onto the floor. He was playing with some of my old flashcards (in case I ever feel like learning my chemistry again) and came over and sat on my leg with two of them in his hands. My camera was right there so I just had to get a picture of him “studying” chemistry. He is also wearing overalls and they are cute.

 All winter we have been meaning to get Jack out in the snow since he has a great snowsuit, but we never got around to it and were always pushing it off thinking there would be other chances. Then it became late February and in so I had to make quick use of a small dusting we had one morning (the last snow that we have seen here and probably the last of the season). Jack really wasn’t a fan once he couldn’t get the snow off his hand, so we went back inside. At least we got the picture.

This picture makes me laugh. What is sad it that we actually took our child out in public looking like this. It was just a walk to the library but still, the hat, the socks, and his expression are too much.

Not pictured: Jack is starting to imitate weird sounds that he hears, like Levi's talking and me blowing my nose. He's not as willing to imitate our words though. He used to seem like he was making an attempt at cracker, but we haven't heard it recently because he knows we will give them to him anyway. He is quite good at chirping like a bird or a puppy.