A Colt For The Colts: Shhh Don't Tell DaDa

Our little Manning, I mean manling, has done his fair share of kicking, passing, and tackling in the 8 months that he has been amongst us but Mama still had to ask...

Are
You
Ready
For
Some
Football?

I think the answer is, "Yes, Go Colts!"

I Scream, You Scream, Savannah Serves Ice Cream: Cookie Dough Edition

Here at Meet The Choissers dot blogspot dot com we would like to extend our hand in gratitude towards Miss Savannah May for inviting us into her home for a special sweet treat...ICECREAM!

Edy's puts the cream in scream.

I think she needs a bigger spoon!


oops, was too busy eating ice cream and trying to remember how to speak German to take any photos of us consuming das guten Eis.

Savannah asked if she could take a picture, for a three old I'm impressed!

This is just a reminder the my heart melts faster than ice cream.

Squish and Squirm doing what they do best, Blondie squishes and Squirmy runs!

The View From An Eddie Bauer Travel System

The follow pictures were captured from Andrew's perspective while he rode 2miles in his Eddie Bauer Travel System around Benton Lake. Despite less than ideal weather conditions we made the most of the cloudy and unpredictable precipitation in Southern Illinois.

















.

Clean Shiny and A Little Grimey

Playing in the tub is fun
its what I like to do.
I dunk my toys one by one
and splash my Mommy too.
Then Mommy leans in the tub
"Its time to wash your hair."
Mommy has to scrub and scrub
but I don't really care.
Getting clean is fun for me
but I fight it every time.
After all I am a boy
I kinda like my grime.

8 Months Old Today

Baby Finger Food

Julie Livingstone: The Pool

Julia Livingstone: Audubon Park

Bacon, Eggs, and Ham

Bacon

Eggs

Ham

Considering I don't have a sewing machine this craft project went rather well, last night I produced a bacon and egg breakfast.

The medium simple; all it took was some felt, yarn, and a large needle.

My ultimate goal is to make several different "felt food dinners", the alphabet, and some numbers.

1 Year Wedding Anniversary

August 9, 2009 marks the celebration of our first wedding anniversary, we returned to the location were married on the Gun Creek Peninsula at Rend Lake where we stayed and reflected on our first year as husband and wife.

Hair Chop

New motherhood finally took its toll and I got the hair cut!

First Swim

Andrew went for his first swim out on the lake and loved it!!

First Music Lesson

It is never too early to get started on music lessons but when you weigh less than twenty pounds the selection of musical instruments becomes limited. Considering that Andrew has already mastered percussion via rattle Mommy decided to direct him towards a more harmonious option, piccolo.

Waiting in anticipation to get started, we listen to a Mozart sonata.
First, Andrew learns how to tune the instrument by adjusting the head joint.

...but we need to work on posture.

Sitting in playing position Andrew demonstrates for the camera how to hold the piccolo with both hands. I would like to note that he was able to place his left index finger correctly without any assistance.

The horizontal hold was a little heavy so Mommy helped out.

His embouchure technique is remarkable!

The Choissers Explore New Harmony,Indiana

We went to New Harmony Indiana last weekend to support Bryan's Stepmother Alice, in an Art/Craft Fair. She makes garden art such as fountains, bird feeders, and charms out of copper. The photo below is a macro shot of one of her stunning lily pad wreaths.

Grandma Alice, Grandpa Randy, and Baby Andrew pose in front of their Copper Penny Garden Art Booth.

Three Generations of Choisser Men smile pretty for the camera

According to my brochure:

"A community that began almost two hundred years ahead of its time,New Harmony was first a spiritual sanctuary that later became a haven for international scientists, scholars, and educators who sought equality in communal living."

We enjoyed the day exploring the historic sites and got creative with some photography.

Here are some photos of our quickly growing family

Leave it to my Husband and Mother to turn a beautiful serene ivy garden into a playground. This is what I get to deal with since I married someone just like my Mom!

Thankfully, this adorable "Father son shot" and "Grammy with baby" make up for their silly behavior.

Alright, my turn to have some fun in the ivy garden.
Now you see me
Now you don't (Heh, gonna have to photo shop my hands out of this

Three generations


....and now and important message brought to you by the Harmonites, "A culture that does not teach prayer soon runs mad with desire".

Ohh another pretty fountain to pose at, I even managed to keep my Husband and Mother from jumping in!

Attachment parenting at its finest
Just call us the Bush family(ducks and hides from democrat husband)
My Mom ran away
Over the Wabash and into Illinois
Finally, I leave you with this loving image of husband and wife hugging along the Wabash River under a tree tunnel. Awww...

Thunder Over Louisville

Thunder Over Louisville is a day long celebration geared to kick off the Kentucky Derby some of the highlights include continuous flybys of our U.S. military aircrafts, yummy carnival food, and the Nations largest firework display! We made our journey to the Bluegrass state, along with 600,000 others, this past weekend to get in on the events and celebrate my husband's birthday.

The Drive to Louisville Kentucky is beautiful, The highway weaves along the rolling hills of Eastern Indiana's Hoosier National Forrest and because I was driving it flew past in a blur of green, I hope to go visit someday but this particular trip had a different mission, "to get four adults, 1 infant, 1 toddler, and supplies parked along the Ohio River without having any major meltdowns and much to our surprise we pulled it off!

Behold Louisville
(The weather was nice despite the overcast conditions)

Bella enjoying herself

Andrew's not so secret talent

Look, there is an Apache helicopter stirring Ohio River water mist into my face, ewww!

I have about 100 pictures of random planes but I'm going to spare posting them since I couldn't begin to tell you what kind they are and leave you with this image. This is a representation flyby of the advancements in U.S Military aeronautical engineering.


Andrew and Mom decide to blow all of her Weight Watcher points on splitting a funnel cake with friends, yay funnel cake!
Daddy rocks tired baby to sleep
Family shot before firework begin
Fireworks, don't worry--Andrew loved the fireworks he was just scared of the camera!
And finally, a video of the firework show brought to you in high definition by David Harpe

Rainbow Fun

My latest project may not taste like Skittles but you can still, "taste the rainbow". Today's adventure is brought to you thanks to my husband's love for silly cakes. Speaking of silly cakes, there is some good stuff over at www.cakewrecks.com and now without further ado I present the technical process of baking rainbow cupcakes.

Normally, I would make my own cake batter but the 3month old requires me to budget time wisely so I had my dear old friend Betty whip some white cake batter up for me.



For taste test purposes I stuck my clean finger in the bowl, took a lick, and proceeded to pour what looked like evenly divide batter into 5 glasses.


...and now the real fun begins thanks once again to my friend Betty and her handy-dandy gel food color tubes.

I swirled the dye on purely for aesthetic purposes, ooh pretty!

As you can see in the picture below I created a ROYGBIV color spectrum with my gel color tubes minus the IV because I'm a busy housewife and don't have time to work with 7 colors, we are a 5 color household.

Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore. Here are the beautiful mixing results!

Now that the primary rainbow spectrum batter is mixed it is time to move on to the layering process.
#1 Wrappers

#2 Layer the colors (I layered in reverse rainbow order BGYOR), just keep laying until you have used up all the batter


#3 Bake according to cake recipe directions


#4 While the cupcakes cool, take an adorable picture of nearest baby


#5 Slap on the icing(hopefully your better at it than me)








#6 Dissect




#7 Eat!

#8- Bonus! As I was writing this my husband sent me a photo of the beautiful rainbow he captured through his window at work!

Happy Birthday Bryan

I'm having anxiety over the suspense of not telling Bryan what his Birthday gift is so without further ado I'm going ahead and unveiling the "big surprise". Lets just hope he actually reads my blog!

Those of you that know Bryan may be aware of his annual trip to attend Thunder Over Louisville. Due to having a baby the chances of upholding his tradition have been slim to none, and I feel bad that we are not getting to go like we did in the past.

Thankfully, his creative wife came up with a back up plan...




A weekend getaway at a hotel that has its own waterpark! Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 76 degrees, if its too cold to swim we still have the HUGE indoor pool to look forward too! Did I mention that the hotel is 0.76 miles away from...THIS?? Oh, and that these fine people are going with us?

Simply Organic Strawberry Pie

I'm a purest when it comes to the beauty of the berry and preservation of its natural deliciousness so I beg you to throw out those jello coma inducing recipes and try this.

The name of the game is Simply Organic Strawberry Pie and we start with the crust. I prefer to make my own because quite frankly its a fun thing to do plus I can control the ingredients and earn bragging rights. If time is of the essence you can kiss your bragging rights goodbye and buy a pre-made shell --shhhhhh, I won't tell if you don't.

Here is a little video tutorial on how to make a pie crust thanks to LiveGreen on youtube.



Blah, mine didn't turn out so fancy but that's my own fault for being cheap and getting a lame pan.



Now we need to fill her tank with some mother nature goodness, 2 cups of sliced strawberries should do the trick.


When you done slicing add a squirt of lemon juice and stick em back in the fridge, hum a show tune, and grab your sauce pan. In a small sauce pan stir to a boil 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 3 tbs cornstarch. When the mixture stars to boil remove from heat and allow to cool. In the mean time kindly throw your strawberries into the pie shell.

When your berries are in place carefully pour the liquid sugar mixture over the berries. Better yet, for a prettier presentation add the liquid sugar mix to your berries before putting it in the pie shell. Clearly I wasn't going for pretty.

Simply yummy.

2 cups strawberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup h20
3 tablespoons cornstarch
9 in pie crust

1. Mix water sugar and cornstarch in small saucepan.
2. Bring to boil stirring often. When mixture thickens and turns transparent, remove from heat add strawberries and pour into baked pie shell.
3. Chill

Got Ears?

I don't think my husband even noticed what I did to his Easter Bunny!

It was supposed to look like this:

Not this:

MMmmm...bad wife, bad!

I hope everyone had a Happy and Blessed Easter, Love The Choisser's

"Closet" Breastfeeding

Dear Pastor of Church,

On Easter Sunday, I was visiting your church with my baby. During the service, I stepped into the nursery to feed my infant son. I asked one of the nursery workers if I could use one of the two rocking chairs, as both chairs were occupied by the workers at the moment and I did not want to set in the unoccupied chair that was lacking arm rests. They quickly offered a rocker, which I appreciated. As I sat down and began to unlatch my discreet nursing camisole to feed my son, one of the workers said, "Oh, you're breastfeeding, here we have a private room for nursing mothers..." and proceeded to drag the armless chair behind a door into a room that is obviously being used as a closet, where I and my baby both hit our heads on various items.

I have several issues with both the room and the pressure that was placed on me to move from the comfortable rocker. The first issue is the safety of the room that has stuff stacked everywhere, it is not a safe place for a mother to feed her baby let alone anyone that has access to the nursery. A child could easily open the door, hide back there, and get crushed. The second is that any church treating breastfeeding mothers with such low regard as to stick them (literally) in a closet, is not a place where a nursing mother is likely to return. The third issue is I went to the nursery and should have been able to nurse my baby there as I started to do. I solved the issue myself and nursed on the steps leading into the sanctuary instead.

I was really looking forward to visiting as this was my childhood church. . Considering that our Lord and Savior was nursed by Mary as a child, I had expected a higher level of respect for the art of mothering than what I found in your place of worship. I am hoping that by letting you know my experience, breastfeeding mothers can become cherished members of your congregation.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.
1 Peter 2:2

Enclosed are the photos of the conditions in which I was asked to feed my baby

Homemade Stuff Rules!

We love homemade items here in the Choisser household, especially ones made just for Mr Squeaks! Here are a few pictures of him modeling some his favorite hand crafted items.


Here Andrew is modeling an afghan that my Mom knitted during my pregnancy. She chose colors to match his nursery.

I had plans to do a series of paintings for the "clover fields" theme of Andrew's nursery but I only finished one canvas that spans the length of the changing table.

Painting for Nursery


In this photo Andrew is sportin' a sweater that my vary talented online "penpal" Beauty4Ashes crocheted him.


I will be back with a picture of Andrew's blanket that Aunt Denise made him its on my other computer ;)

...and last but not least, this little bundle was homemade with love.

TriState Moms

I got upset with a certain local online mommy group that was more concerned with profits rather than the content so I started a new community, Tristate Mom's. So far its been a huge success

As of now we are hosting monthly MNO's (Mom's Night Out) . In March we enjoyed dinner fellowship at Los Bravos, our upcoming April meeting will be held at Olive Garden and we are brainstorming a few other ideas for get-together activities! We are also looking forward to constructing a cookbook in the near future.

Currently one of the members is holding a Spring weight loss incentive program which includes prizes--just in time for bathing suit season!

We are always welcoming new members so if you live in Indiana, Illinois, or Kentucky and are a mommy or mommy-to-be (I also like to encourage newlyweds/to be) please join us at http://tristatemoms.probards.com both mainstream and crunchy mommies are welcome!

Hello Blog

Hello Blog,

I have neglected you. Andrew has kept me busy and now that Winter has subsided I have been finding myself outside more often than not.

As of yesterday, my little boy has been in the world for ten whole weeks!! I love being a mother and absolutely can not imagine life without children--I'm ready for round two ;)

My adventures in Mommyhood have led to so many fun and sometimes frustrating discoveries.

My Mei-Tai wrap (<--see photo) arrived last week and I'm head over heels in love with the thing and so is Baby A. No longer do we fumble with the big bulky stroller and a heavy baby seat when running in and out of stores.

I have also discovered the joy of cloth diapering, it was a little intimidating at first but now that I'm used to it 'sposies are out of the question. Have you ever blown up a marshmallow in the microwave?-- Disposable diapers in laundry have the same explosive properties, except they spew forth hundreds of gross gel beads EVERYWHERE (just don't ask me how they ended up in my washing machine-LOL)!

Now is my chance to get a shower, G2G.

Until next time,
Jennifer

Precious Lamb of God

Andrew's First Valentine's Day