This week we received the official certificate for one of Koa's birthday presents - one share of Starbucks Corporation stock. His Uncle Wes and Auntie Jessi got if for him from OneShare.com. Now we can all have our $4 lattes and feel like we are contributing to a college fund somewhere far, far away. You will find a photo of said certificate in the Koa's First Birthday! photo album.
While you're browsing the photo albums, you might also want to visit Foster Koa @ 1 Year Old and see pictures of him on the hunt. We have some frogs who live in our front yard (in our Bird of Paradise tree) who are rapidly becoming more and more afraid when they hear a little voice say, "Ohhh, oooooh, yeah!" We've been fostering this fascination since he was probably about five months old (maybe younger). When we would come home after dark and see frogs in the yard we would take him over and hold him above them to see if he could see them and if he would try to touch them. You may remember that before "Littlest Duck" there was "Mr. Frog" (His first favorite toy), so we thought he should get to see what a real frog was like. Over time he has become more and more interested in them. Now, he is what you might call a "frog stalker". If we come home at night, as soon as we take him out of the car and start heading down the sidewalk he immediately starts in with, "Ohhhh, Ooooh!" and the frogs start lookin' for cover! We finally decided it was time to document it. I think he had the most fun the night we took pictures because the light from the camera helped him see them better. He was scrambling up the hill and through the bushes to get to them. It was really fun to watch and help him spot one that hadn't successfully hidden yet! And yes, he does catch and touch them with increasing frequency (soon we'll have to teach him to be a bit more gentle towards the frogs)!
Along with the frogs in our front yard we also have lots of plants. As Zak likes to say, "you can take the girl out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the girl." So, I have a quite a few plants that I've been mothering for a while and I have a few new ones I thought I would share. You can find pictures and a little description of a few of them in the Kathy's Spring Foliage album. I plan to update the pictures as they continue to grow and produce. This year I have started growing herbs which I have really been enjoying as I have also been learning to cook more since I have become a stay-at-home mom.
Although I don't get to use my herbs very often in desserts, I have also been having a lot of fun learning how to make some of those that we've had at fancier restaurants. We mentioned in a post previously that we had made chocolate souffle and it turned out really good. Well, last week we had some friends over and tried our hand at creme brulee. Well, this one wasn't quite a success. I'm not sure if it was the recipe or my execution of it, or just my preference for a certain texture, but it was a little too much like flan. If anyone has any input on what I did wrong I am very interested in hearing it! I also tried to use the broiler instead of getting one of those cool kitchen torches. It turns out I am just going to have to get one of those if I am going to be a success (shucks!).
One of the ironic things about us and our fancy deserts is that we always seem to decide to try one of these when we are having a not-so-fancy dinner. For instance, when we made the souffles we had turkey sandwiches for dinner. With the Creme Brulee I served sloppy joes (which is also ironic because we almost never have sandwiches). I had tried a new recipe from Robin Miller and we really liked it. You might enjoy seeing just how much Koa enjoyed the leftovers the next day when you check out some of his latest pics. That is one of those instances when lunchtime leads right into bath-time!
So far potty training seems to be going pretty well. We definitely have good days and bad days. We've employed a technique that some folks at church used to potty train their little girl - a timer. We set the timer in the bathroom to go off every 30 minutes at which time we take Koa to the potty (the timer is more to help us be consistent rather than Koa!). This system gets Koa used to being dry and only using the restroom in the restroom instead of in his "big boy" pants. As time goes by we gradually lengthen the time between potty trips while working on Koa's "signal" to give us whenever he needs to go. So far it has been rather hit and miss, but we have seen improvements. Koa now stays dry more often than he doesn't.
In lieu of this, we are not sure we "manage [our] children well," but apparently the church does because they made Zak a deacon last Sunday. They had us come forward before the closing prayer where they gave us both a lei and introduced us to the congregation. Zak is now heading up the Small Group ministry of our church, which means he'll be starting up a Small Group ministry for our church! Hopefully Koa doesn't get us demoted!
