The Weber Ranch and Turning One!

The ranch has been in my family since my great Grandpa Sharp and is loved and cherished by all. We've gone up at least once a year since I can remember, it truly is one of my favorite places on earth. It is so breath taking and still feels so untouched.

This year we went up with my family over Elizabeth's first birthday! I wanted to wait to post for her birthday because other people got much better pictures than me but I'll post this now and re-post later.

Elizabeth was loving her cake although we were surprised how dainty she was with it. She took the tip of one finger and elegantly licked off the icing. I had to try and force her to get a big handful!

Of coarse she needed a bath after!

My camera started to get foggy in the little bathroom!

Etta's Monkey face above that she does when excited.

Cheeser face! Showing off a new outfit!

Stats for first birthday!

Weight: 19 lbs 8 oz - 30th percentile

Height: 30 in - 50th percentile

Head: 18 in - 50th percentile

She has started to walk but is still pretty hesitant. - Wipes your face with a napkin after feeding you. - Says a plethora of words some favorites being car and ball. - Still puts everything in her mouth. - Is fascinated with all things in the bathroom, ie running the bath water, playing in the toilet water, and ripping toilet paper into tiny pieces. - Opens all cupboards and doors. - Makes dog and duck noises. - Loves to be "gotten." - Gives super cheeser grins with her adorable buck teeth. - Is overly friendly and outgoing as always. - Favorite songs: Itsy Bitsy Spider, Old Macdonald, Row Row Row Your Boat, and Head Shoulders Knees and Toes!

We love our little monkey!

We had such a blast and we're so thankful all the family could make it up to celebrate. More to come!

Mmmmm...Best French Onion Soup

~French Onion Soup~

2 ½ lbs Onions
¼ lb Butter
1 Bay Leaf
½ cup Sherry
½ cup Brandy
1 ½ cups White Wine
4 cups Beef Stock
4 cups Chicken Stock
2 cloves Garlic
1 Tbsp Kosher Salt (use less salt if you use salted broth!)
½ tsp White Pepper (regular is okay)
1-2 cups Gruyere
1 loaf French Bread

1. Slice onions ¼ in thick and throw in a sauté pan with butter and bay leaf. Saute about 30 min on medium low until onions are sufficiently golden brown. (Be patient, keep it low and long so they don't burn) Stir frequently!
2. Deglaze with sherry and brandy, let simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Add white wine, let simmer for 5 minutes (I know this all seems like a lot of liquor but trust me, don't substitute and don't scrimp, you wont be sorry).
4. Add stock (this is going to be better if you can actually use stock but broth is okay), garlic, and salt and pepper. Allow to simmer for 20-30 more minutes. The longer the simmer the more flavor the soup and the thicker the soup!
5. Slice French bread and butter lightly. Put in oven under the broiler till it’s golden brown.
6. Ladle up some soup into each dish and top with toast. Add one large handful gruyere over the top and return to the broiler to melt and brown cheese.
7. Eat it eat it eat it!

Serves 4-6 peoples.

YBCR

Your Baby Can Read. Don't believe me? It's true!

Did you know that in the first years of a child’s life, tens of thousands of synaptic connections are made each second in the brain? This opens the door for increased learning capacity. The most natural time to learn any aspect of language is during the infant and toddler years. There is a natural window of opportunity for learning language where it is easier for children to learn to understand and speak our language at a high level. During this window of opportunity, between the ages of 3 months and 5 years, they can also learn the written word naturally and easily. Why wouldn't we take advantage of this opportunity? It is up to us mom's and dad's to get our child on the track to learning and to love learning before they go to kindergarten, or even preschool! I found these videos and thought I would try them.

YBCR is different from baby Einstein and other video's of the sort. I believe they have a few key elements the other videos are missing. Many of the baby Einstein videos I've seen for infants simply have stimulating pictures flashing to music. In the YBCR system even the very first video they can start at the age of 3 months is focused on word recognition and reading. I had my doubts whether Etta would sit through the videos for 30 minutes. At first she could only watch about 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, and with in a week she was watching the whole video. Another thing I like about YBCR is that there is a system. It comes with graduating videos and a plan on when and how often to watch each video. Lastly, it comes with corresponding flash cards and books so that you can have one on one interaction with your child and reiterate what they've learned through the videos.

I also believe that part of Elizabeth's lovely personality has come through doing this program. It has helped her learn how to concentrate and focus on something for a much longer period of time. This means that she is not so impatient and quick to lose interest in things. She also is very self entertaining and independent. I love that I can just let her crawl upstairs and when I go up 15 minutes later to check on her she's sitting in her room reading a book or playing with her flashcards. I'm serious! I love that her books are always the first thing she goes for...sometimes just to eat the book...but you can really tell she loves it and is genuinely interested. Learning to read helps boost their self confidence and communication skills as well which Elizabeth has loads of!

I really cannot stress how much I've loved these videos. There are testimonials of children reading anywhere from 9-18 months old! Now I don't know if Elizabeth is going to be reading at 18 months old, but what if she's reading at 2 years old, or three? That's still ahead of the game. Most of all it's time I can spend with her learning, it's time she can spend alone developing a love for learning, and one hour a day I can get things done and not feel guilty I'm putting her in front of the television! There's no downside and nothing to lose. So what are you waiting for...go....GO, go get them! http://www.yourbabycanread.com/

Elizabeth started the video's at about 6 months. This was taken at 11months, she's gotten even better since then! She reads cards that prompt her to clap, wave, put her arms up, touch her head, her nose, stick out her tongue, touch her ears, her toes, and makes animal noises when she sees duck and dog...etc. She's also started to speak, saying words from the videos. I will ask where's your ball? She'll say baw baw, look around, and find it. Same with her ka...car, her beeebeee...baby, and many other word's she recognizes and understands. She also sings the beginnings of songs. Her favorite is to sing Row, row, row...row, row, row...urr oat, tee da seam!

Grrrrrr! K...so I tried to load my video like 10 times over the last few days and it isn't happenin. So I'll post it without. It was a video where we would put three flashcards in front of us and ask her to pick out a specific word and she would! I think she got like 8 out of 10! Anyway, it's something to think about.

Mi Familia

My family has been in town A LOT lately, and we're lovin it! We've been running all over Utah and Elizabeth has been trying to keep up. Here she is in her new hat!

With her car, and her "this is what I would look like had I dressed myself today" outfit.

With crazy hat hair later that evening.

With the fam getting sushi, of coarse.

We're so glad everyone is out here chillin with us for summer vacation...don't you worry, there's more to come!

Memorial Weekend

We came back from Colorado on Thursday and my little sister Julia thought she'd come along with us for Memorial weekend. It was so fun! We made homemade pizza's and lemon squares (julia's favorite), went to jump on it and boondocks, spent time with family eating and playing games, made tinfoil dinners, and fit in a little shopping.

Every time Julia comes to town she wants to do tin foil dinners, yet every time she comes it happens to be raining. We decided to go for it and hope for the best. We got pretty much all of our meals cooked and some of them eaten before we had to head for the hills and bail.

Etta was of coarse lovin being outside.

Sisters...sisters, never were there such devoted sisters...anyone?

Rob was so tired!

From all this...


But our master chef tried to put a smile on for us through the exhaustion and smoke in his eyes.

Aubrey and Seth joined us...and Kennedy too!


And we had a blast! The food was soooo yummy, the landscape was beauuutiful, and the company was even better.

The next day we went to Magelby's Fresh for breakfast, yummm. Then headed up to the gateway before taking Julia to the airport.

Kujack making some sexy faces at CPK.

The last of our weekend before heading out...may be some more pictures to come. But till then thanks Jules for making it such a fun weekend!

New York New York

Put on the breaks for a minute...let's take a quick stop in Colorado first. So as many of you know Rob and I took a trip to New York. One to visit Rob's sister, two to visit my cousin, three to go to stew's wedding, four ummmm to go to New York? Anyway, so we left and took a quick stop in Colorado to drop Elizabeth off with my parents...good deal right? So we go there and my mom had gotten her all kinds of toys for the week including this Princess bike/push toy/boom box/monstrosity eye sore that Elizabeth loves! (BTW I'll apologize now for strange and blurry photos, my camera was being so weird and then died...so there's hardly any pics! :( what can you do?)

Then we headed out to get her some food for the week at the grocery store and she had her first horse back ride! She was a natural. And I don't even know what this smile is...adorable, I guess that's it.

And this one...

Then we finished off the day with a nice family dinner where Elizabeth was excused from the table for throwing food.

The next morning we were off to New York. As we were standing on the curb in New York both of us were struck by the chaos and flavor that is The City. Both of us have been there, more than once, but it still strikes us every time. New York is amazing. The different cultures, sights, sounds, and oddities that some how find a way to live cohesively in such a small space. The sheer size of the city and it's huge buildings is enough to blow the mind. But then you start thinking about all the people swirling around you going about their lives with all their trials and triumphs and how their story is so vastly different than yours. I just wish I could stop people in the street and ask them what they're about, which of coarse would lead them to believe I'm hitting on them or crazy (as Katie assumes when someone talks to her :). Anyway, so I didn't strike up any random conversations but I still couldn't help myself from smiling at everybody. I never realized I did that so much! :)

So the first night Katie and Jeff treated us to a great dinner in the village...they're so sweet. It had an in house bakery so of coarse the bread was killer. Rob got some delicious fried chicken and I got (no surprises) lamb, which was delectable. The we went back to Katie's to get settled in.

The next day we met my cousin and aunt at the Manhattan Temple. I was so excited (and got no picture! I really can't express how enraged I am). The temple was beautiful and really small! First floor entrance, elevator up to rent temple clothes, I think the baptismal font was the next floor, sealings must have been the floor up from that, and the endowments were the top. The endowment room probably held about 30 people. It really was beautiful and so fun to go with my family. It was so neat to see the different people who had traveled from all around New York and further to come. A few of them gathered outside the session afterwards to greet each other and talk. They introduced themselves to me, asked where I was from, what I thought of their temple, and told me a bit about themselves. So friendly and open. It was night and day from the streets of New York in many ways.

After that we accompanied my cousin to go to the hospital upstate to see her little baby Anthony, AJ. He suffers from hydrocephalus (fluid on his brain) and is going on I believe 3 surgeries at two months old. My cousin seems to be doing so well and being so brave. I think I might fall apart seeing my tiny baby in an incubator where I can't hold for weeks at a time. It was so sweet to be able to see him and share that moment with my family and we keep them in our prayers.

After our visit with them we walked about the city for a while. It actually turned out to be quite cold so we borrowed some winter coats! We walked around Madison, park, and 5th ave making our way over to central park. Robbie had actually never been there (or didn't remember) in all his visits to the city. He was blown away by the size of this oddity and respite in the middle of one of the biggest cities around.

It really is amazing that the park has stayed this way. I hadn't ventured up to the north side of the park much and it's practically like a forest...amazing. We walked through the zoo and as Rob satirically mused all day long, we saw Jason Bateman filming some moving which will surely come to light in a year or two.

That night we went to a great local jazz show (my fav) where we heard a new band and a favorite of Jeff's called the Bad Plus. We then went to a funky little Malaysian restaurant called The Fatty Crab. Loads of fun.

The next day was actually beautiful outside so we headed out to Brooklyn to do some shopping in a cute town called williamsburg. We took the subway of coarse...and I'm not sure why I'm looking so sassy in this picture that I'm pretty sure I asked Rob to take. Haha!

We went to a great little place called Egg for brunch, walked around some vintage shops, went to a couple really cute baby stores, and stopped for an ice cream at Penny Licks. We then headed back and stopped to go to this fantastic Indian market that has every thing you could ever imagine and then hundreds of things you couldn't. I was in heaven of coarse and wished I could just pop down there once a week to cook with some new and crazy ingredient I've never heard of.

That night we cooked some pizzas at Katie's (which has started my now pizza craze/mission to create the best homemade pizza). The next morning we took off at 7 to head to Maryland for the Stewart/Archibald wedding. I was so excited to go inside the Washington DC Temple. It was a beautiful sealing that we were so happy we could be at.

We spent the in between walking around Bethesda then driving around Congressional to feed Rob's golf appetite for the weekend. We then arrived at Ashley's house in Potomac which was an absolutely lovely area that I'm quite sure I could live in. Their wedding was beautiful (as is not evident by my ghastly pictures, again my apologies). We had such a blast dancing and sharing that special time in their lives with them. Thanks for the invite and being such gracious hosts!

We made our way back to NY by about 2 AM and majorly crashed. We woke the next morning to a relaxing day we just spent with Katie and Jeff around the city. Something you must know about Katie and Jeff is that there could not be a more perfect couple for me to spend time with. I love it. Katie shares my passion and talent for cooking and food. Jeff shares my love of all things music. So that night Katie made us some great Indian food and Jeff made us some sweet sweet music! Haha...really though, Jeff is amazing! They have a little recording studio in their living room and upon finding out I'd attempted to write some songs he insisted we record something! It was really so much fun, he had Rob going on the bass, me singing and playing guitar, and he was on the drums. After we recorded it he would play it back and grab an instrument. You want to lay down some trumpet over that? Some piano, some (actually good) guitar? No problem Jeff will just improv you some beats. We had a blast and were so sad to leave the next day. It was so kind of Katie and Jeff to have us stay in their sweet Harlem nest and we hope we're invited back sometime. :)

We headed back to Colorado after that for a few days which I will post at a later date partially because I don't have the pics and partially because this is the longest post of all time.

PS-The Neilson family band sings second rate Sarah originals coming to a store near you soon. Thanks for coming along on our trip with me!

Mother's Day

On Mother's Day Margaret was so sweet and had us all up for a yummo dinner. It's always a fun time to hang out with cousins! This is Etta's closest cousin, Nate. Pretty cute pair!

BYU MIA at NCAA F4

As you all know we are heavily involved with Volleyball around the Neilson house. So of course we were very excited to have the NCAA Men's National Championships here in Provo. On the other hand we were not so excited that BYU wasn't in it. We still went and it was actually kind of weird. We definitely saw some good volleyball which is always fun,but it's not very entertaining when you could care less who wins! I kept telling Rob, "just choose for me, who should I root for?" Anyway, we got to get out, see talented athletes, old friends, and get some free snacks. So all in all I'd say it was a success. Hopefully next time it's here we're the front runners. By the way, let me just mention I'm very proud of my husband and all the BYU volleyball players for how far they came and improved. I'm so excited for how awesome they're going to be this next year!

Like a duck to water...

So I know I need to start taking more pictures of things other than my child. I'm working on it. Until then...

Our little duckie loves, loves the pool.

The baby pools a perfect size for her and she loves her little baby floating tube. She walks around like she owns the place plowing anything and everything in her way. She loves all the little kids around splashing and playing. Definitely a people watching social butterfly! She still needs to learn the concept that putting your head under water equals drowning...!?! However it doesn't seem to bother her one bit so I guess I'll just keep an extremely close eye and let her do her thing. She'll be swimming before you all know it.