3 years?!

I can't believe it. Porter was born three years ago. That just doesn't seem possible. Eventhough he is mistaken for a 4 or 5 year old sometimes. He is still my little boy. I love him so much and am glad that he came into our family. Life wouldn't be the same without him.

Porter wanted to have a dinosaur party (with a little encouragment from me) and we had a blast. He loves dino's now and Adie even knows how to say "dino". He invited some of his friends over for a party of games, cake and ice cream. The cake didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to and everyone was at our house before I even got to ice it. But the kids and adults knew what it was so that was ok. It was a great learning experience for me. Porter picked out the color and this was his stegosaurus cake. If you ever talk to Porter about his party he calls the spikes on its back "bones" and he usually refers to the ones on his tail.

Porter got shoes and the coolest dinosaur from grandma and grandpa Nielsen. It moves on its own and Porter has finally conquered his fear of moving toys (with the help of this dino and Adie, she never was affraid of it) and he plays with it non stop now.

He also got his own kitchen to play with. He likes to make Adie and me lunch. He is going to be a little chef with how much he likes to cook with me. So now he gets to make his own. And he and Adie play with it together really well. This is the other thing that he doesn't stop playing with.

We even had a picnic on Friday with his kitchen stuff (and real food) for lunch. The kids were so excited. The just sat there and ate. We had lil smokies wrapped in crescent rolls, clementines, carrot sticks, and milk. Adie had to have one little hot dog in each hand at all times in order to be happy. It was such a blast. Maybe we should do that more often.

He got a whole bunch of other presents too that I just didn't take pictures of. He got some really fun trucks (fire and ambulance), a whole bunch of clothes, road signs, bath crayons, and a dino quilt for his bed. He was jumping up and down the whole time saying "presents just like christmas!". It was so funny. I sure love that kid.

All you can eat salad bar....

So I know this is totally going to be a long post, just consider yourself forewarned. I really have just not kept up with it and had about 70 pictures on the camera. So here you go.

For New Years Eve we had the Goode's over for our special dinner that we do of all appetizers. It was so much fun. I actually made more thinking we wouldn't have enough food. Boy was I wrong. For dinner we had: fried mozzarella sticks, potato skins, chicken wings, hot spinach artichoke dip, veggies, fruit dip with toasted cinnamon sugar tortillas, stuffed mushrooms, wrapped lil smokies, and nacho cheese dip and chips. I think that is everything....oh, martinelli's and raspberry gingerale. It was absolutely delicious, especially considering that we had several things that nobody has ever made before. This picture is after most of us were done eating, except Roland (I think this was his second time back) and Adie who is my bottomless pit. Wow, did all of us over eat.

We also carried on the tradition of clown ice cream cones. But seeing as how there are no Baskin Robbins nearby, and we are cheap, we made our own. It was so much fun but the kids didn't really understand how to eat them. It was funny. So here is how they turned out, and all the kids eating theirs.

This snow fell in all one day sometime after Christmas. Idon't remember what day. Then it just kept snowing. We had like constant flurries for about a week or so. It was crazy!

And we had the coolest icicles which after I took the picture, we knocked them down. And I seriously mean Eric out on a chair with a hammer knocking everything down so it didn't break our gutters off. We couldn't even get the Christmas decorations down until just a couple of days ago when all the ice and snow melted off of our porch railing.

We went to a party that our friends the Moellers had called "fry on the pounds" where they deep fryed a turkey (which is really good) and then told us to bring anything that we wanted to try deep fried. It was so much fun. We had battered french fries, fried ice cream, and all kinds of goodies. Here are some of the other things.

fried cheese sticks

battered and fried oreos (the kids loved them)

and we also had deep fried pineapple dipped in a butter and brown sugar concoction which was actually really good I thought. But we could all feel not only our pores clogging up, but our arteries as well, so we stopped eating around 4 and we didn't eat the rest of the night.

And this is what our kids looked like on the way home.