Idaho Falls Zoo!

Jackson and I headed to the Tautphaus Park Zoo in Idaho Falls the other day. They had just opened the previous Saturday, so we decided to check it out.

It was a lot of fun! Jackson's favorite part was when we went to their petting zoo. He especially loved the goats. The goats would stick their faces to the fence and Jackson would try to touch them. Then, the goats would lick his fingers and Jackson would laugh and giggle every time! I wish I got video of it, but unfortunately I didn't act fast enough. We also were able to see a news crew there doing a story on the zoo. We came just in time for us to see one of the penguins hopping down some stairs and walking around while they filmed. The little penguin was so cute! Jackson wanted to touch it and kept reaching out to it. So Cute. Jackson also finally figured out how to wave while we were at the zoo too. We were looking at the emus and I was waving to it, trying to show Jackson what to do. Then all of a sudden Jackson started waving to it too! Yay! Now, if only we could get him to wave bye-bye to Daddy when he goes to work. Maybe I need to get Jarred an emu costume.

The zoo was just perfect. Not a huge zoo with tons of walking, but just the right size. We only spent about an hour and a half there and we got to see everything and Jackson didn't get cranky! Win Win! I loved it so much that I decided to get a membership there so we can have a lot more adventures at the zoo this summer!

Another Pinterest Creation!

Well, I've made something else from pinterest, and I'm so excited about them! I love them so much and needed to share some pics!

My inspiration for these was this. I thought they turned out so great and a big plus is that they are so EASY! Seriously! My mom came up to visit during her spring break and one night after Jackson went to bed, we made all of these. So here are the supplies:

glass vases

Permenamel Surface Conditioner (I got mine from Amazon,

but you should be able to get it from a craft store like Michaels)

Permenamel Paints (I got this from Michael's. the 2 oz bottles were on

sale for $0.99!)

Paint brush

We cleaned the vases with hot soapy water and dried them completely. Then we poured some surface conditioner in. Its like the consistency of water, so you only need a little bit. We swished it around until all of it was covered and just poured the leftovers back in the bottle. Let this airdry completely. It is alcohol based, so it dries pretty fast. Then add some paint in the bottom and swirl it around, using the paint brush when needed until the entire surface is covered. Most likely you will have too much paint. I let it drip out into a cup as I swirled it around. I also used just the back of a plastic spoon for some of this because it doesn't leave any weird brush strokes. On one of the vases I had the vase drying right side up and as the paint gathered at the bottom, I simply spooned out the excess a couple of times. It worked great. I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable putting water in these for fresh flowers because I didn't use any kind of sealant on the paint. I don't even know if thats available. Some of the vases were a little scary looking on the inside, but they all looked great on the outside! I'm so happy with how this turned out. I feel like my kitchen is ready for spring too!

Happy Birthday Jackson!

Okay, so this is a little late, oh well. Jackson turned one on March 28th! We decided to celebrate it early in Utah with family. We headed down the weekend before his birthday and had a blast with both families! He had a lot of fun enjoying his piece of cake all to himself too! He was hilarious when he first ate it too. He has had all sorts of nibbles of cake, cookies, chocolate, etc, but this was the first time he had an entire piece to himself! When he was presented with the cake on his tray, he looked at it for a second, picked a tiny crumb off and put it in his mouth. Then he held onto the sides of the tray with both hands and dove his face right down into the cake! He has never once done this for any other food! It was great! Jarred was able to get some video of it, but last time I tried to upload a video, it never went through, so no video for blogger. He ate pretty much the entire piece. The only bits he didn't eat were the little crumbs and the little pieces that fell to the ground. Don't worry though, that wasn't wasted cake. Jackson's cousin, Gavin, took care of that and promptly ate those up! Jackson was especially lucky this weekend because he got another birthday party at my parents house the next day too! This time with the cake he grabbed the whole piece and tried to shove it all in his mouth at once. He was so funny and we loved that we decided to just spend time with family and get great pictures of Jackson eating his cake! We had a lot of fun visiting and spending time with our families and Jackson's cousins! It is so fun to see him interact with the other babies!

Jackson also got a table and chairs for his birthday and here was his first piece of artwork he has made using this table.

He loves sitting in his little chair and he had a lot of fun painting for the first time. Good thing I bought washable non-toxic paint. If you look closely, you can see that he tried to eat it. I'm really excited to see what other masterpieces he makes with paint and other mediums! At this point, paint is all he likes, well he does like crayons, but not for drawing just eating.