Our Truman Jeffrey Todd

Our perfect little Truman was born on January 23rd at 8:28pm. He is 18.5 inches long and weighed 6lbs. He is our little angel baby and we are SO in love! The labor and delivery went great! I started some contractions at home around 3pm and called my midwife around 4:30. She said it's time to head to the hospital and we got there at 5pm and had Tru at 8:28pm. It was very fast and there was no rest time in between contractions but I'd rather have it that way and shorter. I went completely natural and I highly recommend other mommies to try it. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced but so worth it in the end. The jacuuzi tub and water tub helped tremendously! Also having a great coach makes a world of a difference. Chet was the best coach ever! He helped me every step of the way and I seriously couldn't have done it without him. We are home and enjoying every second of Tru. We love being parents and are so blessed by our Creator! Thank you Lord for our Tru.

Most amazing carrot cake!

This is the carrot cake recipe that my family has been making for year! Most of the family friends know about it and remember it because it is that good. I decided to share with you all!

You don't want to make this very often because it is not that healthy carrot cake, but it is delicious. Save it for special occasions. I most recently made it for a work pot luck. It is perfectly moist and delicious. I am a HUGE cream cheese frosting fan as well and this has crushed pineapple in the frosting. Oh so yummy!

Carrot Cake Ingredients:

1-3⁄4 cup canola oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1⁄2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups shredded carrots
1⁄2 cup crushed pineapple

Frosting Ingredients:
1 – 8 oz pkg cream cheese (softened)
3 cups powdered sugar
1⁄4 cup crushed pineapple

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350
2. Grease and flour 9x12 pan. Mix oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add in flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add carrots and pineapple.
3. Pour in pan and bake 35-40 minutes.
4. Mix all ingredients for cream cheese frosting.
5. Cool and frost with cream cheese frosting.

I forgot to take a picture of the whole cake, so here is a picture of one left over piece. Enjoy!

~Court

Back at it!

It has been several months since my {this is Courtney} last post. So long that I am scared to even go back and look when that was—so I am not going to!

These past few months have been absolutely crazy and amazing! God is so good. 

Here is a quick re-cap through photos. 

Nick and I took a long road trip to Montana, which was amazing, beautiful, relaxing and so much fun. 

I will do a separate post specifically about our trip to Montana and visiting with Roo and Chet.  

This picture above is Glacier National Park. 

We have had several family members visit us. 

Grandma, Em, Dad and Chris visited us in the fall!

Mom and Dad Parsons also visited us in the fall. 

This is probably my favorite picture from the week they were here. 

We spent Thanksgiving at a deer camp in Texas with Chris, Mom, Ron and a bunch of the Runnels crew. Nick got quite a bit of hunting time in. 

I traveled to California in early December for my sister's baby shower! And it was so much fun. 

While in California I finally got to meet my dearest friend Courtney's little girl, Reese K. 

She is precious.

Mom and Ron braved the cold and the ice storm to join us in Tulsa for my birthday. She even brought me a Nothing Bundt Cake and it was amazing! You should try it sometime. 

Christmas was super! We did not go anywhere and we absolutely loved it. On Christmas day we made a BIG delicious meal for the two of us and feasted on it for several days after. 

We celebrated New Years Eve with dinner and drinks with friends. We were home and in bed by midnight! haha. 

Starting the new year off right!

Somewhere in between the posts above we had lots of snow! This is our house a few days after the snow, we got a pretty good amount. 

My adorable nephew made his entrance into the world on January 23, 2014. 

Truman Jeffrey Todd 

{I'm sure Corynne with post more later}

Lastly, the reason I have not been posting much the past few months is because I have been studying for a big exam. I am a member of the Society for Marketing Professional Services and I took the CPSM (Certified Professional Services Marketer) Exam this last week followed by the Southern Regional Conference. It has been a rough couple of months preparing for the exam, but I am relieved it is over. 

Hopefully I will have some good news in the next few weeks!

Hope you enjoyed my recap of the past few months!

-Court

Baby Shower, Nursery & My Creative Sister's Work

My sister, mom, nanny, Aunt Becky and Shauna all threw me an AMAZING baby shower in California. There were around 55 people and I felt so loved and blessed by everyone. It was truly amazing!!!! It couldn't have been any better. I will cherish that day forever!
I know it's cliche' but Truman's nursery has a vintage theme so my creative sister, Courtney, made all the decorations and art work for the baby shower. I then took it all home and have hung it in his nursery. She did such a FABULOUS job and I love every single piece. She did the definition of Truman, verses and quotes. I have to admit I cried when I read them. She is so talented!!!
So here are some photos of the baby shower, truman's nursery and my sister's artwork.

DIY Projects

It's been way too long since my last blog post. There's several more to come. Chet and I bought our first house in Kalispell and we've been remodeling it since October 3rd. Stay tuned for the crazy remodeling blog. Over the past couple months I've been re-staining furniture and working on things for the house. My Grandma gave Chet and I this awesome kitchen table and I re-stained it then put a coat of polyurethane to seal it. Now I need to find two kitchen chairs.

This dresser we got for free and I should have taken a before picture because the handles were so hideous looking but I removed the handles, stained it, put a coat of polyurethane over it and then put new handles that I bought at Lowes. Now it looks great for Tru's dresser/chaning table.

Lastly, I wanted something different as the main piece of decoration in our fmaily room and I remembered we had a pallet in our shop from when our countertops were delivered. So I got my stain out and stained the pallet and three pieces of leftover wood from our floors. Chet screwed in the wood floor pieces so there would be shelves for frames and such. It turned out great and I'm so happy with it. All of the staining I did with a heavy duty respirator mask so I'm not harming Truman inside my womb! :-)

Well there you go.....Three things refinished and it barely cost us anything.

Pear Butter Recipe

There are pear trees from the same property that we have all our apple trees. Chet had picked pears a couple weeks ago and I had them sitting on our counter for a while. I didn't know what to do with all of them and was about to throw them away when I got the idea I can make pear butter. It's very similar to making apple butter. 

So I started the lovely process of making pear butter and got a recipe from a family friend. I peeled and skinned 20 small pears, cut them up in quarter slices, cut out the core and seeds and let them cook in a big pot with a little bit of water. I cooked them for about 20 minutes until they were like moosh. Then I put them in my Ninja blender and blended until very smooth with no clumps. I put the pear sauce back in the pan and cooked them on low with 1/2 cup oranje juice, a little bit of nutmeg, 1 tsp cinnamon and three cups of sugar. I stirred occassionaly and cooked for another 30-40 minutes until the sauce was thick. 

In the meantime I boiled my mason jars amd lids to sterilize them. Once the pear butter was done I had to taste it, of course, and then put them in the mason jars, and placed them back in the bioling water to seal for about 10 minutes. And there you have it, homemade pear butter. I had some left over and refrigerated it and have been putting it on toast and even cottage cheese. It's so yummy! And works as a great gift. 

Applesauce and Canning

It’s that time of year…Fall! I love it even more now, because of the house we just bought. Chet and I bought our first house in Kalispell and it’s right in downtown and has tons of beautiful orange, yellow and red leaf trees. Another reason I love fall is because apples are ready to be picked. At the families apartment complex are tons of apple trees. We never knew there were fruit trees until two weeks ago, but now that we know it makes the backyard even better. We’ve gone picking several times and have given so many apples away. I made some delicious apple crumble pie, which I’ll have to write a separate blog about. The second thing I made was applesauce and Chet said it’s the best applesauce he’s ever had so I went to pick more. Well I had so much that I thought I might as well do some research online and learn how to can applesauce. So yesterday I peeled and cut all my apples, cooked them with water over the stove, mashed them, and then added some sugar and cinnamon and let it sit in the pan to stay warm. Meanwhile I boiled water and put the mason jars, including the lids, in the boiling water to sterilize them for 10 minutes. I then took them out with tongs and put applesauce in all the mason jars. I left ¼ in. on the top for room. I then sealed them tight and placed them in the boiling water for 20 minutes. Once that step was finished I took them out and pushed down on the top of each jar to make sure it didn’t make that popping sound. None of them did, which means they are canned properly. I enjoyed it so much and still have apples so I bought more mason jars at the grocery store today to do more canning this week. I definitely recommend doing this. It’s fun, very inexpensive and you’ll have applesauce all winter long and they even make good gifts!