Jalapeno in the eye

Time marches on and I haven't been able to find a minute to post all the cute new pictures and adventures, so here we go.

There was this fantastic deal going on for a free picture printed on a canvas. Only problem was I couldn't decide on which picture to use. So Kate and I took the kids out for pictures, unfortunately we missed the deal, but we did get some great pictures.

I purposely overloaded this post with pictures for grandparents.

I took about 360 pictures that day. About 20 of them were good, and I only loved about 6 (all taken in the first 5 minutes when the kids would obey). Photographing kids is tricky!

Yes, I did have way to much fun with the photo editing software last night.

ADORABLE!!!

I can't believe Alex was this 'kissy' usually she won't let Archie touch her, or is trying to smash him into the ground and get him to wrestle her.

Tyler's favorite.

My favorite.

This is about when we started bribing them with mini marshmallows.

It worked great for a few minutes.

We even got Archie to perform.

This is their "We kissed, now give us a marshmallow" sign.

As ornery as they both can be with each other, I'm so glad that Alex has her Archie. They really do love (and hate) each other like siblings.

By the time I tried Alex and Heidi pictures, Alex was way past cooperating, even for bribes. Her hands are ALWAYS in her mouth when I don't want them to be. After playing in the dirt, during pictures, when meeting new people. Silly girl.

She did hold Heidi for a minute before pushing her off her lap and trying to use Heidi's face to help her stand up.

Heidi is growing like a weed! She always wants to be sitting, even though she hasn't quite mastered it yet.

This is the "Hug each other and you can have a grape" picture. Archie really wanted a grape, Alex was Soooo past being touched and performing.

I love the Archie's face full of grapes look.

This picture is all to reminiscent of a very similar picture where Alex was the baby and her two older cousins, Nicholas and Christian were the toddlers who didn't want to sit still and kiss the babies head.

Here is a great example of what the other 320 pictures look like.

I love this one. Alex and Archie are the same size (Alex is in Archie's pants), have the same nose and pretty much look like twins. Plus the fact that they are always together sort of gives both our families an idea of what having twins would be like.
The other day Kate asked Ben if he was going to be outside with his kids while we were cooking dinner. Today we went to the gym with Archie, while Kate watched Heidi, and I kept referring to them as our kids. I guess this picture just captures that unique closeness for me, a picture of Kate with her kids.

Heidi's gummy smile.

Someone lost a contact.

"Mom, are we done with pictures yet?"

After pictures we came home and had the weekly family dinner at our house! Tin foil dinners!!!! Alex and Arch helped split wood for the fire.

It was a blast. The food was great, the company was great. We cooked cinnamon rolls over the fire in Tonka's (I don't know their real name), I made the PERFECT smore (with the help of Devin's mad marshmallow toasting skills), and Archie got a mullet!!!!

That's right, Archie got a mullet. For halloween. It looks FANTASTIC. It also proves a great point about being judged by appearance. Archie doesn't know he has a mohawk mullet, but somehow when he does something bad, it's like he is extra naughty because of the haircut. I haven't snagged a good picture yet, but check out Ben and Kate's blog for a sneak peak!

So onto the title of the post, while making the tin foil dinners, I lovingly cut up a few jalapeno's for Tyler and Ben to enjoy. I rinsed my hands off after cutting them, but didn't think much of it even though the though crossed my mind that I'd heard once you need to be really careful while cutting peppers. I figured Tyler eats them like candy with his bare hands, I must be thinking of a different kind of pepper.

Fast forward to the cutting of the onions. Eyes watering, eyes being rubbed, jalapeno juice in eyes. Luckily Tyler was around to fix me up, although I think he enjoyed pouring water and milk into my open eyes a bit too much. So that's the trick to remember. Milk first THEN water (water just makes it worse, unless you are rinsing out the milk), and if that doesn't work, as strange as it sounds, dissolving a teaspoon of salt on your tongue finished it off for me! The burns on my face were soothed by ice cream and within 20 minutes, I was good as new. It was a truly terrible experience, especially cold milk dumped into the eye by a chuckling husband, but I'm really glad he was there to help out, and it was a really fun night.