Quentin turned 3 months. He discovered his hands. He can roll over from tummy to back. He smiles and giggles. He loves to talk a lot!
Sunday Outfits
We were all matching for church on Sunday so I had to take a picture! It’s definitely not every Sunday where we match. Most Sundays we just try to get out the door and hope that there is a clean white shirt for the boys to put on. Dallin is usually at a church leadership meeting so May Bo has to take the little boys to church by herself. It gets a little crazy on Sunday mornings but we try to keep the Spirit in our home by reading the scriptures and listening to hymns by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
In this picture, little Quentin is only 2.5 months old and Micah just turned 2 years old.
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Random Photography Ramble:
Since there usually isn’t an extra person to take the picture, we usually use the 10 second delay on our camera and set it to take 10 pictures at a time. We usually set the camera on some stable surface or a tripod. The only problem with using a tripod is that there is no one to catch the attention of the babies so our kids are never both looking at the camera.
The Best Chocolate Cake in the World with Chocolate Mousse Frosting
For Micah’s 2 year-old birthday we made pretty much the best chocolate cake in the world. We got the recipe from an Irish friend we met while in Dublin. This cake is sooo good! Really… try it.
The Best Chocolate Cake in the World
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1- 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1/2 canola oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon white vinegar
- 1 cup hot water
Cooking Supplies
- 2- 9 inch round cake pans
- parchment paper
- 2 quart sauce pan
- big bowl
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Butter the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans and fit a circle of parchment paper large enough to cover 1 inch up the side of each cake pan.
- Heat butter, brown sugar, and sweetened condensed milk in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil.
- Divide the sugar mixture between the prepared pans.
- Sprinkle 3/4 cup pecans over sugar mixture and set aside to cool.
- Combine the flour, cocoa, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.
- Add the eggs, sour cream, canola oil, vanilla, and vinegar, and hot water and mix with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth.
- Pour the batter into the cake pans — over sugar mixture
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until a tooth pick inserted into the cake center comes out clean
- Cool cakes in pans for 10 minutes
- Run a knife around the edge of the pans and turn cakes out onto a cooling rack.
- Remove the parchment paper and cool completely before frosting.
- Frost cake with chocolate mousse frosting (see below).
- Add the remaining 1/4 cups of pecans to the top of the frosted cake.
Chocolate Mousse Frosting
Ingredients
- 14 oz whipping cream
- 1 bag of semi sweet chocolate chips
- 2 tablespoon butter
Cooking Supplies
- Hand mixer with bowl or Kitchen Aid
- 2 quart sauce pan
Instructions
- Melt butter in sauce pan on medium heat.
- Add chocolate chips to sauce pan and stir with a wooden spoon until melted.
- Put the whipping cream in a mixing bowl and add melted chocolate mixture.
- Whip until the frosting is fluffy and smooth.
Ireland Miracle #2
Now that we’ve had some time to ponder about our time in Ireland. I’m going to do a series of stories about miracles that happened on our adventure in Ireland. We feel like our trip to Ireland was one big miracle made up of a bunch of small miracles. The first miracle I blogged about happened within hours of our arrival in Ireland. You can read it here.
This post is about one of the final miracles that happened in Ireland and I’ll fill in the rest later. I felt like it was a miracle to have little Quentin in Ireland. He has been our favorite and best souvenir. You can see his newborn pictures here.
We initially didn’t plan on having the baby in Ireland. We thought we would just fly home during my last month of pregnancy…. but Irish airlines wouldn’t let pregnant women fly internationally after 28 weeks. That was a problem. Dallin wasn’t finish with his research assignment in Ireland when I was 28 weeks pregnant so we decided to stay. We changed our airplane tickets to July 25 which is one month after the guess “birthday” of the new baby. We thought since my first baby was 2 weeks early that it wouldn’t be a problem to fly home on July 25. Well, things didn’t go as plan and the baby didn’t arrive until July 4th which is 9 days after my “due date”.
At first we didn’t realize how much paper work and processing time it was going to take to get the baby home to the USA:
- First we needed to get an Irish birth certificate (processing time 4 to 6 weeks)
- Then we needed to schedule an interview with the US embassy (booking 4 weeks in advance)
- We needed to take the Irish birth certificate to the US embassy interview to get a US birth certificate abroad and a US passport (processing time 6 weeks)
- Lastly, we had to wait for the passport to come in the mail
The total estimated time to get the baby’s passport was 10 weeks after birthday which would’ve put us to Sept 12th! We didn’t want to pay more money to change our flights and we really wanted to get back to Utah. So we prayed and I got a priesthood blessing. My husband and I both felt at peace that the Lord’s timing is always right.
We acted on faith after the baby finally arrived. We miraculous got an US embassy interview for July 11 (14 days before our flight date) but we still needed an Irish birth certificate. So we called and requested an emergency Irish birth certificate. The hospital faxed our information over to the government offices instead of waiting for the information to process in the system. We managed to get a copy of the baby’s Irish birth certificate on July 8th. We went to the interview and told the people at the US embassy that we want to fly on July 25 so they marked our application as “urgent” but they didn’t guarantee that it would happen by then. Our faith was indeed tested while we waited for the passport to arrive in the mail. I checked the mail everyday hoping that the passport have come.
I was in distress because we needed to change our flights at least 24 hours in advance! Well to make the story short, the passport arrived within 48 hours of our flight and we flew home on July 25th when our baby was shy of 3 weeks old.
Yep we made it home with a toddler and a newborn infant alive. How in the world did I just give birth and get on a plane to move our family across the ocean? I have no idea except that I felt the grace of God helping us every step of the way.
Well that’s it for now. We have many more miracles to post about!
2 Year Old Photoshoot
Our little Micah turned two! He is so smart now. He knows that you’ve turned off the music toy so he turns it back on. He has day to day memory now so it’s a sad day when he loses his favorite car toy. I can’t wait to experience the terrific twos!! He is so fun.
At 2 years old Micah likes:
- Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Juice, Milk, Pasta, Pancake, Cake, Peaches, Bananas, Bread, Chicken Nuggets, Beans and Rice
- Candy
- CARS CARS AND MORE CARS especially Lightening McQueen
- Shoes… he won’t take off his shoes
- Car games on the Ipad
- Youtube
- Thomas the Train
- His balance bike that we made for him
- TV
- Reading his Thomas the Train Book
- The color blue
- Coloring
- A Blue Yamaha Motorcycle
- Going outside
Micah can say:
- All the alphabet except “W”
- Please
- 90% of his prayers at night
- Count from 1 to 10
- Lots of two letter phrases some of his favorites are “All Done” “Ball Wee!”
- Three letter phrases like “There you go”
- Longest sentence so far “Pee pee in the potty outside”
- Some of Micah’s favorite words are: Outside, iPad, Car, Bus, E-I-E-I-O, Temple (He calls temple bubble), Church, Popcorn, Juice, Food, Cake… cake cake …, Peaches, Baby, Abulance, Air Plane, Ball, Truck
- I would guess he can say about 150 words or more
Micah can recognize:
- All the letters in the alphabet
- Shapes and Colors
- All types of cars
Micah’s favorite songs:
- ABCs
- I love to see the Temple
- Book of Mormon Stories
- Wheels on the Bus
- Old McDonald
Micah is:
- 85% Potty Trained
- Really Funny
- Clever
- Awesome napper/sleeper
- A runner
Family Pictures
My mother-in-law took these cute pictures of our family! She is learning how to use her new Canon 60D. She’s a great photographer!
Donut Falls
We hiked to donut falls. It’s a really easy hike if you start at the Donut Falls Trail Head. It’s only .75 miles until you get to the waterfall. Then you have to climb the waterfall to to see the donut. I highly recommend the hike for little kids. We went with a 7, 5, 3, 2, 1, 0 year old kids and we seem to all make it to at least the waterfall. Then we left most of the smaller kids with grandma and grandpa so we can make it up to see the donut. Don’t forget to bring the donuts!
This is the the waterfall you have to climb to see the donut:
Quentin’s Newborn Pictures
Here is our precious little baby Quentin’s new born pictures that we took at our apartment in Ireland. I don’t do black and white pictures very often but I like it for newborn pictures.
Quentin’s Homecoming!
They let me leave the hospital about 6 hours after I had the baby. It was such a blessing because I only had to be gone from my first child, Micah from 10:00 am to about 8:00 pm that evening. We had a heartwarming experience taking the baby home. Micah was just at awe with the new baby.
Micah said “Baby.” “Hi Baby!” “Happy.” It was so cute. Here’s the movie and a couple of pictures:
Here is our first family picture after coming home. I was so happy to be with home with the new baby and Micah!
This is our friend who stayed with Micah while we were at the hospital. She was happy to meet the baby too!
But don’t worry just because we left the hospital 6 hours later doesn’t mean they abandoned me. The midwives came to visit me at home for 5 days after the birth. How awesome is that? I got to go home to be with my family and sleep in my own bed. Happy day! 🙂
Quentin’s First Pictures
Here are some of Quentin’s first baby pictures. My birth story is written here. These were taken at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street in Dublin, Ireland. These pictures were taken within 1 hour of the birth.
The midwife’s name was Grace. She was the only person other than my husband in the room with us. She delivered, checked the baby and cleaned up. It was nice having only one additional person at the birth. She was such a good midwife! She even visited me at my home before the birth during my pre-natal check-ups and she visited me after the baby was born! It was wonderful. I wish I would’ve taken her back to the USA!
Here’s daddy and the new baby!
Here’s mommy and the baby!
Here Mommy and Daddy with the new baby! Micah, the other brother is not in the picture. He was at home with one of our friends.
Hubbard's Cupboard 
