Jacob and Abi Beutler Family

For Jacob's birthday party we ate Hawiian haystacks and banana layer cake. Then he opened presents. Ben was so excited about Jacob's presents that he informed Jacob what was in them. It was a great night to celebrate a great person. Jacob is a wonderful husband, father, and graduate student. We all love our Jacob!

One of his few smiles John'll give when we try to get a smiling picture.

Isn't Jacob so handsome. And a good father, to boot!
The kids had a wonderful time at the ocean. Lizzie said, "That was fun!" about ten times on our way to the car. We also had to stop and turn around to say "Goodbye ocean" every five steps in order to drag Lizzie away from the waves.
I'm so strong. I swam like 5 kilometers to reach these slippery rocks and still had the stregth to pose for this shot. Okay, just kidding, I walked out about 5 meters.

Jacob and I have been married for five years. To celebrate, we went out to eat at an Italian place. When we were in Switzerland, we bought a Swiss cuckoo clock for our present to each other.

Last week we had a cookout in our driveway. The kids were fancinated with the fire and we all enjoyed the time together.

I also hunted down a super yummy lettuce wrap recipe and the results were so good, I wanted to document it (see and drool below). I didn't follow the recipe completely, on account of lack of ingredients and laziness. If you make it, you can use ground chicken (I marinated this in the stir fry sauce while I got the ingredients ready) instead of taking the time to cut raw chicken into itsy-bitsy pieces. Also, don't worry about removing the chicken before you stirfry the veggies (I added in two carrots, finely diced). Just throw the veggies in when the ground chicken is mostly cooked. Happy eating! Your kids should love it as long as they can't identify the onions, mushrooms, ect.