halloween

Carmen was a homemade tinkerbell fairy thing.  Not my best work… but she still looked pretty cute.

Here she was for her preschool party:

I really liked the eyelashes… which she yanked off 5 minutes after she got to school.

We carved some “punkins”.  Carmen’s was tinkerbell of course, and I made Moseley’s a pac man inspired jack-o-lantern.

We headed up to Huntington for the Black’s Halloween party.  We forgot the green eyelashes so Carmen shared some of Kaia’s orange ones.

Look how awesome that gnome is.  And the pic doesnt even do it justice, because you cant see Kardiff’s swagger while he was wearing it.  Cutest thing ever.

Of course the night of Halloween Carmen wanted to match Kaia, and wouldn’t wear her green shirt, only the black “underneath” one.  Whatever.

Here is Carmen holding up my adorable little shark… in all his rolly glory.

Ah… that dimple!

Mose didn’t really get the trick’r treating thing. And I mean, how scary can you be when you are strapped into a stroller covered with a blanket?

Thrilled.

However, when we got back home and the kids all dumped out their candy to survey the goods, he got to roll around in it like it was money.

He was making all the kids so mad by putting all their candy in his mouth with the wrappers on.

Yeah. put a nice camera in my hand, and the only thing I can get in focus is the bucket.  Fail.

Oh well, someday I will learn how to use a real camera… Until then I will leave the picture taking up to my talented friends.

the fourth

I actually took a whole mess of pictures this year, so buckle your safety belts because, yes, I do feel the need to share EVERY SINGLE ONE.  Ok so I left out a few choice swimsuit shots of people… but that was for the good of everyone.

These are in no particular order.

He makes me melt like a Popsicle, on the fourf of July…

The people with the huge army parachute were back, so the kids had fun playing with that.

Uncle Ryan and his girlfriend Annie came to visit.

So did Grandpa.

I just love how, when you go to a crowded beach, there are always tons of hotties in minimal clothes in the background of every picture of your kid being cute.

Carmen playing football.

Also Cousin Erik came to visit.  It was a house full of Eric/ks.  (my dad’s name is also Eric… for those who didn’t know)

Erik and Moseley have the same taste in fashion…

I made some yummy root beer float cupcakes… deceptive because it looks like chocolate… but still yummy in a surprising way.

We ate some delicious church’s chicken, and went home to watch the fireworks, and listen to the pachanga pow wow from our front yard.

Carmen was pretty excited about the fireworks.

It was a really fun day.

The next day was fun too because we woke up, ate some homemade waffles made with my own ground wheat (sorry I always have to pat myself on the back for that one).  Then we played guitar hero  for the rest of the day.  I unleashed my inner rock star.

Those little rocker guys are like, my favorite part of that game… Oh who am I kidding,  I love this game.  Everything about it.  I like to imagine myself as a real rock star, and when I hit a particularly electrifying note and the crowd goes nuts… Man there is nothing like it.  I like to think that would be the part when the ladies all start throwing their bras up on stage… Oops wait, no… that would be weird.  Sorry, that took an unfortunate turn. :)Anyway enough geekin’ out about some video game.

It was a great weekend, and I had a ton of fun.  Holidays are always more fun when you spend them with people you love.

easter

Carmen and I colored Easter eggs the other night.

Carmen was very particular about her Easter eggs. Most of them got dunked into the pink first and then when she ran out of white ones (and got denied when she tried to take mine…What? coloring Easter eggs is fun for me too) She would then dunk them in green making them a very interesting shade of nasty. Then she would drop them and crack the shell. Then she would cry. Then I would peal it and ask her if she wanted to eat it. Then she would get stoked (she loves eggs). Then she would scarf. Then she would crack more so that she could eat those too. None of hers made it all the way through the process to the taking of pictures.

In the morning Carmen had a lot of fun hunting for Easter eggs. Not as fun as last year with the cousins… but this will be the last year she has to do it alone, since next year Moseley will be able to walk too.

I broke one of my own rules by buying gifts for Easter this year… I just always thought that I wouldn’t do that when I was a parent. I thought it would lead kids to expect gifts at every holiday. However, when all the birthdays and Christmas fall within two months, and you want to get your kid a toy at another time in the year because you have finally found something that will actually keep their interest and not collect dust in the toy box after the first five minutes, and you don’t have any other excuse… what do you do? So Easter was my solution this year. Oh well, she’ll just have to get used to disappointment if she thinks it will happen every time. We got her sleeping beauty…  She squealed with delight.

So now our house is filled with too much candy.  One thing I love at Easter is Cadbury creme eggs.They are so good, but only once a year.  Unfortunately I decided to get my Easter candy this year at walmart, and apparently getting it a week in advance was too late, because it was totally picked over.  They only had the mini cadbury creme eggs.  This is dangerous because usually, with the big ones the creme to chocolate ratio makes you get sick of it half way through and all sugared out by the end of it.  With the minis there is equal chocolate to creme… Which pretty much makes it impossible to stop eating them (I can have one more, they’re mini).  Anyway besides the fact that walmart only had the mini ones, they also didn’t have my other favorite easter candy which included chocolate marshmallow eggs and starburst jellybeans (i love the pink ones).  So I thought I was being crafty by just getting the generic brand chocolate marshmallow bunnies, and jolly rancher jelly beans.  The jelly beans were questionable at best, and the bunnies… Toxic waste.  So I guess after the mini cadbury’s are gone, so will be my temptation.  Man, I sure hope my chocolate addiction doesn’t make Moseley sick.

When Carmen got inside the house to give her spoils a once over, she cracked into one of those plastic Easter eggs, ate one jelly bean and said “I don’t think I like these”. She also didn’t want anything to do with the other candy I got. So while she was digging around looking for something she actually liked, I got distracted by this little fellow…

(I love how you can hear Carmen’s disappointment in the background when she realizes the only other thing in the eggs, was egg… I remember feeling the same way as a kid).

Isn’t he just so sweet. I hadn’t been able to really capture him smiling until now. Of course it had to be while Lee was holding him. I guess he decided he likes daddy after all, and now that he is smiling and not just bogarting the boob all day, I guess Daddy likes him too :).

Here are some still shots, in case you weren’t overloaded by cuteness quite yet.

You can kind of see the dimple on his left cheek.

new years eve

We headed up to Huntington to spend new years with Dave and Lauren. We played games and ate good food, it was really fun.
Bartering stink beans is surprisingly more fun than I previously imagined, although sitting on the floor to play cards is no easy task for this pregnant body. Everybody else also joined in a game of spoons, but they were playing with it plastic kiddie knives. I decided between the lunging forward and pulling something, and the accidental belly stabbing possibilities, I had probably better sit that one out. It sounded like an accident waiting to happen. It was fun to watch everyone else panic though.

Most of the other couples that came also had little girls in the toddler range.  Which made for a fun night for Carmen.  But we quickly learned that it is very hard to play cards on the floor with one kid or another plowing through the circle every few minutes.  That, and we learned that you should never have that many little girls in the same house without having enough princess dresses AND matching princess high heels.  We had more than one meltdown about not being able to find Carmen’s “other princess shoe”.

The girls had a lot of fun together.

They also looked very cute when they finally settled under Lauren’s quilt to watch a movie.

Luckily Ashley managed to get these pictures because I am horrible at remembering to bring my camera and take pictures.

We poured some warm martinellis and watched some fireworks through a big tree, it was a really fun night :).

frick!

I finally go to post and wordpress is typing my letters backwards… Fate doesn’t want me to blog.

Ok since it is now working I will give a  recap of the past few weeks of no posting.  It should probably be 3 different posts, but I just don’t wanna.

It was thanksgiving, which means I hosted my (count ‘em) 4th thanksgiving dinner.  Remember I have only been married 5 years, so I am a veteran by now I think.  I am huge and tired right now, so I gave all the hard cooking jobs to Lee’s mother and sister Mignon.  The stuff I did make turned out good, so that was a relief.  I did not however have the energy to take a single picture the whole time Lee’s family was in town, so whatev.  No pics of delicious turkeys or anything. It was really fun to have them visit.  But having that many people in my house is pretty good birth control… Not that I’m not already pregnant, but it pretty much reaffirmed that I want a small family, and therefore this will probably be my last child. (if I have anything to say about it, but how much control do I have…really?)

We visited the beach a lot while they were here and Scott took some really cute pictures of Lee and Carmen, so here they are.

Since then I have been nesting like crazy.  I have been going through and trying to organize all the baby clothes that Lauren is letting me borrow, thank you Lauren!  She is a life saver. I really don’t need anything for this new baby, other than tiny diapers, and a double stroller (which is probably something I don’t really need, right now anyway) I finally switched Carmen into her big girl bed and converted the toddler bed back into a crib.  She is still adjusting to this new state of affairs… As soon as I set up all the crib bedding, she opened up one of the drawers in the changing table, pulled out a binky, climbed into the crib, pulled the quilt onto herself and said “I’m the baby”.  So… this should be fun.  But all in all I am feeling really good. I actually feel prepared, which is such a huge relief for me.  If I could just get Carmen 100% potty trained, it will be smooth sailing.

Then today amidst the thousands of loads of laundry I was trying to catch up on, I went on a little bit of a baking spree.  While Lee’s family was here they taught me how to grind my own wheat, which is actually much better than I previously imagined.  So I made us some whole wheat waffles, then I wanted to use the rest of my flour to make bread.  Now, I consider myself to be a pretty competent cook, I love to bake and I think my stuff usually turns out really good, but for the freaking life of me I cannot bake a decent loaf of bread.  I don’t know what my problem is, I have tried so many times, and every single time I am disappointed.  I think my problem this time was that I didn’t let the bread rise long enough, but I have let bread rise too long in the past, so I figure I just don’t have the touch.  I just want to drop kick the two loaves I made today.

Anyway, since I was so bummed about my sucky bread skills, and since lee has been begging me to make him these cookies I decided to whip him up some of these million dollar cookies.

Million-Dollar Caramel Cookies

(Makes 4 dozen)

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar, plus 1 Tbs
• 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 1⁄2 cups flour, plus 1⁄4 cup
• 3⁄4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 Heath candy bars
• 1 bag Rolo chewy caramels

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. In a medium bowl, beat butter and sugars until fluffy, then add eggs and vanilla and beat well.

2. In a separate bowl, mix 2 1⁄2 cups flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture a little bit at a time and blend well. If the dough feels too sticky, sprinkle in a little extra flour. Cover and chill dough in fridge for about 30 minutes.

3. Chop Heath bars into small pieces. Place in a small bowl and toss with 1 Tbs sugar.

4. Once dough has chilled, wrap a piece around each caramel, forming a 1-inch ball and covering the candy completely. Dip top of the dough ball into the candy topping and place on parchment-lined baking sheet.

5. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes. Cookies will look quite soft, but do not overbake. Cool in pan slightly, then move to a rack or the counter to finish cooling. Store in a covered container.

These kind of made up for the bread fiasco, at least I got to eat caramel.

Now that I am all caught up on blogging I am exhausted and will leave you with this one last nubbin of cuteness from Carmen.

Carmen: “What’s that?” (pointing to my protruding belly)

Me: “It’s a baby.”

Carmen: “That’s not a baby, it’s a tomato!”

Then she laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d ever said.

rrrawr!

Here is my little dinosaur and hotdog on halloween.

Carmen was super stoked for Halloween this year.  As soon as I put her costume on she started chasing me around the house saying “Rrrawr!”  and wouldn’t stop until I was saying “Ah, Ah don’t eat me!”  She loved the trick or treating, Even in the huge cumbersome costume.  It made her look so cute when she was walking around with the chubby belly and huge dinosaur head. Here is another angle just so you can see the sheer magintude of this thing…

Even when it got so heavy that her head was starting to droop to the side, she still didn’t want to quit.  The only meltdown of the night happend when Wendy’s next door neighbor told her that he’d run out of candy and tried to give her a dollar instead. She thought that was just about the worst thing ever and started to cry saying “I want candy.” in this pitiful little voice.  She just could not understand why this guy wouldn’t just cough up the goods like everybody else… Oh to be two years old.

It was a super fun holiday to be a mom, and I can’t wait until next year.

I know, I know…

 I haven’t posted in for freaking ever.  I got sick, we have company, my camera battery died and I forgot to recharge it.  All of which have been keeping me from the blogosphere.  I did get a few pictures of easter egg dying before my camera kicked it… I really liked carmen’s face in this one.

And of course the second the camera goes up she spills the egg dye.  Bad picture, I know.

I may have to add pictures of Carmen’s easter dress later because we had to have Garth (Lee’s brother) take some on his camera, since we are such irresponsible picture takers.

We had an awesome easter with Garth and Brit and their family.  I made a ham and those good old mormon funeral potatoes.  And some easter sugar cookies.    The kids had an easter egg hunt and we all put ourselves into a sugar coma.  It was great. I love those cadbury cream eggs if only once a year.

I am sure there will be some really profound posts coming out of me in the near future, so stay tuned.  I’m sure your all on the edge of your seats.

Happy Valentines Day!

Lee was a sweetheart and got me my orchid barrel from pottery barn that I have been eying for over a year. Well actually he got me the orchids today and he got me the barrel for my birthday… But anyway, I love it. It adds the perfect touch to my family room.

 

 

For sewing night I made some frosted sugar cookies I used Chantel’s cookie recipe and made up my own recipe for frosting.

 

Frosted Sugar Cookies

photo by istockphoto.com

 

1 cup butter (softened)

1 cup sugar

2 beaten eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup sour cream

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add eggs, vanilla, and sour cream and mix together. In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients and then slowly add to the wet ingredients. Chill for at least 30 minutes. Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch and cut into shapes (Use a lot of flour to roll out, because the dough is really sticky). Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes. Cool completely and frost.

Frosting

4 oz. Cream Cheese softened

1/2 Cup (1 stick) Butter softened

1 tsp Vanilla

4-5 cups powdered sugar

A few drops of milk if it gets too thick

Food coloring (optional)

Cream together cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until creamy. Slowly add the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat until fluffy. Add a few drops of food coloring of your choice (if desired) and mix until the color is uniform. Frost cookies.

The reason I hardly ever blog…

I have been knitting up a storm lately because of Christmas and the many people with birthdays and babies around that time too. So… that doesn’t leave me much time to blog.
Here are some of the many projects I have been working on…

• Scarves, scarves, and more scarves

• A baby blanket for Traci’s little boy that is coming in a few months. Sorry the picture is so bad. I ran out of time and had to take it in the car, with my phone. It’s a tan/beige color if you can’t tell… And yes I fell victim of the lion brand dye lot curse… Same number, different shades.

• And another color of ribbed wrist warmers.

Christmas 2007

We’re back!

And man did I forget how cold Utah is. The first time we got out of the car into the snow to go into a gas station…I was SHOCKED! Me and Carmen about froze our tail feathers off! In the warm car I was thinking “we should get out and let Carmen play in the snow”, then as soon as my skin touched the air, It was more like “I’m freakin’ freezing mr. Bigglesworth.” And we booked it inside as fast as we could. We did eventually play in the snow though… and it was fun for about 15 minutes.

Christmas was really fun this year. We have the kids dress up while we read the biblical account of Christ’s birth. There weren’t very many of us home this year so there were only enough kids to have two kings, a shepherd, and Mary (played by Carmen).

She quickly ditched the costume and spent the rest of the time unwrapping and re-wrapping the anatomically correct baby Jesus doll in his swaddling clothes. Which was pretty humorous for the rest of us.

She had fun opening her presents… This is the first year she has really gotten into it. Which makes it really fun for us. Luckily Grandma spoiled her because we weren’t going to make a big deal out of christmas gifts this year.

I especially loved when she would rip off a tiny chunk of wrapping paper she would say “here” and hand it to the closest person. Also the squeals of delight were really funny!