Pumpkin Baking

I've tried two new pumpkin recipes this fall and have LOVED them both! You need to try them! (And sorry the pictures aren't so great -- food photography is one area I still need some practice in!)



Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

1 C. butter
½ C. brown sugar
½ C. white sugar
1 C. canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 C. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt

Frosting
3 Tbs. butter
½ C. brown sugar
¼ C. milk
2 C. powdered sugar

Cream sugars and butter. Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla. Add remaining ingredients. Drop spoonfuls onto non-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.
Frosting: Boil butter and brown sugar until mostly smooth (2-3 min.). Cool and add milk and powdered sugar or until desired consistency. Whip with hand mixer until smooth. Spread onto cookies.



Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

2 C. flour
2 C. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
4 eggs, beaten
2 C. (1 can) canned pumpkin
1 C. cooking oil
2/3 C. chocolate chips

Mix together. Fill muffin cups and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Makes 2 dozen muffins.

Delicious!!

Monday Madness

Whew -- I'm ready for bed, but decided to try to post quick re-cap of a busy, crazy Monday. Now Mondays are usually very busy and hectic, but today seemed especially so. A few highlights:


Typical Monday stuff:

*Lots of extra laundry from the weekend

* Lots of messy house from the weekend

* Bathroom cleaning (only 2 out of 3 got done today)

* Volunteering at the school for Einstein Lab (McKay's class) and swapping babysitting with my friend so she can also volunteer (I watch her 3 cute little boys while she goes)

* Picking the kids up from school and taking the older two to piano lessons

* FHE, which is always an interesting time at our house. McKay taught the lesson tonight -- he picked one of my lesson kits about the story of feeding the 5,000, Hannah picked ice cream sandwiches for treats and Hayley picked a Halloween matching game for the activity. (If you're wondering about Courtney, she picked songs tonight.)


Extra Monday stuff:

*Driving the kids down the hill this morning to meet the bus since it rained a little last night and now I'm always paranoid about the bus coming up our road in the rain.

* Driving to the school just after lunch (that makes THREE trips today -- usually at least 45 minutes round-trip each trip) after getting a call from the school nurse that my kindergartner had just had her third potty accident and they ran out of clothes for her to wear. I always send a spare set in her backpack because of her potty struggles, but today she went through those, plus an extra set the school had (plus the ones she wore to school this morning). Aargh! is about all I have to say.

* THREE trips to the Post Office -- picking up (or attempting to pick up) packages that wont' fit in our mailbox (they won't drive up to our house).

* Extra visits to the library (books on hold), the gas station (it's down to $1.93/gal -- woohoo!), and the grocery store (milk on sale and looking for something Wal-Mart didn't have).

*Cutting more strips of tulle to make tu-tus for Courtney's birthday party.

* Trying to figure out what to do for scorpion stings after McKay stepped on one tonight. Don't mess with those scorpions. It even stung him through his sock and he was screaming like his foot had been cut off. (I don't know what would have happened if he had been barefoot.) We have seen several of these very small (only a few inches long), light-colored scorpions around the house. Mostly we see them dead on the floor. They look something like this:


A time or two we have seen them alive. Like tonight. McKay was in the office about ready for bed, when he came running out screaming that he had stepped on a scorpion. He ripped his sock off and just cried about how much it hurt. (I have read that they do really hurt.) We put a cold cloth and some ice on it and after a little bit he seemed just fine.

So there's my Monday in a nutshell. Lots on my list that didn't get done today, we'll see what we can tackle tomorrow!

Cuts & Curls

Last night we had an impromptu styling/makeover night with the girls. Brian's sister Julie was in town and after the girls had their baths, I asked Julie if she could trim an inch or two off Hannah's hair. (Julie is our great family stylist.)

Hannah got her her trimmed and then Hayley and Courtney both decided they wanted haircuts too. I was totally fine with this and especially happy that Julie was here to cut their hair instead of me. I always struggle to get the girl's hair straight (especially Hayley's) and feel so inadequate in the hair-cutting department.

Hayley went next -- a few inches off! She, of course, is the most wiggly patron, but she did pretty good.

This is why Julie is the expert and not me -- I have never felt like I could cut hair this precisely.

Here is our fabulous stylist!

Courtney went next. She told us she decided she wanted her hair really short (and she demonstrated by holding her hands up over the top of her ears). I said short was okay (and good for her hair which tangles so easily), but maybe not quite that short.

We took a "before" shot:

Getting the locks chopped off:

And the "after" look!

After haircuts were done, Julie wanted to see how their hair would curl with a curling iron. Of course the girls were thrilled -- I have never really done much in terms of curling their hair.

Here is Hannah with the "flip up" look (very cute on her):

And Courtney with the "curl under" look:

Hayley also got her hair curled a little, but it didn't take to the curling iron as well and she didn't like it, so we didn't get any pictures of her.

This morning the two older girls were so excited to have me curl their hair again for church. I did my best! Hayley decided she didn't want the curls, but she did pick out a "new" hand-me-down (and almost-too-small!) dress to wear.

So here are my beautiful girls this morning:

I don't know if they're going to want their hair curled for school this week, but they'll have to get up a few minutes early if they do!

Scooby Doo Story Time

It's time for story hour by Hannah. :-)

A week or so ago, we checked out a big book of Scooby Doo stories from the library. The girls have all enjoyed looking through it and reading/listening to some of the stories. Before you knew it, there was Hannah sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of paper and her crayons. She told me she was writing and illustrating her own Scooby Doo story.

She spent a lot of time on it and I wanted to share it. She told me it was all her own "creative idea," although I imagine she was inspired by some of the elements of the stories she read. (And, as you'll see, I think she thought the whole thing with Scooby Doo saying everything with the "r" sound was pretty funny.)

I was especially impressed with her drawings. She used the library book to see how to draw the characters and clothes, etc. Unfortunately, the scanned images didn't stay true to their color (i.e. on the original pages Shaggy's shirt is light green, but all the scanned images make it look yellow). So I scanned all 16 pages! I had her read it to me and I'll type the text below each picture, correcting her spelling so you can read it easier.

So without further ado, I present:

Scooby Doo

and the ghost of Highwing City

by Hannah, age 7

Scooby Doo and the rest of the gang were off to Highwing City. "Wow," said Shaggy. "It sure is hot out here!" "Reah, rot" said Scooby.

Then they came to a steep hill. They drove to the top. Scooby said, "Red, I ram risty!" "Sorry Scoob," said Fred. "Just one more mile."

Finally they came to Highwing City. "Hooray!" shouted Shaggy. "Water! Get out right now or you'll be the rubber duckie!"

"Whee!" they all cried. "What fun!" They were splashing in the waves.

(Note: I asked Hannah what Scooby Doo was thinking about in this picture. She told me he was thinking that if he didn't have his floatie, he might be dead -- hence the x's for his eyes in the thought bubble!)

"Look," said Shaggy, "a museum!" "Reah, ruseum" said Scooby. "Right," said Daphne. We better investigate. "Like nooo way Daphne." "Ro ray" said Scooby.

So they went to the door and they saw a guard and he said... "Sorry, can't come in." "Why?" "It's haunted!" "Oh no," shouted Shaggy. "Roh ro," echoed Scooby.

"But we are detectives. We will make it not haunted. Come on you guys." "No way!" Velma said, "Would you do it for a Scooby Snack?"

"Well... Ok" he agreed. So they went inside. "Jeepers," said Daphne, "Look what I found!"

What Daphne found was... ghost paw prints!

"Come on, let's follow them." "No way!" "For a Scooby Snack?" "OK... hmmph!"

But the paw prints led them into a sculpture! "Wow, it's made out of meat!"

There was a sign that said "Touch if you dare!" "No way" "Come on!" "OK." Scooby reached out...

and touched it! Crack, crack, crackly POP! Boo! A ghost!

Suddenly the ghost flipped backward to show off and landed in a cart! Fred had found a rope and tied him up.

Fred uncovered the mask and saw... Daphne's dad. "Daddy!' "Daphne! Sweetheart! I was a ghost so we would get money and live!" "Sorry Dad." And they lived happy ever after.

A few thoughts -- I love how the ghost turns out to be Daphne's dad (from paw prints, no less!) who was doing it for money, because in many of the episodes it seems that her parents are the ones that are loaded. :-) And you can tell she was in a hurry to write down a lot of the dialogue -- no punctuation or quote marks and hurried handwriting. Get those ideas down -- it's great!

Other things that made me smile -- using "echoed" instead of "said," the x'd out eyes on Scooby, adding the "hmmph" line to Shaggy, and getting some of the character "voices" right, like Shaggy saying "like" and Daphne saying "Jeepers". I love that the ghost's downfall was that he was showing off. And I love that she picked up on the common plot elements to most Scooby Doo stories -- how Shaggy & Scooby never want to go inside or investigate, but always agree to for a Scooby Snack, how Fred is usually the one to trap the bad guy/monster/ghost and how they always "uncover" the mask/costume at the end of the story.

Hannah's 2nd grade teacher noted on her report card that she loves to write. And she certainly does!

Think Pink!

So I was sorting laundry this afternoon and began to notice a pattern as I placed clothes in each kid's pile. It went something like this... pink, pink, pink, blue, purple, pink, pink, etc.


With three girls we sure get a lot of pink around here. I'm not sure what it is about little girls and pink. It's not like I push pink on them -- I'm all for a pretty shade of blue or green. But I suppose pink is the preferred "princess" and "ballerina" color and what little girl doesn't dream about that? (And although they do make boy clothes in pink these days, I don't see McKay requesting that anytime soon -- I think he gets enough pink as it is.)

I have one little princess in particular whose laundry pile was pretty much 100% pink today.


This little girl has probably the highest preference for pink out of all my girls. Gotta love pink!

Well...

We had an interesting week this past week as we watched a well get drilled not far from our house. We are selling part of our land to my parents for them to build a little "guest house" (so excited about that!) and one of the first steps was to drill a well. A very interesting process. McKay was especially fascinated and spent a fair amount of time watching them when he was home from school.

Here are a few pictures from the week...

McKay, Courtney and I walked over on Saturday to check out the finished well.

The well company hadn't quite finished with the backhoe yet so it was still here. The kids couldn't resist exploring a little!

Trunk-R-Treat

This year for Halloween we went to the ward's Trunk-R-Treat at the church. It was combined with the other ward that meets at our building. Since we didn't expect any trick or treaters out at our house and didn't really feel like we knew the neighborhood below us well enough to let the kids trick or treat there, this was what they got. A couple of them complained that they didn't get to do "regular" trick or treating, but they all came home with a pumpkin-full of candy, so they can't complain too much!

We took our truck so we could sit on the tailgate.

There actually weren't as many people there as I thought there might be (especially with two wards), but the kids had fun. They made the rounds of the parking lot several times!

And no one was lacking for candy by the end of the evening...

And now I just try to keep them from eating candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Who came up with this holiday, anyway?

On This Day in History

November 2, 1990

I've been reminiscing today about this date 18 years ago. I had just started my senior year at BYU, getting ready to do my student teaching. I was living in an apartment just off campus (called Courtside Apartments) with 3 other girls. My good friend Michelle was dating a guy named Mike, who was living in some apartments south of campus (called Miller Apts.) with 5 other guys.

One day Michelle told me that she wanted to set me up on a date with one of Mike's roommates. She said he was a neat guy and thought I would have a lot in common with him. His name was Brian and he was from Wyoming. I was happy to go along with this plan -- I really didn't date that much so the thought of a date -- even if it was a "blind date" -- was pretty exciting to me.

Michelle & Mike planned the date -- it ended up being a group date with them, Brian and me and my roommate Heidi (who also got set up on a blind date with Brian's friend Ed). Heidi and I were both pretty excited that day. Here I am just before the big date:

(I borrowed the sweater from Heidi, and you might notice I'm wearing earrings. I almost never wear earrings, since my ears aren't pierced and those clip-on kind really hurt after awhile!)

First we went to a BYU Women's Volleyball game. I think that is probably the only volleyball game I have ever been to. It was a lot of fun to watch, and it was even more fun to get to know Brian a little better. I learned that he grew up on a dairy farm with 8 kids in his family and remember being impressed that he did well academically and knew how to play the violin.

After the game, we went over to the Wilkinson Center. We had planned to go bowling, but found out there was a very long wait, so instead we went to see the movie "Short Time" at the Varsity Theater there. (And in case you're wondering, I didn't remember the name of the movie or the long-wait-at-bowling part -- I looked it up in my journal just now!)

We enjoyed each other's company that evening and I remember wondering what he thought of me. I read in my journal how the next week or so, I came home from class and Heidi was practically bouncing off the walls with the news that Brian had called earlier that day. He called again and asked me on a bowling date (doubling with Mike & Michelle). Brian and I continued to date. This is the first picture I have of him -- this was taken in December 1990:


(He almost forbade me to post this picture... I think he's cute, big glasses and all.)

We got engaged in March of 1991 (Brian took me to dinner in Salt Lake and proposed on Temple Square) and got married on August 2, 1991 in the Los Angeles Temple.

And the rest, as they say, is history!

P.S. Mike & Michelle ended up getting married as well, but things didn't work out so well for Heidi & Ed. :-)