A Sense of Accomplishment

First, a goofy pic of my cute kiddo. She has discovered this bowl, which she puts on her head so it looks like a little bowler hat. It's too small, so it falls off, and she laughs. Dang, I love that kid.

Now the real reason for my posting - let's face it - I love to craft, and I dabble in pretty much every crafty type project there is. Sewing, painting, floral design, scrapbooking, etc. You name it, I've usually tried it. Not to say I'm actually good at all or any of these things, but I enjoy most of them. However, I have a major craft flaw - I go in serious spurts. I get things done that we NEED throughout the year, but my crafty projects I want and like to do wait until crafting season begins. Which is now.

During spring, summer, and even a lot of fall, I want to read, go to the park, work in the garden, or laze around the pool. Crafting is work during those months. But when that cold chill comes into the air and I start dreaming of Christmas trees and snow days (usually sometime in late September), the craft bug in me comes out! Take this year for example - in the past few weeks I have: sanded and painted this nativity (which Syd decided to eat 5 min later. I saved Baby Jesus, but Mary and the sheep have a few battle wounds)
Made/finished our stockings (I am soooo proud of this one since it took me like 4 years to do!). Also notice the new baby even has a stocking minus the name (since she doesn't have one yet).
Decorated my turkey with fall leaves instead of suckers (Syd throws tantrums when she sees suckers and we're working on eating healthier anyway)
I also made Sydney a new blanket, fixed an old blanket, made an apron, darned 3 socks, hemmed 2 pair of pants and completed 2 soft books. My project pile is rapidly depleting! Hooray! I feel so productive. Happy day!

Also in BIG news - today Sydney took her first steps! No walking yet, but she did take a couple of unassisted steps and fall into our arms! Yay Sydney! We'll get video when it happens again.

SNOW!!!!

Remember how I've been dying for it to snow for ages now? I look out the window each morning and each time I am disappointed. I'm dying for that gorgeous picture out my window where each house on my block looks like a gingerbread house dusted with powdered sugar. Well, this morning Aaron got me out of bed (I was awake) and had me go to the window, to see SNOW!!! I was so excited I wanted to squeal, but knew it would wake Syders up, so I kept quiet, but was whisper screaming how excited I was! We took Sydney out and let her see the snow.

Total confusion. Even after we fed her some she was still confused. I think she wondered what happened to the world. (Do you see the powdered sugar dusting further down the street?!)
When we came back in she stared out the back door for a long while trying to figure it all out. Sadly enough, it was gone really soon. By the time we left the house at 11 am it was 60 degrees, so the only white stuff left was melting or completely shaded. Sydney must have known I would be sad and decided to create a snow storm in the kitchen out of all our grocery sacks which she pulled from the pantry. It was much appreciated.

A little behind

I've been a bit of a slacker lately I guess as far as posting, but I also haven't taken that many pictures, so here's what we've been up to. Sydney is finally starting to grow a little bit of hair. Enough to wake up with some funny pic material a couple times a week! Although she doesn't seem to mind, mom wishes more hair would grow so she wouldn't get called a boy every time we leave the house. At least they say she's a cute boy I guess.

Playing in the leaves. Our tiny pile. Remember last year's leaf pictures? sigh She's so big now.

Our real official Halloween pic after trick-or-treating. We did 2 houses I think. It was for the experience.
Our little fairy! My aunt and uncle gave us this darling little dress and it fits her now! She wore it to church on Sunday.
In much more entertaining news, Syd's becoming a much better dancer. She's always loved music and started dancing when she was about 6 or 7 months old, but she's really starting to shake it now!

Yeah, she likes to rock. Oh, and windshield wipers terrify her. Who knew they were so scary?

My New Fave

I don't mind cooking most of the time. I actually even enjoy it when I have everything I need and know what I am making and am not in a rush. But I hate figuring out what to make, trying to keep Sydney occupied while I make it, etc. etc. Usually each day I put dinner off until just before Aaron comes home, which means in order for dinner to be done somewhat on time, I have to choose something that can be done in about 3o minutes. So my choices are tacos, spaghetti, or a Banquet boxed meal (we actually love these and you should try them - particularly the pizza pasta and the chicken/gravy/biscuits/potatoes). All good meals, but they get old having them too often.
I decided we were going to broaden our horizons and find new Quick and Easy meals we liked. I don't usually try new recipes though, because I have a few requirements that they usually don't meet. They are as follows:

1. The recipe must be FAST.
2. The recipe must be EASY (aka have about 8 ingredients or less - this is a vague and general rule. I do actually have recipes with more than 8 ingredients, but I stay away from long intense recipes (Sorry Kiery!)
3. I must have the majority of the ingredients AND gadgets needed in my current possession. I really hate buying new things for a meal you want to try and discovering you hate the meal anyway and you will never again use the 7 lb bag of ingredient x you purchased and used 3 tsp of.
4. Any ingredients I do not own must be fairly easy to find and cheap. I found a recipe for potatoes last week, and the first ingredient was Spanish Smoked Paprika. Excuse me? What? That doesn't work for me.

Enter my new favorite magazine:
I've been getting this magazine for a couple of years, but I've never made a recipe from it. Who knows why. Until this month. I realized I own almost all the ingredients for about 95% of the recipes in here, so I tried a taco bake and was pleasantly surprised! This week we had the Chicken Parmesan (the breading is made with Ritz crackers!), the bruschetta chicken bake, and the blueberry cheese rolls. While none of them are what you would consider gourmet (Olive Garden's Chicken Parm is better), they are really good, fast, easy, and use ingredients that I own! Yay!!!! After a little bit of tweaking a couple of things (the bruschetta needs a bit more wetness and we made raspberry cheese rolls instead of blueberry) I think we're going to really love some of these and use them frequently! At least we'll have a bit more variety in our menu now! If you want to get this magazine, you can sign up for free here! Enjoy!
P.S. Don't use the tangy pork chop recipe. It was really icky.

Happy Halloween!

So far, Sydney likes Halloween. We have some electric jack-o-lanterns on our cabinets and she points to them emphatically and makes an OH! noise about 10 times every day. She's really excited about all the decorations everywhere we go too - a girl after my own heart. I must say she was less than excited about the pumpkin innards (she sort of freaked out) but she was all sorts of excited about sitting on my lap while I carved the sucker around her tiny hands that kept trying to grab the knife. Naughty pants. Here she is getting in the spirit of Halloween.

What do you think Sydney should be for Halloween? A fairy?

Guess not. A bat? Definitely warmer at least.
Maybe a pumpkin head? (She did this btw. She's a total ham)
A bat it is! I got the costume last year at Target for $1.50 and we had already gotten our money's worth about 5 seconds after I put it on her. She's hysterical in it and she actually flaps her little wings!

Check out the flapping - she figured this out on her own somehow.


Last Friday was our ward's Trunk or Treat. There were tons of people there and it was tons of fun. Sydney was completely confused at first, but as you can tell, she figured it out pretty quick. Yeah, that's one piece in her mouth and one in each hand in the pic. Poor Aaron, it was dark and the flash was bright - we ended up with a couple of closed eye pics. At least he's smiling. :)

This is afterward. Needless to say, her pumpkin bucket filled with well sealed candy is her favorite new toy. She carries it everywhere and she's pretty determined to figure out how to get to the sugar (she's been sucking on a package of whoppers for about 3 days and finally worked her way through to the chocolate last night. She was in heaven). She's now had her first lollipop - shocker, she liked it as well as her first Starburst - on accident. Oh yeah, Halloween is a good holiday.

Also, we get to do our Halloween clearance shopping today and next week. Finally! I've been waiting forever! We'll post on our plunder later on.

Catch Up - The Zoo

Ok this is my last catch up post from my parent's visit. I've not had great computer access the last couple of days, so I'm getting reacquainted with the world tonight! When my parents came to visit in June, we went to the zoo and I left with a zoo pass. We've used it a bunch this summer (I love it and always want one now) and we were able to use it with them when we went last week. It was actually a PERFECT day! It was warm enough to be out, but cool enough that the animals were totally active and the zoo was not remotely crowded. Yes! We all had fun watching Syd's reactions to the animals. She gets more observant each time we go. She spotted almost all of them this time and she's sort of an animal lover and goes a little nuts when she sees them. It's really cute. Here she is with grandpa.

With one of her favorite animals - the Komodo Dragon. Weird, I know, but she really likes them every time. My sister Jessica will be able to appreciate the irony in this.
We went in the Lorakeet exhibit and birds started landing on my mom! They usually only do that if you are feeding them (we weren't), but they really liked her. Syd was totally confused about it.

Her other favorite each time is some type of monkey. This time it was the Emperor Tamarins. He's hard to spot, but you can see his long white mustache just like a Chinese Emperor.

And finally, mom and Sydney at the zoo. There was a great big leaf storm about 3 minutes after we took this picture and it was snowing leaves. I loved it. Sydney tried to feed me leaves, they all ended up in some interesting places, and we had a great time. We love the zoo.

P.S. It was so fun to see all the babies too! There was a baby zebra, a baby giraffe, 3 baby snow leopards (cutest ever), 2 baby red pandas (possibly the cutest things I've ever seen - click here), and a bunch of other babies I don't remember. Good times!

More Fun & Apples

Time for another catch up post. They're coming slowly, but surely, and nothing else is really happening, so it's not that big of a deal. As a matter of note, Sydney discovered her Sit n' Spin a bit ago and decided she really liked it.
Also she discovered Egg Nog. Which she went nuts over. She started crying when the cup was empty and pointing at the carton. Yeah, I think she liked it.
My parents got her this great little Walk n' Ride toy. She can go backward when riding and forward when walking. That's all for now. But look - she has enough hair that it is flipping out in the back! Finally! Maybe she won't get called a boy every other day now.
Taking off. She learned quick that this was a fun toy.
Sydney had fun chilling with Grandpa while my mom and I got the kitchen all messy While making Applesauce! We started with a nice mountain of homegrown apples - yum!
Quartered them and cooked them until soft.
Watched Sydney really enjoy her toy
Put them through this uber-fancy gizmo called a Victorio Strainer. Apples, guts, juice, etc. go in the top, applesauce comes out the bottom, sludgies come out the side to be buried in my garden for compost. Slick.

Mix cinnamon and some sugar with large pot of applesauce. Cook, pour in jars, seal in a hot water bath.

Yum.
Then we made Apple Butter too. Never done that before, but it is tasty and it's basically just boiled applesauce with more spices. Who knew? Now we have more non-heathen jam. Fun times and thanks to my mom for the food storage lesson!

Catch Up

It's that time again. We have nothing to blog about forever, then something happens and we're playing catch up. This time my parents came out to visit. We did lots of things we don't usually do, took lots of pictures, etc., which leaves me way behind on the blogging. We'll try to get it caught up quick! First things first - last Saturday we drove to Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs to ride the train to the top. We've wanted to a number of times, but first Sydney was too little (something about kids having to be 2 mo. old before you can take them to that altitude), then Aaron couldn't go with us. We wondered if my delicate state would intervene this time, but the train depot man simply informed us that he had heard it was best not to go in your third trimester. I informed him I was still early in my second, so I was good to go. Then I realized on the way up that it was actually the first day of my third trimester. Oops. I think I missed a couple of months. This was a shot looking out our train at another one coming and you could see the cool track. The train was a cog rail one, so it has a center track in addition to the 2 traditional ones. Neato.

Syd's favorite part - holding on to the window and leaning out (when we were stopped of course)

The old caretakers house above the tree line. I would not love to live here.

My parents on the trainMommy & Sydney
All of us at the summit
At the outside summit sign. Um, 21 degrees? BRRR!!!
Back in the relative warmth of the train
One of the many pretty views
Sydney after she finally crashed. I was so happy it was a long train ride once she finally fell asleep. Thank goodness we brought her a bottle - she hadn't had one for a month, but Aaron insisted we bring it. Smart Man. Gave it to her and she crashed on the way down. This prevented her from screaming like another person's kid on the train. Yay.
Sydney & Daddy at the car. It was 80 degrees at the bottom. A 60 degree difference was a lot!

We had a great time going and were able to enjoy a lot of thing without subjecting any of us to the extreme weather, altitude (my heart rate jumped so high on top!), or exertion that hiking would have required (also I'm totally not allowed right now). I love technology.

Liberals and Conservatives

We've never gotten political on this blog before, but considering the circumstances, it's time to. Please no one get offended, the views expressed on this blog are representative of this blogger only and are limited to the candidates in question. So here we go. I'm curious - which debate have you liked most? Was it the Palin-Biden one? Maybe the townhall style Obama-McCain one? Or last nights? My personal favorite was the one that occurred this morning at 11:30 MST. Just in case you missed it, here are the highlights.

The Players:
The Scene: Our backyard and garden

Dialogue:
The Conservative: "Hey, dirt stays in the garden, the flower pots, and the potting soil bag."

The Liberal: No it doesn't. Watch.

How does one respond to such an argument? At least she's a candidate that's very involved in her cause and not afraid to get her hands dirty. Seriously take a look at those fingernails. Ew.

Notice how the Liberal candidate feels very strongly about conservation. None of the flowers are disturbed - only the dirt.

After the debate was over we had some much needed cleaning up (check out those socks).

The candidates then met for lunch (check out Ms. Liberal's fashion statement) during which Mrs. Conservative noted that her opponent still had dirt in her ear, and on her nose. It was also later found in the one little white item of clothing she still had on. At least she accessorized.

So who do you think won this debate? And which of these candidates are you voting for?

JC Penney - It's MY Store

Remember how I'm really struggling to find clothes right now? Long shirts happen to be the bane of my existence at the moment since my already long torso is not staying completely covered, but maternity shopping? Not all it's cracked up to be. Up til this point all 3 shirts I've bought have come from Ross and their sometimes good but hit-and-miss selection.

Then I saw in the Sunday paper that JC Penney was having a 50% off the lowest clearance price sale. You know me, I'm there. I came away with 5 shirts for $10.55. Not one was maternity, just those Juniors shirts I used to hate with the empire waist. I would never wear them because I was terrified someone would ask me if I was prego and it would be really awkward and horrible. Now I really love those shirts. And somehow, long shirts are in style for teenagers but not prego women. Go figure. I'm just really happy that I have another weeks worth of clothes to wear. So happy I had to blog about it. Hooray!

New Trailer

Devony is really really super dang excited about this.
http://www.twilightthemovie.com/ecard_widget/
It's my favorite trailer yet.

Climbing the Stairs

I don't know what the problem is, but if you can't see the video, click here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=345207151377532707&hl=en