Playtime

On Thursday before the kids got home from school, Abbie put on a play for me in between the couches. I sat on our red stool to clap and cheer.

Here's a picture of the producer and her star. (Mark has loaned Spotnik to Abbie, except on Fridays. As part of the agreement Abbie could rename him and so six days a week his new name is just Spots, and on Fridays he returns to being Spotnik.)Earlier that morning I got out some playdoh for Abbie and Spencer so I could take a shower. I had planned on running a few errands after I got ready, but they weren't really interested so I decided errands could wait and we played with playdoh until lunch time. Spencer really like my cubes and I made him a whole stack to play with which he squished together and asked me to remake. (I guess the squishing part was plying to him.) I did save a few from the squishing machine and made this silly giraffe.

Abbie made several types of cookies and pancakes to try and then made this cute flamingo with her biggest pancake. So cute.

Spencer also requested that we make a frog. So while I made the legs for our blob with eyes he started making little balls for his nose -- which turned into 12 noses.

December Birthdays

We celebrated Jennie's birthday here a Friday or two ago. Here's the horse cake I made. I was happy with it.Jessie gave Jennie a scarf that she had made. It's actually a little more pink than in the picture, but it also made a great headband for Kyle.After the party part some of us gathered in the kitchen for a game of Skip-bo and Kyle played with our camera. Sorry Scott, but since Kyle took the picture I thought I'd let you see it too.I wasn't home for the next set of pictures, but I guess Jessie found some of the air filled packing material and stuffed it in her shirt to show Ken her "David muscles." Mark wanted to try it too, (wouldn't you) and soon the football helmet was added to the attire.Speaking of Mark he made us two new ornaments for our tree this year and two for Grandpa's tree too.Randy's current "favorite" thing is frogs and these cute cupcakes were in one of my books and so I gave his mom the picture of them and she did a super job. The one funny thing was the the first batch of cookie eyes spread when they were baked and turned out about as big as a canning lid. Oops. It was a good thing there was a little dough left to make some more.Jessie helped me make two bead frogs for Randy to hang from the fan in his room.Spencer was our entertainment after the rest of the kids went to play in Randy's room. Here he made the letter "o" for us.This was the letter "Y." Not exactly how I would have done it, but I'm old and boring now.This was supposed to be a "t," but even after he explained how it was a "t" I was confused.

Abbie and Spencer were my super-duper sticker helpers when I was putting together our Christmas cards. Then they decorated themselves and Abbie stuffed animals. It taught me to remember how fun the little silly things are.

Chocolates and Scales

Ken taught his last class at UVSC (for this semester) last week and the kids were so excited! To kill some time while they waited for him to come home we dipped pretzels in flavored chocolate. Since I took pictures of the rest of the kids Spencer didn't want to be left out. Check out those blue eyes. Instead of dipping he played with the measuring cups making us pretend food. Jessie did the lemon flavored ones. Part way through she looked over at the cinnamon ones I was doing with Abbie and was in awe of my uniform rows and said she wanted hers to look like she worked in a chocolate factory too. I think she did a pretty good job. I can't believe she is so big.

Mark did the orange flavored ones. Mark liked dipping the big pretzels rather than the sticks because he could get more chocolate on them. He was so proud of the one pretzel completely covered in chocolate with a puddle of chocolate around it on the wax paper.

Jessie and Abbie had been dancing to Christmas music before we started and if you ask Abbie you have to wear a dress to dance. She was super careful not to get chocolate on it because she is kind of sensitive to stains on her clothes.

I got a scale at the store and Mark and Abbie were having SO MUCH FUN seeing how high they could get the scale to go. It was funny to watch Abbie climb on Mark's back and then him pick up the weight and try to stand up without tipping over. They eventually got it to go to 220 pounds...after playing with the starting point.

I'm so silly.

When Jessie came home from school, part of the inside of one of her teeth had chipped off. I was a little worried until she told me that the tooth was also loose. She wiggled that silly tooth for 2 days straight (even at church grossing out her teacher and me). It finally popped out and we were all very grateful.

In our family you have to write the tooth fairy a reminder note and leave it on the kitchen table. The next morning Ken asked Jessie if the tooth fairy had come and Mark turned to me and asked how much she got and all I could tell him is that I sure wished the tooth fairy had seen that note. Luckily the other tooth fairy had remembered.

I found a really neat website that had a faux french braid on it and even though I can french braid it looked really pretty so we tried it for church.

Heather gave me this awesome bundt pan a year or two ago, but I've never found an occasion to use it. Spencer thought it was a castle and didn't believe me when I told him the towers were really trees around a gingerbread house -- not that it really matters as long as it tastes good, right? I made a chocolate almond cake that Ken and I thought was delicious, but Jessie thought it tasted like medicine.

We waited until the Saturday after Thanksgiving to put up the tree. The kids absolute favorite decorations were the red and gold strings of beads. They pretended they were lead ropes for horses and then fancy treasures. It was fun.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup

This is another recipe inspired by the Chef's Table. Although I combined about 3 different recipes I found I also added a little of myself, so it's kind of original. Anyway, I hope you get to try it. Ken and I really liked it and surprise, surprise to us -- Mark who likes everything did NOT like it and Jessie who is our really picky eater said she thought it was good. Go figure.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup

3 red bell peppers, seeded and cut into chunks
1/2 cup chopped onion (I used a red onion)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 - 2 Tbsp. olive oil

Line a pan with foil. Combine peppers, onion, garlic and olive oil in pan and put under broiler for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the peppers are nicely browned.

4 cups water
4 medium to small potatoes, peeled and chopped
4 tsp. chicken bouillon
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. rosemary, chopped
1/2 tsp. fennel seeds
1/2 tsp. pepper

1 cup cream

While peppers are roasting in a pot on the stove combine water, potatoes and seasonings. Bring to a boil. When peppers are done roasting add them to the soup. Boil for 15 minutes more with a lid on the pot, but not totally covering it.

Spoon soup into a blender. Add as much of the water as you can. Blend until almost smooth. Return to pot and add cream. Return to stove and heat through. Serve with quesadillas or grilled cheese sandwiches.

Makes 5 servings.

Sunday

After what seemed like a not-so-reverent Sunday we decided that after dessert and pajamas that we would sing some Christmas songs together. Jessie, Mark and Ken were our choir while I plucked out the tunes on the piano. Spencer led the music for a song or two (and then we had to clap for his preformance), but mostly he and Abbie ran crazily around living room joining in on a few words of the chorus here and there. Sometimes I sure love it when it's bed time....

The First Presidency's Christmas messages were very uplifting and after acting out Samuel the Lamanite preaching on the wall in senior primary with the 11-year old boys asked to be the unbelieving people who cast stones and arrows at Samuel President Eyring's talk about his family's Nativity reenactments were very believable.

One totally silly story about putting up our tree yesterday. So we rearranged the living room and Mark helped Ken bring up the tree parts. The kids sorted them into piles and we put the tree together. Time for the lights. We had two small strings of white lights that worked and one short string of green lights and two long strings of green lights, but they were on white cords. We started off with the green lights on white cords, but that looked really tacky. Consigning ourselves to a trip to the store we decided to go with white lights instead. Mark came with me and we were in, grabbed the lights, 2 garlands and a set of suctions cups to hold the lights up around the window and back out. When we got home Ken opened the boxes of lights and I had gotten ones with WHITE cords!!! Ahhhh, so Ken went back to the store to exchange them for ones with green cords and while he was gone I found our packet of suction cups holders under a bunch of ornaments the kids had dumped out, so I still have to take the new ones back. That part of the day was just silly.

In the morning Ken had made bread for the ward Christmas Party while I was at a baptism for a little girl in the ward. The baptism was beautiful. The ward Christmas party was nice. There was homemade bread, salad and turkey with dutch oven cobblers and ice cream for dessert. As Mark and Ken were sitting at the table ready to eat, Mark stabbed his turkey and told Ken, "Hey dad, you know what, this isn't really turkey, Brother Smith told me it was sparrow." Can you even imangie how many sparrows it would've taken to feed 150 people!

One thing to check off the list

Last night I finished the last page of Mark's scrapbook for 2005! Yea, I'm so excited. I can cross one thing off a very long list of things to get done. So go a head and take a look at it. Just link on the link in the side bar. (And if you find any typos, please let me know.)

Enjoy!

Happenings

Jessie didn't think my one turkey on the door was enough decorations for the holiday so she made this colorful turkey to hang in the window. Abbie thought Jessie's idea was super and so the next day while I was in the shower she made her own turkey all by herself and hung it in the window next to Jessie's to surprise me. We didn't get a picture of it, but it was just as cute. For Jessie's book report this month she had to read a biography and then decorate a can to look like the character and put strips of paper in with facts about the person. Jessie choose a book I got at the library about a little girl named Sarah Noble. When she was only 8 years old she went to cook for her dad while he built the family a house in the frontier. When he went back to get the rest of the family Sarah got to stay with an Indian family. It was a very sweet story.

Thanksgiving was very nice (a lot less chaotic than I thought it would be). Ken's parents and brother came over for sweet potato muffins and scrambled. After breakfast we worked in the yard raking leaves and tried a new recipe for Parmesan rolls to take to SLC with the crescent rolls I had already made. We tired to get out of here in time to take a family picture before we got to SLC, but it didn't happen (and still hasn't...).

It took a while for everyone to arrive and Ken got to play with the kids in the backyard, which they totally loved. Before we started dinner we sang America, the Beautiful for Grandpa because he had just received his bronze star in the mail from serving in the war.

We've been trying out some fun new hairdo's (thanks to the activity day leaders). Here is Abbie with two french twists going opposite directions and then pulled back into a pony tail.

Jessie won 2nd place in the Reflections Contest at school for her photo of a big splash. She was so excited. Mark received honorable mention for his landscape shot. Jessie was most excited about her medal because it was made of metal and "not cheap plastic." Here photo goes on to district now.

Mark looking at his blue ribbon. Each of the kids that participated in Reflections got a blue ribbon and I think that was way cool.

The other day Ken raked up a huge pile of leaves. Naturally the kids thought it was for them to play in. Ken had fun watching them and got a couple of great action shots. Do you love how Spencer can't even see?

Hair Cut

Abbie and I had fun emailing Dad this single picture at work last Friday. She's been wanting to grow her hair out to donate it, but to get 10 1/2 inches of extra hair on a little girl is so much. So I was happy to trim it a little shorter. And it looks so cute.
Of course a new haircut calls for a few pictures and I've been dying to go up Hobble Creek and take some so we had a combined effort. It wasn't cold as long as you were in the sun, but that didn't make for great pictures, so we had a little complaining. Throwing rocks in the creek helped fixed the sadness. Click on the picture below to see it better. It was quite pretty up there. Last week we were all excited to see Grandpa Fry. We had dinner with him at Grandma's. Abbie had a blast sitting with him on the couch reading books. They read it normally the first few times and then Abbie would race her finger along the words and Grandpa tried to keep up....faster and faster. There was quite a bit of laugher involved. Grandpa also met us at daddy's work for lunch on Monday and after we ate we played Duck, Duck, Bruce.

Mark and Jessie have kept up their Friday night sleepovers in Jessie's bed. It's always a surprise how they'll be sleeping when I go to cover them up.

While Ken and were at the temple Grandma helped Spencer put training wheels on the little bike we have. He is so excited about it. We have to keep reminding him that his feet can peddle without him looking at them so he can watch where he's going. Abbie is his biggest cheerleader and helper when he runs onto the grass and gets stuck.

A couple of weeks ago Jessie and a friend made a poster for their store at school. They had all the stuff ready for kids to make their own bookmark with a thumbprint creation on it. I thought it was a great idea, but I'm also the mom. Jessie was such a trooper because I convinced to her to sell them at a higher price and they didn't sell too many, but I guess all the kids kind of had that problem because most of the kids had quite a bit of the "money" they had earned left over. I'm not sure what they were saving it for. That's ok though, now when the kids need a craft to do I have something all ready to go.

The First Snow

These pictures are from the 4th and 5th of November. We came home from running errands and it had started snowing. Spencer copied Abbie which made for a great photo.

On the 5th we woke up to snow on the ground. The kids were more than excited. After breakfast I bundled them up and sent them out to play. Before I could get dressed for the day they were back in begging for my participation in the fun. So I put on some sweats and a hoodie, grabbed a pair of gloves and stared a snowball fight with them in the back yard. It was tons of fun. Abbie kept trying to sneak up on me to throw her snowballs and Spencer wanted me to throw snowballs into a bucket he found instead of at him. Once most of the snow in the backyard was tromped on they made a few snow angels in the front and we went inside for hot chocolate. Actually only they had hot chocolate, I was plenty hot from chasing them all over the yard.

Apple Juice

A few Saturday's ago some friends in the ward let us borrow their apple press to juice all our apples left on the tree in the backyard.

The kids were super helpers and unlike last year when we ended up finishing in the dark we did it first thing Saturday morning.

Mark dropping the apples in so they get chopped up.

Spencer held the lid closed so the apples didn't jump back out the top.
Jessie loves her cowboy hat.
After the apples are chopped we scrapped then into this little contraption and squeezed the juice out with a car jack. We ended up with 5 gallons of juice! This year I figured out how to strain it better and the juice turned out beautifully clear and tastes like you are drinking an apple.

Mark had so much fun helping do apples that he spent the whole afternoon over helping the friends we borrowed this from. He's such a good boy.

Sunday when Ken and the kids walked home from choir the sun was just starting to set and really lighting things up. Ken ran in to try and grab a few pictures before it was too late.

Our funny sleeper was at it again. Why do we have huge beds when they can fit on a single pillow?