Help Around the House!

And you can believe I praised her up and down and called it good!  No way I'm redoing for extra sparkle.  (You want to borrow her Krista, haha!)

When supper becomes a family affair...  This is surely a situation where I gave some instuction and then turned around.  I think the saying goes something like, ignorance is bliss!

These guys used bread knives, took them a long time to get through them but they persevered and asked to do carrots after :)  Best part.  Check out the patoto at Cara's eye level...sometimes they went flying!

Birthday Girl

Who was quite excited about her mama and baby horse cake.  Steve even cut them out of a second cake and put them on the top all 3D like.

But to keep it honest?  I was relieved when a bunch of girls asked for seconds.  Why?  Because this was the first and third cake mixes!!!  First one got burnt...was going to use it anyway.  Second I made into two square pans because I wanted to make a small cake for our family.  They both got undercooked when I panicked about the first and so they didn't come out of the pans nicely.  Third cake I made because I was feeling so bad about the burnt first one.  But, all three rose beautifully and then fell when they cooled!!  AGGHH!  Anyone else have that with Betty Crocker cakes mixes?

Long story short the third cake was the bottom layer, the first the source for the two horses, the second - still sitting in the fridge and they'll probably mold before I get to them.....  Sigh!

Leah still had a hoot with the girls from her class in the church gym.

And they did ask for seconds.  A very encouraging thing indeed.

In Support of Having an Even Number of Children

Reason # 23

Cara:  Cody, Cam isn't going to marry anyone.
Cody:  Yes he is!
Cara:  No, Leah will marry Sam, I will marry you and Daddy and Mommy already are married to them.....  So, Cam will always not marry.

= when conversations are heartlifting to eavesdrop on :)

the blog has a bit of a hiccup... apparently I have exceeded my photo storage limit.

Any helpful hints out there to save me some investigation time?

Thanks!

November 11

It might be mid November but I picked this off Cam's strawberry plant yesterday afternoon.  Cam declared it delicious!

The Kids Play when Daddy's Away

Steve was away overnight and so I was trying to think up something special to do with the kids. 

1 tealight + 2 colored toothpicks taped together to extend the length + a pile of mini marshmellows =

 

a TON of marshmellow roasting fun and a house fire waiting to happen.

We Did our Civic Duty

No, not vote, we don't live in that country.  While out for a bike ride this morning the leaves looked so amazing that the kids begged for a chance to go back to the park with our rakes to make a pile.  We headed home, grabbed the rakes and the camera and came straight back.  So glad we did.

 

One big bare tree, one carpet of leaves, three four eager people and four rakes.

 Get to work, of course, they all want to make their own pile until they realize mom's pile is accumulating much quicker :)

 Totally skewed for the sake of photo taking but we had a pretty large pile!

So they jumped and jumped and then started to throw them up in the air.

 And at some point this beautiful daughter of mine realized she had a hat.

 Which of course had to be imitated.... but his eyes are crossed....HILARIOUS!! The kids giggled and giggled when we looked through the pictures together.

 He's Stinky.  Just ask Gramma...because he's "stinkin' cute!" 

I'm not sure if Public Works is going to be happy or sad at the mess we made but we did have fun.

Then we came home and I told them if it was fun at the park it was fun at home.  Boy did they work hard.  Used a snow shovel to fill the wheelbarrow.  They worked and worked until I howled when Cam thought I meant for him to dump the almost full wheelbarrow on the driveway when I asked him to bring it over to the road where I had made a little pile.  The howl was loud enough to make him jump and the neighbor dog bark.  And then they decided Mom was better off doing it her way and they went on the trampoline. 

Now it's pouring rain and cold again.  So glad we could have so much fun this morning.

Ever seen the quote on pinterest that says, "no matter how slow you're going you're still going faster than the person on the couch"?  Well, it's meant to motivate runners, I think, but just to keep it real, for some reason that came to mind this morning and is the only thing that motivated me to go for the bike ride in the first place. 

As Moms we're always thankful to do these extra special things with our kids and we look back and say, "that was SO much fun" but lets be honest, sometimes it's hard to just get started.

That's why I snuck in the brownie baking while they were all occupied with the John Deere video this afternoon.  Our kitchen seems crowded enough without 3 extra little people helping crack the eggs.  At least, that was true for today.  Maybe next week I'll have patience for that :)