She's steam ROLLING!

How can you not love this little face?

Kya made a funny when she saw her in the red sweater:

"Oh, mom, now we can call her Little Red Whiting Hood!"

2 months old

So I was showing Hal how cute her little tummy time is getting and then she started going NUTS!! I couldn't believe it -
So I'm sorry about the lighting - but this is hilarious! You have to watch.
I swear, the hair must make her tippy...

Trick or TREATS!

Here are a few super easy Halloween recipes that I love!
Some are really fast so it's great to do with kids!

These first ones are from my cousin, Amy - how cute are these?

The Perfect Pumpkin Roll

This recipe was posted on My Kitchen Cafe.
Cake:
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 eggs
2/3 cup mashed pumpkin
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 15 X 10-inch jelly roll pan.
Cut wax paper to fit the bottom of the pan and leave an inch overhang on each of the short ends of the pan.
Lightly grease the wax paper and sides of the jelly roll pan.

Mix the sugar, flour, salt, soda, cinnamon, eggs and pumpkin in a large bowl.
Once mixed, pour mixture over the waxed paper. Sprinkle the walnuts, if using, on top of the mixture. Bake for 14-15 minutes until edges pull away from the sides of the pan and center is done.

Lay a large dishtowel on the counter top (it is best to use a dishtowel without any texture - a tea towel or similar towel works best). Spread a thick dusting of powdered sugar all over the towel. When the cake comes out of the oven, turn the pan upside down on the powdered sugar-laden towel so the wax paper is on the top. Gently peel off the wax paper, being careful not to tear the roll. Starting at one of the short ends, roll the pumpkin cake up with the towel to cool. While the roll is cooling, mix the cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar together until it is light and creamy. Once the roll is cool, unroll and with an offset spatula, carefully spread filling in an even layer over the cake. Roll it up without the towel and place in the refrigerator (covered with plastic wrap or wax paper) for about an hour before serving.


Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins!
Found this recipe HERE at Bake350!
We'll be making these tomorrow!!



Bucket o' Goodies!!


I love those little 50 cent buckets at Target and this year I just did rub-on stickers. Filled them with treats and we started attempting these easy chocolate stick guys.

Ya, I know they look a little weird, but it was really fun.

SOOOOO fun to do with kids!

Hardly any mess!

Takes 5 minutes!

WIN- WIN!

Just buy those melting chocolates (usually at Michael's or even WalMart) and just melt them, stick them in a frosting bag or ziplock bag (cut the corner) and draw out your shapes! They harden pretty quickly or you can stick them on a cookie sheet in your fridge.

3 Reasons You Know You Are Loved

How you know that you are loved.
(By Hal a guest poster)

1st - You get to "borrow" from the budget, the cash you earned and saved, craiglisting stuff from the house. Money that was set aside for "something else", to get an early B-day gift (2 months early) for a tablesaw.

2nd - You get to shirk all fatherly duties for a day of high impact flyfishing. That included motorcycling for miles on backwoods logger trails, bushwacking .5 miles down a steep ridge to get to the river, and coming home right on time 3 hours late.

The Foot Trail: once on the River

The Hole: Kings Chair - Named by Jon my brother in law, as a place where kings would fish based on the size and yeild of the catch. The chair is to the front and right of Jon.

Hal's River Monster! (sort of)
3rd - On the same day sitting down to a romantic night with Jess to watch the pre-recorded BYU v. SDSU game.
I had a good weekend.

I love you Jess

It's Fall!!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving (posted below) we were so grateful everyone is feeling better (thank you for all the kind posts and emails) so we attempted family pictures. "Attempted." But a few turned out cute:

I could not get any to turn out well of Kya - so here she is with her eyes shut...but looking adorable.

This is the only shot that was decent of all of us. Kya walks up and says,

"Oh Mom, I look so cute in this one! Wo- Evie, you look terrible."

Gotta love her brutal honesty.

Classic moment: Hal really struggled figuring out the timer right as Evie spit-up all down me at the same moment Kya jumped up screaming "Poop!" after she realized she sat on a wet lawn that had just been aerated.

It was funny, although it probably fails to even compete with some of your family photo sessions (especially you guys with a handful of chitlens)!

This gets trickier the more you have!!

And we only have two!

Happy Thanksgiving, eh!

Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving over the weekend with some friends here (reminder: I will have to post the BEST recipe I've ever had for yams).

I realized I don't even know why they celebrate their Thanksgiving (do any of you??)

This is a picture of Canadian troops celebrating Thanksgiving in a bombed out cathedral in Cambrai, France - Oct 1918.

So if you're ever in the mood for random historical facts, they celebrate it for several different reasons (yes, I actually checked it out HERE on Wiki)
We decided we'd all deck out in our Canadian gear. The Robertson's were awesome - we had such a great time!! But we always love hanging out with them.
Hal decided he didn't want to wear his sweatshirt so I made him wear the hat. Gotta love it. (And yes, we totally stood in front of the fireplace for a cheesy family photo)

It's happened, my WORST nightmare

"I quit. Can I just quit? I'm DONE!"

I just wanted to see how that felt to say it outloud. I do feel better.

I have been a craaaazy woman about washing hands since Evie was born. We sterilize everything daily. I scrub Kya every time she walks in the door from school, church, whatever. So you can imagine the slow-motioned "NOOoooooo" as I found out Kya caught the H1N1.

NOT FUNNY.

at

ALL!

(I was so shocked all I could do was just take a picture)

I didn't find out until too late that the high school on our street had an outbreak of like 160 kids two weeks ago. Once I found out, I kept the girls home from church, etc.

This is how I found my poor girl tonight.

I heard this sweet little voice in the backseat of the car on the way home from the Dr:

(in almost a whisper)

"I can't believe I have H1N1. That is so terrible."

I've tried really hard not to make her feel like a walking toxin but I've been so worried about Evie catching it. I've had to separate the girls entirely (ok, have ANY of you tried doing that with a 5 yr old for more than an hour???)

I'm sanitizing EVERYTHING four times a day (from stairs, bathrooms, handles, light switches, to even my dishwasher handle and every cupboard - I'm GOING INSANE!)

It's like I can see the germs crawling everywhere and I have 12 sanitizers scattered around the house (which was 5 BEFORE I found out) that I make everyone use every 10 minutes. Probably more like every 7 minutes.

I'M EXHAUSTED!

.

The worst part was cancelling our big weekend in Utah for Evie's blessing

and Kya was heartbroken.

.

So...

we dressed up in random halloween costumes for fun,

watched the BYU football game in BYU clothes for fun,

decorated pumpkins during conference,

(here is the start of Hal's with Ev's little foot)

After we each take about 2 baths/showers a day and I've had the laundry going non-stop,
Hal says,

.
"I think I'm getting a sore throat."

.

NOOOooooooo
.

again, in slow motion.
.

I'm tired.
I don't even want to think about tomorrow.
(Am I allowed to complain???)