Happy Halloween

my "lil stinker" wouldn't go to the door until the girls were done and when he did go he would just go up and wave and say hi, it was pretty cute.

Getting ready for the big night. Shaun painted the girls nails black and you can see in the background he is also painting his nails. later he asked "do your nails feel weird when they are painted" funny, not a comment you expect from your husband. my reply was "no but i feel weird when yours are painted"

We borrowed this costume from our friends. SO cute and VERY appropriate

Kailey showing off her nails and lipstick

My cute witches

Cousin come to visit

betsy came down this weekend, It was a lot of fun! We dont get to see them much even though they only live an hour away. The girls played really well, and Tate and Jordan had fun, so much she crashed on the couch about midnight, so not the night owl she is every other night!

School Halloween Party

This year Kailey wanted to be a witch, i had no idea but i figured it was an easy costume and Grandma Rhonda had by chance brought Halloween Capes, When I dropped her off to her school Halloween party i found out the reason. she wanted to be like her teacher Mrs. Hansen, who was a very good witch! I love that Kailey likes her teacher so much!

New Pj's

I can rarely get a non-silly face from Jordan, but they are pretty good silly faces if you ask me It seems like we get present everyday when Grandma comes! today we got new PJ's!

Grandma comes to town

Grandma and the kids at Pumpkin land

They have a corn maze

And Fun things to put your face in

And Ginormous Pumpkins to play in

And grandma's to push whiney kids around in!

Jordan Practicing her balance

Kailey playing in the tunnels

They had a bounce house at Pumpkin land, Carter wasn't the biggest fan

dessert-a-holic

I have an addiction: I'm a dessert-a-holic, I'm sure its no secret to anyone who knows me but i can't fight the urge to bake and when i bake i usually eat. i ate 12 snicker doodles the other night. i wanted to vomit, but didn't because i was sure they wouldn't taste as good as on the way down. then the next day I made monster cookies (my favorite) I only had 2 and froze the rest (so last min i can have my favorite cookie of course, all cookie-holics do this right?) but made up for it by making chocolate chip pumpkin bars, with cream cheese frosting (i only had 1, saved a few and gave the rest away) but the next day i ate 2 more cookies (it could have been more, whose counting?) of the leftover monster cookies (they are better the next day) and stared the bars down all day. i was fine, i didn't need dessert. then my diabetic husband decided at 8:30 he needed a dessert and my choices of what to make were: chocolate souffle, peanut butter cookies or cheesecake. "surprise me" he said so i pulled up a PB cookie recipe and found yet another weakness, the best cookies ever!

It seems like I have become partial to chocolate chip cookies, i have a few really good recipes and they are always satisfying, sugar cookies, snicker doodles and Peanut butter cookies always seem to disappoint, they are never as good as I want them to be, and sugar cookies take to long for how long they last! but then I found Martha Stewart's recipe for snicker doodles.. YUM! so i tried her peanut butter ones! best ever!! she says to cook for 18-20 min and rotate halfway through, but reviews said 9-15 min and that worked good for me. i dipped half of them in milk chocolate, gotta add the chocolate right? they melt in your mouth, no joke. try them. and make em big~

Peanut Butter Cookies
8 T butter
3/4 C peanut Butter
1/2 C Sugar
1/2 C dark brown sugar ( i used regular and it worked just fine)
1 egg
1/2 t vanilla
1 C flour
3/4 t baking soda

350 for 14 min (i checked them at 10)
take out when golden brown and cool on wire rack almost immediately to keep the soft yet crunchy taste.

my Kid is big!

she seems so old! yes she is only in kindergarten but shes old enough to have "crazy hair day" for red ribbon week. we chose to make it a birds nest.

just another day

we made cookies and Kailey insisted we wear aprons and do silly faces. Jordan is hilarious. I made the best snickerdoodles from Martha Stewart's website. they were so good i ate a dozen. no joke. i wanted to puke after but they were so good, i didn't want to ruin the taste! i suggest trying them! but only bake of 8-9 min that way if there are leftovers they still stay soft.

Snickerdoodle Cookies
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper. (I used one 14 X 20 and was able to get all 20 cookies on one sheet. Place about 3 inches apart and they won’t bake into each other.)
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a mixer, cream butter, shortening, and sugar on medium for about 2 minutes.
Add egg and mix until combined.
Add the flour mixture and beat until combined.
In a small bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon.
Use a small 1 1/4 inch ice-cream scoop to form balls. Release in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and roll until covered. When coated, you can shape them in a nice round ball and place on the baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies begin to crack. Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

here is my other child, who patiently awaited being served. By patiently i mean he dumped his food in his cup and then put that on his tray and splashed around. But you can't tell he's being naughty by his face. He has the cutest smile!I just cant get mad at him

And here is another great dinner super fast and super easy and very pretty!! chicken and Cheese Enchilada's. Best ones we've made!

i went darker

i went brown in Boston while visiting Jessie, but wanted to go darker. so my stylist, Shaun, did me dark brown on Sat. He does good and puts out, (hopefully just for me, but times are tough) its pretty dark, almost black. I like it, cant you tell. Photo courtesy of Kailey who would only take my picture doing silly faces

Grease!

Shaun found this rad leather Jacket and the Converse shoes. He is one stying kid!

Kaileys First real Hair cut

We ran a bunch of errand today. I don't get to do that very much and it was nice. We were at Sally's and Kailey had to use the bathroom and she had to use the one in Fantastic Sam's so we decided to cut her hair. They cut about 4 inches off but its still super long, she got layers and one cute girl! She sat so still an was so stoic in the chair it was funny

Happy 28 to ME

well, yet again I didnt get what i REALLY wanted for my birthday but that's OK, maybe next year. It was still a good day. Birthdays are just not the same when you know at the end of the day everything you got came out of your checking account..
We Went to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, gotta love the Spumoni! I have 3 wonderful kids who got me flowers and a ginormous bag of MM's my new favorite treat (heat them up in the microwave for 30 seconds, they are awesome!)
I'm 82 and apparently an old lady, nice of Shaun to have that written on my cake. All i really wanted was a baskin Robbins mint ice creak cake with chocolate cake and not much ice cream. It was the best ever! it had ice cream frosting and fudge. DELICIOUS!
Jordan and Shaun "lady and the tramp"ing it... is that weird?
Kailey and her old mom! it was a fun day. and i don't even feel that old... i wonder how long that feeling will last?

Red Barn year 2

we were off to the Red Barn for our second Year, we invited Mike and Wendy and family. As you can see Mike was SUPER excited (pictures are deceiving, he complained the whole time and Shaun decided to join in) i mean come on, who doesn't like an hour drive in the cold to a pumpkin patch where we may or may not get to ride out to the patch and when we do its dark? we did get lucky and got to go out and all got pumpkins and got some apple donuts and delicious blue mint ice cream followed with Two jacks. it all ended well and was fun. I'd do it again, but i doubt they will come with us

the rule was you have to be able to carry your pumpkin. Below is Jordan's brilliance at work! Why else do they make hoods other than to carry your pumpkins?

The Girls loved it!

private

Well I think i went private... so all you reading this are now part of a priviledge group! (did they make you sign in?) i dont know who i forgot and i know i forgot a lot because i didnt know everyone's e-mail but oh well. i guess their loss!

Kailey in Kindergarten

She looks younger than i feel she looks in real life but pretty cute if you ask me!

why i went private

Well, I decided to go private for a few reasons. The main reason is someone googled shelves and up came our masterpiece and they left a comment (beerorkid) and i thought, that's a little weird that if someone googled something they could just see everything about us. kids, names, when we are in and out of town, where we live, i wasnt the best at keeping those things a secret. kinda scary. Then Shaun went out of town and i swear someone broke in my house (another story) and ever since then I've been a little paranoid. I figured why not. Yes i stop all those cool stalkers out there from seeing the blog, or people that i told but don't have their e-mails. sorry whoever you are, but your fault. I told them to give me their e-mail like 2 months ago. and i figure, I blog to do a journal, not so people can see all the awesome things i do! anyway, that's why i went private. if I forgot anyone, it was purely an accident or i don't have their e-mails. sorry.

Cabin Fever

We had a fun weekend! we headed up the canyon with some friends and stayed the night in their cabin. Shaun got a migraine on the way up and was totally boring! he stayed in the cabin most of Saturday while we rode 4-wheelers and watched the kids zip-line and play on the swings. It was a lot of fun!
Jordan bringing the zip-line back for the next kid in line

Kailey loved it and it was nice they could do this alone

The babies... so funny. 3 kids all about yr old. Carter is trying to make his way to see. I love Shana's reflection. we are such good moms! instead of comforting our children we take a picture of their misery!

Since Shaun was asleep i got to take all 3 for a ride. that was a slow ride, so I dropped the younger 2 off and Kailey and I went for a fast ride with Heather and Chloe

I took this while driving. Gotta love the triple chins!

It was such a nice day and we got all the kids in bed by 8! then the adults (Shaun woke up and joined the group) stayed up way to late playing a game and talking scaring ourselves! It was fun! thanks for the fun weekend! we will have to go again!!

Gardeners Village

last week Shaun was out of town so i tried to do things to get out of the house, we were pretty successful most days. We went to the Bean Museum which was Carters favorite, i was surprised how much he liked it. We did 2 libraries, and went up to Sandy to Gardeners' Village with Wendy and kids. It was pretty fun. a full car and lots of kids, but lots of free fun! We found the witches that were in the hunt and everyone got a 25 cent cookie. Not a bad deal!

The Love of my Life

It's that time again. Time to be cheesy and say all the things married people should keep secret so I'll keep it short. Shaun is celebrating his birthday all alone in Seattle on a business trip, i guess he isn't alone, he's spending it with his friend Nils and wife Claudia and gets to go eat fancy food on the company credit card, while i sit at home and try not to spend money... (sadder for me than him huh!) anyway, I miss you. I wish i could celebrate your oldness by rubbing it in I will always be younger than you. You will hit 30 long before me! and by getting you awesome presents that you need, aka electric razor, rather than buying you a gun or something cool you'd want. (if you were here I'd show you the awesome new gun i bought you but since you aren't I'll return it) Happy Birthday! your wife and family "misses you more than any possible in the Universe"- Kailey. I love you. Now come home!

(the candles show a 28 plus the one on the side beause he's really 29 and I dont have a 9)

Hair cuts

Carter got a hair cut today, I'm surprised he did so well. I've been asking Shaun for weeks now to cut it, he was turning into a girl with his hair so crazy and starting to grow over his ears. Its weird how similar your kids look in just diapers, kinda scary. He did great and looks cute. Thanks Dad