Thanksgiving

I think one of the signs of a successful Thanksgiving dinner is when every pot and utensil in the house is dirty, so judging by our mess, ours was a huge hit. This is an "after" picture of the kitchen. (I used a different camera for the dinner and the card reader for that got left at Jons office, so they'll have to come later.  I know you're heart broken.)We had a very quiet but good day with just the four of us and I am thankful that we were able to have so much this year to be able to make a dirty kitchen for Thanksgiving!!

Now, I'm off to start baking for the first Advent of Christmas tonight! Let the Christmas season begin!

Success!

If you recall,  in August (Advice) I posted about seeing a religious icon car on our way to San Antonio and "someone" blowing right by it. I never thought we'd see the car again but on Labor Day when we were on our way to our traditional breakfast we saw it from afar. "Someone" finally learned his lesson and turned around for me to see it but it was gone already. I was on a mission to see it up close and get a picture and I finally found success. Last week after having lunch at Whole Foods (and after overhearing the guy next to us say he hopes he never meets another Mormon since we are a cult . . . but that's another story) we came out and there it was, parked in all it's glory on the street!  Although after seeing it up close, the car wasn't quite as religious as it had looked as we sped by it on the highway. I admit, the pictures could be better, but I had cars swerving around me while I was taking them . . . 

P.S. You might not want to read all of the stickers. They're "interesting" . . .  

Taste of fall . . .

                                      

Pumpkin Bread . . . . mmmmmmmm. One of my favorite things. I have made 2 batches in 2 weeks, so I thought I'd post the recipe. This makes 2 9x5 loaves or 3 7x3 loaves. 

Pumpkin Bread

1 15 oz can pumpkin

4 eggs

1 cup veg. oil

2/3 c. water

2 1/2 cup sugar (I use half brown sugar)

3 1/2 cups flour (I use whole wheat* and it's still really moist)

2 tsp. vanilla

2 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. Pumpkin Pie spice**

Chocolate chips, optional (but a must in our house)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour pans. In a large bowl mix pumpkin, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl (if you want more dishes to wash, if not, just put in the same bowl as everything else), stir flour, baking soda, salt, spice, and choc. chips. Stir until just blended and pour into pans. Bake for 50-60 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.

*I use flour called White Whole Wheat. King Arthur flour makes it and it doesn't have a strong wheat taste like regular whole wheat flour. 

**Pumpkin pie spice is pretty expensive and I can't find it here! Thank goodness for the internet where I found a recipe for Pumpkin Pie Spice. 

Pumpkin Pie Spice

1/4 c. Cinnamon

2 Tbsp. Nutmeg

1 Tbsp. Ginger

1 Tbsp. Cloves OR Allspice, depending on what you have or like. 

Gracie Loo, Suzie Q, Scooby Doo . . .

We love you!!

So as if to prove me wrong by what I said of her on the Halloween post about not liking to get fancied up, Grace came down today all Fancy Nancied. Doing her spelling . . . 

And her math . . . notice the heels and purse. It was filled with her "cell", keys, small bag of treasures, lip gloss (sparkly) AND a bracelet. 

Now, I realize that a lot of you will look at this and say, "That's not very fancy" but for Grace, it is uber fancy. 

Mom Randomness

Not much is going on with us this week. We are in between holidays . . . already listening to Christmas music and planning our holiday activities. 

I forgot to post this a couple of weeks ago when I went to vote. You can tell the size of your city by how many languages they have to post a sign in (and I have to say, I love camera phones) . . . 

These are some pictures from our homeschool Co Op. I love this picture of Collin because he has sat in this position from the time he was tiny!! He is in the early stages of puberty (his latest nick name is Cumin Pits Boy = CPB, his initials, which he created himself) so any reminders of babyhood are nostalgic . . . 

This is Grace in one of her classes playing tug-of-war . . . 

While I was looking at pictures on my phone I found this one from a long time ago. Grace loves to bring a "friend" with her in the car and I was saying that he (the frog) needed to be safe, so I buckled him in the front seat and the kids thought it was so funny so I took a picture to remind me of times I could make them laugh and didn't even have to work at it . . . 

This is to document Grace actually ASKING me to take a picture of her so she could see how funny she looked at the Dentist with her "blue snout" . . . 

And now I find such joy in baking my bread because I don't remember how it came to be, but Grace has started calling it "homemade love bread". Motherhood definitely has it's perks!  

Halloween Week

We hope you had a great Halloween. We did. Very memorable. We had a ward Fall Festival Wednesday night. Jon and a couple of other men did a spook alley that was the talk of the night. They actually got in trouble because it scared some of the young kids too much. They only picture I got was after they were done and had started taking it down . . . 

If you know us at all, our holidays revolve around food. We started our festivities on Tuesday by making some Black Cat Cookies (I added a couple extra Tbsp. cocoa) for our After School Party on Wednesday. They were fun to make . . . 

AND, they were super tasty. Like a cross between a cake and cookie. 

We have a traditional dinner every Halloween before setting out on our night of Trick-or-treating. We make Mummy hot dogs . . . 

And Ghost Potatoes. . . 
Getting ready to feast . . . The kids did most of the work making the mummies and ghosts. Nice!

And then the fun begins. Collin was Jack Sparrow (Yes, those are the boots I got in Finland when I was 14! I NEVER would have imagined my 10 year old son wearing them some day!) and Grace was a Barbie Butterfly Fairy Princess - strange because she is so NOT into the fairy princess stuff, but I guess that's what Halloween is for . . . 

When we went to Collins new friends house he and his mom (who wore her "tame" costume) tagged along with us for the rest of the night. I could do a whole blog about this, but I guess now is not the time . . . 

Good ol' Texas Pride . . .