Six Already?!

 A few weeks ago now, we celebrated the 6th birthday of our oldest child.  That seems so strange to say, but it's true.  We had a great time celebrating this fun and amazing child.  She really is a blessing to us.  So creative, caring, and funny.  Oh and a great big sister!  She often safes the day when the little babe gets upset when I'm in the middle of something.  You know how they inevitablly need you when your doing something like mixing up meatloaf with your hands or rushing off to use the restroom?  Big sisters are great for those times and she is no exception.
She's also a bit goofy!  And we love it.

 Her family party was the night of her birthday with my brother and sister in law, the birthday girl's favorite meal--bear spaghetti, it's true--and a delicious cake.  Shawn isn't a big cake fan and is even less of a frosting fan.  So this recipe with a light lemon sponge cake and a cool whip based frosting made him very happy.  He said it's one of his favorite cake recipes now. (And here's the recipe I used.)

 When the next weekend arrived, we had some of her friends over for a simple birthday party.  She even agreed to "no presents necessary" being printed on her invitations.  It was kind of nice and made the evening focus on just hanging out with friends.  She also chose to do something simple at home with a larger group of friens rather than a big activity (like swimming or ice skating) with a few friends.  So we decided on a movie night with pizza at our house.  It turned into a really nice (and easy) party to host.  We got some take n' bake pizzas from costco, made some cupcakes, popped some pop corn, and started a movie.  Simple, yet fun...win, win!

 The little man got to have a friend over for the evening too.  That was fun for him.

 These two have been friends since before they can remember anything differently.  It was fun to see them goofing around and still having fun together.

Butterfly cupcakes.  She's currently quite taken with butterflies and it was a fun excuse to try out an idea from the book Hello Cupcake.

Fun and cheerful cupcakes for a fun and cheerful girl.

 The movie watchers.  We're glad they could all come out to help make a special time for our special little miss.

Not So Wooden Steeds

In addition to the carousel horses our kids got to ride on while we were in Oregon, there were rides on a real horse.

Every time we visit my parents we always make time to visit our friends Mike and Christy and their family at their home.  (AKA, we invite ourselves over to play!)  Mike and Christy have so many animals: horses, donkeys, goats, chickens, a dog, and probably more.   Since they live on Stonebrook Dr. we affectionatly call their homestead "Stonebrook Farms".  It only seems fitting.

This time around both of our older kids rode on Christy's horse, M&M.  And yes, they LOVED it!
It was so fun to see the confidence of the little miss this time.  She remembered her last visit and horse ride with Christy so was pretty relaxed and confident this time.

Since he's three, I'm sure he'll remember this visit to Christy's.  It'll be fun when we go back the next time to hear him reminice about this day and anticipate the next visit.  I'm already looking forward to that.

Carousel Ride

I originally tried to publish this post several days ago, but wouldn't you know it just when I had some time to get another post together blogger was down and not working for over 24 hours.  So I feel like I already posted about this days ago, but actually it's just finally getting shared with the world.

When we were down in Oregon, one of the things my parents enjoyed doing was taking the kids on a carousel ride.  The one we rode on is a gigantic old fashioned wooden carousel in the Jantzen Beach Mall in Portland.  Of course the kids had a fantastic time, but an added bonus for me was the chance to practice a photography skill: panning.  I took several...*uhem*hundred...shots and got a couple that I was pleased with.  I definitely realized panning is a lot harder than it looks, but like they say "practice makes perfect".
These first two shots, the one above and the one below are before the carousel started.  The next ones show the movement in the background.

If the photo above was a little more in focus on our little man's face it would easily be my favorite.  So instead it's the next one, the one below.  A goofy face in focus is a pretty good replacement.

They only had to ask with a polite "please" and the smiles on their faces for grandpa to gladly give them a second time around.  So here's the second ride photos.  (I changed my position and I liked the results a bit better.)

The little man wanted to have the exact same horse as his first ride.  I guess the two of them really bonded or something. :)

I like this one...focused on my sister and her hair is just slightly flying in the wind.

The two youngest cousins enjoyed watching the whirling fun.  Well, I guess this one enjoyed watching the back of her eyelids!

Soon enough they'll get to be riders too.

Easter 2011

My recent blogging hiatus had an extra reason that I didn't mention before.  Shortly after returning from our trip "down south" we got a new computer--well new to us.  Shawn got a bare bones computer at a state surplus auction and worked to get all the programs on it that we needed.  And I must say, it works great and I'm so thankful for his skills to do something like that.  That's not an area I feel confident in at all.

Anyhoo!  New computer means new photo gallery program, not to mention that our camera is pretty new to us as well.  So it took me a while to make time for it, but I finally just made myself sit down and download all 1200-some odd pictures from my memory card that I've taken over the past 6 or 7 weeks.  I'm still figuring out the "ins and outs" of this new program, but so far I like it and am glad I can navigate it so well already.  I mean hey, last night I was downloading and tonight I'm blogging.  Not too shabby.

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So 'tonight I'm blogging'....about Easter.  Last year, I went all out and made the little miss's dress and a coordinating neck tie for the little man. This year, I just knew I'd be pushing it to get that much done, so I compromised and just made matching ties for our boys.  I used a pattern from the Make It and Love It site.  I'm really pleased with how they turned out and hope to make more of them. 

Necktie = teether for the little babe.

Not making a dress this year for the little miss seemed logical enough since my mom recently passed down some dresses that she'd been saving.  My little girl now has a whole bunch of dresses her grandma made for me and my sister when we were that size.  So she picked out this one to wear for Easter.  That hat and gloves actually came from her kindergarten teacher.  When I picked up the little miss from school on the Friday before Easter I was a little surprised to see 12 girls walking around with pink Easter hats and white gloves.  Yep, she gave them to all the girls in her class.  Apparently the boys got two card games of some kind.  Let me just say that this teacher is officially my kind of lady.  I really like that she thinks hats and glove are a basic necessity of reasonable Easter celebration.  Not only does her act of kindness encourage her student's families to at least consider the connection between Easter and going to church, but it also gives these girls a special dress up feeling.  Just another reason to be thoroughly pleased with the little miss's teacher this year.

 Crocuses in our front flower bed.

As with many of the holidays we are in Alaska for, we did much of celebrating with our church family.  After a church potluck, we met at a member's home for an Easter egg hunt.  It just worked out that the little miss was the oldest hunter this year.  Wow!  You mean I had the oldest kid there?!  That doesn't seem right...but it is true.  Being the oldest kid has it's perks I guess since she did find the golden egg.  Folded up inside was a cold hard $5! 

And to end the afternoon...a group picture attempt.  Well, at least we tried. 

Hope you had a blessed Easter too.

Fresh Baked Bread

If you are like my grandma and check this blog daily hoping for the latest pictures of cute kids, stories of wild adventures, or new recipes I like to share, then I truly apologize for my recent hiatus.  (Sorry, Grandma.)  I'm not sure what to tell you all except that I guess life just happened.  For one thing we were gone for a few weeks visiting family.  And for another, we've all had colds recently with our boys having two different viruses basically back to back.  So throw all that into the usual organized chaos of this stay at home, cloth diapering, poultry "farming", bible class teaching, kindergarten shuttling, momma and you're sure to have something fall by the wayside.  Hopefully my unplanned blogging absence hasn't resulted in the loss of all my once usual readers.  And if you've had crazy events in your life recently and haven't checked this blog in a while, good news!  You haven't missed anything!  I do hope you'll read along enjoy my posts as I'm blessed with time to write them.

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So on with today's topic...fresh baked bread....mmmmm 

In the early years of our marriage (can't believe I can say that phrase already, "the early years of our marriage", we celebrate 10 years very soon) for several reasons I did a fair amount of bread making.  One reason was because of our fabulous neighbor, Nicole.  We both regularly baked bread on the weekends and enjoyed walking over to the other's apartment to smell the goodness baking in our tiny little ovens.

Well, recently I've started doing a lot of bread making again.  One reason is because I really like to bake and make food for my family in general.  But another is that I like knowing that the food my family is eating is  healthy and as unprocesssed as possible.  

The bread in the photo above is some delicious Italian Bread that I made a few months ago.  The recipe made three medium sized loaves.  We enjoyed two with friends over dinner, and the third I froze for us to enjoy later.  It was wonderful and I'm sure I'll make it again.

Lately, for our general everyday/sandwich bread I've been making a whole wheat recipe from the King Arthur Flour Company.  Another recipe I'd recommend, but it only makes one loaf.  Some may prefer to get two loaves out of their baking time, but I find that we use about 1 loaf a week and I don't mind the weekly task of  making bread especially since it yields a fresh loaf.     

Another recent adventure has been making hamburger buns.  However, I've only made these once and I don't feel like the recipe I used was exactly what I was looking for.  So my search for a good hamburger bun recipe continues.  (I don't mind those kinds of searches.)
And look tough boys help their mommas bake bread too!

Baking hambuger buns with my little man reminded me of seeing a picture of myself helping my mom make hamburger buns when I was close to his age.  So I had her dig through her "archives" for the photograph.  And aren't we all glad she found it?!

Not even two years old yet (if the date on the photo is correct), and I was already "helping" my mom make bread.  Maybe I've always enjoyed baking bread.
And yes, I do realize how much I look like my mother.  If I didn't realize it before seeing this picture I definitely do now!  And the good news is that my mother doesn't have that floral wallpaper in her kitchen anymore, although she does have the red bowl still! :)
And Mom, if you still have this hamburger bun recipe, I may need it.  I'm currently in search mode.

Another funny bit about bread, recently Shawn said something to the kids and referred to himself as the bread (money) maker in our family.  I corrected him.  Although he's the main "bread winner" in our family (which we're all thankful for), in the minds of our children I'm the bread MAKER/BAKER in our family.  A title I'm happy to hold.