Be Jolly, By Golly

We are in the Holiday Spirit. Our Christmas cards are done and going out in the mail, some have all ready received hand delivered ones. The lights are up outside and this weekend we got the tree and the twins Christmas pictures done.

We bundled the kids all up and headed out in search of a Christmas tree.  First we had to go get new lights because Greg used all our lights around the outside of the house.  We decided to go with white lights this year and I really like them.  We got to the tree place and it was freezing.  We walked around and looked for a small tree because we wanted to put it on top of a table to keep the kids from playing with the ornaments.  They didn't have any trees smaller than six feet, we thought we could take a little off the bottom and it would work so we got the tree.  We don't all fit in Greg's truck so we had to take my car so the tree went on top of the car, luckily we lived close.  When we got home the tree did not fit on the table we wanted and would of had to cut off a lot so we just put it on the floor and are dealing with the kids getting into the tree.  We put the kids to bed and while they were in bed I decorated the tree and the rest of the house.

It was a perfect weekend to get all our Holiday decorating done because the morning after we got our tree up and decorated it snowed. It is so wonderful to wake up to a white blanket of snow (not so fun to drive to work in though!). When the twins woke up that morning and saw the trees and all the decorations they just stared and walked around really slowly, it was just precious

After the tree was decorated I thought it looked like a great backdrop for their Christmas photos. I took their photos which is so hard these days. I have to get them to stay in the position and place that I want and that is hard enough but to get them to look at the camera and smile is almost impossible. I have Greg behind me making noise with whatever he can, he's banging something, jumping, yelling and they just stare like what the heck is going on.  In the end I did manage to get a few good photos.  No smiles from Jaelee though.

Not our Christmas card just something I did while I was bored.

Thanks for the Giving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I made my first pie!  Which turned into 2.  We had a great day and it started early.  We had to be in Melba by 9 so Greg could play flag football with my family against some of the boys from church.  The twins and I went to watch Greg but stayed only long enough to get some pictures and then went to my moms, it was way too cold.

 

 

The twins, my sister and I hung out at my moms until it was turkey time and then we went to my Aunts.  Greg was all ready there as they had finished football a few hours earlier.  I had family come up from Utah and it is always great to see them.  We ate lots of great food and when we couldn't eat anymore we played Bingo and some watched football.  Bingo was a lot of fun there were a lot of great prizes.  I won new hair ties for Jaelee - woo hoo, a new stocking which we needed for Bo, and checkers.  After Bingo we then decorated candles to take home.

 

The twins had so much fun playing with all the kids.  After pie and picking at more food we decided to head home.  Greg put the twins in the car while I rounded up our stuff and by the time I got to the car the twins were sleeping.  That is a record time to fall asleep for them - it just shows how much fun they had.  We had a great time, thank you to my family for all the fun.  I even got to go back out there on Friday and do an awesome craft and Greg got to go duck hunting with friends.  We have a new decoration for our living room make over and a bunch of ducks to make duck jerky. 

Yesterday I made 8 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and since I got a huge turkey from work Greg and I decided to make it and have another mini Thanksgiving.  I felt like I was cooking all day, except I did get a break when my sister offered to watch our kids while Greg and I went to a movie.  We saw the Blind Side, it is really good and a great movie to see around this time of year, it makes you feel very grateful.  I am very grateful for my family and that I had not one but 2 awesome thanksgiving feasts.

My Many Colored Days

I have been meaning to blog about my new project but haven't got to it yet. I have started something that I have seen online in blogs and on flickr. It's where you take a picture or pictures every day for a year. I have seen people do it with self portraits (that one is definitely not for me), with a single object, or with their children. I found this group on flickr where they just take a picture any picture for 365 days. So that is the one I decided to do. I take a lot of pictures of my kids anyway but I didn't want it to be of just my kids. I'll be putting a lot of pictures of the twins but I may put pictures of something I see that I liked, a stranger, a landscape.  I wanted to start this project to improve my photography skills and I think it is a cool way to document a year.  I only which I had done it a year ago and documented the twins first year because they change so fast.  You can visit my 365 pictures on My Flickr Photostream or there is a slide show on the side from my flickr pictures.  Here is the first picture to start the project.

The Pig Flu & Family Frenzy Photo Shoot

Before we get to the photos I have to mention that we all are just getting over the H1N1 flu.  Greg started with it and we have no idea where he got it.   He was really feeling sick Monday the 2nd and just got worse, I kept telling him he had the H1N1 and he would just roll his eyes.  By Friday he was starting to feel better but on Friday the twins came down with fevers.  I was not going to go into the weekend with sick kids and no Dr.'s office open so I made an appointment for them right away and brought them in.  It only took a few moments after they swabbed Jayse for the test to come back possitive for H1N1.  The Dr. wrote a prescription for tamaflu for me and the kids.  After we got the medicine and the twins had some Motrin they were feeling better within hours.  Unfortunately it did not work for me like that.  I was horribly sick for days.  Missing Monday & Tuesday of work.  This is the worst flu Greg & I have ever experienced in our lives.  I have a feeling just about everyone is going to get it so I am glad we all ready got ours over with.

 Now that fall is officially here I wanted to get some new family photos done.  Greg so graciously got his hair cut and shaved - I cut Jayse's hair, I cut Greg's hair once and thought I did an ok job but he says it will  never happen again so he had a professional do his.  Anyway once we were all schnazy looking we went out into the woods with tripod and camera in hand.  I wanted to go back to this bridge I found a couple of weeks ago when I took my brothers senior pictures but when we got to it it was covered in snow.  I didn't even think about snow being up there.  Luckily we found this spot and were able to get some great photos.  So here are a few of them.  I posted the rest of them on our flickr account.  The link to that is on the side of my blog.

 

I have to add that on the way to to the woods I turned around to look at the twins and they were holding hands. I thought it was the cutest thing ever so I had to take some pictures of them. Greg says they do it all the time.

Sharing the Food

So I love those blogs that share cool cooking or crafting tips. So here is my attempt at one of those cool baking tips and I'm sharing a favorite family dish of ours.

I love this dish from Smoky Mountain Pizza and Pasta. It's chicken fettuccine alfredo with a twist. The chicken is cooked in teriyaki sauce. I love it but it is pretty expensive to take the whole family there and eat so I came up with my own teriyaki chicken fettuccine alfredo. It is super fast, simple and cheap to make. First I start by cooking boneless skinless chicken breasts. While that is cooking I start the pasta - we just buy pasta roni, 2 boxes - just follow the directions on the box for making this. Then I steam some broccoli - you can add whatever veggies you want we just prefer broccoli. At the restaurant they added mushrooms, broccoli, and something else but I don't remember what. When the chicken is cooked I cut it up into small pieces and then put it back in the pan and pour the teriyaki sauce over it and stir it around to make sure it's evenly coated. That's pretty much it. I stir the broccoli into the pasta and dish it up and then put the chicken on the top. We all love it and total I would say it costs less then $7. It's a great main dish or side dish.

 

Ok now for my attempt at fondant.  I found this recipe for it that I wanted to try here. It is for these cute ghosts that I want to try next year for Halloween but for now I just used it to make decorations on my cake. I followed the directions on how to make it but cut the recipe in half since I was only making decorations.

 

I wanted to decorate my cake with cute flowers but I don't have flower cookie cuters and couldn't find any at the store so I got some snow flake ones instead. I used blue food coloring to turn my fondant blue and rolled it out. I cut out my snow flake shapes and then made my cake.

 

I just made a cake from a box. I don't care for vanilla cake so I used spice cake with cream cheese frosting. Once my cake was frosted I added my snowflakes to it. I thought the white and blue would make it look wintry but it doesn't. In fact it looks nothing like I envisioned. It looks like a mad hatters hat or a cake with star fish on it. Greg said maybe I put too many snowflakes on it. I don't know it just looks funny. Anyway I will try decorating my cake again with fondant but wont use blue snowflakes.

A Spooktacular Halloween

Halloween this year was fabulous of course. We made costumes for the twins and for us. It is just so much fun to make your own costumes. The twins were Pebbles and Bamm Bamm.

On the day of Halloween we got the twins ready in their Halloween costumes and headed to my moms. They have an annual trick or trunk at the church.  Every one gets together at the church and you give the candy out of your trunk. This is cool because in Melba most everyone lives out in the country and far apart from each other and some people get really creative with their trunks adding lights, decorations, spooky noises and there was even a haunted trailer.

(I tried to get a picture of the two of them together but they were having too much fun running around it was impossible to get them to stop and get a picture)

The twins were so cute. I think they liked all the excitement of the people and kids. Jaelee just wanted to run around. She didn't want to hold any ones hand. If we tried to hold her hand she would just lay on the ground - so we let her run around. Jayse is such a grandmas boy and all he wanted to do was hold grandmas hand. They got a pretty good amount of candy which is good news for me and Greg.

After trick or trunking we went back to my moms and dropped the twins off so Greg and I could go to his friends annual Halloween party.  We went back to our place and got ready.  Greg was a spartan like on the movie 300 and I was an Egyptian.  Greg made his costume out of some fabric, spray paint, cardboard, and a plastic helmet from the $1 store.  I drew abs on him from my make up and he was done.  My costume was made out of a dress I all ready had and some gold rope I had used a previous Halloween.

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you had a great Halloween also!

Pumpkins Part 2

Last night we got around to carving the 2 remaining pumpkins.  We wanted to do it with the twins, so we stripped them down to their diapers and started gutting the pumpkins.  Once Greg and I had gutted the pumpkins the twins followed us and made sure those pumpkins were cleaned out and perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the pumpkins were all cleaned out we put our patterns on, traced them and carved out our awesome pumpkins.  Once again the twins had to go over it and make sure it was perfect....

 

 

 

 

When we were all done we had to take them outside and light them up. It was cold but not freezing so we just threw the twins coats on them and headed out there. I thought they would be in amazement of the pumpkins and just stare at them but they just wanted to run around outside so Greg took them quickly back inside for baths while I stayed outside and got a few pictures of all our hard work.

 

 

 

The new additions to the whole bunch. Greg's is the little guy and mine is the skeleton.

 

My pumpkin from the other night has all ready started to fall apart.  It's not looking so good but we had fun.