Four, Four... I've been tagged!

I've been tagged by friend and fellow blogger Jen to post and describe the 4th picture in my forth folder. Since I lost a lot of my pictures awhile back (thank goodness for saving them on disk and Shutterfly), this picture is from July 9, 2006. M and I were on our Alaska cruise (no kids). We were in Juneau and this is a picture of some of the glaciers at Mendenhall (spelling?) Glacier Park. This was an awesome cruise and would love to go back again with the kids this time.

Look for more postings in the next couple of days as there has been lots going on with Halloween and DARE activities.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Your Favorite Christmas Cookie??

Okay, I'm already in the Christmas mood. Since I now have more time, I'm planning on making lots of cookies for Christmas this year. I need your help in creating the best of the best cookie collection. I would love to hear what your favorite holiday cookies are? Which cookies do you have to make each year?? Or is there a special candy or fudge that you make. I would love to see your recipes. Every year, my husband begs me to make his favorite cookie. I've been making these for him for since 1992 when I found this recipe in a Family Circle magazine which featured the best cookie recipe between Barbara Bush and Hilary Clinton. Wow, that was a long time ago!

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup solid vegetable shortening (I use Crisco)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 cups old fashioned rolled oats

1 oz bags of semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside. Beat together shortening, sugars, and vanilla until creamy. Add eggs, beating until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in flour mixture and rolled oats. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop batter by well-rounded teaspoonfuls (I use the small Pampered Chef scoop) onto cookie sheets (or baking stones). Bake 8 to 10 mins or until cookies are done. Cool cookies on sheets for 2 minutes before placing them on wire rack for further cooling. Yield 7 1/2 dozen.

A little spolied?

My in-laws called earlier in the week to ask if they could come out and watch the kid's soccer games and take us all out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. Oh course, we said yes as we love being with them! Well, my in-laws had some other ideas planned too! In between both soccer games we ended up going out to a late breakfast. After S's soccer game, we went to Dell Osso Pumpkin Patch. My in-laws spoiled the kids with pumpkins, horse back riding, face painting, and the corn maze. My Father in-law and T had a fun time getting lost in the corn maze. After the pumpkin patch, they took us out to dinner; our choice. We went to Famous Dave's! We love their ribs!










S had so much fun yesterday, that this morning she went up to her room and feel asleep. She is still sleeping as I write this and that was 2 hours ago!

Happy 13th Anniversary!

13 years ago today, I married my true love and best friend! I can't believe it's been 13 years. Where has the time gone? It seems just like yesterday except it was much warmer this day 13 years ago! We have actually been together for 18 years. WOW! Since today is my crazy day with kid activities from 3pm to 7pm, I made M his favorite meal and homemade (and my own recipe) apple pie last night.

Happy Anniversary, M!!!

With all my love!!

P.S. I really wish I could have posted one of our wedding pictures. A photo scanner will be on my birthday & Christmas list this year;))

Crafty Weekend

This was a crafty weekend for us. In between the kid's soccer games, we headed to Michael's for their annual Great Pumpkin Event. T & S each created a pumpkin. T decided to have "BOO" carved out and added some decorative things on top. S went for a mummy pumpkin but had to add some decorative things on top like her brother. I did a few crafty pumpkins borrowing some ideas from blogland (thanks to all of you for inspirations). My next craft is a chalkboard.

Lots of very generous give-aways

Just thought I would mention a few great awesome give-aways that I found.

If you love Halloween, check out these awesome Halloween accessories here. This very creative blogger has great ideas for your home and yard sale finds! I now have a few ideas to decorate my house and most of you know that my house is sooo plain! I'm off to check out the craft stores tomorrow when the kids go back to school. Maybe when you come over next time, you will see some new decorations/accessories.

If you love purses, check this one out! I love the black one!

Happy Fall!

What would you be?

My kids were having an interesting conversation a few evenings ago. I think S started the conversation. She asked T what animal he would be if he could be any animal. Here are the final conclusions after much talk:

S would be one of the following:

• Hippo
• Penguin
• Koala (she made sure to tell me that Koala's are not bears; thanks to the education from the S.D. Zoo:)

T would be 1 of the following:

• Whale
• Penguin
• Gecko

Since I got into the conversation, here is what I would be:

• Dolphin
• Whale
• Giraffe

What would you be??

Mission Accomplished

Both of my kid's accomplished major goals over the last month. S finally learned how to tie her shoes while we were on vacation in San Diego. After many years of not wanting to even try, T decided on his own that he did want to learn to ride a bike while we were on off-track. Yesterday, he finally was able to ride many laps at our nearby park without any assistance. I'm very proud of both of them for setting goals and accomplishing them!

Grandparents

My kids have the luxury of having both sets of their grandparents only 30 minutes away. This week we saw both sets of grandparents in back to back days. On Thursday, we had lunch at our favorite restaurant with M's parents. M was even able to get away from work for a bit to have lunch with us. On Friday, we went miniature golf with my parents. I'm very happy that my kids are close to their grandparents and get to see them on a regular basis. I'm glad my kids really know their grandparents and know little details about their favorite things. I only had this experience with one of my grandparents growing up. M & I just recently lost our last grandparents this year and it makes me want to cherish my time with our parents/the kid's grandparents more because life is short!

It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween.....

S has been asking me over and over for the last couple of weeks if we could decorate for Halloween. I told her that she would have to wait until October before we could put up our decorations. S is very, very organized in planned activities. S has a calendar in her room and marks off every day with an "X" and keeps track of how many days until major activities or trips. So S knew that yesterday was October 1st. All day she kept on bugging me to decorate. So we did! Here are a few of our decorations.

Below is S & T's joint creation! They spent about 45 minutes creating this table.

I do have to admit that I love Halloween!! I love the fall colors! And I love how the weather is starting to change; I love it being cooler in the morning and evening, but still a little warm in the day. During the Fall is when I love to start baking and cooking!

Sweet Tooth

With only 1 week left before they go back to school, I took the kids to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield on Monday. The kids have never been to the J.B. Factory and had a great time. We waited about 15 mins for our 40 min tour. The last time I went was on a weekend and they were not making any Jelly Belly's. This time they were making and packing all sorts of candy. I could tell right away that my favorite jelly belly was being made by the smell. (by the way, my favorite is Buttered Popcorn. I know it's weird, but I love it! In fact, when I was pregnant with T, I was so addicted to these! M thought it was so funny!) They were making 3 different flavors when we were there. Besides Buttered Popcorn, they were making Juicy Pear and Lemon and you could smell out each flavor as we walked down the upper hallways of the factory. The tour was very informative and we learned a lot about jelly bellies.

• The top 3 flavors are very cherry, buttered popcorn (see I'm not weird after all), and licorice
• They invented blueberry just for Ronald Regan so that he could have a collection of red, white and blue for his election
• They built a special holder for a jar of jelly bellies in Air Force One that is still used from the 80's.

After the tour, we were able to sample all of the flavors of jelly bellies. The kids had a great time doing this. All 3 of us loved the new Cold Stone flavors especially the Mint Mint Chocolate Chip one. We purchased some jelly flops (jelly belly rejects) and we headed home and out to lunch. After eating a lot of candy, I could feel the sugar rush!