Counting the Ways

How much do I love working with the Young Women at church?

Let me count the ways...

                                              1.  Anna  B.                                     2.  Allie

                                    3.  Morgan                                           4.  Anna W.

                                         5.  Emma                                             6.  Elena

                                         7.  Maeve                                                 8.  McKenzie

                                         9.  Aubrey                                               10.  Ana

                                      11.  Sidney                                                  12.  Marina

                                       13.  Katy                                           14.  Cami

                                        15.  Annika                                               16.  Mikayla

                                  17.  Rachel                                                 18.  Miko

                                   19.  Lola                                                  20.  Kelly

                                         21.  Ashley                                                22.  Alexia

                                 23.  Courtney                                             24.  Maria

25.  Kate 

The girls are hard-working and faithful young women who inspire me on a daily basis.

And I love the wonderful ladies I work with as well….

                               1.   Sister M.                                                  2.  Sister W.

                              3.  Sister D.                                                  4.  Sister M.

5.  Sister W.  

6.  Sister H (no picture)                        7.  Sister G (no picture) 

  I am blessed to be able to spend time with them each week...

  

   …even when that requires wearing a hairnet and a lunch lady uniform! 

Dressed as lunch ladies for YW in Excellence

The menu for YW in Excellence

19 of the 25 Young Women in our ward

Mikayla, Ashley, Courtney, Annika, and Alexia

Rachel, Miko, and Anna at YW in Excellence

Kelly, Annika, Cami, and Katy

Inner Preschooler

Today I went back to preschool for a little while.   

The kids were doing a community outreach project for their upcoming 

Lego League competition and I got to be the one to accompany them. 

Their mission was to teach the preschoolers a little about music, so they brought instruments to play for them….

 a fun book to read to them (The Happy Hedgehog Band ),   

and in general got to channel their inner four-year-olds.  

The kids had done most of the planning themselves, which made it all the more a genuinely fun  experience  for me, the kids, and the preschoolers.

In the end, though, it made me all nostalgic for when my kids were cute  little peanuts too. 

This picture was taken only four years ago, but man do I miss those days!


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Friendship

Blogging is not a burden or a chore to me, but rather I consider it a key to my sanity.

It doesn't matter how busy I am, I almost  always carve out enough time (even to the detriment of sleeping or chores) to blog at least a couple times a week.   Writing blogposts simultaneously soothes and challenges my mind  and I love the visual aspect that the photos add.  It really is therapeutic to me, which is why it's always a surprise to me when I realize (usually after a family member reminds me) that it's been almost a week since I last blogged.      

This is one of those times.

I'm busy, but no moreso than usual.  And it's not that I don't have anything to blog about.  I have several post beginnings, but I just haven't sat down to finish writing them.   If anything, I think my lackluster blogging can probably be mostly blamed on the gorgeous autumn weather we've been enjoying.   We've taken a lot more long walks lately and I'm finding that the time I would normally be spent blogging is often time we head outside instead.

This afternoon is the last mild day we're supposed to have for a while and the kids are once again outside taking advantage of the loveliness that Virginia autumns are.  In our backyard the leaves are  still mostly clinging to the trees. Tomorrow it's supposed to turn cold and in the next few weeks we will be deluged with torrents of leaves and have to spend hours out there raking them up.  I know that I will have an opportunity to take a walk this afternoon while Emma is at voice lessons, so today I let them play while I blog instead.

*******************

When I left our beloved homeschool co-op shortly before school started this year, it was with a leap of faith and a strong hope that we would be able to find new social outlets for the kids and me.

Thank goodness for the S family!  

I had met Rachel, a fellow homeschooling mom, at YW camp this past summer and we connected with  our mutual love of photography and blogging.   I was so grateful when she invited us to participate in Lego League with them.   Lego League has been a fun, albeit challenging opportunity for the kids to learn teamwork, cooperation, and engineering skills.

It's been a good experience for all of the kids, but especially for Ellie.  

Ellie is a social butterfly who loves people and has a gazillion friends, but weirdly has never had a best friend.  

Until now, that is. 

   

Hannah and Ellie are two peas in a pod and their friendship is a joy to behold. 

Emma and Abigail also get along really well and all of them enjoy playing board games and putting on plays together.  

We love spending time with their cute family...

and consider their friendship a blessing to all of us.  

PS  All the photos in this blogpost, except the first one,  were taken by Rachel.  :) 

**********************

The Super Cake

Check out this beautiful cake Cami made for Emma's 14th birthday….


It's a fourteen layer {including the layers of frosting} salted caramel spice cake.  

Instead of oil, she used 4 cups of applesauce which made it perfectly moist
and oh so delicious.




We figure that the applesauce completely  negated the
8-1/2 sticks of butter and 12+ cups of sugar
that it also contained...



In fact, I'm pretty sure it's so healthy that it's practically a super food.

Or at least Super for celebrating Emma's 14th birthday!

And super for filling our tummies with birthday cake deliciousness!

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Halloween 2014

  Usually Halloween festivities around our house take a couple of weeks.   We have our church's  trunk-or-treat the Friday before Halloween, then the kids go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood on Halloween, then sometime in the week after Halloween we finally celebrate Emma's birthday properly.    This year we decided to do things a little differently for a change.   

We still started off the fun with our ward's annual chili/pie cook-off and trunk-or-treating.   We made my sweet potato black bean chili and 4 pies.   Emma made a pumpkin pecan pie, Ellie made a cookies and cream pie with a cookie crust, and I made mango-lime cheesecake pie and my famous apple pie.  

The kitchen was completely thrashed after all the pie baking, chili making, and pumpkin carving...

but I am pleased to say that the apple pie shown above was the grand prize winner,

as was Adam's super scary spider pumpkin (below) in the pumpkin carving contest.  

which means that we are now the proud owners of a spray-painted golden pie plate and a pumpkin carving trophy that we get to store at our house until next year, so it was totally worth it!  

Ellie has been bubbling with excitement for last month for an opportunity  to wear her new Rapunzel costume.  She had debated between going as Rapunzel or Elsa, but in the end opted for the one she thought would be less popular.   She also entered the pumpkin carving contest with this Harry Potter pumpkin she designed and carved completely by herself.   

Abraham Lincoln made a second appearance and Princess Emma was a last minute throw-together costume when her other costume idea (Annie) didn't come together the way she'd hoped.  The dress is Cami's orchestra dress.  

The next week we did our Halloween art project and made these cute little cardboard haunted houses with flickering tea lights in side.  

Then at the last minute, we made a bold decision to forgo trick-or-treating this year. 

 Our whole family has been trying to eat healthier lately and it just seemed silly to go out and bring more candy in the house.   Emma immediately got excited and started planning a small birthday party with a couple of her friends for Halloween night.   

Emma spent most of the day making her own homemade candy to share with her friends so they didn't feel too gypped for not going trick-or-treating.   She made homemade twix bars, homemade peppermint patties, gummy worms, and candy corn.  It was actually pretty amazing to watch how much fun she had baking all day long.  My attention span is too short for that much kitchen time! 

At the party they also made their own caramel apples and Cami did some face-painting. 

Glen was hard to take seriously the rest of the night with that freaky face.

The homemade gummy worms ended up looking super realistic, so the girls had fun tricking Emma's friends into thinking they were eating real worms.  It was quite funny to see their reactions.  

Finally this weekend, Emma got her birthday dinner of choice--

 pumpkin soup, rolls, salad, and smoothie.  

She also got her birthday cake made by Cami. 

Her cake is worth a post in and of itself, so stay tuned later this week for all the sweet details on that bit of deliciousness!