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.

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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.  :) 

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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!

Happy Birth-o-ween!

In honor of Emma's 14th Birth-o-ween today, here are 14 facts about our sweet Emma!

1.  Emma is a peacemaker.
Emma hates contention with every part of who she is and tries very hard to seek for peaceful solutions. I have been humbled by her many times.

2.  Emma is passionate about her pursuits.
When Emma decides she enjoys something, she goes at it 110%.    Her most recent pursuits include music, swimming, reading, writing, and weaving.

3.  Emma loves, loves, loves music...
and has since she was a baby.  She loves to listen to it, loves to play it, and loves to sing it.   She practices for hours a day and is the only one of my kids who we've had to tell to STOP practicing her music so much, because someone is sleeping, or on the phone, etc.

4. Emma is self-driven and a very hard worker.
In other words she is the perfect person to homeschool.    She uses her time very well and loves that homeschooling  provides her more time to devote to some of her other pursuits.

5.  Emma had bright red hair until she was about 4-years-old.
When she was born, she completed her trio of kids with all different colors of hair.  It was quite a sight to see -- Spencer with his dark hair, Cami with blond, and Emma with her red hair.   It's not that red anymore, but I still delight in the fact when the sun catches her hair just right you can still see the red in it a bit!

6. Emma likes doing things her own way!
Whether it be school, music, or whatever….she likes to figure out her own way to do things.

7. Emma is full of energy. 
From the time she was a tiny baby, she was in constant motion.   Her energy level is a few steps beyond my own and she amazes me with the amount she can accomplish in a day.

8.  Emma is our family's only morning person.
Every single one of the rest of our family are at least mild night-owls, getting more done in the evenings and needing to wake up somewhat slowly.   Emma, however, wakes up early every day, ready to start the day.

9.  Emma is a baker extraordinaire (and doesn't usually use recipes).
Her specialties are making breakfasts and treats.  While I consider myself to be a somewhat simple baker, she is not intimidated at all by recipes that have weird ingredients or long instructions.  However, for most things she makes, she no longer uses a recipe and if she does use a recipe, only rarely measures the ingredients.   Today she popped out of bed and made her own birthday breakfast, and is now making homemade candy corn, twix bars, peppermint patties, and gummy worms for tonight.

10.  Emma wants soup in a pumpkin for her birthday dinner.
I made one a few years ago and she really liked how festive it was, so decided she wanted it for her birthday dinner.  I'm willing to give it a try this evening, but I'm a little nervous that an entire pumpkin won't fit into our new oven!

11. Emma's room is never messy unless someone else leaves their stuff lying around. 
 Emma was such a mess-maker as a child that we teasingly said she kicked up a cloud of dust behind her when she walked, but now she's the only one in our whole family (parents included) that can consistently keep her room clean.  She's had her own room now for 1-1/2 years and it's  a fact that still shocks us!   :)

12.  Emma is busting at the seams with excitement about attending her first church dance next week.
When I say busting, I mean busting.  She talks about it almost every day and has been  debating outfit choices with Cami for weeks.   She is especially excited that her best friend, Elena turns 14 the week after her, so they can go to their first dance together!

13.  Emma is a gifted writer.
She is an avid journal keeper (like I was) and is not afraid of writing (like some of my other children).  She definitely has a gift with words and I enjoy reading her work.

14. Emma rarely watches tv, but when she does it's invariably a cooking show.
And even better than watching a cooking show, she absolutely loves to recreate the shows for a family activity.   For her, what could be better than engaging  the whole family in cooking with crazy ingredients or while performing difficult feats?

Happy 14th birthday, Emma! 

We love you!    

Random Weirdness

For the second time in my life I was injured by an iron that was not plugged in or even hot.  

The first time was when I was a teenager and it fell out of the top of a closet when I was reaching for something.   It smacked me in the forehead and gave me a blasting headache for the rest of the day.  This time it was my toe.   Someone had left it on the floor and I jammed my pinkie toe into it big time.  My toe is swollen and bruised, but thankfully does not seem broken.   In the meantime I am contemplating embracing wrinkledness and eschewing ironing duties forevermore.   

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Our Christmas pajamas are ordered and already in the house.   

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm not normally a shop-for-Christmas-in-October kind of girl, so this is monumental.   Don't ask me how or why I've done this out-of-character early preparation.   Maybe it's just all this "extra" time I have now that I'm not on Facebook and Instagram anymore…

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We went on a long walk the other day and saw an owl getting chased by a bluejay.

It was broad daylight and a very strange, albeit cool sight to see.  Even being pretty avid birdwatchers, we have only seen owls in the wild a couple of times and it made the long walk well worth it.

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Seeing my Young Women's faces photoshopped into old yearbook photos. 

My 1st counselor made this poster for an activity last week (YW in Excellence) and it totally cracks me up every time I see it.   The last 4 pics are leaders' actual yearbook photos, the rest are the faces of my young women photoshopped into old yearbook style pictures, complete with authentic hair-dos of that specific year.   Here is the website she used.

Homecoming: Part 2 (the dress)

Have I ever mentioned how hard it is to shop for or with Cami?  

I think she'd qualify as picky by anyone's standards, but for a non-shopper like me it's downright tortuous to take her on a shopping trip.   To my department store hating brain, it seems like she tries on a gazillion things, kind of likes approximately .0003% of what she tries on, and then begs me to take her to another store.  I try to be patient, but in the end always end up a tad bit grumpy and begging her to settle for something that's "good enough" so that we can go home already!     

I really have tried over the years, but I have no doubt that Cami would probably not hesitate to call me a  shopping curmudgeon.  Each year that passes,  I find myself more and more willing to relinquish my motherly shopping duties to anyone who might be willing to take them from me…whether it be friends or my sister or even Glen.   It ends being a win-win situation for both me and Cami's wardrobe. 

When Cami's formal events, like homecoming and prom have rolled around, I try to make a  concerted effort to be more engaged in the shopping process and helping her to find the perfect dress.   It feels more high-stakes because of the deadline, higher price point, and the  desire to find that ever-elusive something that is beautiful, fits right, and is somewhat modest, but I still try…really I do.   

This year she went to homecoming with Gary again.  They have been in many of the same classes all through high school and decided it would be fun to go together as friends again. 

After hours and hours of deliberating and trying friends' dresses on, Cami ended up ordering two different dresses, hoping one of them would work.    Not surprisingly, neither did and she is returning both.  

 In the end, she opted to borrow her friend Ashley's dress.    The color and style looked stunning on her and I was just thrilled that she found something that she loved.  

I liked hers best out of all the girls in her group.

Here she is with the group of seniors from her elementary school.  There were a couple of them I hadn't seen since they were in 6th grade, so it was a crazy sight to see them all grown up and graduating later this school year! 

All the girls in her group.  

Her friends Ashley and Katy came to see her off.  The three of them have been best friends for a long time and Cami was happy that they came.  

As a mother, I am happy to say that I couldn't ask for better friends for my daughter.  

It's fun to watch them laugh together and know that theirs is a friendship that will likely continue on far past their high school days.  

Matt came along with Ash and Katy as the official phone holder. 

Cami and Gary opted to skip the dance and went to dinner in Alexandria, then to Cox Farms for a haunted hayride.     

Although it was a tad sad for me to think that this will be her final high school homecoming, I am happy that it ended up being a good experience for her.  

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