Trick-or-Treat

Happy Halloween! We had a church trunk-or-treat party on Wednesday, so I took the kids' picture that night. (The boys weren't allowed to wear their costumes at school until after lunch today.)

Dylan was a good sport about Ethan choosing the same costume. So, Wednesday night we were supposed to "decorate" our trunks for Halloween. This was the extent of my decorating.

It looks better without the lights.
Ooooh! Scary. (Can you guess which pumpkin is Mazie's? The heart eyes are kind of a give-away.)

First Steps

A few weeks ago Josie walked five or six steps. We were delighted. (Finally!) Afterward, that was about all we could get her to do, until this week when she discovered Mazie's doll stroller. Now she's totting all over the house, filling the stroller with books and toys. She'll only walk with the stroller for the time being, but it's a start.Here she's getting ready for a pivot-turn. She has great balance. She can dance and squat down then stand all the way back up, but she hasn't wanted to take steps before.
Heading back the other way.
She had to prove she could stand without the stroller. There's my big girl--- with some serious bed-head! :)

Food Fun

I don't know what's gotten into me. I seem to be blogging about food a great deal. It's kind of fun sharing ideas, though, so I'm not going to stop anytime soon.



My wonderful in-laws came to visit a few weeks ago and they brought me four boxes of apples. I was delighted to put it mildly, but since we recently realized that our food storage needed rotating, we're trying to use up a lot of home-canned fruit before doing any more. Therefore, I cannot can anything this year. We got the boxes just to eat. It has been wonderful being able to send an apple in my kids' lunches everyday without breaking the bank. We've been able to share with our friends, and we still have a lot left. Two of the boxes were Granny's. My kids love the tart apples. One box was Fujis, and the other was Golden Delicious. Of course the Grannys and the Fujis will store for awhile, but the Golds were starting to get too ripe, so I decided I needed to freeze some pie filling and bake with the rest. I made baked apples with dinner the other night-- just like Grandma Savage made for us one time we went to visit her. They are great with vanilla ice cream, and they are SO easy. You just hallow out the core from the top. (I used a melon baller.) Add about half a teaspoon of butter to each then a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon. (Sorry, but I didn't measure any of this.) Bake them at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. They taste like apple pie without the hassle of making a pie crust.





Then, I volunteered to take treats for Ethan's Halloween party. I scoured the Internet looking for a fun recipe, but I didn't find anything that really got me excited. I tend to veer toward things that include ingredients already sitting on my shelves. Finally, I decided to bunk the Internet and come up with something on my own. My mother-in-law brought me two 10-pound bricks of dipping chocolate when she came (getting me ready for the holiday season). We used some of that to make spiders. If I would have done them myself, they would look more like actual spiders, but I let the boys help. Here's one with four eyes.

We had some gooey marshmallows, so we just rolled together a few of them for the bodies, dipped them in chocolate and put chow mein noodle legs on them. The eyes we hand picked out of some sprinkles.


So, there are my kitchen adventures this week. Tomorrow I have to make eyeballs on crackers (just cream cheese and olives) because I feel obligated to take something that isn't straight sugar to the school.

Just Finished

I just finished reading this book. It's her seventh or eighth, I think. Sarah Dessen has a very engaging style, although sometimes I have issues with the way she treats characters. In This Lullaby, the girls felt more college-aged than high school. Lock and Key was very good, although I think I still like The Truth About Forever better. Her books are not squeaky clean-- there is drug use, mentions of sex, but I think she deals with tough issues well. If you've never read a Sarah Dessen novel, start with Dreamland. She'll have you aching for Caitlyn and Rogerson and their destructive relationship.

The Only Thing I Like About Halloween

I don't like Halloween. I really never have, even when I was a kid. We never did extravagant costumes, and it always seemed like we were scrambling to find something neat to wear. Now I like Halloween even less. I hate wasting money on a costume that will get worn once. Making your own is even more expensive, it seems. I also hate that by and large, trick-or-treating has gone from a fun thing, where you visit your own neighbors, to a complete greed-fest-- people dropping off van loads of kids at neighborhoods where they know no one, and trying to get as much candy as possible.

I recently read an article criticizing Halloween givers. It was something like "the ten worst Halloween treats." And, it's final point was to say how lame anything "fun sized" was, as if every household in America should be giving out full-sized candy bars to kids, because gee, most of America isn't fat enough. Reading it, I was unbelievably irritated.

We're lucky. We live in a small town where the businesses do a Halloween Parade for the kids, which means that the children pre-school aged to third grade go trick-or-treating down the main drag in the middle of the afternoon. It is awesome, and my only complaint is that the kids get too much candy. Seriously, WAY too much. We get a few trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, and mostly, we know them. This is a big change over how it was when we lived in Washington.

However, there is one thing I love about Halloween:
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds. Four years ago I called my step-dad and asked him how to make good roasted pumpkin seeds. He gave me the secret. Boil the seeds in salt water for about twenty minutes, then spread them on a cookie sheet and bake at 250 degrees for an hour and a half to two hours.

So, last night we carved pumpkins.Usually, I'm lame and only buy one, so we carve a single pumpkin for the entire family. But, last year everyone loved the roasted pumpkin seeds and they were gone as soon as they came out of the oven. So, this year I let everyone get their own pumpkin, just so we'd have more seeds. Crazy, I know.
Last night, we only finished half of the carving project (the gross cleaning part), because we couldn't find the dandy little carving set that Nathan bought last year. We're planning to buy a new one today and finish the faces. Now if I can only find the candles!

Filling the Spiritual Bucket

Oh, blogging friends, where have you gone?

It must be a busy time of year. Have you noticed people posting less these days? I keep checking back and looking for new posts, so I decided I should write one.

Last night I went to the annual State Auxiliary Training meeting, where we were taught about the new stuff for the year. Have you all seen the new Nursery Manual? It is wonderful. I'm very excited for Josie to be in Nursery next year and have all those wonderful lessons. I really want a copy of my own at home, and it is recommended for use at FHE.

Also, this month in the Friend is included one of the new songs for next year that is not in the Children's Songbook. It's called My Eternal Family, and the kids are going to love it. It has a marching sort of beat like Called to Serve. We learned it in our lesson last night.

Needless to say, I'm very glad I went, even though I didn't get home until ten, and Nathan had to leave early this morning to fill in for someone at work. I needed to be in the room with all the other Primary Presidencies in the stake, and hear their great ideas and get myself excited about another year in this calling. I was glad I had a chance to drive an hour with two of my good friends and talk and laugh and just be away from my kids for awhile. I was also glad to hear the stake president's remarks and goals for the year and to start feeling more motivated to share the gospel. All around it was a good evening.

Wednesdays

I have a love-hate relationship with Wednesdays. It's either a day that I'm so depressed, I can hardly get out of bed or the day that I jump out of bed, look around and have to begin frantically cleaning, because Wednesdays are the shift-change day at Nathan's job. So, he's either leaving for work (hence, the depression) or he's coming home (frantic cleaning).

Today is a good Wednesday, and thanks to my awesome real estate agent, who has shown my house thrice this week (albeit unsuccessfully), the house is basically clean. Mostly I' m doing laundry and willing away the hours until Nate gets off work and begins the three-hour drive home. It's just nice to know that tonight I won't have to sleep alone.

Outside it's sunny and the sky is beautifully blue. It would be a nice day, but the wind is howling, and I learned when I took out the trash that the wind is COLD. Days like today, I love my little house. It blows and blows, and occasionally our window screens rattle, and that's about it. Solid log walls don't shake in the the wind. Often I have no idea how windy it is until I actually step outside, then I usually feel guilty that I made the boys walk to school. Today, however, I did drive them. (Check mark on the good mommy chart.)