Natalie quirks

This isn’t a quirk, really, just a shot of Natalie swinging!  Candice took it at Paul David’s birthday party, and I stole it off her blog.

I was taking a picture of Natalie here, because she has clothespins in her hair.  She’s been doing this all the time lately, and I find it a bit strange, annoying, and hilarious.  And I wanted to remember.  But then James got in the picture, and I noticed something.  Look at his face here:

And Natalie’s face here:

I think they’re related.

Do anybody else’s kids put clothespins in their hair?

Happy Birthday Paul David!

Joanna’s buddy Paul David turned five (another one?!!) this week, and the girls and I went to his birthday party on Thursday afternoon.  This is the first year he and Joanna are actually in class together at school – yay!

His party was at a local park – it was shady and perfect!

My sweet Natalie, teetering:

Joanna was harder to catch shots of.  She was on the move!

See?

I love this one.  That girl could swing all day!  I pushed her for a bit, then went to sit down and chat with my peeps.  :)  Her buddies (like Anna) would take pity on her and push her for little bits.  It was cute.

Joanna, Aiden Watson, and the birthday boy, Paul David!

Here he is, getting ready to blow out his big 5 candle on his cupcake tree:

Those cupcakes were gorgeous!

Natalie, Anna, Mae, and Judson peeking from behind:  (I don’t know the kid in the green.)

Paul David got a great new stash of toys!  He had a Transformers party, and boy did he get some transformers!

I took Joanna with me to pick out the gift for Paul David.  She was so interested in the transformers.  She just couldn’t believe that this turns into that!   It was pretty cute.  :)  She told me she was going to go to Paul David’s house so she could see how it all works.

Sleeping. Stuffing. Spaghetti.

Last Friday Joanna got to go to the K-Park football game with her buddy Anna and her family.  I knew we’d pay for it later, sleep-wise, but she had such a great time!  They got home even later than Lisa thought, due to it being homecoming.  Oh, well!

The next day she actually took a nap at rest time.  I probably shouldn’t of let her do it as she was up until 10:30 again that night (thankfully, quiet in her room though).  It seemed to have helped, and she was pretty back to normal the next day or so.  She slept in the first few mornings of the week.  That is typically how she makes up for lost sleep.  I love that girl.  :)

We sent Natalie in to wake her up after her nap.  I just love the progression of pictures here.

I love my Natalie-blur!

She’d scooted down and turned over, probably trying to tune out her wake-up call.

I am learning about James that he loves containers.  He loves to put things in and take things out.  He also loves putting things on and through.  (Like a clothespin through a toilet paper tube… over and over and over.)  I don’t remember the girls playing like this.  I love it!

He is getting to eat spaghetti sauce a bit earlier than the girls did.  We have a spaghetti supper every week at the church (WAHOO!), and I’m sure not packing a dinner for him!  Especially when he’d be screaming for what we’re eating anyway!

I may need to start bringing a tarp for him to eat on though – something I can just roll up, bring home, and hose down!

Seriously though I think I will bring a stack of washcloths to wet down for him.  I just can’t get all this off of him, the chair, and the floor with little paper napkins and wipes.  We’re too used to our cloth everything!

I was joking with the nursery ladies (who all stopped to comment on his extreme spaghetti cuteness) that I was just going to drop him off without cleaning him up.  Jane said she’d just put him in the sink.  :)

Swinging Love

James shares a love of swinging with his little big sister.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this:

The sun was right in his face, poor kid, but he didn’t mind!

Joanna was having lunch (waaaaayyyy in the background) with Lisa and Anna and Emma.  I had fed the little kids at home before we met up at the park.

It’s sad cleaning out the fridge happens so infrequently, it’s a picture-taking event.

It has been building for awhile…the desperate need to forsake all other aspects of my home and life to clean my fridge out.  Ew.  There was no way I was going to even take a before picture, much less post it!  But here are all the innards strewn over the counters:

Matt even took a few minutes to scrub the inside for me! 

Not that any of you need a tutorial to clean your fridge, but all I did was yank everything out, scrub the insides with soap and water in the sink, spray the inside with vinegar/water, and wipe down!  No chemicals where I keep my food, and it’s all very nice and shiny.  Even Joanna noticed.  I love her.  :)

It feels soooooo  good to have a clean fridge.  I cleaned the rest of the kitchen to match the next day.  Didn’t stick though.  Something about 4 or 5 kids in the house at any given time and the need to feed them.  :)

Yet another cookie post

So if you’re tired of looking at pictures of and reading about cookies and baking, skip this post!  Last week I made some snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, and peanut butter cookies.  I hadn’t made any of these before, and I was on a bit of a sugar high after.  :)

Here are the tester snickerdoodles before going in the oven:

And all fresh and ready to eat!  I froze the rest in balls before coating them in cinnamon/sugar.  I’ll do this after the thaw and before I bake on party day!

I’m not a snickerdoodle fan myself, but I had several volunteer testers who deemed them good and snickerdoodle-y.  I don’t think they’re the best you’ll ever have, but they have some pretty great ingredients!  All my cookies are made with freshly ground whole wheat flour, real butter, farm fresh eggs, and either turbinado or sucanat for the sugar.  (Quickly – both are pretty much less-processed forms of your standard table sugar.  Sucanat is best, as it’s evaporated sugar cane juice, and it retains the most nutrients and actual natural good stuff that sugar cane has.  Turbinado is dehydrated cane juice.  It’s cheaper but does not have much of the good stuff left in it.  I think it’s still better than the white granulated sugar though.  Neither is actually a health food… just more natural than the customary stuff.)

Anyway… all of these cookies are pretty much sugar cookies, so I was curious how they’d turn out with the turbinado.  The consistency is affected a bit, but I think they still taste great!

Sugar cookies all baked up!  I went ahead and baked all the sugar cookies before freezing.  I’m hoping I don’t regret this later.  :)

Mmmmm… peanut butter cookie dough.  I froze these just like this:

I’m hoping I’ll be able to just throw them on the baking sheet, let them thaw a bit, and bake ‘em up.

I baked a few (obviously!) and they turned out just fine.

Matt thought they were great, and probably if I had one right now I would think that too.  I was on serious sugar overload by the time I got finished baking these cookies.  :)

I’m done baking cookies for a few days while I wait for my Azure standard order to come in on Tuesday.  I ordered 25lbs of sucanat.  Yikes!  I’m totally out of sugar and I don’t want to get any more not-sucanat just days before my order comes in!  I made banana bread yesterday and discovered after I’d already mixed up the other ingredients that I was short on sugar.  This turned out to be a great thing as the bread turned out delicious with almost half the amount.  Wahoo!

I found two or three more recipes today that I can’t wait to make next week!  One is a pumpkin cookie with white chocolate chips – very fall-ish!  I also plan to make some no-bake cookies (I’m drooling right now), though I will probably have to wait until the last minute so I don’t eat them immediately all by myself.  It’s really been all I can do to keep myself out of the dough in the freezer.  Ya’ll – this is some serious self-restraint for me.  My first word as a baby was cookie.  Seriously.  Just ask my mom.

From Way back in September

I just could not get a good shot of this, but had to post anyway.  James is using the ottoman thing as a walker.  He’s actually on his feet here, just kind of leaning forward.

By the time I got the flash on, he’d gone down to his knees.  I was pretty impressed at how well he was doing with the wheels.  There’s not a lot of friction!  He does it also with the little chairs, but there aren’t any wheels – he has a bit more control.

Also not a good picture (what is with these kids not playing in the good light?!), but I loved how sweetly James and Ray were playing!

And totally random – Joanna likes to get the measuring cups and spoons and set them up like this.  I’ve told her not to mess with them, but I still think it’s cute.  :)

And just a final one of sweet sisters playing with play doh.  They really do play mostly very sweetly.  I LOVE that and I want it to last forever and ever and ever.