Loy-al-ty

1. A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection.

(No matter how many times that team loses) GO POKES!

FYI

Just in case any of you are planning on trying those Pumpkin butterscotch cookies (and you all should) I noticed that the recipe on my sister's blog is missing 2 C of brown sugar, so here is the actual recipe.

2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 C. butter (I use butter flavored Crisco in all my cookies because it makes them really soft)
1 C. sugar
2 C. brown sugar
1 egg
1 can pumpkin (15oz)
4 C. flour
2 C. oats
2 bags butterscotch chips

Cream together first 8 ingredients, then mix in flour, oats, and chips.
Bake at 325 for 15 min.

This makes a lot of cookies!

Confession

From the day we got the phone call letting us know that Michigan would be our new home, I had in my mind a picture of Alaska. All I could think about was snow and cold and no sun. I was seriously dreading it. In fact I pretty much lived in denial up until the day we pulled out with our big yellow truck. Of course it was a gorgeous summer and I thoroughly enjoyed the mid 80's temps all the way through August, but in the back of my mind I was always thinking about how cold it was about to get.

Well, September has come and gone and now October is almost over and it is still a beautiful array of orange, red, and yellow outside my window. Nothing like the white color painting Utah right now! ( I should probably go knock on wood for saying that.) And maybe we will be covered in a blanket of white by next week, but right now it is still fall, so we are living it up with pumpkins and apple pie. Oh, and pumpkin butterscotch cookies. My favorite!

James won the award for scariest pumpkin last night at our ward's trunk or treat with that fierce looking monster in the middle. So the competition was a little scarce, it was still very exciting.

This was my first time ever making home made apple pie. She may not look that pretty, but it was delicious! I did cheat and use pre-made crust, but the apples were straight from the orchard.

Not only was it delectable hot from the oven (more like warm-ish because we had to eat dinner first) but it was yummy for breakfast the next morning! Apples = breakfast. You know you do it too!

I used this recipe. In fact, I've started using a lot of their recipes. The grilled pizza is soooo good and super easy. You have to try it!

Put a little BOO in your ZOO

I am totally bummed that Halloween in on a Sunday this year. Normally I wouldn't care. They usually get a ridiculous amount of candy at the church's trunk or treat and don't really need to go trick or treating, but I spent so much time on costumes this year that I really wanted them to be worn more than once. Fortunately, one of the nurses that Josh works with volunteers at the zoo and told him about a fun event that they do every year called Zoo Boo. The kids can go in their costumes and workers hand out candy. They also have a little show they put on and and a tent with some games. So we went. I'm not really sure it was completely worth the money, but the kids had a blast so I guess it was.

Macy was Tinkerbell this year because we already had the costume in our enormous dress up box, James is some sort of cross between a knight and a Viking (the pattern says young adventurer, but he just calls himself a bad guy), and Samm is a mermaid but the costume ended up being way too big. Unfortunately, since I waited until the last minute to make it there wasn't really anything I could do, so she had to walk around holding up the skirt the whole time.

Walking through the hay maze.

We also splurged and took the kids to see their special 3D/4D movie. I wasn't quite sure what the 4D was all about until we got sprayed in the face with water a couple time. Still a good time though. Watching Samm try and swat at stuff was the best part.

We really had a hard time getting the glasses to stay on Macy's face.

I think this is our best picture yet!

Tried to think of a clever title, butt couldn't

Basically, here is what happened. I was on the treadmill this Morning when Macy came in and told me she had to pee. As soon as she was finished she dashed out of the bathroom and left me searching for and scooping up her pajama bottoms and underwear, only I couldn't find her underwear. Finally I yelled out "Macy, where are your panties?" And she yelled back "there in here."

And so they were!

Double treasures

This afternoon while I was taking Macy to the bathroom for the ten millionth time in one hour (she snuck almost a whole 20 oz of Sierra Mist) our door bell rang. I was a little worried at first to see who it was, because if it was someone I knew than I might have to invite them in and well, remember the picture from yesterday? That has pretty much spread like wildfire throughout the entire house. Fortunately it was just the mail man. Delivering not one, but TWO packages for us! And, as if two mystery boxes wasn't exciting enough, one was from my Mom and one from Josh's Mom. A package from both Grandmas in one day is pretty much comparable to Christmas!

When I opened up the first box I asked Macy what was inside and she very excitedly yelled "newspaper!" Once I pulled the first bunch of newspaper off the top, she got the hang of things pretty quickly.

The second box had bubbles to pop, so for Macy it pretty much was as fun as Christmas!



Once we got all the newspaper and bubbles out of the way here is what we found. Grandma Morgan sent the kids some yummy treats and these cute Halloween pillowcases.



Grandma Rollins sent a surprise for Samm's baptism and these super cute everyday pillowcases!

Seriously, what are the odds of getting a package from both Grandma's on the same day and both of them sending fun pillowcases? Crazy crazy stuff. We love it! Thank you to both of our awesome Grandma's!

And this is completely random, but I have a message for all of the meter readers out there. Please don't sneak through people's backyards wearing hooded sweatshirts!! Some of us are a little jumpy. Try wearing a bright orange vest and maybe some heavy work boots to stomp around and make noise in so we know your coming. I might have one less heart attack that way.

Um?

Ya, there's really not a whole lot to say. I'm scrambling to finish Halloween costumes before our first Halloween event this weekend and the kids pretty much have free reign of the house.

Better late than never

We finally got around to taking the kids to a cider mill this weekend, and only because a group from Josh's hospital were going. The kids had an absolute blast, so next year I'm sure we will go many times. My favorite part was the doughnuts and cider!

Our cute crew on the way to pick apples. The wagon ride out to the orchard was just as fun as picking the apples.

The girls are always so good about stopping to pose for pictures, but James can't be bothered with holding still.

The only time James was holding still was sitting in the trees eating. I think Samm and James both ate more apples than they picked.

There weren't very many apples left within Macy's reach,

So she mainly just enjoyed eating them as well.

Can I interest anyone in a bite? Guess who's idea this picture was!

The sun wasn't quite perfect for picture taking, but it was too pretty of a setting to pass up.

Love this one!

More partying

I think I've said this before, but Samm's birthday is the beginning of my crazy season. We go birthday, holiday, birthday, holiday, holiday, birthday and then in January I get to take a breath. This year the older kids have been begging me to let them have a friend party, which makes things doubly stressful for me, but we pulled it off.

We did a late night girls only (no Dad or James) pajama party that quickly turned into a dress up party. Samm even got her wish for balloons.

I found these darling cupcakes in a book called Hello Cupcakes, but I didn't buy the book because I thought it was severely overpriced. I took a few pictures from the book with Josh's phone so I could make them from memory, but I couldn't figure out what one of the ingredients was used for so I called my Mom and she ended up finding the recipe for me online. You can check it out here. They really did take quite a while to make, but were a huge hit with the girls. Samm's reaction alone when she saw them was worth all the time and effort.

For a fun activity I sent the girls on a treasure hunt and they found these cute fairy masks and some paint.

Samm was ridiculously spoiled this year with gifts. I'm feeling a little guilty now, because it was pretty obvious that most of the parents spend more on friend presents than I do.

This was Samm giving her appreciation speech. I'm not joking at all. When she finished opening all her gifts she said "OK guys, now I have a speech for you." It was great! And so Samm!

Macy really liked the makeup case that Samm got and decided to give herself a lip gloss makeover. She had pink creases around her eyes for three days.

The girls ended the night with popcorn and a movie and I sighed a sigh of relief. One down...

I told you she is great

Eight is GREAT!

And so is Samm!

I'm feeling a little bit emotional this year with Samm's birthday. It's a big mile stone for my oldest child, and while I am so happy that she will be getting baptized, I'm afraid this is the beginning of the flood. Young womens, high school, driving, graduation....oh boy! Speaking of boys, I should have put dating in that list.

Good thing right now she is still my toothless little girl. Interestingly, she pulled her tooth out yesterday all by herself, and last year she also lost a tooth on her birthday. I didn't remember her loosing a tooth last year, but this girl is like an elephant. She never forgets. And sure enough, when I looked back through the blog archives, there was a toothless birthday picture. I never really doubted her, I just wanted to jog my memory.

Birthday + tooth fairy visit = very happy and excited girl!

Samm is like me when it comes to birthdays. She LOVES them! It's all she talked about the entire week. But, even as excited as she was, she still wanted to let James and Macy help her open the presents so they would have fun too. She is such a sweet heart.

Her first set of scriptures from Grandma and Grandpa Rollins.

I love this picture, because it really describes Samm's personality. She gets really excited and animated about stuff. I think this picture was taking right in the middle of "It's what I always wanted!" By the way, it's a really annoying yapping poodle! Which I did buy for her, only because I new it would get this reaction.

Josh insisted of being the photographer this year so I would be in the pictures instead of him. And what a lovely picture of me it is.

Oh wait, here is one of me not scratching my nose.

Once again I forgot to buy candles!

The cupcakes still tasted just fine. At least the frosting did!