Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Ah, the joys of family


Here's our family photo from the Botanical Gardens, an overall unpleasant experience! With impatient children and impatient photographer (sorry Amber, maybe patient Tyler can email us his patient versions!) we gritted and tried our best to look our best. And just to be clear, this IS the fixed one with Photoshop pasted-on heads, clothing color changed to match, and smirks into smiles, and it still sucks. But you can't argue with the best, and this is the best! Doesn't take much to be the best when taken from such a pool of inadequacy, so let this be a life lesson to us all: hang out with mediocre people and strive for excellence!

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Scream for Ice Cream?

My babies only know a few signs, just the essentials to get by before speech invades their little world. "More," is perhaps the first and most important! To them, it means just, "Gimme FOOD!" usually accompanied by an adorable little squeak of, "Mo? Mo?"
Well, my bowl of homemade cookie-dough ice cream didn't stay mine for long, as Baby caught sight of it and started with her simple signing, fingers clapping and desperate eyebrows knit together, quickly advancing in speed, then to begging, loudly, "MO? MO?"
And when she finally got hold of it, she smiled wildly and said, "Col'!"
And as with all things good, one bite is never enough. I guess it's a great way to stay on a diet: always share with your toddler. The chubby looks cuter on her cheeks, anyway.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints


You know that Primary song, "I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints!" that the kids sing? I never sing that, I don't wear a missionary badge, a lot of my friends and neighbors don't even know this very important thing about me. So now at least online I can wear my "badge" in the signature lines on the forums I visit. You can too! Here's the PHP code to use on bulletin boards:

[IMG]http://tinyurl.com/jesuschristLDS-jpg[/IMG]

No annoyingly flashing blinkies, just beautiful and simple like Christ himself.
Listen to the song here
http://broadcast.lds.org/churchmusic/MP3/1/2/words/77.mp3

Early Thanksgiving

Troy's sister Amber and her husband Tyler came to visit for Thanksgiving, a week early. Have you seen holiday airfare?! So we had our Thanksgiving dinner the Saturday prior with a Texas-smoked turkey, real AND peeled mashed potatoes, almost lump-free gravy, appetizers, non-soggy stuffing, green bean casserole, and what my kids call "can," otherwise known as cranberry sauce. For dessert, Tyler's Dream Bars, 10 pies, homemade ice cream, and strawberry shortcake. It was wonderful to have my assistant aka Amber cleaning behind me as I cooked, and I've never had so much fun in the kitchen. It's amazing how drudgery takes the fun out of everything. We had a great weekend, a few ups and downs with a trip to the emergency room, but what holiday weekend would be complete without some family drama? Overall it was wonderful to have them all to ourselves to reminisce and get to know them better.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Beautiful

Sunday after church we went to the Austin Zilker Botanical Gardens for some photo ops. The kids LOVE posing, especially when they can zip around from location to location rather than sitting in one spot.

Of course, we had our fair share of bloopers, too!

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Prettier than your wedding!

Olivia, who is always searching for girly things, fanciful, imaginative, or beautiful, wanted to see when I got to be a princess, so I showed her my wedding photos and wedding dress. She was appropriately impressed, as any 4-year-old girl should be. A few days later, on Thanksgiving, she saw my pumpkin cream pie and exclaimed, "Mommy! That's prettier than your wedding!" Obviously we have some priorities to straighten out.

Easiest recipe ever found at Jell-O.com