Summer

Hannah put mascara on Hope because she wanted to see how long her lashes looked. Hannah is my budding photographer :)

Last day of school pictures for Hunter, Hannah and Hayden.

"Mom, you said we are going to the pool today, right? So, I don't need to go out and tan." That was said with a big smile...like I know I'm weird, but I'm still wondering. Guess who said that?

Okay, ready for a quick recap?

Maybe, I'll start with a funny story. The last day of school was Friday, May 27th. I woke up feeling...like I was pregnant, really, but I'm not. I went to Hayden's class party not feeling my best, but not terrible. While there, I started to feel worse, and needed to sit down. My friend Brenda came over and we were chatting. Then IT hit me. I felt really sick really fast. I swallowed and hold Brenda I was not going to make it to my car. I grabbed the garbage can, hid in t he corner, Brenda had my back , literally blocking me from others, and I barfed! Luckily, it was a loud 3rd grade end of the year pizza party so no one heard my retching. Gross. But funny. I grabbed my bag of barf and hit the door. I had just picked Hunter up from his last final so he was with me. He didn't even know I had a problem, so I think my secret was safe. He was too busy entertaining the 3rd graders.

Today is Friday again, one week of summer under our belts. I think I have established summer does not = no bedtime. I think 10 pm is a fair bedtime on most nights, later for sleepover nights. You can read a book in your bed after that, but you need to be in bed. Hope's bedtime has not changed FYI, so I still have to get up and get moving and take Rocky our for a walk. Do they know who their Mother is? Do they really think it will be a good summer if I'm constantly tired and in need of some "Heather" time?

I've got volleyball games, scheduled pool dates, recital, football Fridays, EFY, trek, and vacations all calendared out. (at least for now) Oh yeah, did I mention we are moving at the end of June between our Chicago trip and our Camas, WA trip? The owners decided they wanted to move back into their house, we went looking, and boom we found a house and the rest should be history in a few weeks. I'm trying not to feel extremely overwhelmed. It's not really working but, I taking lots of deep cleansing breaths and packing...books only so far. But, I have a lot of books.

catching up

I found this one day last week. It made me laugh.

Now she has a cell phone AND and ipod touch! Her life is now complete :)

Hannah and her friend Hannah from Washington taking pictures of each other. Hannah came out for Hannah's birthday. It was a surprise for both girls. My friend Shellie and I had been working together. Shellie woke up her Hannah that Thursday morning at like 3:30 am and asked her if she wanted to go see Hannah in TX!!! She was totally surprised. We picked her up at the airport and then surprised our Hannah. Hannah T. and Hope were up on Hannah's bed hiding when Hannah got home. I told my Hannah to go clean her room. She went up (very reluctantly :) and out popped Hannah T. WOW!! Was she ever surprised!

I have an office that never seems to have any pencils. So, I bought a 12 pack of my favorites and told the kids DO NOT touch. Well, a certain 4 year old touched. After a couple weeks, there were only 4 left in my pencil holder. One day I walked in and she had cut the erasers off the pencils. GRRRR!! I asked her why???? And she "didn't know". I told my parents about it a few days later. When they came for a visit last weekend...guess what they brought? New pencils and a pack of erasures!! We had a good laugh.

If you ever feel like you might be spending too much time on the computer...just have your husband wipe out all your "favorites". We have both gotten iphones recently (me:Christmas him:just 'cause he was up for an upgrade and iphones went down to $49) and he was messing around "sinking" (is that how you spell that word) his phone and it got all sorts of messed up. I went to my "favorites" and none of my "favorites" were left. What the what??? I had started (again after we got a new computer after we moved) a nice collection of random websites I liked to check. I was pretty annoyed at first, but now I'm looking at it like spring cleaning for my computer.

Oh well....moving on...Hannah just turned 12 on February 24th. We had a fun party that Friday night. Here, let me tell you all about it. She invited 14 people, so the cake decorating competition that she wanted to have was a no go. So we did a Survivor party. Pretty much the perfect party idea for her and her age group. The girls came in and got bandannas, divided up into tribes and then we started the games. I tried to do a mix of word games, memory games, balance games, physical games, and eating challenges. Just like in the real game. Some favorites: I made mud (chocolate pudding with Oreo and gummy worms) the girls got a glop of it and couldn't use their hands. When I asked the family what gross food thing we should make...pretty much all of them said "a green smoothie". I tried not to be offended. :) So, Scott prepared a smoothie that was pretty disgusting. Onion, kale, radishes, peppers,uhhhhhh what else? I know there is more but can't think of it. No fruit. Oh yeah some celery. It was gross. A couple of the girls got sick. Pretty great.We had something lined up one right after the other for 1 1/2 hours. Then, they all went home. Great party!!

back to nursery I go

Today, I'm going back to nursery. I don't really want to but...that's my calling and I'm going to go and be chipper about it. And try and love those little babies. I was called into nursery six months ago. The first 4 months I worked with the older kids ready to go into primary. And don't tell anyone, but I really got to like it. I was doing all sorts of fun things with those kids, crafts, lessons, books, games blah blah blah. Then in January, I got a new assignment....the baby nursery. I was less than excited about that. They don't do much of anything. First of all, the room is in the back country of the building. I see NO ONE except a few parents. Second, it's the babies and they cry and my back hurts sitting on the floor for 2 hours holding crying babies. I still don't have a helper because apparently this is not a fun calling and nobody will accept it but me. There got that off my chest. I was sick 2 weeks ago and last week was stake conference. So, I'm going back today looking on the bright side.

I just have to say...

Several times recently, I have been looking through magazines and I have happen upon this one model. Every time I have seen her, I have taken a second look and said...REALLY? I saw her again while I was working out on Friday in a magazine, and I thought, THAT's IT!! I had to find out who she was and what the deal was. Her name is Georgia May Jagger. Yes, Mick's daughter. Her mother is Jerry Hall. She is a "hot" up and coming model. She is the new face of Hudson jeans and Rimmel of London. She has a pretty face, lovely figure, and the UGLIEST teeth I have just about ever seen. I think the first time I saw her, I thought she had fake teeth in. If you saw her with her mouth closed, you wouldn't think twice. But she likes to show off her teeth, and apparently so does everybody else. But really? Those teeth? I realize everyone doesn't have perfect teeth. But these teeth? I don't get it. It's just funny to me. Our society is so obsessed with perfectly white, shaped teeth. Everybody and their brother in Hollywood has those veneers. And the fake lashes (and or Latisse), fake boobs, injections blah blah blah. Why do they love her teeth? Very interesting to me. What do you think?

It's the thought that counts.

Last year, I helped my friend Julie make a TON of caramel apples. Like in the hundreds. There were 4 of us, we all made like 6 batches of caramel in the days leading up to the assembly day...each batch made 25 apples....each batch of caramel took an hour to make. So, it took a lot of work. We assembled ALL day one Saturday last year. We dipped them in yummy toppings. We packaged them professionally. They were gorgeous, and they were delicious.

Fast forward to this year. I decided I'd make some lovely gourmet caramel apples for teachers' gifts. I bought apples today and assembled all my supplies. I chopped Heath bars, crunched pretzels, and toasted and chopped almonds. I even spent an hour making my caramel. You stir and you stir and you stir and you stir...all to have everything happen temperature wise in like the last 5 minutes. Everything was going lovely, until I realized that my goal temperature was 235 NOT 335 as I had mistakenly read/thought. I think I stopped around 240 but I panicked and I'm not sure. Needless to say, I was only able to squeak out 9 apples, before the caramel cooled and you couldn't possibly dip anything in it. The nine I made are very pretty, but watch out you will break a tooth on them. I am tired and worked on those darn things for over 2 hours. Hope's teacher and Hayden's teacher are still getting them. I might wake up in the morning and not be able to pass them out as gifts this year, but for right now they are good enough. I feel bad, they will NOT taste as good as they look. But this year, it's the thought that counts. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Happy Birthday to Hope

Here are some pictures from Hope's birthday party last weekend. The pictures are all sorts of messed up time-line wise, but blogger makes it so hard now to move your pictures around. It didn't used to be that way. So, here is the party story, a little messed up but still here. The pumpkin balloon game in the back. Each balloon was filled with something. **Note to self-kids like candy better than glitter!**

Kids coloring the masks. I bought these little wooden masks at Michael's that the kids colored with markers. They were very successful. They kept the kids busy for like 20+ minutes. And in the world of 4 years olds, that's an eternity. The kids also painted little pumpkins.

I'm not sure why the witch on the right was crying...she must have thought her nose was too big...or too green.

These witches were the hardest ones to make, too the longest too. I couldn't get my food marker to work, so most didn't have any smiles/frowns at all. Stupid food marker.

Cake pops! I think I have figured them out now. Hannah was my helper on this project. She helped me one entire afternoon. We made 75 cake pops that day.

The one picture of me that was taken. NEVER any pictures of me, do you have the same issue?I'm usually the one taking the pictures.

Little mummy wraps and grilled cheese pumpkin shaped sandwiches for the main course. Very kid friendly.

I bought soda for the party, it matched my color scheme.

First cut into the fondant cake. I made marshmallow fondant, so it was a little smooshier than the store bought kind, but it tasted much better.

She was so excited to get this present "my own computer!!".

From Auntie Hayley.

All smiles.

My very first attempt at decorating a cake. I have made plain cakes plenty of times, but my first time trying to decorate. The fondant really wasn't very hard. I really didn't have any idea what I was doing, I just made it up as I went along. But overall I was happy. Learned a lot that's for sure!

I found these two spiders the morning of the party. I was sweeping up, I knew the spider on the left was there (I think it's the same one that was on my outside chair from before, he just moved). I was going to have Scott move him, but I was sweeping all around him, I came out like 2 minutes later...to find the tarantula on the left crawling around right where I had been!!! I must have stirred it up, but I'm just so glad it didn't crawl on me, I would have messed my pants for sure. Kids liked seeing them, and Hunter released them back into the wild the next day.

Little Alice in Wonderland. She had a great day!!

poor carebear

Poor Carebear. Rocky chewed this a month or two ago. Funny thing is Hope still loves it. I'm thinking about sewing that eye closed along with the nose. But not so sure. It makes me laugh when I see it. Although, he is loosing his stuffing at a quick rate :)

I bought myself this new baking cookbook. Holy cow. So, I started by making puff pastry. One of the cooking blogs had this puff pastry and peanut butter and chocolate treat. Made them, very tasty. But then I made these little treats. BEST cookie ever! I thought it was so pretty too. They are those palmier cookies, or butterfly wings. They are puff pastry with sugar. DELICIOUS. I made homemade cream cheese filled Danishes out of the same cookbook. I thought I had died and gone to heaven a little bit. I have been baking and delivering to people. The bishop drove Hunter to seminary a few times over the last couple of weeks... and I delivered pastries to him. I must pass out to others or else I would get really big. These things are so good, I have very little control. But so fun to make.

Hope's 4th birthday is coming up on the 19th. We are doing a Halloween themed party this year. Halloween parties are fun to plan and put together. I have been all sorts of crafty. Martha Stewart and I are BBF. I made her invitations, and actually had fun doing it. That Martha has some good glitter. I'm planning on making 3 different cakepops for the celebration. Do you have this book? I'm planning on making the witches, ghosts, and pumpkins. Last night I didn't sleep very well, because I was mentally planning. I had some good ideas last night and can't remember them all this morning. I swear I should put a journal by the side of my bed for times like that. I'd feel better to write it out, plus I'd remember all my good ideas in the morning. Win win.