Awesome Pie Idea:

I am tempted to do this for  Thanksgiving....individual servings are so cute!
Ann

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/09/single-serving-pie-in-a-jar/

Day Light Savings

Funny Moment Yesterday:

I was working on various projects and looked at the clock it said 3:45, I then realized that Ehre wasn't home. Concerned I quickly called the school to see if there was a problem with the bus. The secretary who I've recently gotten to know via Book Fair, calmly assured me that everything was fine since it was really only 2:45 and the kids were still in class..... I am sure she got quite the laugh when she hung up with me.

Even funnier, I still haven't fixed the clock.

:)

Ultrasound Pics

We have a healthy baby_______! I had been forewarned at my last Dr visit that this baby was cradled really really low (took 15 min to find the heart beat), and because of this we may not be able to find out the gender. But our tech said she wouldn't let us leave until she had figured it out. This baby _______ is sitting really low, but "it" is really healthy and looks great. We also found out why I haven't felt this one move much, the placenta is located at the top active portion of my uterus. In the past it has always been along my spinal region. So when this baby kicks or pushes up... all "it" his is a nice cushion.

We will go over everything with the Dr on our next visit, the technician didn't say anything about changing the due date, so I hope it doesn't budge, UNLESS they want to move it forward. :)

Here are some pics, Jeff and I really enjoyed this visit with no kids today, thank you so much to friends that have helped us out today!

2011 Thankful Tree

We started the tradition last year I'm making a Thankful tree. This year all of the tags in laminated so I don't have to make 100 again next year. I really like how this tradition has helped my family find very specific things to be thankful for.

I am thankful for.....

First piggy tail

Apple pie..yummy!!!

Best insurance agent ever...

Our agent has lots of clients which was why I was quite surprised to receive a laminated copy of the newspaper article from her today...even with my name spelled wrong she.knows who I am!  :)

Happy Halloween!

Blow out the candle... sing a song.

Hmmm....what is this?

Elise and her cake

It didn't stay pretty long...but she loved it!

Ben's Halloween treats!

Ben and I made these for his class party tomorrow. It took 1 1/2 hours to make but he did most of the work!

Book Fair in the News!!!

http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011110240305

I told him how to spell my name several times...but that's ok. :)

She didn't last long.

It was a great birthday....

....and in the end she loved sitting in her new carseat watching a movie as we drove home.

Elise's Birthday Cake!

7am one birthday present...

Its 7 am I need to write a paper today and so does Jeff. Kids have their primary program practice and then Ehre is attending a friends birthday party...in the end we will have a big party for Elise tonight but until then we let her open a gift to play with during the day. Happy Birthday Elise!

GNO: Jessica's last bureau before the baby comes!

We suprises Jessica tonight and kidnapped her to Bruno's Pizza. Hopefully she will have her baby soon!

Happy 1st Birthday Elise!!!

We can't believe that you are 1!!! We love having you in our family!!!!

One for Books

This year our students as part of the Book Fair, participated in the One For Books program. For every dollar raised, Scholastic donates a $5 book to Toys for Tots. We had alot of change donated...and I was pretty excited. When I went to the bank this morning I thought for sure we had raised $400, that's quite a bit of change. I weighted my box 90 lbs...so heavy. After waiting  1 1/2 hours for the bank to use a change counter and count all the change (I had to know which class collected the most change.) he came back to tell me that we had raised not $400 but $1411!!! 

I am so impressed with the generosity of all the families at our school. One family donated $63 in change, it came tightly stored in a canning jar. We had 7 classes raise $60-90 each, and many in the $50 range.

Must be getting close to the holidays, I'm feeling the spirit!
Ann

Amazing Cards

My friend Carrie, just sent me the cutest Halloween card! Cute enough that I am willing to spread news about her personal business. Check out her work, I'm sure you  can imagine a friend or loved one receiving one of these cards from you, they'd love it.  Check her out!

http://www.justuscardsonline.com

Book Fair Pics

I am the Chairperson for Cumberland Elementary Book Fair this year. Its been a lot of work but a lot of fun. This is the set up everything was finished this morning. I have wonderful volunteers that have helped out allot! The theme this year is "To the Book Fair and Beyond!" Only thing left to do is the bulletin board.... that will start tomorrow.

Birthday cakes..

Ben and I attended a fun party recently for his friend. They here's some help decorating he cakes and I got it. :) he ghost cake was already cut out and the supplies for the cake provided it was a lot of fun. This mom is so creative in her cake ideas I loved how they turned out. She also had the nursery all decorated it was perfect!

Canning and drying apples

Today's been a few hours canning and drying apples. Everyone helped with the process. Some was apple pie filling for later and others dried cinnamon apples. Yummy!

She eats apples faster than we can peel them

Pie filling for tomorrow.

Yummy!

Paid babysitters

These two are not out for hire! But they are the cheapest around Ehre earns .25 and Ben .10 for each lesson I teach. Only three rules...1. Be happy, 2. Don't interupt mom 3. Don't let Elise get hurt.

Overall we have great days and as of late they play outside together while I teach....it works out great!

She can't walk...

.....but she is pretty much stair safe :)

Surgeon's update

I saw Dr Snead today because they didn't do a lot of physical therapy over the summer he is considering me a 3 month post surgery patient right now. Which is really good he likes white at he said I'm right on schedule we talked about volleyball he said I could start hitting but no serving and definitely no diving.....ha ha I don't die when I am pregnant anyways.

So now I am looking for a babysitter for Friday night so I can go to couples night with Jeff and start hitting again!!!

Baby shower gifts

I am going to a baby shower tomorrow...she doesn't follow my blog so the gift will still be a suprise. This morning I realized I didn't have a gift and would need to make something.   I first made this owl hat for my friends newborn girl but then I realized that it was more boyish than intended. So I made the complete opposite. Maybe I will give her both... I'm not sure yet. Amy I would send it to you but it is too warm in Thailand.

Due to cold weather...

The hat became an early bday gift.

Friends new board game

(this really is a blog post from me :)

What to try a new game? My friends just put together this one, and you can now buy it.  Its kind of fun to say that you know someone who actually put together something like this and now its in production!  Congrats to the Meservy Family and their hard work. Check it out!  http://www.sharpano.com/

Loops ....Croop

My phone has a spelling feature that corrects my typing but often changes words even when I type them in correctly. :)

Sick Elise

Elise has droop. After a long and horrible night ( jeff and I didn't get to go sleep till 3:30..am) I took her into the weekend clinic at 9 am. By 9:05 the dr said it was definitly crook and contagious . So its a good thing its conference weekend. We will all stay home and relax. Hopefully theme steroid Elise recieved will kick in before tonight.

In the keen time we are having Mary Lou doughnuts because i am too tired to make the traditional Abelskievers.

Elise's handmade christmas gift.

I will make one for each of the kids but I have a goal to make something for each one myself each year.

Elise's new winter bonnet.

She had red eye and I can't fix it on my phone so she looked scary. :) The bonnet is pink so cute! This time it buttons under the chin...no ties to worry about. Now I can start on the families set of matching hats for christmas...they are going to be awesome!!!!

Simple wedding cake.

I have a friend getting sealed to her husband this week. I decided to surprise her with a wedding cake. She was surprised it was a lot of fun.

Fall hat

This is a hat that I made when Elise was a few months old....way to big then but perfect now. I am currently working on a pink winter bonnet.

Elise LOVES board books.

She has worn through a few already :)

Church at home today.

Ben has a 103 fever and everyone but Elise has a cough...all this started last night. :( So we all stayed home.

Passport photo

I lately have not liked any of my photos . So when Jeff asked me to get a passport I was nervous that I would hate the photo and be stuck with it for 10 years....but no I like it :)

Look what came home today....

The butterfly hatched today! These past few days both Eire's teacher and I have explained that sometimes they don't hatch but it did!

Chicken Enchiladas Story

This is one of my favorite dishes...and I never make it. Mostly because I never have the ingredients on hand. But this week just before I went to do my grocery shopping...ok when I was in the WalMart parking lot. I quickly looked up the recipe and wrote down everything I would need. It took me about an hour, and I made two extra sides to freeze for later, but in the end I had a delicious Enchilada dish. (1/2 with olives for me, and 1/2 without for Jeff :)

When we served up everyone's plates, this is the conversation that followed:
Ben: I don't like it
Jeff: You should be grateful your mom made you dinner
Ben: I don't like it.....continued for 5 minutes
Jeff : Ben you should tell your mother thank you for dinner.
Ben: Mom, I am grateful you made dinner, but I am not grateful you served me some (seriously!!!! smarty pants)
Jeff: Just taste it, take a bite.
Ben.......4 bites later, I love it!

:) Oh the joys of trying new dishes on kids!

Side By Side

Ok, maybe they aren't as similar as we thought, but they still are quite cute!!! In these pictures Ehre is 12 months and Elise is 11.

Future Mrs. Clause

I had to pull out warmer sleepers and found this. Elise looks so much like Ehre.

Amazing dress site

Yes, this is Ann sending out this link this time. :) A friend just recommended a site that will add sleves or alter a dress to fit your measurements...all for very reasonable prices. So I am passing on the wonderful news.

eshakti.com

Maybe after this baby we'll look into getting a new dress, since yes, I'm sure I won't fit my old ones for a little while. :)

Indianapolis Temple

We have a layout of what the grounds are going to look like...beautiful like always!

http://mormontemples.org/eng/indianapolis/temple-details

Piano Lessons

I am excited to report that I am teaching piano lessons again. Its been a while but this is going to be fun. I was only planning to teach 2 kids, but then realized there was a need in our stake for more teachers. So I took on a few...12 more. I now teach for an hour every afternoon M-F and a few lessons while Ben is at Preschool. I figure it was less work than my second class (that I dropped) and plus I get paid to do something I like.

Ben is now also taking lessons, and though his are quite short and feel quite scatterbrained (I try to relate the lessons to things that he likes, such as cars, airplanes driving up and down the keyboard etc) he is making progress. He can find all the C's and G's, and is good about finding black cluster keys and black chords. (We refer to these sets of black keys as groups of friends, also we relate them to their white friends nearby...Jeff overheard and I think at first he thought I was racist, till he realized we were talking about the piano!)

 Ehre is still taking lessons, her counting has really improved. She has learned that if she practices 4 days a week she gets to have pizza at school on Fridays. Our first piano recital will be in December, and I am excited. I have a great bunch of kids and this is going to be fun to see them progress with their lessons.

Did I mention, the money we earn goes towards our trip to Utah (for a month) next year? Isn't that wonderful! I've got some great deadlines coming up.....

Bookfair in October
Elise's Birthday on Oct 22
Halloween
Thanksgiving (My parents hopefully visiting)
8th year anniversary
Christmas
Ehre's Birthday
Jeff's Birthday
Ben's Birthday
Jeff's Defense
New Baby arriving
Final offer from CRANE
Packing up and then on May 1st .... moving in with my parents for a month until we start our job in Bloomington.

I love all these little celebrations coming up it makes time pass by really fast!

Celebrating the small things

Today I am quickly blogging to celebrate life's small accomplishments. This will sound dumb but I hope you can relate. What was my small accomplishment?

I cleaned our Master bedroom. I've had a basked of laundry from 2 weeks ago with odds and ends that needed to be put away...but it got put in corner and since then we've added more piles. I've done good at keeping the rest of the house clean but I just shut the bedroom door. So tonight I took up all the fresh laundry, and put EVERYTHING away. Its now nice, clean and relaxing again. :)

See its the small things that count!
Ann

Butterfly

Can you see the cocoon? Ehre found it in the backyard. So we printed of f some info about the monarch butterfly and prepared everything so her class could watch it emerge. So far....no butterfly yet.

I want to make this Volleyball Cake!!!

http://thegoodapple.blogspot.com/2011/09/volleyball-cake.html

Southwestern Salad (Fast and Easy and Super Yummy)

I made this for dinner tonight and have to share, it is sooo yummy. Elise (10 months) even ate the corn, onion, bean, bell pepper and tomato mixture. :)  Ben (4) well he took a little more coaxing and only finished 1/2 but he's not a lettuce boy. Only thing that could have made this better is if everything had come from my fresh garden, but it didn't. (My aunt did supply fresh tomatoes for us!)

Try it, I am sure you'll like it just as much as we did. We served it with fresh cantaloupe (super yummy!) What a healthy dinner all around.  Don't forget your glass of milk though!

Ann

(Found at http://www.skiptomylou.org)
This layered summer salad is delicious and can be made a day ahead. It makes a perfect no cook summer meal!

Southwestern Layered Salad Recipe

1 head of lettuce (iceberg, romaine or your favorite), chopped

1 can of black beans, rinsed and drained

2 cups frozen corn, thawed

1 bell pepper (yellow, red or green), chopped

1/4 to 1/2 cup red onion, finely chopped

1 large tomato, chopped

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

1/2 cup crushed tortilla chips

Southwestern Salad Dressing

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup ranch salad dressing

1/4 cup your favorite salsa

Mix together sour cream, ranch salad dressing and salsa. Set aside.

Layer Salad

In a trifle bowl layer lettuce, black beans, onions, corn, tomatoes, cilantro, bell pepper, salad dressing, cheese and chips. Garnish with cilantro and tomatoes. If making the day ahead, leave tortilla chips out and add in before serving.

Enjoy!

Ehre's Spelling List

These seem kind of hard for a 1st grader, but I'm sure we'll master them by Friday.
1. dad
2. sad
3. back
4. nap
5. tap
6. sack
7. man
8. mat
9. too
10. over
11. after
12. candy
13. camp
15. family
15. math
16. am
17. down
18. apples
19. grandparents
20. Labor Day