Go Vote for Me!

Since I have nothing better to do today (no, I don't have a mountain of laundry waiting to be folded or to go into the washer and I certainly don't have a counter full of dishes beckoning to me...) I spent some time today entering a bunch of contests, hoping to win some things to make our Christmas a little better...
And who wouldn't want to win a wii?? My kids have been bugging me for one since it came out. So I entered a contest to win one... so please go vote for me here!!
And don't forget to enter the Christmas Giveaway at 5 Minutes for Mom!

Did I ever mention...

That my husband is a total genius? Well, maybe I did over here.

Seriously, the man has great ideas. Whenever I have any kind of problem or issue, he thinks about it and always comes up with a wonderful and creative solution.

The problem this time was that baby B will not leave her socks on. Of course it was no problem when the weather was warm. But now, it's been cold for a couple/few weeks here and the girl will just not leave anything on her feet. Her piggies have been freezing cold! I go get her socks several times a day, and within minutes they disappear. And one always disappears deeper than the other and just cannot be located. I had gotten to the point where if we were going somewhere I would remove her socks and shoes as soon as we got to the (warmed up) car so that I could put them back on when it was time to go in (otherwise the car would absolutely swallow one sock - never to be retrieved).

So yesterday, here's my baby girl, trying to pull her shirt off, running around with bare freezing piggies... Daddy takes her into the bedroom to, I assume, get her some worthless socks... Instead she comes out looking like she dressed herself ;) [I have been trying all morning to load pictures so that you can see for yourself, but no such luck. I am still having horrid issues with uploading pictures and am ready to throw a huge fit! So I will just lamely describe her attire for you: pink patterned long sleeved pj shirt, short sleeved pink patterned dress, and blue snowflake tights]. At first I was a little horrified, but we weren't going anywhere, so... then I realized what a piece of genius went into the dressing.

Dad had put a dress on over her pj shirt so she couldn't lift it. And the best thing? He found a pair of tights to put on her! While they were a little on the big side, they certainly did the trick. She sat down and pulled on them a few times before she finally had to give up and suffer the rest of the day with warm piggies!

Needless to say, we went out and bought a bunch of tights!

Now if we could just find some shoes that she can't wiggle out of.

Christmas of Dreams Contest at MomDot!

MomDot is hosting this fabulous Christmas of Dreams contest! One lucky winner will receive prizes from all of the sponsors listed below (a total of over $1000 in prizes!). Who couldn't use this prize to help with Christmas? I know we sure could! So hop on over there and check it out!

• Dyson
  
• BabyPop
• The Shrunks
• Soda Club
• Kadi Prescott
• Uncommonly Cute
• Lollipop Book Club
• Kuster
• Silly Monkeez
• LA Plates
• Natitys Design
• Little Black Box
• Koshas
• Kidz Sunglasses
• jaC Jewelry
• Appledonia
• LeapFrog
• Mutsy
• Kushies
• Huddy Buddy
• Mimsi-Bags
• BottleWise
• Lets Go Strolling
• DaBib
• Sassy Baby
• Baby Legs
• Scentsy
• FeeFiFoto
• Randi100
• Organic Blankees
• Shi Shu Style
• Georgie Tees

Everything's a NoGo Today

Grrrr.

I tried and tried at least 20 times to upload a series of really cute pictures for Photo Story Friday. And I kept getting a page load error - it seems every time I try to upload pictures my internet connection is resetting itself in the middle of the process... I kept trying again and trying again. I usually have enough patience to wait it out and eventually I can get the pictures to go through. But this time, after an hour of re-trying I just gave up. The same thing seems to happen every time I try to update my family/friends blog. Its so irritating.

So then I thought it was a great time to post an award that Missy at Bees and Boo-Boos gave me... I meant to do it on Thursday, but then I had a bunch of other things going on around the house... so I tried to get the picture of the award to load, thinking that maybe it was erroring out because I was trying to upload too many pics at the same time and if I only did one something magical would happen and it would work ;)

Not so much. But this time I was getting a blogger error. Double Grrrrr. Maybe tomorrow will be a better photo upload day?

Until then, here I am, photoless and awardless today :(

PS: those strange little boxes you see at the bottom here are my efforts to copy and paste the image of the award. And of course now I can't find where I tried to copy and paste them, so they are just stuck there doing nothing ;) Triple Grrrrr.

And since I'm just rambling on here... when I changed my template and had to re-do my blogroll I inadvertently left some people out! If you are one of those people please let me know! Or if you want to be on my blogroll and aren't let me know. I think I've found most of the ones I was missing... I don't know how that happened. Well, actually I do - I think I just filled it from my "blogs I'm following" list - which left out anyone not on blogger and anyone who is on blogger but doesn't have their list of followers on the sidebar for me to click ;) My feeds are just a mess and completely unorganized and all over the place. I have some in Explorer (which I just don't even use anymore), some in foxfire (which I just didn't like the way the feeds work there) and then some in my google reader (which I haven't even opened in months!)... and somehow I managed to find that I didn't have some that I read all the time in any of my readers... I must have just put them in my blogroll only at some point. Confusing I know. I've just been doing my visiting by clicking on my blogroll or clicking on the person in the comments section. The feed readers are great and all, but I always end up clicking over to the blog itself, so it was an extra step and I'm all about not wasting any time ;)

What do you use for your feeds? And how do you keep them organized?

Wordless Wednesday: Kung-Fu Napping

Kung-Fu Panda looks like he may be re-thinking his decision to take a nap

Frankenberry Pie

Ever make something that doesn't look quite right? But then it ends up tasting marvelous?! We had some bags of frozen berries hanging out in our deep freezer for a while, so we decided to try our hand at a homemade pie.
We found a recipe for a mixed berry pie online, and of course I can't find it now to link to it, but the recipe we used is as follows:

• 2 frozen pie shells
• 4 cups berries
• 2/3 cp sugar
• 7 tblsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tblsp lemon juice
• 3 tblsp grape juice

Bring the pie crusts out to thaw for 15-20 mins. Pre-heat the oven to 375. Put the berries into the thawed pie crust. Mix the dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Then add the lemon juice and grape juice to the dry mixture. Pour over the berries. Put the second pie crust on top of the first one, crimping the edges together. Cut slits in the top pie crust to vent. Put the pie onto a foil covered cookie sheet (preferrably one with sides as the pie will boil over). Bake it for an hour.

Unfortunately, my top crust had troubles coming out of the foil pan, and this is what I ended up with ~ We decided it looked a little like Frankenstein's monster, so we named it Frankenberry Pie!

But amazingly, it didn't look too bad coming out! It almost looks like the criss cross crust on fancy pies ;) I said almost ;)
The cornstarch really helped hold it all together. We were amazed at how it didn't come spilling over after we cut out our pieces. The fruit usually spills out of the store bought frozen pies.

While it may have looked horrendous in the beginning, we all decided that it was the best pie we'd ever had! We are going to make some more for Thanksgiving this year!

And the snow is falling!

We had our first substantial snow of the season yesterday. All told it was maybe a couple of inches, not much, but enough to coat the pine trees and make everything look quiet and serene. I should have gotten a picture, because words can rarely do justice to the beauty. The snow didn't stick around for too long, it started raining last night and most of the snow is gone now. I think the snow in the trees lasted for an hour or two before it was blown off. My son was so tickled by the snow. I can't wait until it really snows and we can go outside and play. I'm sure that he will really enjoy it so much more this year. It will be the first year we can take the baby out to play in the snow too! It will be a thrill for about a week or so ;) and then I will be ready for winter to be over.

I remember when we were kids, we would go out everyday all winter long and play in the snow for hours. It seemed as though we never got too cold. We'd spend hours making extravagant snow forts and tunnels and families of snowpeople and our yard would be decorated with snow angels of all sizes.

But now as an adult, its always too cold for me! :) Does something happen inside your body that makes you feel the cold more when you get older? Because our kids are the same as we were when we were kids - they can't stay outside in the snow long enough. It probably has something to do with children having a higher metabolism or something.

For now I'm just going to stock up on hot chocolate and wait for the first big snow of the season, which is probably just around the corner.

Fortune Cookies :)

Gotta love 'em! We had Chinese tonight for the first time in probably about a year. Our favorite Chinese restaurant is 500 miles away and we noticed last time we were in town that they had been bought by someone else... :( It can be difficult to find good Chinese food. There is only one restaurant anywhere near here. Luckily its pretty good. And they actually have the cream cheese wantons! ;) Those are my favorite. When I lived in Tucson, I was so disappointed to find that none of the Chinese restaurants had anything close to crab rangoon (or cream cheese wanton as its called here).

But the funny thing was that the fortunes were quite appropriate tonight. Well, not exactly the fortunes themselves, but these fortunes also had Chinese words on them. My husband's was "teacher," mine was "mother," and our 11-year old daughter's was "pork chop." The first two are pretty self-explanatory. My husband is a teacher and I am a mother. While my daughter is certainly not a pork chop, the word was just as fitting for her as ours were to us. The girl is completely obsessed with food. We all had a good laugh.

I'm certain that someday she will be starting her own "foodie" blog :)

Hat Modeling at its Finest ;)

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

I love to crochet hats! Baby B absolutely hates to wear hats!
I've made her several hats, but she just will not keep them on. I made a couple of hats last year, one was for one of my toddler nieces, but it ended up too small so I figured that B would fit it eventually. And it does fit her this year ;) It was a little challenging to get her to leave the hat on long enough to take a picture! Most pics ended up like this first one.
But I was able to get one good one!


This hat I made for her last winter, but it ended up too big for her then, but looks like it fits good this year! This one is an ear-flap hat, so I just need to finish it up and make the ties. She'll have a hard time getting this one off when its tied :)
Ahhhh. Hat modeling session finally over!

Gerber 2nd Foods With DHA

We were recently given the opportunity to sample Gerber 2nd Foods Purees with DHA along with some Organic foods from Gerber.

We've always fed our babies Gerber products, so we were really excited to see that they now have Organic foods and foods that have DHA added. DHA is naturally found in breast milk and helps support brain and eye development.

I especially have enjoyed the greater variety of offerings with the additions of these foods. Along with the organic rice cereal, I feel great feeding my baby girl the fruits mixed with grains, oats or granola for breakfast. And she really loves them.

They have also recently added 2nd foods dinners with DHA to their line of foods.

Included in the sample package we received were: Spring Vegetables with Brown Rice, Harvest Vegetables with Mixed Grains, Garden Vegetables with Whole Wheat Pasta, Macaroni & Cheese with Vegetables, Vegetable Risotto with Cheese and Organic Brown Rice Cereal. Both Baby B and I have been pleased with the new line of foods. And we are really grateful for the opportunity from Gerber to sample them.

Wordless Wednesday: Peek-a-boo!

What I love about small town life

We left for our polling place at 4:10pm. We were home by 4:20!! My husband and I were the only ones there and got our voting done within a few minutes. We were #90 and #91!

I might complain about small town life every now and then, but at times like this, man do I love it!

I hope everyone got out and voted today or will tonight! And I hope y'all didn't have to wait too long!

We've Got Pumpkins...And Costumes

My husband's pumpkin turned out the spookiest! Look at those big teeth!

First we tried some of those pumpkin carving stencils. My husband was the only one to finish one and it turned out pretty cool, it's a wolf howling at the moon...

I was going to do a cute little kitty cat, but couldn't get the stencil taped on good... so I did this instead
And our daughter M also tried her hand at a stencil, but it was one of the more difficult ones (a big scary tree - so much detail work!), so after getting half of it done, she decided to just do a freehand carving too - her's is the one on the left. They all turned out pretty cute :)

And our favorite part of pumpkin carving? Roasting the seeds! (Of course I forgot to take a picture after they came out of the oven, but they were darn good!)

The getting dressed and getting pictures of the kids in their costumes was the really fun part ;)
Baby B was trying to help Spiderman get his hat on :)Amazingly, they were all in this shot! Though Spidey has just seen something awry in the playroom and is off to the rescue.

All three kids enjoyed the trick-or-treating! This year we actually drove to a nearby city with a population of maybe 500 or so. We went to about 10 or so houses there. And then we stopped and hit our town on the way home. We went to maybe 4 houses there (the town consists of about 10 houses - we live in a town with a population under 100!). But the kids made out about as good as we did when we were kids (and we used to hit about 50 houses in the big city we lived in!). Last year we only went to about 7 houses in our town and got tons of candy. But of course it took forever because for every house it was an in and out of the car deal. D was only 2 then and had very little concept of trick-or-treat anyway. This year he actually said it! In between houses ;) But he did manage to say thank you to a sweet old man.

He was too funny - last year at the very first house we went to he just walked in and sat on the couch! The old couple were really nice and had invited us in anyway, but I hadn't planned on going in. Back in the city where I grew up you *never* went into anyone's house! But it's pretty customary around here. Ah, the small town life :) This year he didn't barge into anyone's house until we got to that same house again, which was the last house we visited this year. He must think her house is homey :) She got a kick out of it and gave him a big ol' kiss! And an extra piece of candy. What a charmer :)