Cookie fun

The month of November has gone by quickly and we are almost to Thanksgiving.  Our house, however, looks like Christmas.  If Timothy had his way, we would have decorated about the first week of November.  I held him off until this weekend...a week before Thanksgiving.  I grew up decorating the day after Thanksgiving, but since we tend to travel, the new tradtion seems to be before Thanksgiving.  I have to admit I do like the decorations too.  I love the lights of Christmas.

Troy is away at SBL for a few days.  To make these days fun without daddy we are doing some special things.  We slept by the Christmas tree on Friday night which was really fun.  I promised we could do it again in the next month.  We also made some cut out cookies and decorated them.  Shortly after Thanksgiving Troy is hosting a little party for a few students.  I figured why not get a jump on making cookies to use for that.  The kids had a blast with decorating as usual!

I am thankful for the fun memories that I have of the holidays and I am thankful to be able to create new memories with my kids!

 Rolling out the cookie dough.  It was a pajama day and a face painting day...in case you wondered!

The finished product ready for eating.  Yum yum!

Little baker

Teresa has commented lately that she does not think she wants to have kids.  The reason...she does not think she will know how to bake!  To fix that, she has been helping me bake and cook more.  She helped me make an apple pie for Troy.

Her is the little baker with her pie ready to put in the oven.  She is well on her way to being a great baker.  And she is really good at tasting something at the end of her baking project.  Licking the spoon is her favorite part!

Pumpkin Fun at Grandma's

We had the chance to visit Grandma Rebecca and Grandpa Ken last week.  And a trip to the cities in the fall means a pumpkin/fall fun day with cousins.  Here are some picture highlights from our visit.

Timothy and Teresa helped make spider cupcakes for our evening treat.  They were from our Halloween cookbook which we have used a lot this fall!

While waiting for the cousins to arrive Teresa and Timothy did a little leaf pile jumping.

The girl cousins cozy up for a cute picture in the afternoon.

Fiona and Teresa, & Timothy and Broder worked hard on coloring pictures and word finds.  The older two cousins were outside making the leaf piles even bigger.

Making full use of the leaf piles with all the cousins...even little Mattias got in the action!

The next day at Grandma's, Timothy and Teresa discovered the box of dress up.  They had lots of fun showing off their new outfits.

It was a great weekend of family and fun!

Halloween Fun!

The coldest Halloween in 8 years the paper said, but still as fun as ever!  We carved pumpkins on Wednesday night.  Troy got to do the big one for Timothy and I got the little one and the job of collecting pumpkin seeds to roast.  Both Timothy and Teresa wanted a scary face pumpkin.  Troy is a bit more creative in the carving department and he did have a bit more room to work with!  Teresa was initially disappointed that hers was not scary.  We tried to convince her otherwise!

Timothy making his own scary face for the picture!

The finished product.

On Halloween night we had on early dinner of Halloween nachos and got ready to head out.  Teresa and I were meeting Sophie and her mom.  Timothy had hoped to go with Anna, but that did not work out this year.  So he and Troy trick or treated.  Troy had bought them glow wands that they proudly carried around with them.  It was chilly, but the ghost and cheetah costumes were great for bundling up. Teresa made it around one long blog before tiring out.  Timothy went strong for quite awhile, but came in with cold hands.  It was indeed a Happy Halloween for all!