Happy Halloween 2009

We haven't seen K for a couple of days...feels longer knowing he was 30 minutes away working on a project for two days straight. He needed to take a little break today to sleep and recuperate so we decided to take it easy as a family and enjoy some time at home together for Halloween. If you look at the pumpkin K carved it's a freaky guy holding his own eye! Our 9 year old picked out that pattern for dad! Here's the pictures! Happy Halloween everyone!

Happy Birthdays, Pies and Harris Teeter

It's someone's birthday today. Poor guy is in the middle of a project at work and may or may not make it home tonight to actually celebrate his birthday. With that in mind, I decided I had to make sure I got his Birthday Pumpkin Pie made yesterday so that we could have it ready in case he wanted to take some in to eat during work. He decided he didn't really want to take it in to work but that the whole family could have pumpkin pie for breakfast in honor of his big day. We had him sit down on his present to eat his pie. His present from us was a rocking chair that he had his eye one a while back. I finally got out to the store to buy it and hopefully it will help with his bad back.....hm....rocking chair...bad back....how old is he??? (Actually he is four months younger than me so I can tease him) He is the greatest and we really hope he has a good day. We will have to celebrate this weekend babe!!

On a side note. I have to tell you how I got my pie ingredients to my kitchen. Last week I did some grocery shopping but figured I would buy his pie stuff this week when I dropped my preschooler off at school. Well Friday evening hit and I had two sick kids and they have been that way ever since. We really haven't gone anywhere and I didn't want to take them outside yesterday either especially since it was so cold, gloomy and rainy. I started to rationalize in my head that of course my husband would understand why we didn't make his pie for him....heck he would be at work for probably 16 hours that day so maybe he wouldn't even notice. But then that just sounded so depressing so I kicked it into gear to figure out how I was gonna make this happen.

I remembered a friend of mine mentioning that one of our local stores will let you order all your groceries on line and four hours later you can go through their drive thru and pick up your groceries. They don't even charge the first time you do it and charge only 5$ anytime after that. They give the kids a little bag of sugar cookies each time from their bakery for free. If they make a mistake, they will come to your house and bring you the item for free. I had a lady call me as she was shopping for my groceries to see if I really wanted a particular cookie item because the box said "best if used by Oct 30, 09". I told her never mind but couldn't help but think I probably wouldn't have even looked on the box to make sure they weren't expiring soon.

I have to say I loved the whole experience. I had to go pick up my boys from school and just stopped by the grocery store to pick up the groceries right after. It was beautiful!! I won't do it all the time but I have to say during this lovely flu season it is an amazing alternative to mothers with little ones. Bless you Harris Teeter...bless you!!

Group therapy and laundry

When I was in college I had some really good friends. We loved to chat and catch up on each other's lives. We would go to Hogi Yogi (ah ..I miss that place!) and have our chats where we would sit down and talk about guys, roommate problems, and any issues we needed to get off our chest. Somehow this chat time came to be called group therapy and it truly was for all. We always felt better having used our sounding board to work out our problems. I am still in touch with several of these girls today and miss having that group therapy time.

I realized the other day though, that I somewhat use this blog as a group therapy. I share the good, the bad, and sometimes even the ugly if it means I work through something easier or get all of your sage advice. Thank you thank you thank you!

Here's my next question....laundry. I think my family has laundryitis. It is a condition when no matter what I do, laundry is never never finished. My laundry baskets are always swelling and oozing with clothes of all colors and sizes.

I know that laundry by definition is never finished because unless you are walking around in the nude...you are wearing dirty laundry for tomorrow. But I would be okay if there was just six outfits waiting for me on a given day.

This however is never the case. For example, on Sundays, my kids take off pjs and put in laundry. Then they put on play clothes cause we have 1pm church. Then they put on church outfit. Then they put on play clothes again but sometimes will try and put on a whole new play clothes outfit until I yell loud enough and then they put on a whole new set of pjs at the end of the day. Times all that by six family members and you have 12 pj bottoms, 12 pj tops, 12 pairs of underwear, 12 pairs of socks, 12 pairs of pants, and 12 shirts. Now throw in some sheets and towels that get thrown in every day and all of that is waiting for me Monday morning ...and that is only if I had no laundry from any day before and no one spilled on any of those outfits!

I have heard some of you say you only do laundry once a week.......HOW?? A. My laundry room would not hold all the laundry for one week. B. I don't think my kids have enough pants for seven days straight. C. I would never be able to get it done in one day.

But....I like the idea of laundry day and then a big break so I'm willing to learn how. If you have any laundry tricks..please send them my way and hopefully I can dig myself out of the mountain of laundry I have to come check my blog...it is Monday you know!

Winds of change

There weather is colder today. No sun. The high for the next couple of days is supposed to be something crazy like 40 degrees. Have I mentioned I like 75 degrees!!

Other changes are coming too. We are moving. Not today. Not tomorrow. But we are moving somewhere to some place before next June when our lease is up and the owners move back to the states. I can't believe it's almost been three years in this house. I never imagined being here that long. We don't know where we will go. A change would be nice. We have liked it here though...the boys have done so well in school and love all their friends. We do too. Hmm...change is a coming. I will keep you posted on that front.

I have been grumpy of late. Thinking about the holidays has made it worse. It is totally stressing me out. My hair is falling out!!! (okay does that happen to anyone else after having a baby???) I thought that maybe it was all the stress that can come around the holiday season (Halloween-New Years). But I realized that because I know we will need to pack up and move in the near future that I have become Mrs. Scrooge about the holidays. Both sides of our family have drawn names for Christmas. Everyone is trying to get their shopping done early to avoid those lines at the stores and post offices. I don't blame them one bit. I just keep thinking that we don't want to add one single item to the stuff we have to move! I keep chanting to myself "Save money, downsize, have a yard sale, take things to goodwill, save money, downsize!" So when people ask me what do we want, what toys should they get my kids, I think "absolutely nothing!" I know my kids would be mortified to know I have absolutely no desire to buy them one thing for Christmas. I have seen our basement...the place where toys go to die..and I can't imagine they need anything!

Here is the other reason I get grumpy about these things. If you ask kids today what they want for Christmas, half the time it is stuff their friends have and it ain't cheap!! We asked our 9 year old and I think the first three items cost around 200$ a piece. Now maybe I'm cheap but I don't think kids should even have things that cost that much little lone several items that cost that much! So I just end up buying a bunch of smaller items to make up for the fact that I'm not buying them anything on their expensive list....and then my house is filled with things no one wants. Lovely!

Every year I promise myself we are gonna do it different this year. People over things I say. We will spend the time with loved ones making memories and save the money on the junk. Problem is when you are 9, 6,and 3 years old you want all that stuff under the tree. It's magical to see it all piled up and wonder what is in there for you. I know it's magical and so every year we do it all over again. And I start to hyperventilate approximately one hour after everything is opened and starting to spread all over the house

Anyone out there like me?...am I alone?...is there such thing as a holiday therapist?
help!!

Yummy Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting

A couple of people asked me to post this recipe. Just finished eating some of these ...so yummy!

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 15oz. can pumpkin
1 2/3 cups sugar
1 cup cooking oil

Mix all ingredients together. Spread batter in an ungreased 15x10x1 inch baking pan. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Cool and then frost with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 3oz package of cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups sifted powder sugar

beat till smooth and then spread over bars.


Oh and sorry there isn't a picture of them....they are gone..oops!

Gotta love this girl!!!

Apple Picking, Corn Mazes, and Slides oh my!!

We love Fall around here. My husband's relatives had their own apple orchard so apple picking and pie making are close to his heart. I like apple picking..but I love love love apple pie eating!! Yummy! This past Thursday C took his first preschool field trip to a little corn maze and he loved it. He felt so grown up. It was perfect because it was all just his size so I could relax and let him go play. He went up and down the slides over and over again. The funny thing was we didn't realize that it wasn't open until the weekend. We were all sitting at the front gate when they came out to tell us they aren't open on Thursdays. The guys was so nice though and let us come in anyway since we had a whole group. It ended up perfect because we had the whole place to ourselves!!

The Big Nine!

Our eldest son turned nine on Saturday. Hard to believe it was nine years ago that I held him in my arms for the first time. He was perfect then and he's perfect now. I have had pretty much every single teacher (church and school) come up to me and tell me two things about him. 1) What a joy he is to have in class because he is nice to everyone and he is so enthusiastic about learning. and 2) He seems to have quite a following of admirers.

As his family...I would have to agree. More often than not he is really great with his siblings and tries so hard to do what we ask as parents. He is a great "first" kid to be an example to his younger siblings. I couldn't have asked for a better one! And as for the admirers....he is clueless!

For his birthday this year he decided on an ice cream cake in the shape of a crazy shark. I thought this was a great idea. My husband however remembered how hard it was to actually decorate an ice cream cake without the ice cream inside melting before you were done. Somehow we still talked K into doing it and now I remember how hard it really is. We won't be doing it again. But after hours of working on it and putting it back in the freezer to chill and then back out to frost again....it was done and looked awesome. He even made blue jello with Swedish fish for the shark to swim in. T loved it!! Here's the proof!...oh and of course little T for a cute pose!