Pictures

Part One: Random Madie Cuteness & Muffins

Madie loves to help me in the kitchen. On this particular morning she was using the slap chop to help me make...

...these super delicious muffins! I just took a boxed blueberry muffin mix and made according to the package directions except when it came time to stir in the blueberries I also added a pinch of cinnamon, some white chocolate chips (this is where the slap chop came in, since I was making mini muffins I wanted mini pieces of chocolate) and some coconut and then sprinkled coconut on top so that it would get nice and golden. I don't think I can eat a plain blueberry muffin again!

Random cute picture of Madie in her jammies

Part Two: Birthday Celebrations
I wanted a Black Forest Cake for my birthday treat and this is what I came up with. I took a boxed chocolate cake mix and added some extras (which will not be named in case my dad is reading this) for moistness. I put sweetened whipped cream and canned cherry pie filling in between the two layers of super moist chocolatey cake and on top - chocolate ganache topped with more pie filling and surrounded by whipped cream swirls (wait for ganache to set up before you try to pipe whipped cream swirls around the edge of the cake or they will slide off...don't ask me how I know this!).

When we celebrated my birthday, we also celebrated my aunt Wendi's and Katie's. Katie got this Curious George toy that zooms around the floor and lifts his hat up to play peek-a-boo. The kids had so much fun playing with it. They would push the button to make him go and then run away so that he couldn't get them. There was a lot of laughter and screaming coming out of that kitchen.

Zach gave me this rose when he got home from school on my birthday. The way the light was hitting it just looked so beautiful that I had to take a picture (or three). While if I were to buy roses for myself, white would not be my first choice, they have sentimental significance to Zach and me. He brought me a single white rose on our first date and 2 dozen when he proposed, so I always think it is sweet when he gives me white roses.

Part Three: Girls Time
We have spent a lot of time with Jenny & Katie recently. Madie loves those girls so much, it is so cute to watch them together.

Here the girls are decorating turkeys with food. This was something Jenny had to do for school and so Grandpa made copies for each of the little girls also. Good thing Elmer's glue is non-toxic!

Jenny & Katie spent the night last night. Jenny is such a good big sister (and cousin, although I think if you were to ask her, Madie would tell you that Jenny is her sister also).

Chicken, Daddy & Pooh Bear

What do all of these things have in common?

Well, let me share with you our conversation while on the way home from church on Sunday:
Me - (after noticing that her lesson in nursery was on being thankful) Madie, what are you thankful for?
Madie - chicken
Me - (after laughing) What else?
Madie - chicken
Me - Besides chicken, what are you thankful for?
Madie - Daddy
Me - What else?
Madie - Pooh Bear

I know I missed a chicken in there somewhere because she gave that answer three times! I must admit, the girl does like her chicken :)

After a quick perusal of my blog I didn't notice this pic, so here you go. Please disregard the poor quality, but what can you expect from a camera on a cell phone?

Thanks Amber & Jessica for the fun play date yesterday! It was nice to feel like I have friends again.

On two other random notes -
I got the coat I previously posted about! :) It makes me happy...and warm, which makes me even happier!

I've featured on someone else's blog! (In case you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, basically this means that some random person found my craft site and liked one of my projects so she blogged about it). I felt excited, proud, and unworthy all at the same time. It is an interesting combination of feelings to have all at once.

I have several pics that I would like to upload and blog about, but (I'll be honest with you) I just don't feel like walking across the house to get the camera out of the diaper bag. Plus I would have to find the cord to plug it into the computer and that doesn't sound like much fun either. Maybe tomorrow?

October Updates

I figured that I better get caught up on posting before anything else blog-worthy happens!
We took Madie to a pumpkin patch where she got to pick out her own pumpkin, decorate it, go through a hay maze and look at some farm animals. She had a good time.

Trying to decide which one to take home...

She really enjoyed putting stickers on the pumpkin...and then taking them off...and putting them back on...

I think you get the picture.

She got all excited when she saw this little cabin but as we got closer she wanted nothing to do with it. Zach had to go in with her.

It took her a little while to figure out what was going on, but once she did she had fun running through the maze.

Our little butterfly right before we started the loop.

We went trick-or-treating with Kristi, Cliff and their girls and one of Jenny's friends and Ana and her friend Matt. We walked around the block that my aunt and grandma and cousin live on. It was the perfect little loop. There were enough houses that Madie's basket was over half full (still way more candy than she needs) but short enough that she was ok walking for most of it. I think I only carried her for the last 6 or so houses. I was pleased that she wasn't scared during the whole process. I figured it would go one of two ways...she would be terrified at all the strangers or she would realize that she got candy at each house and be excited. What can I say...she likes her candy! As soon as we were done with one house she was ready to go to the next one!

Helping herself to some candy.

She also enjoyed all of the pumpkins and other decorations. I think Christmas is going to be fun this year!

This is the only pic I had of Jenny. She was Dora the Explorer...

and Katie was Boots the monkey!

Thanks for inviting us to go with you, Kristi!

p.s. - Kohls is having a sale this weekend, get 20% off $100 or more, so between that and the $20 in Kohls cash my mom has the coat would only end up costing a little over $50. There will probably be pics of me wearing it in the near future :D

I'm in love...

...with this coat! I saw someone wearing a similar one last Saturday and instantly fell in love and decided that I wanted to find me a similar one. I saw this today at Kohls and tried it on and LOVED the way it looked on me, but there is one tiny (ok LARGE) problem...

...it costs $180.00!!!  It is on sale for $90 right now and I do have a birthday coming up...but the coat would only get worn for part of the year (plus on Sundays, I know it's wool but it really is that cold in our church building) and I could really use some new clothes that I could wear all year long.
I'm hoping I can find something similar at Ross (or any place that it won't cost me 100 bucks)!

A quick post

I have quite a bit to post about, but I'm not going to right now. I'm too tired with too big of a headache and with too many other things I'd rather be doing, so I'll do it later. I did want to get the pics of Madie in her Halloween costume for this year up. She is a little butterfly and she is too stinkin' cute in her costume.
You can see the wings better when she stands up but I was lucky she let me even put the costume on her this morning, so maybe this weekend I'll get better pics.

Here you can see the wings better. Also, she will have pink bows in her hair on Saturday, not red. The antenna are too heavy to stand up on their own when she moves, so I just grabbed the nearest clips to see if that would help them stand up, and it did (I would just have her wear the traditional antenna on a headband but she won't leave one in for very long, but she will usually leave her pigtails alone).

Finally starting to feel better

We were all sick last week...it sucked. Zach & Madie both got over it fairly quickly but for some reason I just couldn't seem to shake it. I finally started feeling a little better yesterday (I started feeling sick last Monday). So now I get to play catch up on all of the things that I neglected for a week.

We had a kitten adopt us. Yes, you read that right...he picked us (I don't actually know the gender of the cat). As Madie and I were walking into the kitchen to get breakfast one morning she saw a cat on the fence outside the front door. So we had to stop so she could wave. I opened the door thinking the cat would jump into the grass and run away like every other cat has done. I was wrong! He came right up to us and starting purring and rubbing against my leg. You would think I fed the cat because he hung around for several days. He even enjoyed sitting on the front lawn right outside Madie's window, which she absolutely loved. Then one day he just disappeared. She still says "bye meow" when we walk past the front door.
Here is the little guy, sorry the picture is sideways but I don't care enough to go back and fix it.

Madie is really learning to like the weekends. She becomes my parents' shadow. She loves to just follow them around and see what's going on. My dad poured concrete about a week ago on the side of the house for the addition. She thought it was great to run up and down it. She also wanted to help grandpa. She was so funny to watch.

My mom sat her in the middle of the jacaranda tree and she loved that!

She also helped me make cookies the other day. :)

I don't know where she comes up with these ideas, but this is where she decided she wanted to sit to eat her snack the other day.

Odd fruits

So I was cutting an apple for Madie yesterday and just had to take a picture. I thought it was so funny how different in size the two sides of the apple were. I think Lori thought I was a little nuts for how funny I thought it was, but when you stay home you learn to find the joy in the little things...like lop-sided apples.

To go right along with my odd apple is this:

What is that? A turban pumpkin. I had never heard of or seen one in my life before Wednesday. We were at Sprouts with my mom and they had them. We're not sure if you're actually supposed to eat it :) I thought it would look cool just sitting on the table all month long but the sucker was heavy and at 77 cents/lb I thought it would be out of my budget for something that I wasn't going to do anything with. Maybe another year...

I ordered business cards a few weeks ago. I think they are super cute. It made me feel so professional when they came :)

This picture kind of goes with the odd fruits. She sleeps in the weirdest positions sometimes.