California

So we went to California and it was a lot of fun. The kids got to spend some time with their cousins, and be wild and crazy little people for a whole week with no school. Disney was a blast, and they are already asking when can we go back. The beach was nice and the weather was pretty good for most of the time that we were there. We even hit the Safari Park, as it is now known. Family pictures did not turn out as well as I would have liked. I think we'll have to redo those later.

Gifts from Favs

The kids are all so excited about our upcoming trip to California and Disneyland. To kick our trip off each of the kids received a special package from their favorite character. The three older kids also received special Mouse pens for their autograph books.

The most exciting part were the t-shirts that their favorite character sent them to kick off their trip to Disney. Included with their t-shirt was a note especially penned for them by said character. It was great fun to see their little faces light up with delight when they opened their packages and read their notes.

Isabelle and Barrett even sent a special shout out to their favorite characters thanking them for their shirts, and pens. Cooper's shirt came from none other than Mickey Mouse. Isabelle's came from Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty.) Barrett's shirt came from none other than Phineas and Ferb. While Decllan's shirt came from Lighting McQueen.

They can hardly wait to wear their shirts to the park and see all of their Disney friends.

Cooper's First Day of School

Since I did not want to miss out on people not finding my dinners I have not updated in a long while. So here I go.

Cooper has started "school" or Mother's Day Out. He was pretty excited to get started and does pretty well most weeks. He goes two days a week to the same Preschool where Isabelle and Barrett went.

So far he has participated in a special visit from the Fire Department, and the Police Department. Ironcially those visits happened to be on the two days that he threw a fit.

He also has a chance to go to Tech Tykes, and play on computers with out having an older sibling get in the way, to "show him how to do it." He really seems to like that.

I hope that this year allows him to work out all his issues so that next year we can put him in for a few more days. Because after that he will be going to Kindergarden and won't have a choice.

Until then he will just have to adjust. Oh yea I make him carry in all of his stuff. None of the business of Mom carrying in or out for that matter, his nap mat and bag.

Dinner Auction Winners

Thanks you guys for your bids and donations for the 3-day walk.

Here are the results:

Fondue Dinner for 8 - Annette Agor

Bar-B-Que dinner for 20 - Ray & Kathy McGovern and Barry and Maria Seivert

Wine Paired Dinner for 6 - Gara Hill

Thanks again you guys for all that you do and your support. I have sent you each a message about making your donation. As well as how to redeem your dinner. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks Again,

Allison

Fondue for Eight (8)

Let this meal delight your taste buds and keep you coming back for more. While the food is cooked while you wait and watch, fondue for eight is a great way to have a relaxing night with friends at home.

Appetizer – Cheese course
Assorted veggies and bread to dip

Main Dish – broth or oil based cooking featuring
Fish, Chicken, Beef and Shrimp
Mushrooms, broccoli and other veggies

Dessert – chocolate fondue
Rice crispy, marshmallows, banana, strawberries and more

Minimum bid $100

Bar-B-Que for 20

Who does not like Texas Bar-B-Que? Well now is your chance to walk away with a great meal for up to 20 people. Your winning bid of this dinner will include:

Appetizers of Ribs and Sausage

Brisket

Coleslaw

Beans

Dessert

This is not going to be a meal you want to miss. Do you have a party coming up or a special ocassion you want to have a BBQ for, well this is the dinner for you. This meal will be delivered to your location of choice ready to serve.

Disclaimer: This meal cannot be redeemed before October 1, 2012.

Starting bid for this dinner is $100.

Italian Wine-Paired Dinner for 6

A four course, meal paired with wine along the way. You and five other people can take the night off from cooking to enjoy a wonderful meal fully prepared and severed to you. Here are the details:

First Course:
Creamy Rice with Lemon, herbs, and parmesan
Wine: Soave

Second Course:
Chicken with Prosciutto, Rosemary and White Wine Sautéed Broccoli Rabe, Cibatta
Wine: Barbera or Italian Chardonnay

Third Course:
A selection of cheese
Wine: Barbera

Fourth Course:
Poached Pears with Marsala, Cinnamon and Vanilla
Wine: Asti

You provide the kitchen and place settings while we do all the work.

Starting bid: $100

Dinner Auctions

Hello Friends and Family,

I will be hosting an on-line auction for three dinners over the course of the next two weeks. All of the proceeds will go to benefit the Susan G. Komen foundation as I make my way to raise money for the 3-Day walk.

Starting on November 2 I will begin to walk 60-miles in three days. This will be my third year to participate in the 3-Day walk and I can hardly wait to start. Before I go I need to raise $2,300 to help in the fight against breast cancer.

Your donation will help me to fulfill this goal. Please take a moment to bid on the wonderful dinners that are available if you would rather just make a donation you can do that as well directly from this link:

Donate Now

Every dollar helps me make my way to the finish. Please take a look at each dinner to decide which one is right for you.

Italian Wine-Paired Dinner for 6

Bar-B-Que Dinner for 20

Fondue for Eight (8)

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my page and make a donation. Don't forget to bid on one of the dinners. You can make a bid by posting your name, e-mail address and amount in the comment section of each dinner's unique post. Each new bid needs to increase by $50. Don't forget to leave your contact information.

First Day of School

Wow, I can hardly believe it is already that time of the year for school to start again. I was ready for August in January but now that is here I think it is a little too early. Mostly because it is the middle of August and we still have some much to do. Oh well, I guess some of the fun will have to come later.

This year I have two kids going to school five days per week all day long. I cannot believe that Barrett is already in Kindergarten. I just know that he is going to love it and have a great time with school and making new friends.

Second grade will be awsome for Isabelle she will expand and grow as a student and make new friends and become reaquainted with old ones as the year goes by. I know she is excited to get started and see what the year has to hold.

I hope they enjoy going to school for a long as possible. So far so good. Bear is really excited about this new adventure.

The Aquarium

Fair Park has recently updated their aquarium so the plan was to check it out this summer. Well that almost did not happen because we were so busy and I was busy trying to "fly." But we finally made it and the kids had a blast. Each kid even had the chance to touch a ray. Bear made the commet that he got the chance to touch the tail, but I'm pretty sure they take out the barbs anyway so no one gets hurt.

It was a fun day and we even saw Aunt Jodi while we were there, after lunch. It really is a smaller world.

One Year already

I can hardly believe that a full year has gone by with Decllan. He is getting big so fast. Just this last week he started walking on his own. He steps off of whatever he had been walking around and just starts to go. Where did the time go?

We celebrated his birthday with a little family time going with a Peter Rabbit theme. No I did not go all out, because he really would not remember it all but I did at least make a super cute cake. I made him a carrot shaped carrot cake. And let me tell you it was yummy.

Then I had Isabelle read to the group the Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrice Potter. She did such a great job reading and I know the adults enjoyed the story. The kids, aka the boys, were just being silly and wanted to play.

I find out on Monday what his curent stats are, I'm sure they are pretty good since he does nothing but eat these days. I do hope he keeps up that good habbit. Either way, it was a great day, and I can hardly wait to see what the next year has to hold.

Tooth Fairy Pillow Tutorial

So I found a really cute tooth fairy pillow on Pinterest, but there were no directions on how to make it. So I took it upon myself to make up a tutorial for those who would be so inclined to make one themselves. Needless to say my kids can hardly wait to use them even the three (3) year old.

Step One: Choose your fabric and start cutting.

Step Two: Body of pillow. Measure out a 6 1/2" in height and 5 1/2" in width piece of fabric doubled if you want or you can use two different types of fabric for the front and back. Cut them out to the correct size.

Step Three: The Horns. Measure out 3 1/2" in height horns by about 1 1/2" in width or there about. I kind of curved mine to make them appear to look more horn like.

Step Four: The pocket. In a contrasting piece or same type of fabric measure out a piece on the fold of 2 1/2" in height by 5 1/2" in width fabric.

Step Six: Monster Teeth. Measure out 4" in width piece of white felt for the "teeth." Then cut the Monster "teeth" from the top part. I really just eye balled the height and did what I thought looked good. I also used felt since it is a little bit thicker than cotton.

Step Seven: White of the Eye. Again I just made a circle in white felt the was not perfect but in keeping with the shape of an eye for this part.

Step Eight: Black of the Eye. Using black felt or you could use the eye color of your child, cut out a small circle. Same thing just smaller for the pupil of the eye.

Step Nine: You are ready to begin sewing. I started with my horns. Turn the fabric right sides together and sew up three sides. I left the bottom open so I could stuff it. Once done turn the horn, use a pin to pull out the top if need be. Stuff your horn once completed. Do this twice if you have two horns. These are now done, set to the side.

Step Ten: I top stitched the teeth. So this is when I would do this.

Step Eleven: Then stich the teeth to one side of the folded pocket. With the fold on the top closest to the teeth. This helps to give it a nice finish and leaves you with one less piece to sew.

Step Twelve: Stich the black or pupil to the white of the eyes. I made sure my color stood out a little that way it would give it more definition but you can do it however you want. Do this twice.

Step Thirteen: Stick the eye to the front of the monster. Again I used a color that would stand out and be easy to see. You can match your fabric or the child's eye color.

Step Fourteen: Place the pocket on the front below the eye and then place right sides together of the back of the monster. Begin to pin pocket and back into place. Once you get to the top add in your stuffed horns. Make sure to secure with a pin well as there are stuffed and can be a little fat up against your sewing machine. Now you are ready to sew. Remember to leave yourself enough space to turn your monster and stuff your monster. Stich it all the way around except for the opening.

Step Fifteen: Turn your monster inside out. Use a pin to pull out the corners. It helped if you had trimmed the corners before turning but whatever works for you. Afterwards you can top stich if you want. I had to do this on one of mine because I did not catch the entire pocket. Go figure. Don't forget to leave the opening open, otherwise you will not be able to stuff.

Step Sixteen: Stuff your monster. This is fun, make sure you get those corners well.

Step Seventeen: Now you are ready to finish off the stitching. You can either complete your top stitching here over the opening or you can slip stich the opening closed. I'm not good at slip stitching so I worked really hard to use my machine to finish it off.

Now you have a fun creative little pocket for holding teeth and money. No more trying to find the tooth in the middle of the night. You will know right where it is.

The Incident

So the kids, all 14 of them, were quietly sitting on the driveway after helping to cleanup. And I thought I would take advantage of the lull to take a quick ride down the zip line. I had tried the day we arrived but only sat on the "bench" to ride down. My niece, Morgan, suggested holding onto the handles to go faster because then the weight is even on the wheels. So I climbed up the ladder to the grab on to the handles and took off.

Well this was not a well thought out plan. About have way down I realized I was going really fast. Faster than I anticipated. So I released my feet from the bench just incase I hit the tree which really would not have happened but hey. Then I hit the stopper really hard and lost my grip.

I flew off and now the rest is history. I was out for about a minute and when I finally came too I could not breathe, I finally caught my breathe rolled over and was helped to be made comfortable. The ambulance came pretty quick and off I went to the emergency room.

X-rays reveled that I broke my collar bone in three places. I need to wear a sling until I see the doctor and can have surgery. That's right surgery. On of my bones is poking up in the wrong direction.

I go to the doctor today, Tuesday, to see what they say. Should be fun. Hopefully they will do surgery before we leave because a 16 hour car ride with broken bones does not sound like fun.

Peaches everywhere

This is our first year to really get a lot of harvestable peaches off of our tree. The kids have been so excited about the possibility of picking peaches they sometimes would pick them too early. Even with that we still ended up with a lot of peaches. So when we harvested them we also set to work on processing them right away.

We made the following items:


Peach Cobbler


Peach Chutney



Jared Peaches


Peaches and Pineapple


Peach Salsa

Peach Jam

Everything was so yummy or smelled so good while we were making it; I can hardly wait to try a couple of our items later on. The cobbler and salsa were great, and tasted wonderful. I hope that the rest of our peach harvest is just as delectable.

We even left a few of the smaller peaches on the tree and there were about thirty (30) new growth peaches starting, strange right. So we might have more peaches to come.

Girl Scout camp

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This is Isabelle's first year to go to Girl Scout camp. I was so excited for her, I really wished I was able to be a fly on the wall to see how much fun she was having, and really be able to hear all about her experience. Resident camp was always so much fun for me as a girl and I was happy that Isabelle got a chance to go as well.



The day we dropped her off, it was raining and so she actually had to use her poncho, how exciting. Otherwise I'm sure it would have had to stay in her bag until the end. She took lots of pictures that I am waiting to have printed, and she said she had so much fun.



They got to go swimming, eat with all the campers, and make some crafts. When I arrived to pick her up, she asked if she could stay another day or come back for the next session. She had so much fun. I was so happy that her first sleep away camp was successful.

Catching Up

I had the recent chance to take a trip to Las Vegas for the baby shower of my of high school friends. It was so great to get a chance to catch up with her and my other girl friends with whom I was able to visit with.



I was really please to get a chance to visit with Amy before the birth of her first baby. Which in a strange was seems wild since I already have four. Good grief! I guess it's just the way the world works, because I have a couple of friends and family having their firsts sometime this year. This was the first chance that I had to see her house and get to know her in-laws a little better.



Plus I had the added benefit of visiting with friends from Utah. One of my girlfriends, Nicole, actually lives in Vegas now, so I had a great chance to visit with her and see how things are going in her life now.



Then Missy and Holly came down from Utah for a short visit which was great. It was so wonderful to visit with both of them. I only wish that our time was more, but life must go on.

Plus everyone had a chance to meet Decllan, who of course was the life of the party and always brought tons of smiles out from everyone he meets. He did a great job on the air plane and even started to sign while we were there. I can hardly believe this kid. He keeps getting bigger, and learning new things. Next thing I know he will be going to school with the big kids. Yikes!

Until then at least I have this trip with him to remember. Thanks girls for meeting me in Vegas. Next time I will have to make my way to Utah for a visit.