Bag

I needed to make a quick little gift bag and I had forgotten how easy and cute these little bags are. You just take a regular lunch bag and cut off the top so it won't show through the top of the card stock, then cut two pieces of card stock to cover the bag, punch a hole through the top of both pieces, decorate then stick on with sticky strip. I put a little bag of goodies in the bag. I love the colors, black and purely pomegranate with a little wild wasabi.

Fair!

We finally made it to the fair. We were actually trying to get out of it, TJ didn't really want to go but we had promised Tyler we would take him, and he was very excited to go. TJ was tyring to bribe him with a new video game and pizza, it didn't work. So we went to the fair last night. There were way too many people there for my liking and it was cold, but Tyler loved it. I mainly wanted to go for the funnel cake :)

Bunny towel

I have the best mother-in-law ever, I just have to say! I love her to death. She made Tyler a really cute bunny bath towel for his birthday when he turned 2. He still uses it to this day. Well now Brena fights him over it, she wants the bunny towel, and she will do almost anything to get it from Tyler. Poor Tyler, Brena really is a big bully. So, TJ told his Mom Brena needed a bunny towel of her own, and guess what came in the mail today??? Yep, a pink bunny towel just for Brena, she won't let me hang it in the bathroom, she has been wearing it all day. Here is a picture, you can't see the top of the bunny head very well, my mother-in-law embroidered a really cute bunny face on the top part. Thanks Carol!

Cookies

I love to bake, I especially love making sugar cookies and it is that time of year to roll that dough! I had to make a dessert for tonight for R.S. so I decided to do some Halloween Sugar Cookies. I thought they were so cute, I just had to show them off. Wish I could give some to all of you :) Thanks to all of you for keeping us updated on your status with the SD fires. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of you.

Back to YW I go!

Well, it was a nice fun break for 6 months in Relief Society, but apparently I have not finished learning all I need to learn in YW. I just was called as the new YW President in our ward - ahhh!!!!!!! I have been in YW for years, so at least I have a little idea of what I will be doing, but I prefer being a counselor - I can be told what to do pretty well, being the one doing the telling, well that is a different story for me. This will definitely be a fun experience though and I am looking forward to it. I loved being in the RS presidency, I really did. Maybe someday I will get to go back again. So, any fun ideas for YW activities - pass them on!

Tornado!!!!

I don't know if you can tell from this picture the amount of rain we are having today. I thought we were just having a normal storm, these thunder storms with torrential rains happen down here on a regular basis. But, my mom called me all worried because my dad had called her from work to tell her we were having a tornado! I didn't even know that. Apparently we had 3 of them. Part of the roof of the mall and the target were ripped off and a few houses destroyed. We are all fine, like I said, I just thought we were having another little rain storm. The only bad part of all this for us is it was opening night at the big fair tonight and now we can't go :( Oh, and doesn't this picture just make you want to curl up in front of a fire and drink hot cocoa? NOT!! it is still 80 degrees with 94% humidity! We are still in our shorts, t-shirts & flip flops around here! We keep having people tell us it does cool off here and we have nice cool weather in the winter, I am still waiting for any sign of that!

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Did you read this book as a kid? I remember reading this book over and over. I loved it! Well I had to post that today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Here is a video of what most of the day sounded and looked like...enjoy!

Food Storage Recipe

Some of you might know I am obsessed with food storage. I don't really know why, maybe it is the fact I really like to eat and the thought of ever going without good food scares me really bad, so I would like to make sure I always have good food to eat :) I thought I would share a pretty good recipe with you. I hesitate to call it a "food storage" recipe because in reality food storage should just be what you regularly eat every week multiplied by 52. But this is something you can say "food storage" for because everything in it is canned or stores well. This is chicken and rice casserole.
Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked rice
1 (10 oz.) can cream of chicken soup
1 (10 oz.) can of cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cups water
1 pkg. dry onion soup mix
1 or 2 cans of chicken breast depends on how much chicken you like. I use 2 cans (I really like the canned chicken from Costco)

Instructions:
Mix rice, both soups & water together & place rice mix in a large greased baking pan. Place chicken on top & sprinkle with dry onion soup mix. Cover with foil and prick holes in top with fork. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or 250-300 for 2 hours.

Bon Appetit!!!

Soccer

Today was Tyler's third soccer game. He has never played before, this is his first season, so he doesn't really understand yet what is going on, but he is getting the hang of it. I have never had any soccer experience myself, I don't even know what is going on. At practice one day the kids were running and getting ready to shoot a goal and I was all excited yelling "go go!" then my friend leaned over to me and said "they are going to the wrong goal, be quiet!" I didn't even realize it! I am trying to pay more attention and figure the game out. T.J. knows whats going on, he played soccer when he was younger, so I have to ask him lots of questions. Tyler was finally out there running around more today and kicking the ball rather than just standing there watching everyone else run around. He was also goalie for a little bit. The final score of the very exciting game was 0-0. His team, the Dragons, won last week 3-1. Go Tyler!

TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really enjoy Thursday and Friday. A group of us mom's from church started a play group, but it is a little different than a normal play group. There are four kids all around the same age and they all go to one of our homes every Thursday and Friday from 9am-1pm. They take a little lunch and everything. The best part of this is, the mom's don't stay! So we mom's have 6 days a month where we are without our kiddos for 4 hours. We swap weeks so once during the month I will have all four kids at my house on Thursday and Friday. It is working out so well and I really enjoy the free time to run errands and get some things done I normally don't get to with Brena and Tyler around. The really good part too is that Tyler is in preschool every day, so I really do have a few free hours with just myself :) The absolute best part is it's all FREEEEE!!!!!! Oh, and I have to tell you about the best movie I have seen in a long time. It is called "I am David" and it is a GREAT movie, if you are looking to rent one this weekend, this is totally worth it. And the great thing is, it is rated PG. It is about this little boy that has no family who grows up in a work camp in Germany, I think, and it is about him escaping the camp and going on this journey looking for something (can't tell you what, just watch the movie!). I hope you like it.

Books

I LOVE to read and normally I have a little more time to read, but at the moment because of quilting, I really don't have much time. So I figured I could read 3 books at the same time, that way I could still get everything in (it makes sense to me!). I was reading Big Hair and Flying Cows for Book Club, it was a pretty funny book. At the same time I am also reading Fishers of Men by Gerald Lund and a book series by Beverly Lewis. Fishers of Men is the first book in the series the Kingdom and The Crown. It is 640 pages long. It took me a few weeks to really get into it, but I am really liking it now and I only have about 100 pages to go. I LOVE the book series by Beverly Lewis. It is titled Abram's Daughters and there are 5 books. The first book is The Covenant. I am reading number 4 right now and I can't get enough of that series. They are REALLY good books. It is set in the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish country and it is about some families there. The books are fiction. So if you are looking for some good books, I highly recommend them to everyone. Now I gotta go read some more. Oh yeah, and I didn't have piano lessons last night after all, my teacher's mother passed away. Sad, but not unexpected. They had been waiting for it to happen for a few months, so I get more time to practice now :)

Never get to practice

Every time I sit down at the piano and try to practice Brena comes running up and climbs up on my lap and yells "I pay pano." It used to make me laugh, now it just makes me mad! I have piano lessons tonight and I really need to get some practice time in - but not with Brena around! Tyler has piano on Monday and he is loving it. He can't play a song yet, but hopefully he will get there soon. He knows his piano alphabet and he knows there are only seven letters in the piano alphabet. Each letter is assigned a critter, so C is creepy crawly critter, D is Dreadful Dancing Dinosaur and so on. He has memorized all the names and the keys so I can say where is Edyth the Elk and he pounds on E. I am amazed at how much he can learn. Maybe we will start Brena in a couple of years...if they will take her :)

Going Quilting Crazy!

So a few weeks ago I thought I had a lot of extra time on my hands (don't know where I got that idea from) and decided to sign up for a quilting class. I LOVE it! I can't stop buying material now for all the quilt projects I plan on doing. I have always loved material for some reason (I don't even sew) and love to look at all the pretty colors. Now I am so happy I can buy that material and actually think I have a purpose for doing so! This is just the sample wall hanging we learned to make and it isn't even finished yet, I will post a picture of my completed projects including a full size quilt when I am done. I am searching all over the internet for quilt books and magazines. If you know of a good one, let me know!