Also, My Kids Are Cute....

Enough said! LOL!

Dinner Time

It's hard to pick dinners that both girls will eat. That is eat without a fuss. But I found this recipe in a children's magazine my father-in-law had sent to Katelyn. Peanut Butter pizza. The concept was simple......take pita bread. Then slab on your peanut butter of choice. Ours is Skippy creamy by the way. The your favorite jelly or jam. Here we have grape jelly. Then top it with whatever fruits you want. Fresh or dried. Here we had sliced fresh bananas, raisins and a mixed dried fruits. The girls loved it! They loved it so much we had to make two of them so we all had enough to eat. I was most surprised with Laura. The child hates fruit of any kind unless it's in a smoothie. But she devoured these as well. A few days later Katelyn asked for one as an after school snack. That day she had sliced fresh strawberries and mixed fruit. If you have a kid who loves pb & j sandwiches as much as mine do then I highly recommend trying this pizza out. Best thing about it (besides the fact that they'll eat it) is that it requires no baking.

Portraits

This is the one we got a great deal on for an 11 x 14.


This is my favorite fo Laura. She loves talking on the phone and this is such a natural pose.


Love the smile here! She had a blast on that rocking horse too.


Look how grown up she looks here.

Katelyn, my toothless wonder these days. This is my favorite of her solo ones.

So not her personality. She hates talking on the phone. But still a cute picture.

So I wanted to get pictures of Katelyn because her front teeth were out. Normally we go to JC Penney. Even though we always like a few poses, one or both of the girls always goes home crying after a session. If they are the slightest bit uncooperative their photographers at our local one get unnerved and struggle. Then they changed how much they pick up the phones. You're supposed to call and leave a message and the idea is they will get back to you. Never happens with me. I can call numerous times and nothing. But typically we can walk in and get the pictures done that day no problem. Not this time. We got the girls dressed, went over, at a time/day when it wouldn't be crowded. Nobody was there. Just the photographer. And we were told "Sorry, we can't take you right now and we are booked solid all day. Have you tried calling to set up an appt?" Yes! Told her the issue and she said "Hmmm....that isn't right. We always call back." Yeah right. (said very sarcastically) So I go ahead and book an appt anyhow. We left and even Clark was put off. I told him I'd call around and see if there's other places and check prices. Then we decided to walk around the mall. Since we were there and all.

And right next to the JC Penney we find this place that does old fashionned portraits. They provide the clothes. They had a deal for $15 on 11 x 14. Normally those are like $50. So we figured why not. The most that can happen is we'll only like one pose since the girls never last through more than 2 without hassle. We couldn't do it then but we set an appt. We did prepurchase the 11 x 14 to take advantage of the deal. Then Katelyn got hurt so we had to change the appt. They were totally cool with that. Finally the swelling was down so we went in even with stitches.

The same two girls who hate having pics taken, loved this place! They thought they were getting to wear princess dresses. The photographer was awesome with them and the girls laughed and giggled through the whole session. Today we picked up the pictures. Not one bad one. We ended splurging and plunking down $180 on the most expensive package and taking everything home. And that was a special. Normally it's $199.99. So we got a great deal at this place. The package included a cd of the session. The cd is in color. The actual photos are more muted to make them more old fashioned. But you can get the gist of the it all. I don't think I'd do it every year. But it was great to have these ones at least because they did turn out so well. They will definitely be treasured photos.

Dinner with the Missionaries

Back: Elder Slade (on left) and Elder Anderson (on right)
Front: Me, Sister Brinegar, Katelyn, Sister Ashton, Laura

The front of the card

The inside of the card

In our previous ward, the calendar filled up so fast. By the time it got to me in primary, the nights we could sign up (Fridays and Saturdays) were filled up. Then there were stake changes and our section of the ward got moved to a different ward in a different stake. It was new for some but not for others. For many of the long time ward members, it was going "home". 15 years or so ago, they were once part of the other ward/stake. For others, like us, it was new. It was a smaller ward. Not many kids in primary or YM/YW even with those that got transferred there. So we had plenty of dates to choose from for feeding the missionaries.

What was cool is they were sisters! Katelyn never believed (even with my pictures as proof!) that "girls" could be missionaries. So we made sure to sign up to feed the sisters. At the time there was just two....Sister Hoover and Sister ? (hey I'm bad with names, LOL!). We had them over twice and Katelyn was finally convinced of the whole girls serving missions thing. Then the local mission president put a set of elders in (Elder Tate and Elder Anderson) along with a 3rd sister (Sister Brinegar). But the way the ward mission leader divided it up it was everyone south of 195th got the elders and those north got the sisters. Now it was Laura's turn to be confused. She got mad the first time the elders showed up. But she warmed up to them fast. Esp to Elder Tate. She didn't like Elder Anderson at first for some reason. Then Sister ? finished her mission and there were transfers. Elder Tate and Sister Hoover got transferred and in came Sister Ashton and Elder Slade.

Now funny story......With the first two sisters we had chicken dishes. But with Tate and Anderson, it just seemed like each time they came (3 times) I didn't feel like cooking in the heat so I had Clark grill. Well Clark doesn't just grill simple things. No, he loves to grill up steaks. They are delicious too. And yes, we ended up serving it each of those times. The first time they were like "cool! we haven't had it in a long time!" The second time it was "Score! Sister Raile can give up cooking altogether for all we care!" The third time they were joking that 3 for 3 was just too good to be true until they showed up and I said Clark was taking dinner off the grill. The 4th time we had all 5 missionaries over. We played a joke on the elders. When they all arrived we told them we forgot we had signed up for both sets and since the sisters had never eaten our steak, we'd be serving it to them and the elders could eat the food storage MRE's we had and they could choose which ones they wanted. They actually fell for it til dinner was served. Ha! But the streak ended when we got Elder Slade. I served the elders chicken enchiladas last time.

However, since it was my birthday, I asked Clark to grill steak for us all. When the elders called to confirm and Elder Slade asked if there was anything they could bring I said "Just your appetites. It's my birthday and we're having steak." He's like "Steak?! Yeah! I haven't had that in a long time." In the background I could hear Elder Anderson whose had it 4 times already, "Steak?! Yeah! Woohoo! Hoot hoot hoot!"

When the sisters arrived, they gave me a container of homemade chocolate chip cookies as a gift. After dinner while we were eating birthday cake (yes, I was able to get it finally), the elders said "Now we the sisters already gave you a gift. That was their part of the it. Our job was to make a card. It's not a Hallmark so we hope you'll like it." Like it? Oh my gosh! This card is better than any Hallmark card! I'm going to save it forever.....really. It's that funny! (and yes I have a silly sense of humor) And we even took pics of us all (well minus Clark, he was the picture taker) and the card for the blog.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Today (it's still Sept 5 here on the west coast) was my birthday. First off, I won't reveal my age. Just let's say it's in the 30s and I'm not looking forward to the big 40 in a few short years. Second, if you really want to know ask Katelyn. The other day she asked me how old I was going to be and I told her "29" which she didn't buy at first. "But that's not right! Daddy says you are the same age as him and he's 36." So with a smile on my face I told her that daddy only wishes we were the same age so he didn't suffer alone and that I was always going to 29. She said "So daddy lies?" with all seriousness of a 6 1/2 year old. And I said, "Only about mommy's real age." So now she won't let anyone tell her otherwise about how old I am. Yeah!

So here was my day:
*walked Katelyn to school along with Clark and Laura
* stayed home and did light cleaning while Clark took Laura to Walmart
* went to the post office to mail a package to a friend, took Laura with me, she made a point of telling everyone (and it was crowded by the way) that she was Laura, I was mommy and that "it mommy birfday!" So when we left I got a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday Mommy from a bunch of strangers. I love having a social butterfly. LOL!
* went to Ralphs to pick up my cake...couldn't pick it up....area around store had a power outage, nobody could use their cash registers....I thought I wouldn't end up with a cake
* went home, Clark took Laura on a walk to pick Katelyn up from school
* we all drove to the Lakewood Mall to pick up portraits I just done of the girls (I'll do a separate post on that)
* came home and got things set up to feed both sets of missionaries.....yes I planned it that way, our missionaries rock and since I wanted Clark to grill steak for me, I signed up to feed the missionaries too...they loved it (I'll do a separate post on that one too, 3 posts in one night, how cool is that?!)
* took Katelyn to surgical urgent care to get her stitches out....they did have to strap her down on a board but this one had velcro and the two female nurses had me leave the room so she wouldn't fight it as much and within a minute the stitches were out. yeah!
* and in between all this I managed to read and finish my latest book.....Persuasion by Jane Austen, the only one I hadn't read

Let's see.....gifts.....Clark and the girls got me cards and books. The last three books in the Zion Covenant series by Bodie Thoene. I had the first 6 but it's been years since I've had them and since then there are 3 more. Now I have the whole set. I also got some stuff from the missionaries but you can read about that in my next blog post. I got lots of online greetings from some awesome online friends. A shout out of thanks to all of them since I know many of them read my blog even if they never comment. :)

All in all, a good birthday for someone who will 29 forever.

Back-to-School and stitches update

So how many pictures does it take to get the best shot of a 6 1/2 yr old for the 1st day of school pictures for the photo album and blog? Only about 3 outside ones where she's got funny looking faces because she keeps looking up at the sun and not at the camera.....and then back inside really fast to get a decent one.

Yes, today was the first day of school for Katelyn. But not only that. It was also the first day of 1st grade, the first day of walking to school (she was bussed last year), and the first day at a new school. Last year she was in special ed and was bussed to another school in the district. This year she was mainstreamed and her home school is just a block and a half away. She was a little nervous but did fine as the teacher led them into the classroom. Little sister on the other hand errupted into tears. When that didn't work she stomped her feet and all the way home. "No! No! No! I no go home! I want sssssiiiiisssssyyyy!" It only took about 5-8 minutes to get to school. But it took at least 15 minutes to walk home after dropped Katelyn off. Yes, that's how slow she walked, dragging her feet in between foot stomps, the whole way home.

Katelyn said her first day was good. She met some new friends but since she is so new to the school and she's as bad as me with names....she doesn't know their names. She really likes her teacher too. I think we'll be having a good year. But only if Laura doesn't drag her feet all the way home every single day. hahaha!

Oh and the stitches. I know some know about it. But there's a few that might have missed the update. As you can somewhat see in the pictures, they are still in. She should have had them out last week. However she put up such a fight at the doctor's office that we ended up having to take her to our closest Kaiser ER. While there I wasn't even given any options for removing them. The ER doctor just automatically wrapped her up in a huge sheet, laid her on a blue board, taped her to the board in a few spots and went to work. Then she still kept moving and sticking her tongue out from all her horrible screaming. He ended up having to take her ankles, her forehead, her chin, and put gauze in her mouth to keep the tongue down. Horrible! I know it was probably necessary but NO parent wants to see their child like that. And after all that, as he started removing them, the stitches on her top lip, it split back open. So those ones weren't ready to come out afterall. Only the two on the inside of her lip were ready to come out. Then her lip was numbed and the ER doc had to restitch the top of the lip. Tomorrow she is to go and get them checked out again and see if they are ready to come out. I foresee another trip to ER to strap her down again. I hate to say it......but sedation was much easier for me and her. At least with that she doesn't remember much. But she was quiet and sad for a few days after being strapped down and she's normally a happy kid.

I'll update tomorrow on how it goes......and also how I celebrated my birthday. Yes that is tomorrow. And if you ask Katelyn she'll tell you how old I am (29 forever) and that daddy lies when he says mommy is his age (36). ::::::evil laughing::::::