pretty in pink

crepes

Our small group was over last night for our fellowship/food gathering we have every other week. This week our theme was crepes...the choices were savory or sweet. Believe it or not I don't ever remember having crepes before...but let's just say I will definitely be eating them again. And Nutella...what an amazing chocolaty-nutty food.This was our crepe maker...so professional. He had a real crepe maker and all the tools, so he did all the work and we did all the eating.And we did have other guys at this gathering but for some reason they tend to shy away from the camera. So thanks to my honey for representing the other men there by giving this great smile...actually it's one of those fake "just hurry up and take my picture" smiles. But thanks anyway for taking one for the team.And these little munchkins got to enjoy a savory and sweet crepe before bedtime. As you can see by their faces they are big fans.

habits

I think I might patent this...thumb covers to help in kicking the habit of thumb sucking. Maybe I could call them thumb cozies.

Jude's habit has become pretty obsessive, so I felt I had to take drastic measures. Regular old band-aids weren't doing the trick and the bitter tasting polish you can paint on the nail didn't faze him either...he's my kid that will eat a lemon. So I had an idea when I saw these little kids gloves at Target at $1.27 for two pairs (not a high demand for gloves in Hawaii) and cut off the fingers...wa-la, the temptation to put his thumb in his mouth was impeded by a fuzzy covered thumb.

Cruel you say? Actually he thinks it's pretty cool and doesn't complain...although I'm tired of people asking "Jude is your thumb cold?".

pumpkin carving...a little late

A day late but we got our pumpkin carved.

race car drivers and a 'lil pumpkin

The happy energetic kids before we headed out for some game playing and candy eating fun. We again enjoyed a local churches fall harvest party before we met up with some friends for some trick-or-treating in their neighborhood....where we lost the 'lil pumpkins hat.The boys also wore this little pumpkin outfit...we definitely got our moneys worth for this costume. And to make sure she wasn't mistaken for a boy, I added the pink bow on top. This is what Ansley really felt about it. And the boys and their race car driver uniforms. I was sewing the belt a few minutes before we left. Next time I don't think I will cut it that close.

A great night of fun and way too much candy.

10 months old

time for a re-cap

Wow, has it really been that long since I posted? All that free time I used to have to do things, like blog, seems to have disappeared. I guess schooling a 1st grader and adding a 10 month old into the mix does that. So instead of making seperate posts for different things we have done this past week, I thought I would just give a "quick" run down. And this is the only picture I have taken this past week. So enjoy.

~So I'll start with last Friday when the fever bug hit Jude. He had a pretty high temp and I feared the H1N1, but thankfully it was a regular old virus and made a very active Jude into a very lethargic Jude. Now he is back to his normal digging in the dirt, riding his scooter, playing trains-self again. But before he recouped, he thought it would be nice to pass it along to his brother and sister as well. Thankfully it didn't hit them as hard and everyone is on the mend.

~I sewed 3 bears this last week for a friend of mine at church who wanted to give them to her nieces. So with that money I bought....brum-brum-brum (that's a drum roll)...a DEHYDRATOR. Okay maybe some of you aren't as excited as I am about this but I finally found one here on the island (way cheaper than trying to have one shipped here) at our local Japanese grocery store. I just made fruit leathers, dried apples and dried pineapple. I can't wait to make some sun-dried tomatoes, raisins and other dried fruits...maybe even jerky at some point. Oh the possibilities are endless. And the boys are very excited about the fruit leathers.

~Besides sewing the bears I am also working on the boys costumes for Halloween. They both wanted to be race car drivers. So those pictures will be coming up in a few days.

~Ethan and I went to see Sky Pirates at the local community college's planetarium. It was a cute little cartoon that talked about a few of the constellations and their names. It goes well with our study of Astronomy this year.

~I found a really cool website on crock pot meals. This lady actually has a cookbook out there but her blog features a different crock pot meal for every day- for an entire year. So far we've made yogurt and baked oatmeal...did you know you could bake things in your crock pot? I can't wait to try other recipes. It beats having to turn on an oven and heat up your house when it is already stinkin' hot in the house anyway.

~A friend of mine gave me the cookbook Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld a while ago but I finally got around to actually trying some of the recipes. It's easy for me because it uses a lot of fruit and veggie purees and since I have many purees for Ansley's baby food on hand I just pop a few out of the freezer and throw them in the recipes. So far we have had Applesauce muffins (with applesauce and butternut squash puree), Pink Pancakes (with beet puree), Mac-n-Cheese (with butternut squash puree) and brownies (with spinach and carrot puree). Kind of fun to have a little punch of extra vitamins thrown in. So far my kiddo's have eaten all of them.

~Jude had his first dentist appointment yesterday and he did so well. Both boys came out with perfect teeth...I always worry because there is no fluoride in the water here and they scare you about teeth decay, etc. But Jude was very excited about picking the cookie dough toothpaste to get his teeth "polished" with and I couldn't help but think how gross that sounded to have cookie dough flavor brushed all over my teeth. The amazing thing about our dentist is that he is on the 6th floor of a business building (well that's not the amazing thing) and when you look out the window while having your teeth worked on, you can see the ocean in the distance with its aqua blue water. Pretty amazing and beautiful!

~Our van is in the shop. It has a few "little" things needing to be fixed. Of course those "little" things always cost so much to fix. One of those little things was the outside sliding door handle. I went to open it a few days ago and it broke...not the handle itself breaking off but I seriously broke the handle in half! I guess it's all that lifting/holding a 20 pound baby that, I just didn't realize my own strength. Or maybe it's because the van is a 9 year old van that sits in the hot blazing Hawaiian sun every day and makes plastic very brittle. But I like to think it is actually my muscles that did all the damage.

Okay so nothing real profound or thoughtful but that is what we've been up to. Maybe when I have some real free time (you know the kind where you can have a complete thought without being interrupted?), I can jot down what I've been reading or studying. It's always neat to look back and see how God is trying to grow us as a family.

Off to do some schooling with Ethan.

girls

How can you tell if a house has an almost 10 month old little girl?

Your newly folded laundry ends up like this...I wasn't thinking when I set the pile on the chair within hands reach.

Notice how the criminal has left the scene?Yeah, I'm talking to you little missy. That cute little innocent face isn't going to work this time...okay maybe it is.

boys

How can you tell if a house has boys living in it?

Your mirrors turn into target practice.

Your floor becomes a parking lot and...

your windowsills a traffic jam.

And they tend to get a lot of "battle wounds" from things like playing pirate ship in the toy box, racing in the driveway on scooters and bikes or wrestling on the floor...which always ends with someone getting hurt.

I'm lion...hear me roar!

Jude was getting dressed for the day...and then his head got stuck. All I heard was a little whiny voice saying "mommmmmy, I can't do it." So I turned to the little whiny voice and said "you look like a lion." And then the little whiny voice stopped and a big smile appeared on the not so whiny face and then that little face let out a big "ROOARRR". Very scary.

This is what my baby is up to these days. For right now she can't move forward or backward from a standing position but she can cruise pretty good if she's holding onto furniture. She is one busy girl.