Pasta Sculptor

The other day we tried to get creative with pasta. With a bunch of different kinds of pasta, hot glue gun, and paint, this is what we created.

I Thought I was Pregnant...

This is a little story about the time I thought I was pregnant... It took place LAST WEEK! Can you imagine!!! Brooklyn is not even a year old yet and I feel it was just yesterday I was waddling around with little Brooklyn inside me. I need WAY more time between pregnancies. Love the baby part, but oh boy, I do NOT like being pregnant. I'm still nursing and still haven't gotten my period thank goodness. I was just having weird hormonal things happening to me, cramping, break outs, my hair felt different, I gained a couple pounds, I was emotional, and tired. And I have a little confession to make... I'm not on birth control and I've never been on birth control. I know what you're thinking... WHAT!!! Who in their right mind would do such a thing? Well, I have my reasons, one being I'm just plain afraid of it. I guess I'm more afraid of birth control side effects than I am of having unplanned pregnancies. So far our method has worked. Keep your fingers crossed that it continues to work :). So anyway, I took pregnancy test after pregnancy test. Seriously, I was obsessing over it. There were a couple of tests where I swore I saw a line. Sean insisted there was no line. So I continued to take the tests. Finally after taking a half dozen tests I have peace of mind. I'm NOT pregnant. Although there would be a certain level of excitement if I WAS pregnant, now is definitely not the right time. Oh and for any of you who may be trying to conceive and have spent a ton of money on pregnancy tests, I have a recommendation for you. After taking multiple trips to the store, spending a small fortune on sticks to pee on, I decided to do a little research. After reading a bunch of positive reviews, I found a pack of 2o tests for only $7 on Amazon. Here's what they look like.

San Diego Trip Part 1

We recently got back from a 10 day trip to San Diego and I tell yah, it was absolutely AMAZING! We've never spent much time in San Diego, I don't know why. We try to take a nice trip once a year and in the past we've mostly done Cruises. I always thought that cruising was the way to go when you have small children. I've totally changed my mind. Our last trip we flew to Florida for a Caribbean Cruise on SouthWest which is something I do NOT recommend, especially if you have kids with you. You'll have at least 2 lay overs, which makes things very stressful with long flights, ugh! Talk about a pain in the... So anyway, by the time we got home from that trip, I felt like I needed a vacation from vacation. I was completely wiped out and felt like it was more work than it was worth. So this year we decided to forgo the airplane and take a nice long road trip to sunny California. I was dreading the drive a little, but thankfully we were able to stop in St. George and stay at our house there for a few days before making the rest of the drive. It takes 4 hours to get to St. George, then another 6 1/2 to 7 to get to San Diego. I had it all planned out though. I made up a fun schedule to follow to make the time go by faster. For example, we started by watching a movie (I was sure to get a new one specifically for the trip), then we read books for 30 minutes, played games for 30 minutes (I found some fun road trip games online using good ol' google), colored pictures for 30 minutes, played ipad games for 30 minutes, did school work for 30 minutes, ect, then we'd repeat the whole thing until the drive was over. I made everyone fun little snack packs full of healthy foods and a few treats. I made little binders for Oliver and Lily with lots of different printouts, like a map of Utah and California, bingo, word searches, coloring pages of the Utah and California state flags, birds, flowers, ect. I tried to throw in educational information to share with them about each state. I also got a bunch of dollar toys and gave them one about every hour or so. They loved that. We rented a beach house on Mission Bay which is right across the street to Mission Beach. Everything about this location was absolutely perfect. Here's a picture of the house we stayed in. We stayed in the bottom level of this place. Loved that we are literally ON the beach. Made going to the beach with kids a lot less stressful. Usually you have to haul all kinds of stuff, taking multiple trips to and from the car just to get set up. Then of course there's always something you forget to bring, like the sun screen, extra clothes, drinks, you name it. So it was nice, because if we forgot something, just head right back into the house to get it. I also loved being on the bay side since we still have small children and the waves can be a little daunting to them. They got to play in the water without the constant worry that the waves would carry them out to sea :). We still got to play in the waves, just walk across the street and we were there. Just perfect! Oh and another nice thing about being right on the beach is that Brooklyn could still take her naps. I was sure to bring the video monitor so that we could play outside but I was still able to listen for her when she woke up. We did a little paddle boarding. Sean's parents came with us on the trip. Don't you just love this picture of Brooklyn with her grandma. So cute! The first night we were there, Lily and I walked across the street to the ocean, played around and took a bunch of pictures until sunset. Collected sea shells... Examined the sea weed... Watched the surfers and boogie boarders... And made huge discoveries... Then we walked back over to the bay to do some more treasure hunting... I sure love spending time with this girl. To be continued...

Halloween Birthday Party

Seriously can't believe Lily is "7" now. I'm WAY too young to have a "7" year old. We just had Lily's party this weekend and it sure was a lot of fun.

I just love Halloween, so I always get so excited about planning Lily's party, what a great time of year to have a party right?

Lily helped me plan and make everything this year, which made it a lot more fun.

We started out by making our jello brain platter. We found a brain mold at the grocery store, then just bought 2 boxes of black cherry jello and added one packet of just plain gelatin. We needed to make sure it was good and firm and wouldn't fall apart when removing it from the mold. Also, I sprayed some cooking spray in the mold before adding the jello mix. It worked perfectly. the brain didn't fall apart and it came right out of the mold. I was so proud that I didn't screw it up :).

Then we made a graveyard cake. I saw a picture of one on Pinterest, but I think it originally came from the Family Fun magazine. This was such an easy cake to make and saved me about $20 too :). We just used a box mix, then added the frosting after it cooled. Then we used pretzels for the fence, short bread cookies for the tombstones, gel frosting for the letters and oreos for the dirt. I removed the white frosting from the oreos before crushing them.

Then we made a plate full of bones. These treats are so yummy and SO addicting. Just stick some mini marshmallows on the ends of pretzels, then dip in white chocolate. YUM!

Then we made some hot dog mummies. Just wrapped some hot dogs in croissant dough and baked at 350% until golden. Afterwards I added mustard for the eyes and served with "blood" (ketchup) for dipping. They were a hit! I saw this on Pinterest too. Don't know exactly where the idea originated, probably from the Family Fun magazine again. Love their website too.

Then we got Lily all decked out in her costume. She wanted to be a vampire. I found these vampire teeth at the grocery store. They were meant for adult teeth so they didn't last very long. Just long enough to snap a picture. But they look awesome don't you think? The make up was done using a stencil kit I found in the Halloween section at the store.

We decorated the table. We also made some witches brew with dry ice, but I didn't get a picture of that.

Then all the friends came.

After we had dinner and cake we painted pumkins, played hide and go seek in the dark using glow sticks, then watched the Shreck Spooky Tales. It was awesome!

Happy Birthday my sweet Lily Rae!!!

Fish Guts

I meant to blog about this a while ago. I'm working on my yearly family photo album (I use blurb.com to print off all my family albums) and realized I've left out quite a few events. When I first started this blog it was mainly a place for me to share information, tips, and ideas, but I've decided there's no harm in sharing our family outings and activities, right? Hope you still find it interesting. So anyway, we tried out fishing with the kids for the first time this year. We found this great man made place to fish which I think is perfect for young kids. They get VERY impatient I've learned. We went to two different spots, the first one we didn't catch anything and the kids were going crazy, saying, when are we going to catch a fish, about every two minutes. The second place we found pretty much guaranteed a catch immediately. It was AWESOME!!!

We caught 2 then brought them home and actually cooked them up. Lily was surprisingly really excited about gutting the fish, lol. Look at this girl. She's loving every minute of it, which of course makes her dad VERY proud.

Getting Ready For Halloween

Don't you just LOVE this time of year! The leaves changing, weather cooling off, holidays coming up. Oh, and let's not forget Football and hunting :). It's always fun watching the kids trying to decide on costumes for Halloween. It seems like they never REALLY decide what their going to be until the day of. We've been trying out different face painting techniques. We came across a little tutorial on youtube and Lily insisted I try it out on her face. Not sure what she's supposed to be, and it's a little creepy if you ask me, but we had fun with it. Here's the youtube link, animated doll eyes. And here are the two costumes Oliver is deciding between.

Got this ninja one from Costco.

I got these cute jackets from KMart for $15 each. Don't ya love them!!!

I saw this idea in the Family Fun Magazine. They called them Troll toes! Looks appetizing right :).

We tried out a little Halloween craft.

I saw this idea on Pinterest. It didn't quite work out as well as I hoped. It's supposed to look like this...

But when I tried to peel the glue off the wax paper, it just stuck to the paper and got all messed up. So I must have done something wrong.