Sunny Autumn Afternoon

Today, Emily and Louie spent almost the whole day outside. It was so much fun! There was a yard sale of junk up the street. We came in and had lunch and took a little bit of a nap??? Grandma stopped over on her way home this afternoon. Emily and Louie were done with their naps, even though they were very short! When Grandma left, we got our pumpkin decorations finished up out in front. Apparently, pumpkins are sold out everywhere this year. We ended up getting "Funkins" at Menards last night. We also stocked up on Halloween candy last night at Menards. They have jumbo bags for $1.79 after the rebate. Super deal compared to the ohter stores.
When Grandmas left and we were done with the pumpkins, we raked up all the leaves in our yard (and the loser neighbors yard) and Emily and Louie played for a couple of hours jumping in the leaves. After a while, Isak came over to with his baby brothers. All the kids had a lot of fun running and jumping in the pile of leave and playing in hte cars in the back yard.

This is Louie looking more and more like his Daddy everyday!

No School!

It is MEA this weekend. Emily is out of school on Thursday and Friday. Since there's no Friday night highschool football this week, Dan has his varsity game tonight. He and his crew went all the way to Rush City tonight. Since the kids and I were home alone tonight, we made dinner (delicious Shepherds Pie-see below) and then after dinner, the kids and I made a double batch of the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. Man, they are so good!
Tomorrow or Friday, Dan and the kids will take a trip out to Gerten's to pick out pumpkins!

The super easy recipe for Shepherd's Pie:
2 tbsp canola oil
1 lb ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1 bag frozen mixed vegetables
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
couple grinds of pepper
1 tbsp fresh thyme
3 cups mashed potatoes (I used Betty Crocker Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes, prepared)

Preheat oven to 350. In a heavy skillet over medium heat, brown onions in the oil. Add the ground beef and break into chunks. Cook ground beef 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 more minute. Add the bag of frozen veggies, the thyme and pepper. Stir and cook another minute and then stir in worcestershire sauce and the pepper.
Put the ground beef mixture in a deep dish pie pan and top with the mashed potatoes. I topped the mashed potatoes with some grated cheese. Bake for 30 minutes, until the potatoes are browned and the meat is bubbly. Serve!

So, as I'm typing this, I've got Jon and Kate + 8 on. How does Jon tolerate living with such a CRAZY and freakishly OCD woman that almost NEVER says anything nice about her husband? Emily and Louie like to watch the show about all the kids, honestly, I used to enjoy watching it. Now that I've done a little blog surfing and read about what a self-centered woman Kate is, I can't stand it. Jon and Kate are having their day together and Jon wanted to get his teeth whitened. . . well, Kate couldn't stand the thought of being next to Jon with him having whitened teeth and she doesn't? unreal . . . I'm sure that like everything else for this family, it was FREE!

It's the Great Pumpkin!

Tis' the season of delicious pumpkin flavored goodies!

First on the list is:

Tesa's Pumpkin Crisp

(not sure if it is really her recipe, but she gets credit for it as she introduced us to it)

1 box yellow cake mix

1 stick of melted butter

1 egg

*remove 1 cup of the cake mix for use later. mix the remaining cake mix, butter and egg in a bowl and then pat into a 9x13 cake pan.

1 can pumpkin

2 eggs

2/3 cup of evaporated milk

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

*mix pumpkin, eggs, milk and spices together and pour over the cake mix mixture.

1 cup yellow cake mix

3/4 cup sugar (I use 1/2 brown sugar and 1/2 granulated)

1 stick room temperature butter

*combine cake mix, sugar and butter in a bowl until mixed and sort of crumbly. crumble in small pieces on top of the pumpkin mixture.

bake in a 350 degree oven for 55 minutes or until it doesn't jiggle and is a nice carmelized brown color.

Serve warm with a spoonful of whipped cream.

** this is delicious! and one of our fall favorites.

Punkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

(another fave, I have not made these, but a friend has and they are YUMM-O!)

1 c. pumpkin

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. oil

1 egg

2 c. flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. milk

1 c. chocolate chips

1 tsp. vanilla

Nuts (optional)
Dissolve baking soda in milk; set aside. In large bowl add pumpkin, sugar, oil, and egg; stir. Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda mixture. Mix well. Stir in chocolate chips and vanilla. Spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees 10 to 12 minutes or until done.

Now, the remainder of the fall to-do list is in process.

Yesterday, I got some plants moved around in front. I wanted to add a couple of plants that were fall bloomers. Currently, everything in front blooms during the spring and summer. Can't wait until next year!

We need to pick up a bale of hay (any suggestions on where to get that?) We need it for our pumpkins on Halloween and then it gets spread over the plants in front for the winter.

As for Halloween, there was a mini-crisis today. I was a total procrastinator this year and didn't order Emily a cute Old Navy Halloween costume in time. I was at the Old Navy website two weeks ago and they had the kitty costume. Last Friday, they didn't. Then, I resigned myself to ordering her a mouse costume. Didn't complete the order because I got distracted. Today, went in to order it and EVERY costume is sold out! Dang! Now what to do?
I quickly searched Ebay for a cute kitty costume and came across "Marie" from the Aristocats. (Emily's favorite movie).

Found a CUTE Marie costume on Ebay and when I went in to buy it now at 1:13 pm, somone else had gone in and did the buy it now at 1:12pm! It was sold! UGH.

I ended up getting a different Marie costume for $3 more. It should be cute!

We're going to a Halloween party this year and Grandma is coming over to pass out candy. Should be fun and Louie will LOVE to get all the candy.

We went to New Prague on Sunday morning and had some family pictures taken. It wasn't a beautiful fall day like I had hoped for, but it wasn't raining! Hopefully, there will be a sneak preview of them posted shortly, I can't wait to see how they turned out.

Here's another photo that I used the "color pop" actions on. It's amazing how it enhances the colors. The right side is how I remember my wedding bouquet, so bright and vibrant. I've loved the one on the left because I had to settle for that in the picture. I've been working on editing our wedding photos and Hawaii photos to make a couple of photo books. Progress is very slow, but clearly worth it.

Photoshop

Ugh, I've been playing around with Photoshop lately, to try and learn more efficient ways of using it. I found this website that has "actions" that you can buy from her. The actions are directly uploaded to your PS program and when you open a picture, you just click on the action you want to do and it will do it. You do go in and tweak you photo, but it's really nice.
There's a bunch of websites out there that have these for the full version of Photoshop (the $$$ version), but I've got Elements (the $ version). This photographer created these for Elements too. Check it out. The "color pop" that I ran on this picture looks pretty nice. Now, if I could just get rid of the glare on Emily's forehead . . . .

Pine Tree Orchard

We went to Pine Tree Apple Orchard on Saturday, along with 3000 other people. It was so much fun. The kids met Charlotte for the first time! They were very excited to meet her and have been asking for a couple of weeks now.
The ponies were being unloaded from the trailer when we got there. Grandma went straight to the pony line and we waited for the pony rides. Emily got to ride Yo-Yo and Louie rode Pudgey. They were both 10 year old ponies.
After the pony rides, we went on a wagon ride through the orchard. What a beautiful orchard that it. It located on the highest point in Washington County, you can see the tops of the buildings in downtown St. Paul from the top of the hill. Very pretty ride.
After the wagon ride, we went inside and bought some delicious apple butter, crab apple jelly and some Honeycrisp apples. Louie and Emily LOVE to eat apples. It is so nice, they don't like to have them peeled and sliced, they just eat the whole thing (except the core). They have been asking for an apple a day since the orchard.
It was a gorgeous day on Saturday. It was topped off with dinner at the White Bear Lake VFW. Emily won the meat raffle that night. She got to choose her packag eof meat. She chose the pack of fresh walleye fillets. We'll be cooking them in the near future. They look delicious! Emmy was very excited to win!

School work and a doll stroller

On Sunday, I came home from a weekend away and Emily was so excited to show me the project that she made at school. She comes home with a little something each day, but they work on a "big"project all week. She was so proud of it. We've been workin on coloring and staying inside the lines. As you can sort of see, she's doing ok in that department. I think the next thing, is handling scissors and actually cutting things. School is really helping her coordination. She has been receiving 1:1 physical therapy from the therapist at school and that is really starting to show. Also, she's seems to have had a word explosion. I can't believe how much more of a vocabulary that she has. I'm sure it helps to have a brother that has about a 500 word vocabulary. She and Louie sing the ABC's and count to 25 at the table all the time. They both are doing well with identifying their colors too. They are little sponges!

On the potty training scene, Emily is doing so well. She's has about one "accident" a day. She is dry in the morning about six days a week and runs to her potty to go first thing. We're so proud of her and the improvements that she's made. Now, is she would just figure out the #2 part of potty training. We'd all be so happy, especially Dan.

Sunday night, Louie was doing everything he could to irritate Emily. So, he climbed into the doll stroller to watch The Wonder Pets before we read stories and headed off to bed. Emily decided that she wasn't going to get mad, she just pushed him around the house. It was pretty funny!

Same book, different day

We celebrated Nicole's 21st birthday tonight. I can't believe she is 21, how did she become 21 already? When I met Nicole, she was a 12 year old that was going on 21. We've had our ups and downs over the years. I am so thankful that since becoming an adult, she has also become her own person and Dan, Emily, Louie and I are a part of her life.

Now the birthday party is over and I'm getting ready to go away for the weekend. Dan is giving Nicole a ride home and I just got done reading Emily her most favorite book in the world.

Emily LOVES Peter. She loves "The Snowy Day," but she loves Peter's Chair more. Auntie M gave Emily Peter's Chair when Louie was born, what a fitting book? Ever since, we have had to read that book for naps and bed time. A friend from work has a little boy named Peter and Emily was so confused, she didn't understand that someone else could have that name. When she goes to bed and the book isn't there, she asks for "Peter" every night.

Funny, the Ezra Jack Keats books were my favorites when I was a kid. The Snowy Day was my favorite.

Emily's Favorites:
Peter's Chair

Fisher Price Piggy Bank

American Baby Bitty Twins

her puppy and doggie

Louie's Favorites:

Gordon (from Thomas and Friends)

any truck

bananas

anything that is currently in Emily's hands

Emily's doll buggy

Sid the Science Kid

She's HOME!!!

Sara, Charlotte and her parents returned home from Guatemala last night. Charlotte was asleep, I guess she was meant to be a traveller. She slept pretty much the whole way home. I wonder if she slept last night in her new house?? She's such a beautiful little girl, she's already got Grandpa and Grandpa wrapped around her finger . . . It was fun to see them come home. Welcome home Charlotte!!!

Some pictures from Bailey's pony party

We all had a fun time yesterday at the pony party!