Monday, December 6, 2010

On the road and through the streets to Hansen's house we go!

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
 We had Thanksgiving at our good friend's home this year, the Hansen's. They live in a really cool old home with wooden floors, a secret staircase that leads to a big room, neat fireplace, and oh I can go on... it was the perfect setting for a Thanksgiving dinner with great friends! Thanks Janette and Donovan for inviting us over!

Janette is the next Marth Stewart! Little squash pumpkins were used as our place cards with our family names attached. Families; Hansen's, Sorensen's, Elders and Bailey's.

The buffet style table. All the good looked so yummy and we still had more to add to the table. I enjoyed cooking and baking all different kinds of foods! Mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce (heaven!), my moms roll up rolls, chocolate pie with wafer crust and last but not least, a pumpkin cheesecake roll. I didn't think to take a picture of each item but I felt like I was on Iron Chef cooking all these wonderful foods!

Yummy rolls! (I did forget to add salt... no one seemed to noticed though) That right there got me knocked out of the race for Iron Chef!

Janette saw this cute idea for place mats for the kids. Since kids don't really care about how cute things look and about food, place mats were drawn on the paper. Darling isn't it?  The children were off in toyland in the secret room and of course we let them play so the adults could enjoy the dinner! Don't worry they eventually came down and filled up their bellies.

This picture does not do its justice, but oh... the food was so DELICIOUS! I can honestly say this was the best Thanksgiving dinner I had ever had. Stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, pototaoes and gravy, candied yams with pecans (I am not a fan of this but this was yummy!), green bean casserole, pickles and last but not least, my new favorite not so healthy, pineapple bread pudding... the thought of it just makes my mouth watery... I will have to post the recipe for this pineapple dish a soon as I get it. Thanks Hansen's for introducing this to us!

The awesome Hansen's!  Donovan is doing his residency as an oral surgeon and boy did he have some crazy stories to tell?  Janette and Donovan have two little cute gals, Avery and Belle with a boy on the way! We are so excited for them!

Rachelle and Mark Sorenson  and their cute little gal, Lana. They have two other darling kids, Caleb and Reese. Mark is also in residency as an oral suregon and instead of telling us crazy surgery stories, we got to see some crazy reconstructing images... shuttering....

Elder Halbert hails from Arizona and Elder Peck hails from Utah. We love our elders, especially Brooklyn!

A Happy Thanksgiving... Taylor surprisingly slept most of the time we were there... so no pictures of her. She was busy sleeping.



Sunday, December 5, 2010

BYU'd!!!

When I woke up a Saturday morning to see all this blue I was excited! I had woken up before Matt did and took pictures before he could destroy it. We, (well I should say, Matt...) got BYU'd!!! Matt is a strong Utah fan and for him to wake up to all this blue and blue on his car was... well... in his own words... "I am not gonna have this!" He marched right outside in his pajamas on the phone with who he thought had done it and said, "I won't have this!" We will keep who did it a secret.... You can say Matt cleaned it up right away and didn't want to have this kind of embarrassment. Me on the other hand, I was loving it!!! I grew up a BYU fan and love Utah for their swim team since Matt swam there.

Ballons were tied to plastic spoons and stuck in the ground. I thought that was such a smart idea! Matt was able to get everything cleaned up except for the streamers in the tree. There is still blue in the trees!


Matt is a huge Max Hall fan!! (no really he is)

Elder Halbert and Peck over to watch the big game!! Don't worry, they got permission from their mission president to watch the game and so we invited them over for pizza and football! Elder Peck played one year on the BYU football team and will go back after his mission! We can't wait to see him rip it all up!

Taylor was fasincated with the Christmas lights!


She is exactly what she looks like... an angel....


The other day I brought Brooklyn's bike up from the basement for her to play outside on and Taylor had fun exploring this big thing with two round wheels!

Can you teach me how to ride the bike?

I had to post yet another one of Brooklyn's pucker lips.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Let's go fly a kite way up into the sky!

After church today it was a little windy and Brooklyn noticed her kite in the trunk of the car and you know what happens next!

By the time Matt got the kite put together the wind had died down and so here he is trying to get the kite up into the sky... Not doing so well...

Getting frustrated.... Cute Brooklyn trying to help in any way that she can.

Finally... the wind decided to pick up the kite!

Brooklyn was thrilled to be flying a kite all by herself. I feel bad this is her first time... That I can remember of anyways and she has had that kite for over almost two years! Its about time we flew it!

I am making fun of myself here... I don't know what happened to this jacket but either I grew or the jacket shrunk... I think its the latter and dang it I don't like it when my clothes shrink! This jacket is going in the thrift pile! Do you know how many times I have had to throw clothes in the thrift pile because they have shrunk!!

Out little girl growing.... growing....

way up high into the sky.... well okay she won't get that tall, but we are sure she will be tall! (volleyball, volleyball, volleyball, basketball, basketball, basketball, volleyball, volleyball, volleyball, basketball, basketball, basketball...)


I posted two other entries along with this one! Check them out!

Oven-dried tomatoes and my birthday!

I love sun dried tomatoes but they are so expensive that I looked at one of my favorite websites, Our Best Bites and found this recipe for oven-dried tomatoes! They are heaven and make your house smell so yummy! Brooklyn wanted to help me in every possible way and she did such a great job!

Taking the stems off the tomatoes

Adding freshly ground pepper

Laying out the tomoates, not sure why she's making this face... Maybe it felt all slimy with the olive oil?


Drizzling olive oil

Topping tomaotes with fresh chopped garlic... smells strong!

And Viola!!! Ready for the oven! Don't they look yummy! 

It was my birthday this last week and Elder Peck and Halbert surprised me stopped by to say Happy Birthday! We invited them in for sushi and Matt taught them how to make it. This was Elder Halberts first time eating sushi... he is still working on acquiring a taste for it.

Look what the Elders surprised me with! Cold Stone!!! Cake batter ice cream with almonds and raspberry! It was heaven!!! Thanks Elders, you guys Rock!

Matt and the girls took me out later for a night of shopping! I got some pants and tops from one of my favorite stores, Buckle!!! Its the only place that sells pants long enough for my long legs! Afterwards, we stopped at our favorite grocery store, Wegmans... If you ever come to NY to visit us, you bet your bottom dollar we are taking you there! I picked out a delicious Italian Rum cake and oh my goodness! It was seriously the most moist cake I had ever eaten! We loved it and chowed it down! Thanks Matt, Brooklyn and Taylor for a wonderful night!! I love you!!!

I took Brooklyn to see the musical play, Annie! We both were so excited since we have watched that movie together so many times.

Getting ready to watch the show! Brooklyn is showing a new fashion statement with her cute headband. I pushed it back, she pulled it down, I pushed it back, she pulled it down... I gave up! She looks cute and the way she wears the band looks almost like the roaring 1920's! During the show Brooklyn leaned over and asked me, Mom can I do a play sometime?  I told her of course! Later, on the drive home, she said, Mom, I will wait to be in a play until I am like 6, 7, 8 or 9 cause then that way I won't be scared.  (I love this gal!)

Our wonderful friend and her dog as Sandy in the play. Karen Lyman (townsperson), her son Gus (Housekeeper) and their dog were in the play. Karen is in our ward and she is also my visiting teacher. I sure love her and her family!!! We can't wait for another musical to go to.

Happenings this week....


 
I caught Taylor gnawing... nothing new.

She is already developing an attitude and didn't look too thrilled that I caught her! Notice the marker, she gnaws on that too...

Puckering her lips again... Love the boots she is wearing!

On her way to becoming a hair stylist. Brooklyn came running down the stairs one evening and paraded around the room to show us her stylish hair. She put them into pigtails with bows all by herself! She was so tickled!

Brooklyn and her friend Safari (long i sound). These two have so much fun together! Safari lives two doors down and he and his family moved in over the summer. They love to play on the tires across the parking lot, dig for treasures in our dirt patch and ride their scooters.

Our famous babysitter!! Cory is awesome with kids!! He and his brother Caleb are "The Ones" to babysit. All the kids love them and they love the kids!  Can you tell how much Taylor loves him? Now now Taylor, you are a little too young to have some kind of crush!

I received a birthday package in the mail and of course I loved the gifts my parents sent me (Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween decor...Love it Mom and Dad!). My gifts were wrapped in bubble wrap. Guess what Brooklyn loved...the bubble wrap! She was so excited to pop all the bubbles. She ran around the kitchen and would come running down, popping the bubbles! She sat and rolled on it too! Who knew bubble wraps could be so much fun?

Need I say more? LOL! This is going in Taylor's wedding video!

Playing in the dishwasher.... again....

Splash splash I love taking baths! Matt said this looked like an 80's picture, I agree.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Family Pictures!!

We finally got our famliy pictures that include our newest addition, Taylor.  Thanks Lisa for taking our pictures. We love them! lisaruthphotography.com.

ENJOY!!