Dinnertime Fun 10-15-09

Yes, dinnertime at our house often involves the camera. Everyone is (supposed to be) sitting in one spot, there's lots of talking and interaction, and the camera is usually on the kitchen table, anyway. Brad likes to play with the black and white features.


They're looking at me, and by their faces, I really wonder what I was doing.


As I said, we are 'supposed to' be in our seats. We seem to have to remind Leiden a lot.


The girls do this funny thing. When I give them a thumbs up, they like to touch my thumb with one of their fingers and make a clicking noise. Mac will ask to do it a hundred times in a row. She's equally happy with pointer finger to pointer finger. As long as she gets to make the clicking noise!

Snack Time

You can tell I'm really behind, as these pictures were taken October 15! Better late than never!

Anyway, I gave the girls a snack, and as I often do as a lazy mom, don't make them sit at the table to eat it. I came around the corner of the counter and found Mac here. She had wedged herself between the door and the chair, and was quite contentedly munching on her cheese stick and colored goldfish!


She couldn't figure out why I thought that was funny. To her, it made perfect sense.

Mac at the Computer

One of Mac's favorite (banned) activities is to play at the computer. She loves to climb up on the chair and poke at the keyboard. Then there's the obligatory, "Mac! No!", as she usually performs some function with the keyboard that we don't know how to reverse.



She actually looks like she knows what she's doing. It's even better when she's poking the keyboard and looking up at the screen.

Pumpkin Patch and Picking Apples

Last year, I took the girls to an apple orchard, and wanted to take them to a pumpkin patch, but Brad wasn't convinced that would be very fun, so we skipped it. This year, we decided to do both in one shot! It was pretty cold when we got there--like 41 degrees, and I had just put jackets on the girls in anticipation of the high temp for the day. Most of the other kids were in coats, hats, and mittens. Oh, well. Leiden was pretty happy!


Mac was pretty happy herself, when she was moving around enough to stay warm!

Riding on the hay ride was another story, so Brad wrapped her up in his jacket, which helped both of them.

Leiden in the pumpkin patch. It was pretty cool.

Mac was very unsure of the pumpkin patch. She kept saying, "punkin", but she was not willing to touch one, and after a minute, refused to even walk among them.

She went a ways holding on to hands, but was very wary.

And then she had had enough of the pumpkin patch.

Some very nice pumpkins were to be found.

More pumpkin-induced sadness.

This is my favorite of the day. Most of the time Leiden gives this really funny closed mouth smile, but we got the real thing here.

Going to weigh our pumpkins.

Once out of the pumpkin patch, Mac was a lot better. Plus it was a bit warmer.

I picked out a sweet little pumpkin just for Mac, and finally convinced her to touch it.

Then, wonder of wonders, she actually took it from me, and carted it around for the next few minutes.

It's an important job.

Then we switched to apples. They were much less frightening to Mac. She found one on the ground, and didn't let it go the rest of the trip. She actually ate more than half of it on the way home. As in she took bites off the apple and ate them! I've never seen her do that.

Ended up being a great family outing.

More Girls

Here are some more girls. Taking pictures is pretty much all I have to do all day--besides clean, feed them, sewing, cooking--you know. We can't leave grandparents out just because they don't live here!

Leiden had gotten out her old snow hat, that now should really be Mac's, and was playing with it.



Mac thought it was funny. No one can make Mac laugh like Leiden!



Of course, who wouldn't laugh when confronted with this?


Speaking of winter things. It's October and we have already needed them. Ugh. The worst part is that Mac is bigger than Leiden was at the same age, so she's already outgrown stuff that she's never even worn! The day of the first snowstorm I traipsed out to the shed, where all our extra stuff is in our hopeless attempt to sell our house, and grabbed the snow boots Leiden wore this same winter (in age). Did they fit Mac? No, of course not. I barely got them on her feet, and when she stood up, she whimpered and wouldn't take a step. So it's off to Target we go. At least Leiden is still (currently) fitting into her coat from last year! It's never ending!

Another Halloween Dinner and AWESOME Bread

Another Halloween endeavor the other night. They actually turned out pretty cute, and the stew was good, too! The girls seem less than impressed--I knew Mac was too little to care, but I thought Leiden would be a little more excited. Oh, well. I walk a fine line trying to find the 'cute' Halloween themed dinners and the gross ones. When they're older, the gross ones will be fine, but stewed eyeballs would not go over with little Leiden.



Here was the best part, though. This bread was amazing. Truly wonderful. Think European artisan bakery bread--crusty on the outside and tender on the inside, with just the right amount of saltiness. The only catch? You have to make it in the dutch oven, which you can put in your regular oven, but it's still cumbersome. Remember the burn on Mac's arm? I now have a similar one on my arm. But much tinier. I barely touched the dutch oven while it was hot--immediate blistering. But, the bread was really good.



Even Mac, who is not a bread fan, liked it.

Mac and First Snow

Here are some cute pics of the girls. Mac can climb up into her booster seat all by herself, now, which is frightening. One of these days she'll lose balance and fall off right onto the tile floor. But, she's pretty cute when she gets there!

And then, of course, there was snow (if only a little) on the ground this morning when we woke up! Leiden insisted on going outside to play in it. I haven't gotten her any snow boots and she doesn't have a coat for this season, but she made do.

What a cutie. She thought it was a good idea to eat the snow. Since it was fresh, I let her. But I did tell her not to eat yellow snow. She had no idea what I was talking about.

She tried to get Mac to eat some snow, but Mac is pretty fearful of a lot of the unknown, these days. She's still fearless in all things physical, but everything else is getting tricky.

Mac wanted to go out, but Leiden's old boots from when she was almost 2 don't fit Mac. Mac is a bigger girl than Leiden was. So she went out in shoes and a sweatshirt. She says 'cheese!' whenever I aim the camera at her, and I caught her in a less than flattering face. Shortly after this picture, Leiden started throwing snow.

Like this:

Then she decided to throw it at Mac, which signaled the end of Mac's outside session, as Leiden managed to throw it right onto Mac's neck. After Mac came in, Leiden stayed out for a good 20 more minutes! Now the snow is all gone, and all the leaves are falling off the trees green. Brad is having fits.

Halloween Time Dinners

I decided this month to make a bigger deal of the upcoming holiday--Halloween. Often I find that holidays creep up on me, and instead of finding fun ways to celebrate and give the girls a fun time, I realize I've run out of time and I have all these ideas! So in that spirit, I've been doing lots of Halloween themed food. Here was our Halloween Pot Pie. (The camera was on a really weird setting, so it looks kind of day-glo, but it was actually pretty fun.)



Last night I attempted Halloween tostadas. (Cookie cutters are so useful!) These actually worked pretty well. Here are the cutouts fresh out of the hot oil. The ghosts were hard to put the toppings on in the next step, so I won't be doing them, again.



Here are the three kinds I did. Leiden was very excited about the haunted house because it was "just like the one at Disney World". Being excited about its shape, however, did not translate into actually eating dinner. Mac ate her whole pumpkin.

They were topped, by the way, with refried beans, taco meat, and cheese, and then I heated them in a hot oven until the cheese melted. Add sour cream, lettuce, olives, and what have you! More to come as the month goes on!

Holiday Time at Etsy!

If you're not in the mood for shameless self-promotion, go ahead and skip this post! I try not to post Etsy stuff here on the blog much, because you're all family and friends, but occasionally, I indulge, and hope you'll indulge me.

Today is a case in point, because I've got some D-A-R-L-I-N-G stuff up in the shop, new for Christmas/Holiday time! --Some of which would make cute gifts, as the price points are pretty low. First up is the Women's Christmas Apron! (Yes, that is me in the apron. I tried it on a friend, and it looked much better on her, but the lighting was all wrong. So we improvise.) That said, even on a pregnant lady, it looks pretty flattering! Love the halter neckline.
It can be found here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32213969

Next up we have the Little Christmas Apron, listed at sizes 12M to 5T, with larger-but-not-quite-adult-sizes available if they are wanted. This was made to coordinate but not be matchy matchy with the women's apron, but both the little and the womens can be made in any fabrics. Why not be matchy matchy when you're baking up the holiday treats? Find it here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32217659

Leiden is not a very willing model, as shown by her face above. At least I got some pics.

And...shameless self-promotion is over. :) Hopefully the comments will not go up in flames.