Baking!

My re-discovered hobby. I have always LOVED to bake, I've just been doing it more lately because of my awesome new kitchen appliance! Good for my soul, not so good for the diet I am attempting to stay on! A friend of mine turned me on to the Pioneer Woman's recipe website and I'm in love. Such yummy and unique treats. These cupcakes are amazing...



Recipe made 18 and within the day, my family and Bryan's parents finished them off. YUM-O!

Last week I was in the mood for something different...not chocolate. I decided on these cupcakes made with fresh strawberries. So good!


I am going out of town soon on a girls trip. I was volunteered to make the dessert for one of the nights. I'm thinking of going with these......Can't go wrong with "Better Than Crack Brownies". With a name like that, they HAVE to be good! LOL! They are made with a brownie mix, peanut butter, melted Reece's cups, milk chocolate chips and rice crispy topping. I will update on how good they were!




I'm so glad we are making our way into the holiday season. The weather is finally starting to cool off and I'm in full baking mode. Trying to make my final decisions on what I'm going to make this year. Thanksgiving (for 20) is at my house so I have to make some yummy treats for my family!

Kitchen Aid

I have wanted a red Kitchen Aid since, well, forever! It's probably been a good 7 years that I have had one of these babies on my xmas/birthday list and I never got one because I just couldn't justify spending $250 on a mixer. I know, I could have bought the white one for less than that but I wanted red. In this case, white just wouldn't do. Plus, white totally clashes with my kitchen. Anyway, yesterday Bryan and I were walking through the Target by my house. I walked by the clearance rack and I saw a this perfect RED Kitchen Aid. Surely, this was a mistake! How could a Kitchen Aid be on clearance? Sure enough, I looked at the tag and it was no mistake. My $250 mixer was now a mere $150. Bryan put it in the cart without even thinking twice. I felt guilty and almost talked him out of buying it for me but in the end, he won. This is my brand new "graduation" gift. LOL! I love it though and I can't wait to bake this Christmas! (One of my very favorite hobbies). My festive RED Kitchen Aid! I love it!

Fall!

Jack Johnson

Was awesome! We had a great time at the concert. We hung out on the lawn with good friends. I even drank 4 whole beers. Go me! LOL! I was hung over the next day from 4 beers. Shows how much I drink! I forgot my friggin camera so I don't have any pictures to show but it was one of the best concerts I think I've been to. Bryan and I have LOVED Jack Johnson for so long, we even named our daughter after one of his songs. "Taylor" I think we're shooting for Hawaii for Christmas 2011. He inspired us!

More bows!

Just wanted to share more of my little creations!

Mother Nature's Farm

Decorating Pumpkins

My little pumpkins

Riding on his tractor!

Hay Ride

The farm animals

Baby chicks with my baby chick

Sweet Taylor

Tractor boy!

I just love fall...even in Arizona where we don't have leaves that change or cool, crisp air. It's just a feeling I get this time of year.....I'm happy, really happy during the fall.

Today was a fall kind of day. I woke up early and got the kids ready to play at the pumpkin patch. We were supposed to meet friends there later on in the day but I purposely got there early so that I could take pictures of the kids (before they were distracted by friends) and spend a little bit of alone time with them. It was such a beautiful morning. 75ish degrees and sunny.

When we first arrived, there was a little tiny chicken cage (later, Mason reminded me that it's a coop, not a cage). It was full of baby chicks. SO cute, the kids loved them and I was a little tempted to buy one and bring him home. Then I remembered that I'd probably kill it since I don't know how to take care of chickens. Fresh eggs would be nice though.

We sat on the tractor and took some pictures, played in the pumpkin patch area for awhile until our friends arrived. Then we did the bounce castle, hayride, play houses, pumpkin decorating, hay maze and checked out some farm animals. (The kid driving the tractor for the hayride was hilarious). It was such a fun day to spend outside in the fresh air. I love Mother Nature's Farm. We also are going to Schnepf farm again this year. I like to do both. Mother Nature's is less expensive and less commercialized. Schnepf is fun though too because it's bigger, has rides and a chile festival. Pictures to come soon from Schnepf!

My favorite part was watching my kids play with all of their best Casa Grande friends. We miss them so much and I miss their mommies, Jennifer, Kim and Carrie! Luckily we don't live THAT far away and we have some play days coming up so that means more time to chat with my best girls.

Tired! Today has been full of fun stuff. I purposely schedule lots of activities so that I'm not bored and the kids aren't sitting around all day, but it's tiring. We don't have a whole lot of down time around here. Just today I made breakfast and lunch to take to the farm, I took the kids to the farm for 5 hours, did 2 loads of laundry, unpacked and cleaned the car from the farm day, took the kids to the park next to the house to play with neighborhood friends, I'm about to cook dinner and then tonight Drew has gymnastics and all three kids need a bath. It's exhausting but it's all worth it. I have the most wonderful kids in the world! I'm going to miss them when they go back to school next Wednesday!

Disneyland!

We took the kids to Disneyland for part of their October Break this year. It was so much fun! I've never been to Disney during Halloween-time and we will for sure be making it a tradition. Halloween is my very favorite holiday, it was so much fun to see the park all decorated in Fall leaves, pumpkins, spider webs and skeletons. Even the characters wore Halloween costumes.

We spent three full days at Disney and California Adventure. On our first day, we decided to check out California Adventure. We had never been there before so we were excited to experience it for the first time. We were feeling pretty lucky that day, it was cloudy and it actually rained quite a bit but it was such a fine mist rain that it didn't get in our way at all. Rain is something we treasure in Arizona so we really enjoyed it. The reason we felt lucky was because there was absolutely NO lines for the rides! We rode just about every single ride at California Adventure, ate lunch, met the characters and played games in just under 4 hours. I'll take rain over lines any day!

Some of our favorite rides were the Soarin' California ride, Monsters Inc, and the Ferris Wheel. Our least favorite....Tower of Terror. Yes, we took both boys on that ride. Big mistake. So scary! Can you believe Andrew was brave enough and tall enough for that ride? Ugggh, makes me scared just thinking about it! You get into an "elevator", it takes you 10 stories up, opens the doors so you can see how high you are and then drops you 5 stories, opens the doors and drops you again. Just when you think it's over......it takes you to the top again and makes you re-live the terror. Okay, it was a little fun but I'll never do it again! Another scary ride was the California Screamin' roller coaster. I'm not a big roller coaster person but it was fun too! Bryan and his sister really enjoyed it!

The following day, we got to the park bright and early. Beautiful morning, clouds were pretty much gone and the park was once again, dead. No lines! We got to meet tons of characters and we took Taylor to meet the princesses too. Connor got to ride Indiana Jones for the first time. It's one of my favorites and he really enjoyed it too. He went twice, once with Bryan and me and once with Grandma. Taylor really loved the carousel, Pirates, Winnie the Pooh, and Small World. Drew's favorites were all of the rides he couldn't ride last year because he wasn't tall enough. Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain and of course, the Matterhorn. My favorite is the Haunted Mansion. They decorated it in a "Nightmare Before Christmas" theme, which I loved. It really helped to get us in the mood for our "Trick or Treat" night!

Later that night the kids dressed up in their costumes and we took them to the Trick or Treat event at the park. We had to buy a separate ticket for the event but it was SO worth it. We rode rides, went trick or treating, saw an awesome Halloween parade and a fireworks show. The kids had a really fun time dressing up as Buzz, Woody and Minnie Mouse. They got SO much candy, it was ridiculous! By the end of that day, we were all exhausted!

The next morning, we slept in a bit and had breakfast at the hotel. Grandma and Aunt Heather decided to skip Disney that day and head home early. We were sad to see them leave but it didn't stop us from going back for more Disney fun! That day was pretty rainy. We all wore our panchos to stay dry. It's funny because kids really don't care about weather like adults do. My kids never complain about it being too hot or too cold, too wet or windy. I never once heard them complain about the rain. They were just so happy to be at Disneyland and so were Bryan and I. That day we went to all the rides we missed the first day, then we decided to have each of us pick our favorite ride and then we'd go back to the hotel. Connor picked the Rockets (Because they were the closest), Bryan picked Pirates, I picked Haunted Mansion, Drew picked Splash Mountain and Taylor picked Winnie the Pooh. My favorite moment of that day was watching Connor and Andrew hold Taylors hands and help her walk up a hill. They were all three so happy. I'm so lucky to have them.

Now we're home.......just cleaned the house and finished all the laundry. The worst part about vacation. I can't wait until next summer when we can do it all again. I think we're renting a beach house though. Nice and relaxing!

Newport Beach

My Family

Cold water!

Handsome boy!

Having fun!

Running and playing

She's SO happy!

We took a vacation to California during the kids' October break this year. We had a 3 day hopper pass to Disneyland/California Adventure so there wasn't much free time to go to the beach this year. We did set aside half a day to enjoy the sand and water at Newport Beach.

This was not Taylor's first time at the beach but it was the first time she was really able to enjoy it and play in the water. She's just like her brothers...She LOVED it. It was chilly and cloudy that day but the weather didn't stop my kids. They dove right into that water. It was so much fun watching them run and play. It made me wish I was little again. I'm so blessed to have my kids and to be able to relive experiences like the beach through their eyes. Here are some of my favorite pictures from that day.