Our Family Project

Throughout the month of September I've taken a cake decorating class at Michael's. I just finished the course last night and cannot wait for the next course to start. It's surely been challenging trying to get the icing the right consistency ... but in the end, it was awesome to see that I could totally do it! Here are some of the cakes I've made, and a couple of the cakes two of the ladies in the class made as well. I gave this cake to my neighbor, whose anniversary was last weekend. After eating 3/4 of the BYU cake, I just didn't want another cake sitting around the house for another week (especially because this was a spice cake ... my fav). (Made by one of the ladies in the class, named Marisa; ironically, she pronounces her name Mar-ee-sa and everyone here calls her Mar-i-sa, totally the opposite for me when I was in Utah.) (This one was made by another lady in the class. She works at Cold Stone and decorates their cakes and stuff. Don't try to fi...

I had a huge list of things to do today ... but, I got slightly distracted ... in a good way. Four and half quarts of stewed tomatoes, several white and yellow onions, a couple pounds of new potatoes, one yellow squash, and a few carrots later I am stressed because I still need to do everything on my list. But, the satisfaction of a good harvest is totally worth it! (Not to mention all the rewards our stomachs will get from it.)

Four of my children are going to school this year. For Eliza and Kate it's "old hat" by now. But, for Andrew and Adam it is all new. This is the first time Andrew gets to ride the bus, and the first time he has to be responsible for bringing his own milk to school. (All of my children are lactose intolerant, and while the school will provide lactose-free milk for them if given a doctor's note, they all prefer soy milk. So, when Eliza was in kindergarten I started sending a thermos of soy milk with her for snack time, and I have since done that with Kate, and now Andrew gets his turn.) This is the first time Adam is in preschool. Granted, it is a small "joy" preschool that two of my friends and I have started, but he's still excited to go to preschool everyday. (Although, he has a hard time waiting through the days he doesn't go.) I get to teach the preschool in two weeks and I'm nervous to teach, but I'm hopeful that I'll get the hang of ...

Maryanne has fully embraced table food. She WILL NOT eat baby food ... the pureed stuff. So, it makes meal time a little bit more fun. So far Maryanne really enjoys green beans, any kind of bread, pizza, mashed potatoes, strawberry yogurt, bananas, carrots, cheerios, rice, and of course cookies. On this particular morning she got her first taste of our special apple-cinnamon pancakes with cider syrup. She could not get enough of this stuff, she kept grabbing the fork from me because I couldn't get it to her fast enough. Seriously, the syrup makes this the best (and it's a recipe Jon WILL NOT allow me to share because it is so good, he wants to eventually sell it), and all of our children are completely spoiled because when we have pancakes, we have cider syrup. Eliza has even said that if she were to eat breakfast at school, she'd have to bring her own syrup. (Side note: we will be sending/giving bottles of syrup for Christmas, if you want one, leave a comment and ...