Sausage Pumpkin Penne

It was chilly last night. We slept with the windows open and it was glorious!!

When the seasons change, I get a hankerin' for new yummy foods.

I have been striking out in my search so far though.

IIIIIII love them but the boy does not.

So, with some trepidation, I found this on makeitandloveit. It was oh, so tasty. I was worried that with the pumpkin in it, it would be "chick food" but he liked it. He does like chick flicks after all. Just not olive cheese bread. That's too much for him! :)

Try it. It's good!

Beautiful!

Inspired by my darling cousin's wedding, my sister thought we should make Pomander balls for the flower girls. Fun and easy!

We decided to do them with artificial flowers to make them less destructible. Last Friday, T and I gathered to make them. We tried to make them out of the signature Gerber Daisies that Grace loves, but they ended up looking like cubes. So we opted to just stick with the pretty colors for each girl.

Here is M's. I'm so pleased with how it turned out!

And here is LG's. So cute!

What to do with all those leftover Gerber daisies that we destroyed? :) Well, we made them into cute hair clips!

Did I mention we chopped M's hair????

It's soooo cute! She has adopted a sassy attitude to go with her sassy hairdo! :)

I love love love this girl!

Just so we're playing fair here...

W thought it was okay that he and I weren't in the post below. But that's because we haven't had to deal with Jake's wrath yet...

mwa ha ha ha ha... it's alive!

(insert Goofy's laugh here)

he finally found a way to manage all that hair!

Yes, we are weird. But yes, I love us!

Us Weirdos

It all started with a quiet evening looking at old pictures.

And giggling.

My family is funny.

I may be killed for this.

mmmmm...baby meat.

Most Prolific. Apparently making strange faces for cameras is a high school past time.
Best use of props.
I take it back. This one gets best use of props. Anesthetic!!!!
I think she was trying to look like my little brother.
who could go for some flapjacks right about now?

They come by it honestly. Seriously, my great grandfather ALWAYS looked like this in photos.
choo!
see? Most prolific.
mom was once a castle guard, until an unfortunate incident with a spear and a flying monkey
-"Nobody knows...the trouble I seen..."
Best use of snot.
Baby meat's dad.
And that is why we called him Hooch, or at least discussed it once.
the child of Frankenstein
Best Jane Austen impersonation.
I love them. And I hope to live past the weekend!

the little things

It's been a day. I'm glad it's almost over and I'm even more glad that tomorrow is my Friday!!!

I love my husband because he showed up after studying all evening with a pint of Half Baked Ben and Jerry's. Come to mama!

I love my big girl because she has not pooped in her panties for six days straight and only has four more days before she has earned "Barbie and the Three Musketeers".

I love my little girl because she ate up all of her shepherd's pie and half of mine without a complaint except when I went too slowly while her big sis cried that she couldn't eat what I'd fixed.

It's the little things.

brown bagging

I still haven't decided on my "crafty challenge" specifications.

In the meantime, this is a diaper bag I made with for a friend at church's daughter in law. I hope she liked it!!

Example

My brother Sam continues to amaze me. He's sixteen.

He has been teaching a friend at school during lunch about our beliefs. He takes his "Preach My Gospel" book to school to share with him about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

His friend came to church yesterday. He came with a Book of Mormon in hand that Sam had already given him.

My brother Sam has Autism. Social situations are awkward for him. Yet he has been able to open his mouth and share his testimony with a friend.

His example shows me how much harder I need to work!

Visions of Sugarplums!

ooooh! I think I am in love! I want one of these!

Any of them! This may be the store where Kristin got the pattern for Ruby's doll for her birthday? not sure. But similar and oh, so cute!

I am having homemade Christmas inspiration!!!!

Beatles Rock Band

Mom gave my Dad The Beatles Rockband game for his birthday.

I think it was more for the rest of us than for my Dad.

But he was a good sport about it.

He loves the Beatles, he raised us all on it, and I married a Beatles fan as well.

Needless to say, it was fun. Everybody sang, everybody played. It was a blast!!!
And just because she's so cute...LG wants to be a rocker someday herself! :)

Did I Really Pray for Patience?

Somewhere in between...

another poopy in the panties (despite the motivator given less than an hour earlier of a new Barbie movie if she stayed dry and clean for two weeks-that movie is going to be mine forever!)

another day with no nap

another tantrum in Target with people looking at me like "why can't you control your daughter?"

another day of nonstop constant chatter

another day of nonstop constant rain (except for the 1/2 hour of blissful mostly cloudy skies where the sun teased us only to disappear again behind sheets of rain)

I kind of flipped out.

My PMS short temper and toddlerhood are a lethal mix, I tell you.

Unfortunately, my retail therapy included said tantrumming, poopified, chattery toddler in the midst of an over-crowded Hobby Lobby where the big deal of the day must have been to restock every flower on the one day where I was looking for flowers. It wasn't the relaxing trip that T and I envisioned.

Thankfully, luckily, blissfully, it's already dark, sweet hubby swept them away when we got home and read them a story, they're already in bed (hopefully for the night) and I now get to curl up with a movie...and well, laundry.

But there's always tomorrow, right?

AMBUSH!

So....

my date didn't happen!

Apparently, it was all a ruse to get me to my Mom's house where my friends were waiting!

I've never had a surprise birthday party before!

T made me a very very yummy chocolate cheesecake. My favorite!!!

We played a fun game, chatted, ate yummy food and had fun! Thanks to everyone who came!!

Tomorrow is my Dad's birthday! So today's dinner was for both of us.

Happy Birthday Dad!

I made him a yummy carrot cake.

ps-W made it up to me and our little family went out to dinner last night. And yes, I had the same old and it was wonderful!

friday night date

My sweet husband is taking me to dinner and a movie for my birthday tonight.

I love him.

I love that he won't mind that we're going to the same old place where I will most likely order the same old thing. T told me I should be adventurous since this is a big birthday and go somewhere new. Instead I will get my comfortable, yummy, never disappoints food and enjoy it oh so much!

And hopefully the movie won't disappoint either.

I've been very full of emotions today.

I just found out that a girl from my ward in high school passed away this week. We were the same age and somewhat rivals. She was sweet and wonderful and talented but I am quite sure that she didn't like me much. I took her neighbor friend and made her my best friend.

But life feels very fragile today as I realize that as I grow one year older, her life has ended.

I feel very grateful for eternal families as I think of her little kids. My prayers are with them.

And I feel oh so very grateful for my own eternal family that I have been blessed with and that I celebrate on my birthday weekend.

I love them.

Early Morning Conversations with a Toddler

M: So, what kind of dreams did you have?
Me: What kind of dream did you have?
M: Well!! I had an Ariel dream.
Me: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I had a stressful work dream.
M: No, you had a princess dream.
Me: Well, then I must have had a Cinderella in bondage dream.
M: I don't have any bon-denge.
M: I want to shnuggle wif you, mommy.

Julie and Julia

My sister in law and I escaped one night in the middle of the week and saw Julie and Julia.

It was perfect. It was the late showing and we were the only ones in the theater, so if we had commentary, we just went ahead and said it!

It was delightful! I know everyone's already said it, but I'll say it too. You should see it!!

Really!

I love love love Meryl Streep! She has been one of my favorites for a while now. I think she is an amazing actress. She truly transforms herself into the character she plays, it's not just another version of her (think Kevin Costner, who, has some enjoyable movies under his belt but truly every movie is just another version of him) But Meryl BECOMES Julia and gives you such a wonderful visualization of what she might have been like.

The best part is, you will come home with a new appreciation of butter and wanting to cook things!

I have decided there is too much wine in French food for me to recreate the Julie/Julia experiment but I think I'm going to replicate it. On a much smaller, I-can-actually-finish-this, scale, of course!

Like creating something new (craft, sewing, cooking, you name it) every week. I'll let you know what I come up with. Maybe I'll use my big 30 birthday on Sunday to kick it off!

And yes, I'm silly enough to get inspired over a movie. You would come home wanting Julia Child's cookbook too though, admit it!

my sweet hubby

Have I mentioned how proud of my husband I am?

He is working so hard at school and doing so well!

He works over forty hours a week and helps everyone out at work.

And then he comes home and studies all night every night.

He's enjoying it and working so hard and I'm so proud of him.

He is sacrificing so much for our family.

We're finally getting a routine, and I'm so proud of him for making this a priority.

LG's Second Birthday Smash!

this is what happens when you have a one year old who doesn't understand that she will get her toy back as soon as we can detach it from the packaging :)

and then she's all better when she gets her present back! :)

she loves things that drive by themselves. she goes crazy nuts over those little wind up toys that crawl or jump around!

she was very excited by her cake but had no clue that she should blow out the candle. so I helped her. I was proud of my cake. It had the yummiest gooiest frosting and it was in the shape of a butterfly (two heart shaped cakes end to end-so cute!)

and then she dove right in! we joke that she's never really full, she just slows down. we finally had to take the cake away so the rest of us could get some because I'm pretty sure she would have just kept eating it.

signing "more" for well, more

happy, full of chocolate and cute as can be!

Farewell

My sister goes back to school tomorrow. Usually she's much more sad to leave all of us than excited to get back to school. Not this time! I'm pretty sure she's counting down the time until she gets to see her fiance, Jason.

When she comes home, it will be for a whirlwind weekend of wedding excitement! (nice alliteration, huh!) I'm going to miss her though.

cabin fever

I truly hope that the changing of the seasons helps to somewhat remedy this!

You see, I have had the strong urge, dare I say, impression, that we need a family vacation. A real one. Not a trip to see family where we come home more exhausted than when we left. Not a trip with extended family. That's next summer at mom and dad's timeshare. A real vacation where the WE Holmans are with themselves for some small-family-of-four bonding.

We were in the semi-firm planning stages of a wonderful, thrifty, memorable trip to Washington, DC this fall. We have both always wanted to go there. Instead we paid grad school tuition.

Worth it? of course. Sad nonetheless? of course.

Our life is stressed and busy right now while we adjust to W's new study schedule and my ever-changing work schedule. But then there's this urge.

The urge that makes me calculate how cheap we can go to Disney World for at least once a week.

The urge that makes me figure out if I can drive to Dallas by my lonesome to see my dear friend.

The urge that makes me want to never eat out again so we can still go to DC and yet still make it to Kauai next summer.

sigh... like I said, I need fall to come and refresh my soul!

SEPTEMBER!!!

I LOVE SEPTEMBER!

It is my most favoritest month of the year!

It's the month when the air turns crisper and the leaves change colors (I may have to modify my expectations to fit the Arkansas climate but I will still get excited for it in September!)

It is the month when I crave crisp apples and caramel

It is the month where it doesn't seem so silly to make pumpkin bars anymore

It's the month where I turn 30

It's the month where I get antsy for fall-ish projects. I want to scrapbook and sew and mod-podge something!

It is the month where wearing jeans all day doesn't seem like such a crazy idea!

It is the month of campfires and roasting marshmallows

It's the month of sleeping with the windows open listening to crickets

LOVE LOVE LOVE it!