What's my time worth?

Apparently it could have been worth a box of kleenex.

Shadow's idea of entertaining himself while I put the kids to bed.  So not funny!

Brunch with Papa Greg

Greg flew into town only to drive right back out last Thursday morning.  The kids and I had a real quick brunch with him and Derrick at Denny's.

Both kids had Pancake Puppies.  They are balls of pancake, rolled in cinnamon and suger then deep fried.  They are then served on a line of whipped cream with both syrup and raspberry sauce for dipping.  Even I was tempted by this breakfast!

I always seem to forget to bring a bib when she eats syrup at a restaurant.  I joked with the server that maybe she could just go run Noelle through the dishwasher real quick.

Leaves Are Falling From The Tree...

Fall is a great time of year to be outside!  The neighboors put up their decorations last week and the kids, and I, love them.  Noelle was kinda iffy at first and Adam tried to climb on, LOL.  The kids have been spending a lot of time out front playing in the leaves and with their friends.

They love to throw them in the air...

and jump in!!

Noelle picked these for me!!

Video of the kids playing in the leaves!

Omelettes and bagels

Justin is great about letting the kids help cook.  A couple weekends ago they helped make their own omelettes and bagels for dinner.  From what I was told they had a blast and want to do it again!  Noelle doesn't usually eat eggs and I guess she ate most of hers that night!

First snow!

Okay, so it wasn't the "first" snow, that was actually near the end of September, but it was the first one that stuck.  J was such a good Daddy and took the kids out to play in it.  I wasn't home, but it looks like they had a good time.  He said they had hot chcolate when they came in.

Dinosaurs and Puzzles, Oh My!

The kids wanted to go the the Museum of Nature and Science a couple weeks ago, so we went.  Adam wanted to see the dinosaurs and Noelle wanted to do puzzles.  It was just before lunch time when we got there so we went to the Kids Discovery Zone first.

Such a handsome boy, he looks more and more like his daddy every day.

Next we ate lunch and then went off to see the Dinosaurs.  It's so boring to me, but he always wants to see them, not that he pays attention if I try to read the plaques to him.  He is getting better though.  I have been wanting to see the Expedition Health exibit since it opened so I dragged the kids through there, they had fun though.  Adam and I were given Peak Passes and entered our info on it.  As we went through the exibit we did various things that measured our health/body.  When we turned in our cards at the end it gave us print outs containing the info on us.  I had to skip a lot of stuff since the kids were with me.  I would love to take Justin and go by ourselves and actually do everything, it was lots of fun.

I had the kids do this mind ball thing.  They were supposed to relax and then their minds would move the ball.  Adam won, as you can see (or maybe you can't) the ball is in the circle in front of Noelle.  To Noelle's credit not only is she 2, but her headband kept falling down.  LOL

The kids watched, and participated in, this Superfood Heroes show.  Very silly, but also entertaining.  Adam was dressed as a walnut, kinda fits him actually.  LOL

I am on the top, Adam is below me in the middle, and Noelle is off to the right side.  She didn't get that she was supposed to put her face in it and instead pushed her whole body backwards onto it.  I turned her around and pushed her face into it afterwards, I'm such a mean mommy.

They had this AWESOME aging software.  This is Adam at 70 years old.  I also took a picture of him at 21 and 30 years old.  It will be interesting to go back and see how well the software works.  I did it for myself too, but I won't be sharing that one!

Floaties*

*As Adam would say since he seems to think everything needs "ies" at the end lately.

One of our cars died a few weekends back, so we had to buy a new one.  The kids did so great while we were car shopping that we decided to get a special treat on the way home.  We went for Root Beer Floats, well, in Adam's case it was a Pepsi float.  LOL  They loved them!!

Adam finished the entire thing!

What a goofball!

Allen Cousins

Ethan (8), Noelle (2), Mary (5), Adam (5)

Crazy kids!!

Noelle just adores her cousin Ethan!  I found it funny, for some reason, that the oldest and youngest were the only kids missing teeth.

Mary is only 5 months older than Adam.  I really hope they remain buddies their whole lives.

Cousins are so special

My niece and nephew, Mary and Ethan, spent a couple days with us last week before their big move out East.  It was so nice for the 4 cousins to have some playtime together plus a sleepover.  We will see them again at Christmas, but till then the kids will be e-mailing each other back and forth.  Adam and Ethan had so many things they wanted to do together that they made a to do list for the 2 days.  It was so sweet!!  They were actually going back and checking off what they did afterwards!

As I mentioned they had a sleepover.  We let Ethan and Adam sleep downstairs on the pull out.  This was a very special treat and they were soo excited!  They did great and even went to sleep in a reasonable amount of time.  Mary slept in Noelle's room on the trundle.  Noelle insisted on sleeping on the trundle with Mary and since Mary said that was fine we tried it.  Mary seemed to want to go to sleep but Noelle had other ideas.  She kept playing, being loud, and when Mary fell asleep, hitting Mary on the face.  She woke up Mary so I let Mary go sleep in Adam's loft bed, which was a special treat for her!  Everyone had so much fun and they were all pretty well behaved.  I'm so glad they had that special time together!!

Christmas list already - cont.

I mentioned Adam working on a Christmas list for our family, here it is!

Little bakers

As I am sure everyone already knows, my kids LOVE to help me bake.  And I enjoy having homemade muffins and breads for them to eat at breakfast and snacks.  I had been craving this coffee cake recipe for a couple weeks and Adam really wanted it too so we made some up.

It is so yummy!!  It has a crumb topping even.

The Breakfast Coffee Cake we like is super easy to make and I always already have all the ingredients on hand since we always buy Bisquick brand pancake mix.  I got this recipe from B's mommy after I had it there once.

Breakfast Coffee Cake

2 cups Bisquick

2 Tbs. granulated sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 egg

2/3 cup milk

I often add a little extra milk.  If you think of it as a big pancake you can understand that the moistness really depends on the amount of milk you add.

Mix all together and sprinkle crumb topping over the top.  Bake in a greased round 9 inch pan at 4oo degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Crumb Topping

1/3 cup Bisquick

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

2 tablespoons stick butter

I would love to hear if you try it and what your family thinks.

Christmas lists already?

Adam asked me one day if we can get Mario Kart (for the Wii).  We play it at work sometimes and it's so fun!  I said how that would be nice and we should put it on a Christmas list.  Well he sure took that to heart!  He ran to his desk and started writing a Christmas list.  He asked both Noelle and I what we wanted, dart shooter and PhotoShop Elements, and wrote them down as well.

Aren't they sweet!

He wanted to ask Daddy what he wanted so he wrote an e-mail to him from his and Noelle's e-mail address.

It read:  "wut doo yoo wont for crismis?

adam"

J wrote back this HUGE list.  LOL  I think Adam ended up writing down music, Pink, and Battlestar Galactica.  His spelling was pretty funny though.

I love this shirt and vest a friend gave Noelle.  It also has a skirt, but it is way to big around for her.  The vest has 2 little pockets where the apples are towards the bottom.  Noelle LOVES pockets and always walks around with her hands in them.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

We all love to fly kites!  There is no better combination than when the field is right out your back door and it's really windy out.  The kids have dinky little plastic kites they get for Easter every year, they work great for lighter winds, but on this day we had to get out the big guns kite as well.  Our big kite is a Dragon with red wings.  It's huge and requires very strong wind to keep it up.

Noelle is flying her Barbie kite here.  Adam would help her get it back up if it came down.  So sweet!!

Adam tried to fly a Super Hero kite, but it had been through too many windy days and was also missing a key piece to keep it stable.  So he got the fly the Dragon.  He was very frustrated at first, then he finally got the hang of how to always be moving away from the kite (since it kept changing directions on him).  I also taught him how to flip the Dragon with both hands in order to get it up in the air for me.

I never occured to me to have them take coats, I figured we would be running around and they would be a burden more than anything else.  Noelle got pretty chilly after a while.

When we got home we had nice warm hot chocolate together!!