Pumpkin Coffee Cake!

I love this recipe that I copied from Lauren Dyer.

Ingredients2 1/2 c cake flour + 2 T
2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1 t nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
1 1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter
1 1/2 c pumpkin puree
3 extra large eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla
For the crumble:
3 T butter
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt
Method Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer using the paddle attachment. Then add the eggs one by one, then the vanilla, then the pumpkin. Sift together the flour baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Set the mixer to low, and add in the dry ingredients until just combined. Turn the mixer off and finish folding the batter together with a spatula. Pour the batter into a greased 8 inch spring form pan. (You can also use a tube pan, or a square baking dish. Smooth out the batter and top with the crumble. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes.
*If you do use a tube pan, invert the pan to turn out the cake, and serve crumble size up.
For the crumble:Place all the ingredients in a bowl, and pinch together with your fingers until you have small pea sized pieces

Crayon Rolls!

I was excited to find this really cool stocking stuffer. It is the Crayon Rolls. The cute rolls to carry the crayons in.

http://www.skiptomylou.org/2007/04/25/on-a-roll/
Here is the web site that will show you how to make them.

There lived a princess....

Once upon a time in a far away land, there lived a princess. Not just any princess, but a beautiful princess...well what is a story without a beautiful princess, ugly princess would not work, so back the story. This princess didn't know how to climb out of bed, so she slipped and fell and hit her beautiful face on her bed rail and had to get a stitch to close up the hole that her beautiful teeth made in her beautiful lip. Now our princess has a big fat purple lip with a black stitch that is holding it shut. She is such a brave princess because she only cried when they gave her the shot to numb her lip, and then she shut her eyes so tight she didn't have to watch the Dr stitch up her beautiful lip. Now that she is sleeping soundly with the help from prince Motrin. Lets hope that she will not have any peas that will keep her up all night. The very tired Queen will be so happy to start a new day tomorrow. Everything can get to normal. Lets hope.....

Trick-or-Treating

Tricks or Treats

Isaac is a vampire who killed Christian Brown the missionary and stole his name tag, Aaron was Frankenstein, and Nicole was a Princess.
The kids are so excited for the trunk-n-treat.

The boys really loved there candy, they counted every piece and Aaron put them in piles.

Nicole decided that Oakley needed to be part of the fun.

Something really great came out of this Halloween. Isaac and Aaron got suits that they promises me they would wear to church. Today was the first day and they did great.We went to a friends house for a party. The kids had so much fun. Nicole and her friend Noelle (who was a Turkey Princess, (Turkish princess) did a swap of candy. Well Noelle did the swap and Nicole profited from it.

All the kids went T-o-T and when we were done the hostest had all the kids go through there candy and pick out any thing they didn't like. Then the unwanted candy was put in the middle of the circle and all the kids picked out 2 candies at a time until all the unwanted candy was gone.

Yeah it is November!

That is what we heard on our way to church this morning. Aaron was in the back seat so excited. He is counting down the days until he is 7. Nicole will also be turning 4 this month. She is so excited. We have had a full month and are so excited for the next month to come. I know I said that I would up date you on my food storage rack, I will as soon as Christian is done with base boards. That project has taken over the garage, but it will look so nice when they are done.

Isaac is so excited to be in cub scouts. He loves to wear his uniform, unlike his dad who wanted to run away from home when he was a cub scout.

These are my friends that do a fun trip to San Francisco each year. We decided that it was time to go so we went shopping, got pedicures, and then went out to dinner. It was so much fun.

Nicole is so cute. I took her to Disney on Ice. She loved all the princesses and could not stop watching. It was fun to see the show with her friends.

Nicole's Pre-School class went to the pumpkin patch. This pumpkin patch is great, it has a lot for the kids to do and the best part is that it is free during the week. The boys got to come because they are off track.

Gluten Free!

Anyone who is looking to go gluten free or is already gluten free, here is a blog that I stumbled upon. http://glutenfreemommy.com/

I hope this helps.

New Storage!

I am so excited that I am getting New Food Storage shelving. I was at the "Time Out for Women" and they had an incredible deal on the Shelf Reliance shelves. If you bought 2 you got an incredible deal and it was with free shipping. They also threw in the 4 side shelves and the top rack for free. I will post pics as I get done putting it together. Did I say I was so excited.

What is your house made of?

We have an on going project that will be done in the next month. Christian is working on replacing all the base boards in our house. I am so excited. This past week he did the living room base boards.

Well, while I was vacuuming out the space where the new base boards were going to go, I found something interesting in our wall. It was a soda can, the person who built our home left in the wall. I thought it was interesting, and wondered what other things they left us. But at least 10 years later the can is empty of all liquid that could have been in it. Nicole thinks it is funny that her house is made of soda cans.

What is it about eating dinner!

Tonight I made a easy dinner. It is Sunday and unless we have company for dinner I just don't feel like going all out for a dinner. I do that most of the week. We had bake potato's and toppings for dinner. Everyone thought it was great. I loved that all I had to do was get the toppings ready while the potato's cooked.

Nicole is really funny about eating dinner. She will look at her plate and tell us that she can't eat part of her dinner because it is yucky. Tonight she did it and she had 3 piles of potato. 2 of the piles she was able to eat, while the 3rd and smallest pile was the yucky pile. I just had to take a picture of it because I know when she gets older she will not believe us when we tell her. We took a picture of her with her plate and she ate the 2 larger piles but the yucky pile just could not be eaten. You can all understand right. Who wants to eat yucky food.

Where do you live?

I have been teaching Nicole where she lives. She is getting pretty good at knowing that we live in Sacramento California. The other day I was talking to her little pre-school friends that I had in the car for carpool. Nicole say to me"I live in California." Me being so excited that she remembers. I ask her what city she lives in"I live in Sacramento" Yeah. Well, it started a big conversation with her 2 friends:
Nicole"Where do you live Hailee?"
Hailee" I don't know"
Nicole: "You live in Sacramento"
Hailee:"Oh, Sacramento"
Nicole"Abby, where do you live?"
Abby: "I don't live in Sacramento, I live in a house."
Nicole: "Well I live a house too."
Hailee: "Me too."
I was laughing so hard as they were all were changing, because we do all live in a house.

Free Bike...Yes that is right a free bike

This company is giving a free bike every Wednesday. If you would like to see how to win this bike, click on the picture and see the rules.

Daddy I want to do this....

Last Saturday when we were all feeling well, I suggested that we find a lake to go play in for the afternoon. Everyone liked the idea and we made dinner and snacks and packed up the car with all the essentials for a lake visit. We had never been there and didn't know what to expect, but we were determined to have a good time even if the lake was a flop. We decided on Bullards Bar Reservoir. It is just past Camp Bountiful in the Tahoe National Forest. The trees were so beautiful and we got the see the smoke from the forest that was on fire just a couple ridge tops over.

We got to the lake and found that you don't have to pay to use the lake. But you have to hike down, down, down to the lake. The shore was carved in large steps to get down to the water. And if you decide to go, bring a beach umbrella to sit under, there are no trees by the water. The dog and the kids had so much fun. It was fun to watch Oakley realize she is a dog that should be able to swim in a lake. This is the first time we have ever taken her out to a water source that she could not touch the bottom. At first she did the panic swim, but a few tries and she got out and would swim all over. The kids had a blast and they loved the water. Christian loved the water as much as the kids did.

Thank You for the Great Idea!

I would like to thank Carrie for the great idea about Dessert Waffles. I have been thinking about them ever since she talked about them. We had Dessert waffles for dinner tonight and it was a big hit. I should have taken pictures but I didn't.
Here is how you make the yummy waffles. (If you didn't guess I really like waffles and I am always looking for new ways to make and eat them)

You make your waffles, you top your waffles with Ice cream, syrup(any kind), fruit, whip cream, or any other way you top your dessert. We had waffles with fresh raspberries, homemade blackberry sauce, whip cream, caramel sauce, maple syrup, vanilla ice cream. Everyone made a different kind of waffle. I loved that I got all the great fresh flavors with the sweet ice cream.
So here is to the great ideas of others that we all love to share.

I guess it is time to update!

We have had so much fun the last few months.

The kids watched a movie outside in the backyard.
Isaac is loving Oakley. They are both getting so big.

We spent a day at six Flags. Nicole and Aaron played in the ground fountains. We didn't bring dry shoes and they ended up with prune feet. Their feet hurt so bad they couldn't walk out of the park.

Here are the long awaited Baptismal photos of Isaac. It was a great day.

I took the kids to a spray park. They had so much fun.

We went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. The kids loved all the cool ships and equipment.

Before we went to the CRMM, we spent time hiking and enjoying the great weather in the south western part of Washington (it was a family reunion). I got to see most of my family. I think that only 2 of my cousins didn't come.

and yes the dog came with us. She almost was better than the kids.

I thought it was so funny that all the pet areas were the worst place in the rest stop to let your dog out. They usually had sticker weeds that were awful for man or dog to have to walk on. But the view from this rest area was so beautiful.