Getting ready.....

.... only this time, it's Kissie, not me! We've been the lucky recipient of Kissie's sewing experiments and excitement. She's been making baby blankets, burp clothes, Sunday tie onesies, and even a carseat cover for baby brother. We are so grateful-- I've checked and just about all of our burpclothes and blankets are PINK! Now lucky baby brother will get blue and green and trucks and balls (Kevin's favorites of course are the BYU themed ones), instead of making do with his sisters' old stuff. Thanks mom!

Spinach & Tomato Pasta Toss

Liz posted this terrific recipe and it's too good not to post here too. We've had it twice this week-- it's delicious!
2 cups penne pasta (I like to use rigatoni), uncooked
1/2 lb turkey sausage
1 package (6 oz, or 7 cups) baby spinach leaves
1 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, undrained
1 cup shredded mozzarella
2 Tbsp grated parmesan

Cook the pasta and set aside.
Brown the sausage, drain. Add spinach and tomatoes, cook until spinach is wilted, stirring occasionally. Add cheeses.
Put pasta in serving dish, add yummy mixture, and toss.


It is so easy and quick! And you can do a lot of variations. I didn't have any sausage, so we used turkey bacon once and cubed ham another time. Also, I didn't have the Italian-style tomatoes, so I just used regular diced tomatoes and a tsp or two of Italian seasoning that we get from Costco.

Christmas Tree #1

This year we get to have two Christmas trees! With my parents moving into a smaller place, we bought one of their decorative trees from them (thanks!) and put it up last week. It's fun to have it in the entryway, and I love how you can see it from the street. So nice to have a little bit of Christmas around already. Lucky for me, my mom came over one day last week and helped put it altogether. Cora and Violet are especially excited about the little bird nests and shiny birdies on the tree.
We were also lucky to have my dad come over Saturday morning and help Kevin wire two new outlets so we can plug this tree in and plug the garland in on the other side (and for other kitchen purposes as well). Kind of crazy, but there are no outlets in our entryway. It was a little tricky, but they did it and it is so nice. Otherwise, we'd have to string an extension cord across the hallway to plug the tree in in the office... not the best alternative! Another bonus.... now that Kevin has re-familiarized himself with outlets, he can put in the extra outlets we need in the office and laundry room! Well, someday soon at least I hope.

Our productive / fun day Saturday continued with watching the IMAX 3D dinosaur movie at the planetarium. Kissie and Violet had fun back at my parents' place and Cora got her first taste of 3D. She wasn't so sure about wearing the glasses, and some of the big dinosaurs really made her jump in Pata's lap, but she really liked it. We met up with Kissie and Violet for lunch and to watch the BYU game, walked around the Gateway, and heard Jon Schmidt warming up for his concert that evening. We didn't end up staying for the real concert and Christmas tree lighting, much to Cora's dismay, it took some real distracting to get her out peaceably. But it was just too cold. We rode the train back, which the girls LOVE and the adults had a lot of fun playing a game after Violet went to bed and Cora got settled in with a movie. It's such a fun game, and I'm finally getting the hang of it. Thanks for all your help mom and dad, and for the fun day!

Thanksgiving

I saw this on a friend's blog and thought it would be a nice one to share.

Cora's Big Fun Day

We had such a great day on Saturday, especially Cora! It really was a big day for her. We started off with a relaxing morning after a good night sleep for everyone (thankfully!).

Cora and I then headed downtown to see Disney on Ice, the Princess Show. I waited to tell Cora about it until the week before, and that whole week was filled with questions.... Will Belle be there? Will Ariel be there? Will Cinderella be there? Pretty cute. Cora wore her princess dress... and a warm coat, and was so excited. She didn't want to look around or anything before the show, just wanted to find our seats and wait for it to get started! It was hard to get a good picture of her, her eyes were glued to the ice even before anything started happening on the stage.

It was a fun show, and it was pretty cute. Cora loved it, and watched it intensely the whole time. When it was done, it was snowing really heavy outside! I was glad we had scored a great parking spot and didn't have to walk in the blizzard very far at all.
Next we were off to a birthday party for cousins Aubriel and Brianna. I didn't take my camera in, but it was a really fun time. Due to the heavy snow (up at Suncrest), I just stayed and watched. They had a magician come, and it was a hoot to watch the kids faces as he performed his tricks. Cora was most impressed by a balloon popping and turning into a bird and loved petting the bunny. Luckily, they had plowed the roads during the party, and we didn't slip at all on our way home.

Cora was so worn out by this point, but so hungry too, we stopped for a quick hamburger, but she couldn't keep her eyes open long enough to eat it! I tried to take it away for it wouldn't spill, but that just made her angry. She just wanted to hold it and sleep.

It was still snowing lots at our house too, and Kevin took the girls out to play in the snow. Wow, it took quite a while even just getting them geared up! Cora had a blast playing with Kevin, Violet kept saying 'Don't like it! don't like it!'. Sh didn't want to go in, but she didn't want to walk in it, she just wanted to be held! It'll b interesting to see if she still doesn't like it when she might not be as tired or if we can go out when it's not still snowing and blowing in her face a bit.
Of course, they were so excited to go out, all we got were blurry pictures!

Pumpkin Pie Poem

At Cora's preschool the kids memorize a poem each month. Here she is reciting October's poem, on pumpkin pie. It's pretty catchy, even Violet is spouting out bits and pieces of it. It's especially cute to hear them try to get their mouths around the word 'scrumptious'.

Ensign Peak

We've been taking advantage of the beautiful weather (high 60s, low 70s--wow) this week and have gone to the park every day. We also had a great playgroup trip to Wheeler Farm too-- we even saw a huge mama pig nursing 5 not-so-little babies. First time I've seen that in person! It's really been a perfect week, and we topped it all off today by hiking Ensign Peak with Kissie.

Cora walked all the way up and back with no complaining. She loved it! In her prayer tonight she said thankyou for the hike to the top of the mountain, the pretty grasshoppers and being able to see the whole world from the monument. It was super windy and a tiny bit hazy, but a great temperatures and a pretty view. Violet walked all the way up and 2/3rds of the way back. They both did amazingly well, way better than I thought they would! I've never been up to Ensign Peak before, and it was great.
At the little lookkout point near the bottom


At the base of the trail
At the top! It was sooo windy.
Violet was more interested in checking out a piece of ABC gum on the ground than the view. Ew.
Now the weather is supposed to turn more normal for November, so at least we took advantage of our week of Indian summer!

Yet another delicious soup recipe

Autumn Soup

Brown & drain 1 lb. ground beef. In large pot add ground beef to:
1 1/2 cups diced potatoes
1 cup sliced carrots
2 cups stewed tomatoes
1/2 head cabbage (chopped)
1/4 - 1/2 cups rice
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 - 1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp basil
1 1/2 quarts water
3 beef boullion cubes

Cook until vegetables are tender.

I had 3 heads of cabbage from the food co-op, and got this yummy recipe from a friend to help me make good use of it! Delicious! We'll also be trying cabbage casserole and egg rolls in the near future.

Car Fixed!

Our Jetta has been so good to me for so many years now... it's been 9 years since I got home from my mission and we stopped by a car dealership on the way home from the airport to "pick up a car part"... actually a graduation present for me from my parents (I graduated before my mission). It was so nice to have a car in graduate school, no car payments, and good reliable vehicle that I drove all the time until we bought the van. And now it ferries Kevin to and from work.

Nine years... and it's really got to last 3 more! In Tooele County you don't have to do an emissions test to register your vehicle. So we weren't too concerned with the check engine light, when the mechanic told us it was the catalytic converter, and shouldn't affect our driving much. Now we're in Salt Lake County though, and they take these things much more seriously!

To try not to elongate a kind of boring story.... we took the Jetta in to get a new catalytic conveter to pass emissions. They told us there were 3 major things wrong with it that needed to be fixed to pass, plus a bunch of little things to fix it altogether. Since the bill added up to $1500, we got a second opinion that confirmed that the oxygen sensor and the catalytic converter did indeed need to be fixed, but the computer might not need to be replaced-- it could possibly be coding because our battery was sooo low. The second place couldn't even come close to the bid the first place gave for fixing those items (they said, wow, we'd like to know where they are getting their parts too at prices like that!).

It's good we got a second opinion to find out more about the relationship between the battery and the car computer, and to realize we weren't getting ripped off at the first place. Even though we spent the majority of last week ferrying each other back and forth between auto shops dropping off cars.

The result: we replaced those two items, we passed emissions, and we are good to go... for another year. And Kevin can work on those other minor fixes. And hopefully the Jetta can go on much farther than the 147,000 miles it currently has on it! Thank goodness Kevin works much closer to home now and only puts on 10 miles a day most days.

So, if you need a place to get your car fixed, we highly recommend World Class Auto Service in American Fork. They told us which parts are good to buy aftermarket and which parts they have had trouble with when buying aftermarket. Their bid for replacing a catalytic converter was less than half of the price we got from calling around to 4 other shops. It was well worth the drive to save over $600! They were nice and took time to test drive the car to make sure the problems were all fixed, and even made sure the car passed emissions before it left their shop the final time, even though we had actually paid to have the emissions test done at a place much closer to home at the start of this ordeal. Finding a mechanic is such a pain, we were so happy this recommendation from Kevin's coworker worked out so well for us, I thought I'd pass it along.

My Diaper Strategies

I wrote all this out for my sister-in-law who is expecting a baby in April! She had a post on her blog asking for diaper advice. I thought I might as well post it here. Everyone has their different strategies, but this is what has worked best for our little family. I've learned lots about buying diapers in the last 3.5 years... isn't motherhood full of exciting things? :) I always enjoyed school and thought that I'd continue to take classes even when not pursuing a degree. Funny, I don't feel the need at all! My research topics -- and experiments! -- of motherhood are in meal-planning, couponing, food storage, parenting strategies, teaching methods, community resources, crafts, etc etc and are more pertinent and meaningful (and interesting) to me than most of my classes ever were, and I really loved my classes!


On diapers.... I get feed updates from this website babycheapskate.blogspot.com and they tell you what diaper coupons are out there and where is having good sales that week, as well as sales on lots of other baby stuff. So useful!

For newborns--I really like Pampers. They have a netting in them that seems to work really well for the little babies and their weird poop. I'd only buy a couple of newborn packs of diapers ahead of time, or buy more and know you can return them. My babies just wore newborn sizes for a couple of weeks. They probably could have worn them for longer, but newborn diapers cost more per diaper than size 1 does, so if they can fit into size 1 diapers, you might as well move them up. You know you need to move them up when you start having blowouts!

We usually use Huggies or Costco brand. They are both great. I can usually get Huggies cheaper than the Costco brand, so I just see what's less. I've used generic diapers before, from Babies R Us and the White Cloud brand from Walmart. They work fine... if you use them, you'll probably just want to use them for daytime use, not nighttime. I use Luvs for daytime and Huggies for nighttime right now with Violet. Luvs are quite a bit cheaper than Huggies, so it makes it worth it for me.

You can sign up on the Huggies, Luvs, and Pampers websites for their diaper clubs (use a junk email address) and they'll send you coupons regularly (and if you end up using formula, sign up on the formula websites for their clubs and they'll send you coupons too). Or, if you get the newspaper there are $1 off coupons off of Huggies most weeks. There are also lots of internet coupons out for diapers... that website will tell you about those too. You can print two of them off of each computer, just hit the back button. Of course, if you are using a coupon, you'll want to buy the smallest pack, so your percentage off is the greatest.

I use this chart http://www.scribd.com/doc/15792914/How-Many-Diapers-Per-Pack to find out if I'm getting a good deal on diapers. A couple of times a year I see great diapers sales online, usually Amazon or Target, that sell the big boxes of diapers that are discounted or have a kickback. But then you have to store them too! And then it kind of comes out of our savings area instead of our grocery area of our budget. But I LOVE not rushing to the store on a Saturday night because we're out of diapers. I'm just not that kind of a person :). You can't beat having diapers delivered to your door!

To sum it up... use coupons, check that website for sales, and use the chart if you're not sure you are getting a good price on diapers. And then just experiment and see what diapers work best for you. Different diapers might work best for your baby when he/she is different sizes as well, but really most diapers in the same price ranges are the same, so whatever you pick should work out just fine!

Halloweening

Our Halloween weekend started off on Thursday with a preschool Halloween party. Cora had been looking forward to this for weeks! Cora decided she wanted to be Cinderella for Halloween a few months ago... for her, there really were no other options, even when we found a super cute Sleeping Beauty costume online! The dress has been waiting in the closet for Halloween, being admired by Cora every morning.
At the preschool party, they had a lot of fun with Halloween games and dancing, and some of their normal preschool activities. Parents were invited to come for the last 15 minutes, so we went and took some pictures and saw all the kiddos dressed up. Pretty cute!

Here are all the little kids, except one little boy who had a breakdown right before picture -taking happened :). They decorated cupcakes to look like spiders and colored pumpkin cutouts too.
Friday we went trick-or-treating at Kevin's work. It was nice to see the new building and meet some of his coworkers. The girls got some good practice saying trick or treat and thank you. Violet still refused to put on any kind of a costume-- even bunny ears!-- but got some candy from generous people anyway. Both of the girls got quite freaked out by a candy bowl that had a motion activated hand... Violet was howling for a while after she went for a piece of candy out of that bowl!

Saturday we managed to convince Violet to put on a tutu and so she could go trick-or-treating with Cora. She was still fairly adamant about not dressing up until she saw our candy bowl and Cora in her costume.... maybe that's what helped her put two and two together! She was a little hesitant at first, but once she really connected that saying "trick or treat" connected with candy in her bag, she was all excited.
Just a little excited!
Violet got a little freaked out by some of the scarier porch decorations... she would shy away and say "scary, scary". Most of the houses though, she'd come down the stairs with her newly loaded treat bag saying "fun! fun!". There was one trick-or-treater with a pretty cool costume-- a guy on stilts really decked out as a monster. He totally scared the girls, we had to alter our trick-or-treat path and even then, after every house, they would ask where that tall guy was. I ran home for gloves in the middle-- it was a pretty nice night as late October goes, but the girls stayed out way longer than I thought they would, they had such a great time!

When we got home, we had some yummy dinner and answered our own door. I was really happy with how this soup turned out-- it's a combination of a couple of recipes. I LOVE butternut squash, this was a great fall treat!


Apple Butternut Squash Soup

1 butternut squash
2 apples, peeled, cored, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cup chicken broth (add more for a thinner soup)
pinch nutmeg -- to taste
pinch cloves -- to taste
1-2 tsp. curry -- to taste
1/4 cup pure maple syrup (I omitted this)

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream


Stick whole squash in the microwave for about 5 minutes, until easy to cut. Cut lengthwise, finish cooking in the microwave or the oven until it's easy to scoop out the flesh. Put the squash in the crockpot. Add other ingredients, except cream. Let it cook on low for 3-5 hours or until contents are softened. You can transfer the mixture to the blender, or I used my handy immersion blender to puree it. Add the whipping cream at the end, serve with some yummy toasted bread!

Happy Autumn!

Cows, Cows Cows

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We went to see cows-- Texas Longhorn-- with Emily and Rhett on Saturday. Rhett and his friends were busy measuring and inoculating the cows.... which Cora thought was especially interesting, given all the shots our family has been through the last month (flu, swine flu, rhogam, and regular immunizations!). We even got to watch the guys chase down one of the cows that escaped with the jeep. The girls thought the horns were cool, and Violet especially liked the rocks (good thing we keep Purell in the car!) and we got to see a lot before the rain started-- perfect timing!

Cora fell asleep on the way home. When she woke up she told me "Mom, while I was in bed, I was thinking about cows, cows, cows!" So cute. Thanks for the invite Emily!

Our New Hospital

This is our brand new hospital... it opens next week. It's only a few miles from our house, and it's where the new baby will be born. We took a tour of it on Friday evening and it looks so nice. It even has a Primary Children's Outpatient facility, and it hosts our pediatrician too. My doctor's office is across the street... so close! It will be so convenient, currently our closest hospital on our insurance is about a 25 minute drive.

Now we just need our community rec center to open (2 more years) and a closer Costco (I've seen signs, but no dates) and we'll have everything nearby that we could ever want!

Impromptu Photo Shoot--September on Temple Square

Kissie took these pictures while scouting out locations for another set of family photos. The girls weren't in the most patient photo mood (and never mind the smudge of chocolate by Cora's mouth!), but we still got some cute ones. It's probably been 5-6 weeks since we took these, I can't believe that the girls (mostly Violet) already look a little different now than they did that short time ago!
We ended with a visit to the Christus statue, it's been a while since we've stopped by there. The sister missionaries turned on the audio recording for us. Kissie told Cora that it was Jesus talking (which of course, it is his words from the scriptures) and so Cora was looking all around in a sort of confused awe the whole time. Luckily there weren't too many people there, when I walked up to the statute with Violet, she kept up quite the commentary "TALL! HANDS! HAIR! FEET! TALL!".
Temple Square is a beautiful place! We're lucky to live so close and have two great reasons to visit often! The girls talk almost every day about when we're going to visit "Kissie's temple" and "Kissie's house" next... and Cora always mentions how she's going to get married in "Kissie's temple" and asks me who is going to hold her hand?

Pumpkin Patch

Cora's preschool class took a field trip to the pumpkin patch! She was so excited... for two weeks before she asked everyday when the field trip was going to be. They each got to pick out a little pumpkin. She's also been scouting out all the other local pumpkin patches in the area as we drive by, so we might have to take another trip for more pumpkins closer to Halloween!

Baby Boy at 27 Weeks

He was snuggled up to the side of my womb pretty much the whole time, no matter how much the ultrasound tech tried to wobbly my tummy. You can see his little fingers balled up under his chin.

That's a foot up by his chin!


He's smiling!

Getting ready.....

Really, we've got most all of the baby equipment we need, but there are a few things still left to purchase. This week we picked this
up off of KSL classifieds. With the nursery upstairs, I have a feeling the baby will be in our room for quite a while, at least until the baby is only waking up once a night or so to eat. This is a mini co-sleeper, the side goes down so it sits right up next to your bed, level with the bed. Should be nice!

Thanksgiving Point Farm

Last Saturday I went to Logan with my dad to see my cousin sealed to her husband in the Logan Temple. It would have been fun to take the girls so they could see family, but it was going to be too long of a day. Dad and I had a great time hanging out at Books of Yesterday and Gossner's Dairy store (yum!). It was so fun to see family at the yummy luncheon my aunts and cousins put on. And of course, the highlight was seeing Sara and Cordell sealed. The Logan Temple is a lovely place!

Kevin stayed with the girls and took them to the Thanksgiving Point Farm. It's a fun little place, and the girls love the pony rides.