Wednesday, December 30, 2009

My Wonder Wall

I wonder.....

Why it matters who sits where on the couch.

Why my baby's diaper gave out - as soon as I picked him up today.

Why the pink bowl or the pink spoon or the pink plate has to even exist.

When my skin will recognize that I'm way past puberty.

How I'm going to finish my 802 page book in time for book club.

How one extra tiny person can create so much more laundry.

If my hacking cough will keep me up all night.....again.

If my hacking cough has anything to do with my disdain for dusting.

If all kids start attitudes this early in life or if its just mine.

If anybody noticed that I didn't fix my hair today.

If it's lame to bow out of my New Year's Eve party so I can go to bed at 10:00 instead.

If it will ever be in style to keep a Christmas tree up all year round.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Letters to Santa

Dear Santa,

I've really been a good girl all the time this year. Please bring me an Ariel and a colorful coat. Bring me a princess and a dress too. And a real puppy that barks and runs and jumps and plays. I will build a doghouse for him.

Love,
Brooklyn Malea


Dear Santa,

I have been very nice to my friends this year. Please bring me green shoes with pink sparkles. I want a real pink butterfly that really flies and a white kitty with black spots. Grandma Lu gave me a kitten for my birthday but it wasn't real. I don't care that my mommy is allergic to cats (ok, I inserted that). I know you will bring us whatever we ask for......because you can (WHAT?!!). Please bring me a little Jasmine Doll. Please check and make sure that my name is on the nice list. Look for Brooklyn's name too. I will leave you a surprise on the table - be sure to look for it. I really love you Santa!

Love,
Abby Elizabeth Robbins

P.S. If you see a ballerina bring that too!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Abby's Birthday




Abby turned 5 years old!! Her birthday was earlier this week (the 14th) and we had plenty of family here to help celebrate. This is Abby and her requested purple cake with red flowers. Abby and Booklyn both got beautiful, loud wands that light up and make noises whenever they change anybody into a princess or a prince or a frog or whatever. She also got a new kitten because Great-Grandma Lu just happened to read Abby's quickly thrown together letter to Santa in which she mentioned she would "really love to have a kitten. One that is white with black spots on it." Can Grandma Lu deliver or what. Now Santa is off the hook. :) Probably her all time favorite gift of the night (besides her white kitten with black spots) was her sparkly denim skirt with jewels around the pockets. She has worn it for 3 days straight and counting!!


This is Jace with Grandpa Ed. We were just happy that he and Darren made it to the birthday party instead of being out with the snow geese who are apparently a ton of fun!:)



And last but not least....Great-Grandpa Sim. He requested his picture be taken with Abby's favorite thing of all time, Blue Bear, and Brooklyn's favorite doll of all time, Purple Baby (aren't we creative!) Can you tell by the look on his face that Grandpa Sim is being ornery?:)


We also had Grandma Dena, Grandma Suzette, and Pa at the party but I realized too late that I didn't get a group photo! Oh, well. I did get a short video so the memories will be preserved!



Monday, December 14, 2009

Betty Crocker

What a day. Today is Abby's birthday - she turned 5 years old. Most of you mother's out there know what that entails. Spending the day creating a kitchen masterpiece - or at least trying to.

Abby was very clear in her instructions to me. Make a purple cake with red flowers. Fine. Easy enough. The problem arose when I started counting the number of people that would be attending Abby's party. We don't do friends at this age but we did have extra family in town. At any rate I figured I would just make the purple cake with red flowers and put together a pumpkin roll. Just real quick. Just in case we needed more dessert.

If you don't know what a pumpkin roll is imagine a thin, rectangular cake rolled up like a log with frosting in the center. Back to my baking disaster. I did make my pumpkin roll and I did do it fairly quickly. Unfortunately as I dumped my cake out I noticed that half of it remained on the pan - even though I had saturated the pan with Baker's Joy. At this point I was a little ticked but I had high hopes and a positive attitude and rolled it up in a towel anyway. And, yes, these are the proper steps for a pumpkin roll! (And just for the record, I have made a pumpkin roll before - once. And it turned out great. Now back to Abby's birthday pumpkin roll.) Later as I began to unroll my cake (after it was cooled) I realized the full extent of the disaster it was. There was no way to save it. None. So I took a deep breath, bit the bullet and started my new pumpkin roll. I made some minor changes that produced huge improvements. My effort was worth it! Or so I thought. This time my roll came out of the pan very nicely. Score one for me. I rolled it up just like I'm supposed to and let it cool. Score another one for me. Then I skipped around the house getting things done and came back to "unroll" it. Only it was not unrolling. It was more like a sticky mess that was breaking in chunks with every pull. Once again my cake began falling apart. Almost to unsalvageable....almost.

I was not going to have another failure so I quickly smeared the frosting on it, molded it into a log, wrapped it in Saran Wrap and threw it in the refrigerator. I have yet to check on it. My spirits can only take so much bashing in one day. The good news. Some of our guests weren't able to make it. My pumpkin roll did not have to be displayed and remains hidden in the back of the refrigerator. I'm trying not to think about the amount of time I put into the useless dessert! Oh, well. Abby did get her purple cake with red flowers and was happy as a clam about it. Happy Birthday Abby!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Brrrrr....

Well, it's been cold here in Lamar- really cold. In fact, it has been so frigid that I have not even gotten my running in this week. Lame, I know. I just don't think that -4 degree weather is good for the lungs! So, what have I been doing? Well, since I haven't gone running in this weather, I've decided to instead see how many sugar cookies I can eat in a single day. And the tally is at ....(drumroll please) Ok, I haven't really counted. In fact, I've done what I can to lose count! I feel that it's best to celebrate Christmas in it's entirety- Tis the season after all:) We have gotten our Christmas tree up and all the decorations on. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you saw my sisters blog you'd know that the 2 of us are insane when it comes to decorating the tree. Meaning there is no twig left undecorated (or left undecorated multiple times:) It is quite the undertaking and my husband refuses to be around until it's done for fear of my wrath ( I'm really not that crazy - but close to!). The stockings are hung and the lights are lit! I thought I'd share my sewing project from last year. This is a huge accomplishment for me since I can't even sew in a straight line. My friend Joan helped me with it, but I did do all of the sewing (and all of the seam ripping!). We put our designer hats on and came up with about 7 different patterns and designs. I painstakingly hand sewed all the beads on each stocking in different patterns. It took forever and I now have tendinitis in my little wrists, but it does make my little stockings sparkle!


Darren's stocking is first and then mine has the big bow. The girls get to pick out which ones they want each year (since I have extra's) and all of the kids stockings are slightly smaller and have white fur on the cuffs. You can't really see the beads but trust me, they're there!



I am in love with my baby stocking - I think I will have to put it out every year baby or not!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

November 26



November 26 ended up being a big day for our family. Not only did we have Thanksgiving dinner, but we also had Brooklyn's 3rd birthday AND Jace turned 4 months old! Ok, so we didn't do anything special for little Jace's milestone and we celebrated Brooklyn's birthday the day before....but you get the idea!



We thought the girls would have fun bowling so we took the whole family the day before Brooklyn's birthday. It was a little strange for me to be celebrating her b-day not on her b-day and a little confusing to poor Brookie who kept asking if she had turned 3 yet, but worth it in the end (worth it as in not having to gorge myself with pies AND birthday cake on Thanksgiving Day!)! The girls had fun and Jace was a troooper. We all bowled stellar scores and actually got recruited for the bowling league.....or maybe that was just in my dreams!
Thanksgiving Day brought me trying a new recipe called Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Bisque Soup - it was good. Or so everyone told me. I, myself, couldn't finish my own cup of soup. A little too.....squashy. Instead I started in on the pie!

I tried to take a few cute pictures of Jace but he really wasn't in the mood - go figure. As soon as I get my camera out it's over no matter how smiley and fun he was being! So Grandma to the rescue - she got him smiling in no time.



Ok, moving on to .......BLACK FRIDAY! With being in Lamar Black Friday has to be done solely at Wal-Mart and online. The week leading up to Black Friday I got bombarded with emails telling me of savings that would make anyone's eyes pop. As we got closer to the big day I even got "special" sneak peaks and previews that not everyone was privileged to (or so I like to think:). And then came the real kicker. A 15 minute headstart to fill my shopping cart with everything I would need for this Christmas season!! I called Heather and let her know of my good fortune. We were on the phone and online a good 20 minutes before buying began just making sure that we both had seen everything there was to see. Once those red little lights turned to green it began! Unfortunately for me, "it" ended up being "nothing". The darn internet WAS NOT working. Did the net not get the memo - you know the one that said it was going to be the biggest shopping day of the year and get ready for the massive overload of crazy online shoppers!! Apparently not because I went to bed an hour later fuming with an empty shopping cart.

However, there is a silver lining. Darren, who despises anything to do with shopping unless it starts with a "C" and ends in an "abella's", happily got up at dawn's early light to wrestle with the old ladies at Walmart. Strange I know. He was hitting the store at 4:40am and hitting the hunting shortly thereafter. I'm pretty sure he thinks that if he shoots some geese right after shopping they cancel each other out. You know like, shopping + hunting = still manly. I don't really care as long as it means that I'm left cuddling with my pillow at that time of morning! The internet redeemed itself as well and I was able to get back online and start Christmas shopping from scratch. I spent some money but I saved even more!!
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