More projects

Jason and I both recently finished some cool projects.  I made some pretty scrumptious cupcakes for a church activity.  I was particularly proud of these because I came up with the creations myself (not all of the recipes, but each of the components are from different sources some of which I have tweaked).  The first one is a chocolate cupcake with chocolate peanut butter ganache and peanut butter frosting.  The second is a pumpkin cupcake with whipped cream cheese frosting and cinnamon streusel topping.  The last one is a red velvet (I tried several recipes before getting a great one) with cream cheese white chocolate frosting.

 

 Jason has been working on his milk-jug igloo for several weeks now and finally finished.  We had several people donate milk jugs for several months and used a total of 498!  He was meticulous in washing every single one; he would not use it if he couldn't get all of the stink out (learned that something in chocolate milk makes the jugs MUCH stinkier).

View from the inside.

Looking out.

Those Crazy Kids

We're enjoying some moments of normalcy right now in between holidays.  Here is a look at our normal:

 

Andres occupied himself for at least 30 minutes trying to put on his vest from church.  It kept going wrong, so he devised this method of laying the vest down and then laying down to get it right.  Pretty genius kid.

This little genius has been climbing a bit too much.  I was trying to get a picture of him trying to get up to Addie's bed to play with them, but whenever he sees the camera . . .

Baths around here are a lot of fun.  I can't do it seperately because they all like to be in there and they like each other.  Plus it would take too long to do more than one.  I love happy, clean kids.

I don't know why I love pictures of babies falling asleep in strange places, but I do.

Halloween 2012: A day in pictures

 I actually remembered to get pictures on Halloween.  I did realize that none of them are of me or Jason.  This is not on purpose.  You'll just have to take my word for it that we were there and looked great.

Addie decided to go to preschool dressed as Belle.  Here she is with some of her friends from school.  No, I did not suggest she take her coat off.  As a matter of fact, I thought she was crazy because it was really really cold that day.

Andres dressed as Batman during the day.  I love that his "Batman Shoes" are his church socks and his black sandals.  Awesome.

 For lunch I made green pancakes and we tried to make them into fun shapes.  Some worked better than others.  If you can't tell, there are two spider type things, a 'BOO' and a witch on a broomstick that I was rather proud of but right now looks more like a cowboy sweeping.

 Ready for trick-or-treating.  Apparently, Addie is dressed as Barbie (just in a fancy Belle-type dress).  Andres was, of course, Iron Man.

 Dexter and I stayed home to pass out the candy.  I tried to get a picture of him reaching his hand through to try and get the candy bowl, but this little guy is much too quick for me.

Halloween Festivities 2012

As usual, our Halloween activities lasted for about a week or so.  It started with our ward's Trunk or Treat on Friday night.  We decided that this year would be perfect to dress up as the Incredibles.  It's one of Addie and Andres' favorite movies (really they both like the Jack Jack Attack best) and Andres has been so into superheroes that since we have all the characters it seemed just perfect.  I was able to find a really good deal on pre-made costumes for Addie and Andres a couple months before hand.  Jason found the red pajamas for Dexter at a thrift store for less than $3!  I made and added the logos to Dexter's and to mine and Jason's shirts.  I also made masks for everyone except Dexter (knowing that he would never wear it).  And when Addie saw me painting Dexter's face she had to have that too.  It was probably better that way because she never leaves anything on her face/head for more than a few minutes either.
The actual Trunk or Treat part was really cold so we rushed through it as quickly as possible, but we still came away with tons of candy.

It's Dash, Jack-Jack, and Violet Incredible.

We were trying to show our powers (I was stretching and Addie was holding a forcefield).

Mr. Incredible teaching his boys how to be super strong.

The whole family. Don't we look SUPER?

 And the pumpkins:

Jason worked really hard to get the symbol just right.  He did a great job.

The kids pumpkin is a happy spider (a compromise between Addie who wanted something creepy and Andres who wanted a happy pumpkin).