Adventures in Bread Making

Last Sunday, I made bread and the girls helped. Good thing that bread doesn't mind the extra kneading!

Jessica kneading the dough.

They are so cute even while making a huge mess.

Kaitlyn's turn to have a hand in it, literally.

Flour and red velvet don't mix.

Dried dough! Yummy!

Long Time, no Blog (Aka Birthdays, Halloween and stuff)

Well a lot has happened since I blogged last, so I thought I'd give a digest of the events. On the 15th of October, Arnie turned a very old 33. Malia helped me decorate the cake but we had a mishap when she fell trying to get toothpicks positioned on the stove above and her whole upper arm went into the freshly chocolate frosted cake. Hence the big pumpkin you see in the picture.

We finally got to carve our marvelous pumpkins. Arnie, Jessi and Kaitlyn worked on the short round one the traditional way with a big knife. While Malia, Bethany and I took the more artistic approach and created our own design and used the little jigsaw from a pumpkin carving kit to carve our tall pumpkin. Both turned out wonderfully, lit by Arnie's bike lights. One blinked red for great effect.

Halloween was a great night. Nice warm weather (for New England, that is.) Here is a run-down of the costumes. Bethany was a Violet Wizard (you'll have to ask her what that is). Malia was Malia, the Halloween Fairy. Her character was modeled after her favorite series of books by an author named Daisy Meadows (I'm not making this up) that has a whole slew of fairies with names like Bethany, the Ballet fairy or Megan, the Monday fairy (again, I am not making this up.) Kaitlyn is obviously Snow White and Jessica is Cinderella or as she says "Rella, Rella!"

On November 10th, my little baby Jessi turned two! *sigh* With a very yummy "Funfetti" cake from Pillsbury and a singing Barbie doll based on the latest Barbie movie, the party was a smashing success.

Arnie's Birthday Cake made especially by Mom and Malia

Bethany and Malia taking turns with the little pumpkin kit saw.

Jessi, getting a kick out of scraping out the pumpkin gunk.

My four little trick o' treaters.

Jessica, enjoying her rainbow sprinkle cake and Neapolitan ice cream.

Jessica, playing with one of the most obnoxious gifts ever, a singing barbie doll.

But she LOVES it!

The Kancamagus Highway

Yesterday afternoon, we traveled north to drive down the famous Kancamagus Highway. I wanted to get some pictures of the fall colors. The girls didn't appreciate the expedition much. It made no sense to them to drive an hour and a half just to find another road to drive some more. Arnie makes his rounds in this area almost every week so it wasn't that thrilling for him either. As it turned out, most of my pictures were taken out the window of the car. Not the most ideal but I am just grateful to have had the chance to go through this neck of the woods. It was well worth it in my opinion. The weather was nice and we did get to stop a couple of times and stretch our legs.

We did stop at the base station of Mt. Washington before heading back home. The peak of Mt. Washington was where the highest wind speed was recorded. We didn't get to drive up it like Arnie wanted, though. Maybe on our next trip....

Lots of signs about moose, but no sign of any moose that we could see.

Bethany and Malia happily watching a movie and completely missing scenery outside.

The hills were like paintings. What wasn't orange, red or yellow, was brown or evergreen.

Jessica pointing toward the river in front of Loon Lodge on the Kancamangus Highway

Bethany, my model.

The river. (I don't know it's name. I think this wide part in front of Loon Lodge is called East Branch.

Mt. Washington Railroad at dusk. They were closing down just as we got there.

Bethany and Malia filming the trains being put away for the night.

Pickin' Pumpkins

We spent our Columbus Day finding our pumpkins at Mac's Apples, the famous farm and local stomping ground in Londonderry. We were not the only ones to think of this. There were many families roaming around the fields looking for the perfect pumpkin just like us. In the end, we decided on two pumpkins, one tall and skinny and one plump and round. It was a perfect fall day for this adventure. We were even able to enlist the help of one large pumpkin to take our family portrait for the year, although we might have to give it a little more "coaching" on focusing.

A family of pumpkins

Malia's Pick

Kaitlyn trying her muscles on this greenish one

Bethany, the official camera girl

Jessi thought that all these pumpkins were giant soccer balls and kept trying to kick them

The "heart" of my house of order

If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then the kitchen must be the heart of his home. While the girlies were "enjoying" the clean green room, I scrubbed and cleaned the kitchen. I am so excited about seeing the before and after pictures that I am forgetting to keep up the rooms I have already completed. I need to continue to keep them clean so I am not doing all this for nothing. Plus, I need to have the girlies' help so I don't keep saying "I" all the time :) They live in this house too!

Jessi in the Kitchen "before"

The Kitchen "after"

Another angle of the Kitchen "after"

House of Order cont'd.

Today I tackled the girls' play room, nicknamed "The Green Room." In the before pictures you can hardly see the green floors that earned it that name, however. I got rid of a lot of things to help prevent such a monstrous mess. Children can only play with one thing at a time anyway. Anything else gets thrown every where. The next step, however, is to get rid of all their toys. I am very tired of them mistreating their belongings.

Green room entrance before

Green room entrance after

Green room center before

Green room center after

Green room side before

Green room side after

"A House of Order" experiment

Thursday night, I was chatting with my sister Kelly and we discovered that we both were suffering from an overwhelming amount of mess in our houses. She had a wonderful idea of taking pictures of each room messy, then have the children help clean the rooms over the next week and take another picture of the clean room. Kelly then developed a chart where the two pictures were put side by side and below were the days of the month. Every day, each room will be compared to the two pictures and a check will be put under the picture the room most resembles at that time. Our goal is to have more checks in the "clean" column than the "dirty" column.

Below are the first two rooms that I have done so far in my house. I am already having a difficult time just keeping these two rooms clean. Just after I took the clean picture for the front room, Jessica and Kaitlyn got a hold of some sand art in bottles and opened them all over the carpet! Good thing I have a great vacuum.
Wish me luck!

TV room before

TV room after

Front room before

Front room after

Mainely Gourmet Chocolate Factory

We went to Portsmouth with my folks to do an errand at the bank and we killed some time and some nickels at the "Mainely Gourmet Chocolate Factory." I recommend it even though we "mainely" bought gummies. I did buy a very delicious peanut butter cup and a little bucket of gummie lobsters for my mom and dad.

Kaitlyn and Jessi sitting eating gummies

Kaitlyn showing off her gummies

Kaitlyn keeping her gummies from Jessi

Fall Colors

Here is the first colors of Fall in our backyard. We are having such a wet Fall here.

Random Acts of Destructions (RAODs)

Kaitlyn and Jessica have been on this kick of doing, what I call, Random Acts of Destruction, hitherto called RAODs. My life is so full of acronyms I just couldn't help myself. These RAODs come out of nowhere and seemingly without any thought. Just today, they have taken all the DVDs out of the cupboard and threw them all over the living room (not photographed), threw rice in two different rooms, dumped tortilla chips out in the car (also not photographed), and just now, Jessi dumped peanuts in the living room. You know, I don't recall praying for more patience. I guess Heavenly Father thinks I need more practice in patience and long, long, long suffering. Maybe this will help.

Example #1: Peanuts in the living room

Example #2: Raw rice in the front room

Example #3: Raw rice in the kitchen

Kaitlyn's First Day

Kaitlyn went to her first day of preschool today. She goes in the afternoons on Monday thru Thursday. Jessica wasn't happy to see her leave and tried to go to school with her. When she came home, though, Jessi greeted her with a big hug and kiss.

Kaitlyn getting on her bus

Jessi tried to stow away

Jessi waving goodbye!

Camping at Zion's Camp

Friday night and Saturday, we took our family to the camp, owned by our church. It is called "Zion's Camp" after some very significant historical events and places in our church's history. The typical use for the camp is for Boy Scouts and Youth of the church. It can also be utilized by the different wards for family camp outs and such. We invited and were joined by our friend, Thom and his two eldest daughters, Olivia and Chloe, who are almost exactly Bethany and Malia's ages. Thom's wife is in her first trimester with their 5th child and opted to stay home with the two younger boys. There were several instances during the trip where I felt as if I had taken a Girls Scout troop camping.

The girls had a grand ole time going on expeditions around the campsite. They called themselves the "Adventure Kids" and even dubbed Jessi "the Junior Junior Explorer." Amongst the things they found on these expeditions or adventures were some grasshoppers, a couple toads and a hand full of caterpillars.

We had a wonderful time with wonderful weather, only raining a little at night, I guess as Heavenly Father's way to make sure we doused our fire correctly. After a hardy pancake breakfast and an exploratory hike around the camp, we topped off our trip with playtime at the lake.

We took the girls out on the lake in canoes, Thom, Bethany, Olivia and Chloe in one and Jessica, Kaitlyn, Malia and I in the other. Arnie darted in and around us in a little kayak. I tell you what, those guys at the olympics make rowing look too easy. I definitely regreted letting Bethany go in the other boat with her friends. I missed my co-oarswoman.

After a tour around half the lake, we headed back for some beach fun. While the girls played in the water and sand, Arnie decided to take up winding surfing. Some sail-boards had been donated to the camp and Arnie took it upon himself to test, not only the boards out but himself. He kept at it for a good hour and by the end, he could not only get up on the board and get the sail up but he had actually went out into the lake and back on wind power! If it was me, I probably wouldn't have gotten as far as getting onto the stupid thing and if I had, I would have been carried out into the lake needing to be towed back in again because I probably wouldn't be able to get back or fall off in the middle and couldn't get back on. We all enjoyed seeing Arnie accomplish this great feat of daring do. However, I am not encouraging yet another expensive hobby!

All in all, fun was had by everyone, even me. I have decided that Jessi is just the right age to enjoy camping. And all that activity wore out the girls so much that all four of them fell asleep on the car ride home.

Our campsite (complete with chairs, lot of chairs)

Jessi in an empty tent

The "Adventure Kids" hunting caterpillars

Jessi jerking me around by my ponytail

What is that lying on the dock? Oh, it's a Malia cocoon!

Daddy and JR enjoying a kayak ride in the lake

Daddy discovering yet another expensive sport

Gotta love sand and water pies!

Jessi doing some amphibious sand fun.

Life jackets are also great for imitating otters at play!