Halloween 2007

It was been a fun Halloween for us! On Saturday, we went to a local trick or treat with a lot of our friends from Church and then today we went to the library and to trick or treating at Grandma and Papa's house. It was a lot of fun and I think the kids are officially trick or treated out (until next year that is!). Here are some pictures...

FHE

Tonight, we had some friends over for dinner and FHE. We had tacos for dinner and then a lesson about sharing. Michael taught the scriptural part of the lesson about how the Nephites shared their land with the Ammonites. Then, we read "The Rainbow Fish" and the two children old enough to understand (we had two babies there as well) received a little fish to remind them to share. After our lesson, we carved pumpkins together. Michael and I have never carved pumpkins in the duration of our marriage, so it has been over 5 years, probably more, since I have done this. Michael did the top and I did the face. I think ours turned out alright considering neither of us are very good pumpkin carvers! We had a lot of fun and enjoyed having friends over!

Cupcakes and Cookies

I signed up to make cupcakes and cookies for our ward's Oklahoma Centennial Day of Giving service project. I had bought some cute cookie cutters and decorating bottles from Pampered Chef a bit ago, so I decided to take the opportunity to try my hand at some simple decorating. I was pretty proud of myself afterwards (even though my husband was quite annoyed with the mess I had managed to make during the process), so I thought I would post some pictures. So, here are some pumpkin chocolate cupcakes and some mummy chocolate chip cookies!

My Little Pony Live!

Well, my mother and stepfather were kind enough to provide us with tickets for My Little Pony Live this weekend! It was a lot of fun and Lyna and Randi Kay had fun dancing around and watching the show. They also treated us to a terrific dinner beforehand at Mickey Mantle's and a horse and carriage ride to the actual show (which was a couple of blocks away). Here are some pictures!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the local pumpkin patch on Friday for playgroup and to pick out some pumpkins to carve for FHE this Monday night. We had fun, although Alyna wanted to leave quickly because we had "My Little Pony" that night (more to come about this soon). Anyhow, here are some pictures I took of our short stay there!

Finally Done!

I started taking sewing lessons two weeks ago and decided my first project was going to be making my children's Halloween costumes, Little Bo Peep and her sheep! It took a lot of time and hard work, but I am finally finished! Here are some pictures, check back next week to see the full costumes (face paint, shepherd's crook, etc.), but here is a little preview!

We took a trip to P-Bar Farms last night for some fall fun! They have this super cool corn maize that they do a different design every year. They also have a petting zoo, laser tag, pumpkin patch, karaoke, etc. We had a lot of fun! We walked through the maize once with the little kids and then the order kids went through it again after dark when they do the haunted maize! Here are some pictures...

At the end of the night, the girls (Alyna and Randi Kay) decided they were going to do some karaoke. It was a room full of people and they were just performing away, everyone thought it was pretty funny! Here are some videos of our little stars!

A Blast From The Past...

While looking at some old pictures, I found this old video of Alyna and thought I would post it for fun.

FHE

For FHE tonight, we had a lesson about Following Christ. We used this template. We learned about why we follow Christ and what things we can do to follow him closer. For our activity, we played follow the leader which Lyna loved! It was really fun! For our snacks we are having banana bread. Here are some pictures of Michael and Alyna playing follow the leader (we all played, but someone has to take the pictures!)

Our Playroom!

So, we redid the kids' playroom when we moved into the new house in May and I didn't ever get around to posting pictures of it. So, I figured I would do it now. This was a big project and we were really excited with how it turned out.

New Hobby...

I have recently found a new hobby, Photoshop!! I have a book and am trying to learn all of the fun tricks you can do on this program. So, I have only been practicing for a couple of days and I was pretty pleased with the pictures I am about to show you. I know some of you that are well versed in Photoshop are going to think this is pretty lame, but too me, this is awesome! So here we go...

Before:

After:

And One More For Fun:

Best Friends

Well, in Lyna's eyes anyways, I think KiKi is still terrified of Lyna. But, Lyna is showly learning about how to treat a kitten gently. I thought this was a pretty cute picture though!

Loving the Park...

Well, we have had the most amazing, awesome, fabulous weather ever here recently. It has been beautiful, so we have been having a lot of outdoor time. Here are some pictures from a little trip down the block to our neighborhood park!

FHE

We did a simple FHE last night of watching Conference. I had a whole thing planned on faith, but we wanted to watch the session of Conference that we missed, so we did that instead.

General Conference Baskets...

For General Conference this year I decided to start a new tradition in our family of making General Conference baskets for everyone. They turned out to be a big hit! I put in different things for each person (soft toys for the baby, coloring and busy toys for the preschooler, and notepads, pens, snacks, etc. for the adults, etc.). It was a really nice thing for everyone to wake up to Saturday morning.

Introducing...

KiKi Malmfeldt! A new addition to our family...

Just Playing...

with the boxes! Still! These boxes really were a hit. So far they have become houses, castles, slides, mountains, and more. Unfortunately, the boxes met their end late this afternoon when a certain daddy that will remain unnamed quickly and quietly snuck them outside and destroyed them. It has not been noticed as of yet, but I am waiting for that question anytime now. But, before their end we got a few cute shots of the kids playing with them...

New Car Seats!

So, after a friend told me about the benefits of extended rear facing (if you are interested in learning more, see here), I decided I wanted to go that route. However, the car seat Alyna had does not rear face, so after much thought and research on car seats, we got two new car seats for the kids. We wanted to get the Britax car seats, as they receive superb ratings and reviews, but they are out of our price range. So, we went with the Fisher Price Safe Voyage Deluxe (which is made by Britax and very much like the Britax seats). Lyna has been very excited all week to get her new seat! I was concerned about turning her back rear facing because I thought she might not like that positioning, but we went for a ride after getting the seats installed and she loved it and thought it was so cool (we will see how it goes when the novelty wears off!). I installed the car seats with the LATCH system, which I had never used before, but is apparently much safer in our particular vehicle. These seats should last us a while, as they both go from 5-55 lbs. So, here are some pictures of the kids in their new car seats...
(Yes Lyna is wearing her pajamas, and no it is not morning, she just likes wearing them!)


(Lyna was not happy about taking this picture, the sun was driving her crazy.)

And the best part about getting new car seats....

THE BOXES!

A Special Thank You To...

Grandma Kathryn! Alyna REALLY loved the card (I am sure you will get a phone call later as well), she is always so excited to get mail! She received it about an hour ago and has yet to let it out of her sight. I am sure this will continue for quite some time.

Swiss Chicken Recipe

I tried this recipe on Sunday and it was SO good! Both Michael and I loved it, so I thought I would pass it on to my blogging friends...

In a crock pot layer everything up in this order....

1. 4 Chicken Breasts

2. Swiss Cheese (a much as you want or just enough to cover the chicken)

3. Milk & Cream of Chicken/Mushroom Soup (1/3 C of milk for every can of soup -- I do 1 can of cream of chicken and 1 of cream of mushroom soup). Mix the milk & soup together, and then add them to the crockpot.

4. Sprinkle enough dry stuffing to cover

5. Drizzle 1/2 cube of butter melted over the stuffing.

6. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6 hours.

Family Home Evening

Tonight, we had an FHE about General Conference. We basically used this template, but changed it a bit to fit our family. We explained the importance of General Conference and talked about how it was going to be on this weekend. I printed out pictures of the current First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, two of each person, and we played a matching game with them. But, to get the match you had to be able to name the person (of course, we helped Lyna). It was a lot of fun and Lyna wanted to play again when we had finished!

Welcome Fall!

I finally got my fall decor out this last week! Fall is my favorite time of the year, so I thought I would post my decor, it's not real fancy, but I love it!

My Blue-Eyed Boys

Here are some pics of my beautiful blue-eyed boys...