"Gingerbread Houses" aka A Good Excuse to Eat Candy

The kids begged to do graham cracker gingerbread houses while we were out in California.  My Mom and sister were kind enough to go and get us lots of supplies for the event.  A friend of mine told me about how she uses melted sugar to "glue" her crackers together.  Basically you just melt some sugar with some water and it makes liquid goo.  You have to be fast before it starts to harden and watch out that you don't burn yourself.  I glued the houses together and I thought they weren't going to stay together, but once the sugar hardened they were as sturdy as can be!
Everyone came up with such cute and unique designs.  I love seeing the kids' creative juices flowing.

 Aria did hers all by herself this year and I think she did a fantastic job.

I think Hunter used every kind of candy.

Chase's was probably the heaviest.

Michela's was a beautiful work of art.

Laina and I collaborated on our design.  

Perfect activity for a winter afternoon.

The Terrific Twos!

I can't believe my baby is 2!  We celebrated Laina's birthday with a family Cookie Monster party.  She LOVES cookies and is always asking for one, she is her Daddy's girl, so I decided a cookie party would be perfect!
We invited Mike's and my families over for dinner and cookies.  Everyone filled up on taco salad for dinner but left plenty of room for dessert.  Did I mention we were having cookies?  Five different kinds of cookies to be exact.  We had Chocolate Chip cookies, Peanut Butter cookies, Lemon cookies, White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal cookies, and Triple Fudge Oreo Crunch cookies.  I got some awesome recipes off of Pinterest.  I couldn't believe how many cookies there were but the group polished them off with no problems.

Laina was so excited for it to be her birthday.  For breakfast we made her blueberry "Fuffins" and put some candles in one to practice for the big event that night. 

She didn't know what to make of them.
She did a lot better in the evening.  She tried to blow and with a little help from Mommy we got them out.

It was fun having everyone over.  The cousins had a blast playing together, inside and outside the house.  I often found Laina tagging along after her older siblings and cousins laughing and screaming along with them.

 Laina loved opening her presents.  She got a cute piggy bank and some "monies" from Grandpa and Grandma Staker.  Matt, Sara, and the boys gave her a cute little book and a much loved Minnie Mouse.  

 Grandma Hunt sent out a present full of cute clothes and a sweet book about 10 little monkeys.  And our family gave her a little Cookie Monster and a new microphone for all of her singing moments.

Laina is the sunshine in our family.  She adds so much fun to our lives.  I can't imagine life without her!  She is becoming such a big girl.  She is always running and dancing through the house, singing and talking up a storm.  She is always so concerned about where everyone is and loves having her whole family together.  She is so sweet and sensitive towards others.  When someone is crying she is the first one to run over and give them a hug.  She is the life of the party!

Two fun things about Laina:
1.  She loves being a girly girl.  She likes twirly skirts, pretty shoes, and lots of bracelets.
2.  She is a dancing machine.  At our nephew's wedding reception she danced the entire time.  She loves shaking her booty and likes to try and copy Aria's moves.

I Survived Cycle 1

Today is the beginning of Cycle 2 on my new exercise and diet plan.  Yes, I made it through Cycle 1, though at times I didn't think I was going to be able to.  The Fast day didn't kill me right away, it was the effects the day after that threw me for a loop.  I did okay on the whole water only thing, but the protein supplements got harder and harder to take as the day went on.  I was supposed to down a ton of pills that day, but I started to get sick of swallowing them every couple of hours, so I know I didn't get enough of them in my system.  That night I was so tired and worn out from the not eating, together with the 3 workouts I had to do that day.  Of course Michela was at a party so I had to wait until 10:00 to go get her.  When I finally got to bed I crashed.
Mike had to wake up at 3:00 in the morning the next day for his Marathon, so I got woken up too.  Unfortunately I could not go back to sleep afterwards.  I tossed and turned all night, not being able to get comfortable because my body was so sore and my stomach was turning.  I alternated between thinking I was either going to pass out or throw up.  My alarm finally went off at 6:45 and I laid there thinking there was no way I was going to be able to get up.  I was shaking so badly and was very dizzy.  I dragged myself downstairs and slowly made myself a protein shake.  (The day after the fast day is protein shake day.)  I lugged the blender out onto the patio so I wouldn't wake anyone up and blended up a much needed shake.  I gulped the thing down trying to fill the ache in my stomach and to get something in me.  I had the worst headache that day and felt so weak.  Of course I had to get all of the kids up, fed and ready to go because we were leaving at 8:00 so we could cheer Mike on at the race and then it was off to the soccer field for three games, one of which I was coaching.  As the day went on I felt a little bit stronger but I was so spent.  Luckily Sunday was coming up the next day so I could have a break from the workouts.
This time around I am going to have to tweak fast day a bit.  There is no way I can survive that experience again.  I'm thinking I will allow myself at least some veggies during the day and perhaps a protein shake after one or two of the workouts.  It's not like I can just sit around all day and recoup, I've got 5 kids to take care of and a billion things to do.  Hopefully I can avoid the exhaustion and sickness this time around.  The number on the scale did drop, but scales can be so touchy.  I'll wait to see if it drops again after this cycle is through before I can say if it is really working or not.  The funniest part of this whole thing is Michela's little comments every day.  "What can you eat today Mom?"  "Protein shakes all day!?  That  is so sad."  Couldn't have said it better myself.

Pancake Art

Michela was inspired by her Aunt Megan who made us unbelievably cool pancakes last summer.  She has been wanting to try it herself so I finally found a bottle to use.  It took a bit to get the consistency of the batter right but then she had fun "drawing" on the griddle.

 

  Here are a few of her creations.

Shark for Hunter

Dinosaur for Chase

And this one was for me.  :)

 I love all of Michela's creative energy.  It is so much fun as her Mom to see her creating and having such a great time doing it.

Gourmet Conference Breakfast

For one of Michela's classes she had do to a Family Project.  She decided to make us a big fancy breakfast for Conference Sunday.  On the menu were chocolate chip pancakes topped with whipped cream and raspberry syrup, hash browns, bacon, and smoothies.  Me, oh, my it was good!  We made the raspberry syrup ourselves and pre-made hash browns weren't good enough, she wanted to make them herself!  She got a good arm workout grating the potatoes.

Everyone enjoyed the breakfast and it was fun eating all the delicious food.

Pancake Breakfast

This morning we went to Mike's parents' house for a family pancake breakfast. His sister Megan and her family just arrived from Oregon and we wanted to get July started off with a little fun. I had to wake the kids up so we could get there on time. That meant dragging them out of bed and throwing them in the car in their PJs. Since I still had a house to clean after breakfast I came in my lovely sweats and ponytail. :) Mike and his brother Matt biked out to their parents' house in Lehi. We caught up with Mike right before we pulled into the neighborhood. The kids had fun yelling out the windows at their Dad as we passed by.

The kids were so excited that the trampoline was set up in the backyard. I had to practically

pull each of them off to get them to sit down and eat some breakfast.

Michela and Aria.

Chase getting some air.

Michela doing a front flip.

Hunter trying out some crazy moves.

We were treated to the artistic stylings of Megan on the pancake griddle.

Her trick is a mustard bottle full of pancake batter. First she draws the outline and any details.

She lets that cook to a nice golden brown and then fills it in with more batter.

After that cooks a bit, she flips it and cooks the other side.

The outline is cooked longer so it turns out darker than the rest of the pancake. Chase got a Monkey.

Laina got a Happy Face.

Hunter requested a Shark.

I got a cute Penguin.

I kept yelling out whatever popped into my head trying to stump her. She's too good though, she was whipping up all kinds of wonderful creations.

We couldn't stay long though, we had to go home and get ready for this little cutie's birthday party.

Pregnant Pepper

One night while slicing bell peppers for the salad I found another little baby pepper inside of a big pepper. The kids thought it was the coolest thing. Chase was so excited about it he said, "Mom, you should take a picture of it and put it on your blog." Too funny.