Spooks! Sneaks! And Sweets!

Halloween has come and gone,

We had a spook-tacular time,

Amara was the cutest chicken,

Lily, a witch sublime.

Our church had a trunk or treat

Two days before the big day,

Dad, a clown, Grandma, a gift,

And a witch-mom on display.

Ten minutes and a hundred steps later,

The girls came back, their bags heavy,

What a way to earn a load of

Sugar, sweets, and tooth-rotting candy!

Perhaps you think this story ends

After this evening masquarade,

But no!  Oh no!  There's more to eat,

For Halloween is in 2 days!

So, costumes and makeup they willingly wore,

And out they went to explore,

To join the neighborhood trick-or-treaters,

In their yearly, fruity-ful chore!

The trunk-or-treat was at our church, and it was basically a half hour of passing out sweets, then a potluck soup dinner.  Really fun and yummy.  We had a huge turnout and passed out around 150 pieces of candy.  My favorite costume that night was the cowpie!

And my favorite carved pumpkin on Halloween was this one:

Halloween was so fun this year!  The weather was perfect for us.  We didn't even have to put coats on!  The girls got a lot of candy, which they happily left for the candy fairy (after eating a few of their favorites first).  The candy fairy left them a cool instrument they can play to their hearts desire.  What a silly tradition trick-or-treating is, but I love it!  I got to go around with my girls to knock on doors in my mom's neighborhood (our old neighborhood) and meet new people.  It was so fun!

Steve stayed home to pass out candy.  But he ended up eating it all because no one came.  He probably appreciated it that way since he was watching a football game! :)

Check out the Smilebox Scrapbook I made about our halloween this year and a few pages dedicated to Halloweens of years past (yes, even you iphone and ipod users should be able to view it- and if you can't leave me a comment).  Also, I didn't have pictures from last year, but Steve's mom did (thanks!), and she emailed me them, so I've included a collage of a few of my favorites at the end of this post.

Make your own free scrapbooking design  Last year we were in "happy valley" for Halloween, so here's the Halloween 2010 collage... (click to see full size)

Lily keeps growing.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

A Visit and A Blessing

My sister and I are very close and we have made good use of the invention of the Iphone/Ipod Touch's app called Facetime.  Above is a picture of April's baby Devon via Facetime.  Lily took the picture with a camera while I was talking with April.  This is how I usually see Devon.

On October 16th, Devon was blessed in church and my family traveled down for the blessing.  I loved seeing Devon in real life and seeing how tall he's gotten.  We had a wonderfully full weekend visiting with all my family members in Utah Valley and some of Steve's as well. 

After the blessing, April had a potluck luncheon at her house and I was able to get some pictures.  We had yummy build-your-own pulled pork salad, pasta salad, jello salad, drinks, and dessert. Yum!

I miss my family very much and living 2 hours away is too far for me.  I miss things like this:

 and this...

 and this...

But, I'm blessed we are able to visit as much as we do, and I'm glad that we didn't have to miss this occasion.

Sorry, Spencer.  My camera's reaction time is a little slow.

So good to see my dad!  I miss him!

Maizie talking it up!

Amara getting ready for prayer.

That weekend went by way fast, and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Homemade Big Macs!

Years ago my step-mom was spring cleaning and was donating a pile of stuff to the thrift store.  I happened upon the pile and being frugally-minded, I rummaged through and found a hardly worn cookbook entitled, "Top Secret Recipes."  It featured recipes of the favorite foods from American restaurant chains like Chili's, KFC, and McDonalds.  Cool!  I thought.  And I took it home excited to cook from it.  A few weeks later, I made their recipe for KFC coleslaw, one of my guilty pleasures, and I dove into the bowl with my fork... Hey!  There is no way this is the Top Secret recipe for KFC's coleslaw.  It's fine, but it's not KFC's.  That's when I decided to read the introduction to the book and discovered that it's not technically the top secret recipes divulged on those pages, it's a guy's best guess using thorough experimentation and taste-testing.  Well, the KFC coleslaw fell short, so that cookbook sat on the shelf for years.

Then recently I had a hankering for McDonalds, but trying to be slightly (ever so slightly) healthier, I wanted to make it myself so I could control the quality of the ingredients.  I remembered the recipe book had taken the McDonald's Big Mac and deconstructed it, so I used it as my reference to make homemade Big Macs.  SUCCESS!  These were awesome!  In fact, Lily has informed me she wants to make them for family favorite night (we do that ever other Friday and allow one of our family members to pick a favorite food for dinner that night).

Yum!  I should mention that we had these right on Sunday and the girls came to the dinner table wearing their pretty dresses.  Not wanting them to get messy food all over them, I had them take their dresses off to eat.  They took them off and came to the table wearing only their underwear.  I was hungry, they were hungry, so I didn't send them back to their room to put clothes on.  Besides, it's less laundry for me to do!

Our Stellar September

We've had a fun time this past month. I made the smilebox newsletter above, but I know there are those who cannot view smilebox for some reason or another, so I also included the pages below. Enjoy!

Daddy's First "Pedi"

A couple weeks ago, Steve had a campout with the scouts from Friday to Saturday night.  I know how camping can really take a toll on your energy, so I was fully expecting Steve to be on the couch much of Saturday, which he was.  Well, while Steve was out braving the wilderness on Friday night, my mom came over and joined me and the girls for a "girls night."  They gave me a foot massage using a scrub my mom had brought over.  May I just say, Amara and Lily have tiny hands and their massages were cute.  So, the next day, when Steve came home, he showered and sat on the couch, his eyelids already half-closed when the girls came up with the great idea to give daddy a pedicure.  I think it helped proposing the idea when he was half-out because he was willing to surrender.  So, I helped gather the items and I helped with some of the massaging too.  Here's how it went:
Step One: Use the handy wooden scoop to gob out a bunch scrub.

The "Noni" Body Scrub

 Step Two: Spread onto wet foot.

They applied it very liberally.

 Step Three: Massage like you mean it!

Steve's constant request was, "Harder.  Much harder please."

 Step Four: Repeat on other foot.

Amara is in heaven!  What child wouldn't want to plaster goo on their parents skin and rub it all over?

Steve was a little ticklish with the girls massaging, and I loved watching him squirm as they were trying to push harder.  I'm glad I got pictures!

"More Sushi Please!"

A couple of weeks ago we had a delicious sushi night.  While I was making the sushi with my mom, Lily was snapping some pictures.  She did a good job of capturing the food we ate and just browsing through them makes my mouth water!  The Smilebox presentation at the end of this post features her photos.

We made Christensen-Family-Friendly rolls.  In other words, all our sushi rolls were raw-fish-less.  We are greatly limited in our fresh fish selection here in rural-ville, but I'm not complaining, at least not today.  The way I see it, I'm lucky that I can make tasty sushi minus the sashimi, and at the same time I get to save money for my family!  My mom and I made a variety of rolls mixing-and-matching these ingredients~

• tempura green onion
• tempura zucchini (from the garden)
• tempura yam
• fresh garden cucumber
• Krab
• fresh green onion
• crushed fried noodles
• homemade wasabi-mayo
• homemade cayenne-mayo
• teriyaki glaze

Everyone loved dinner and we ate until there were only 3 small pieces left.

Make a photo album