Lily keeps growing.

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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

Our First First Grader!

The alarm goes off at 6:45 a.m. and Lily is dressed, her hair brushed and ready for breakfast in 3 minutes time.  I'm thinking~ Huh.  That's unusual.  Last school year it took her 30-45 minutes to just put her clothes on.  Then I would scramble to do her hair while she glared and poked at her breakfast, then we'd grab her shoes and backpack on our way out the door and I'd wrap her toast in a paper towel for her to eat in the car on the way to school. 

So what's with the remarkable enthusiasm?  It's the magic of a new school year.  It kicks us into gear- and by "us" I mean all of us.  After our joyous summer devoid of alarm clocks, routines, schedules, and deadlines, school comes knocking at our door and we're back in business.  And yes, we were out the door in no time on the first day of school. 

Now it's been 3 weeks since school began and morning routines are a bit of a drudgery again.  But that's what I expected.

Lily unmistakably has a rough time rolling out of bed, but she loves school.  She tells me that she has a very nice and beautiful teacher, Mrs. Brinkerhoff.

She likes everything about school except disrespectful students who talk out of turn.  I can understand that.  She's also made some friends and has a great time at recess playing.

Me: What do you play?
Lily:  We play the same thing every recess.
Me: And what's that?
Lily: Oh, just like we're dogs. 

That doesn't surprise me.  She's wanted a dog since forever ago.  Her favorite shows are Martha Speaks (on PBS, a cartoon about a talking dog) and Dogs With Jobs (BYU-TV).  And any gift-giving holiday she makes it known that she wants a puppy.

One day I drove by the school at recess time and saw Lily holding her friend's hand and running around the playground.  It makes my heart happy for her, especially since I've been tragically weighed down with her being gone from home (me) for such a long part of the day.  Amara at first would ask if Lily was coming home soon or if we were going to run an errand, she'd ask if we were going to get Lily, but now she realizes that Lily goes early to school with dad and comes home with him close to dinner time.

We all wake up early and get ready for the day at the same time, so sometimes Amara and I will go to the school early and help Steve in his classroom and walk Lily to class.

Steve's classroom has changed since last year.  He's switched to tables instead of desks.  In the picture above you see the U-shaped tables- it's all he could get at the time.  Now, he has rectangular tables and his classroom looks more spacious.  Steve's report on how the school year is going thus far is *deep breath* "It going... [insert 30 second pause]... fine." 

I've always loved Lily's drawings and she's come home with some great ones.  I'll share one of her worksheets with you, so you can enjoy her artwork as much as I do.

 Yes, that's the sun with sunglasses on and wiping sweat from his face!  Nice tongue hanging out, too.

 I like how mad the storm cloud looks.  The rain is bigger at the bottom because it's closer to you.  She likes to add perspective to her drawings.

 This is a guy getting knocked over by the wind.

 She's pointing to the clouds.

 This picture is mostly white, just like a whiteout snowstorm.

 Then her drawings of morning, afternoon, and evening.  I particularly like how groggy the little person is lying on the floor in the morning drawing.  It is an accurate depiction of her normal mornings.  You notice the afternoon is raining, that's because summers in Utah get afternoon clouds and thundershowers.  Then the evening has colorful clouds for the sunset.

Here's the entire worksheet.