pie pie pie!

in our attempt to be more social, we invited about 15 families to come over last night for pie. about 2/3 of those invited actually came and we had a grand ol' time! we had a total of 37 here to partay. our tiny house was filled to its maximum capacity, and thats how we like it! one of chris' school mates asked chris if he was going to make ribs to go along with the pie. that was MORE than enough of an invitation for chris. so yes, we had a party and served PIE & RIBS.... very random! but i think everyone enjoyed it, or at least we hope they did. we thought it would be fun to make this an annual get-together. october is the perfect time for pie because you haven't been pie-ed out yet from the holidays.

at one point i think there were even 3 more guys stuffed in my tiny kitchen. if only MY cooking could do that!

the kids had a concert in jack and ellie's room. they would all sit on the bed and take turns getting up to sing and dance.

jack snapped this pic of larissa and it was too cute not to post. he took several others, none of which were very flattering :)

all in all it was a great time! we had more pie than a circus would eat and ribs to fill the bellies of the entire elders quorum!

SpOoKtacular students!

this morning for preschool we had jenna's little sister, dani, join us and we really got into the halloween spirit! we painted pumpkins and made creepy crawly cupcakes. i just had the itch to whip something up last night with my new mixer! so, totally unneeded, i used my mixer for a boxed cake mix and let the little ones go to town :)

dani is one of the CUTEST little girls i have ever seen... and she was well behaved too, not fair!
all work and no play. complete concentration...

alright, she had some fun mixed in there too!

ellie belly on the other hand can't concentrate for anything. she definitely used the most paint, but not on her pumpkin. she had other places to put it.

wow, nice composition jack. i think we may have a petite picasso here :)

this is what our cupcakes were supposed to look like

oh well, maybe next year!

at least we all had fun and i only had to call in back-up (meaning chris) twice throughout our halloween shenanigans!

holy guacamolito!

this afternoon, while ellie was napping and jack was trying to stay out of mischief, i decided to organize my craft closet. this was a very scary undertaking. usually when i am done with a project (if i ever actually finish), i literally just throw my various tools/supplies back into the closet and move on to the next thing. so it was quite the project. about 3/4 of the way through this mighty project i received a phone call from chris, who was on a break at school. this was our convo:

chris: "what are you doing?"

me: "just cleaning out the craft closet! can you believe it?! its been.... (chris interrupts)"

chris: "have any packages come today"

me; "nope"

chris: "you sure?"

me: "positive"

chris "you sure? humor me and go check"

me: "fine, but i know no one has come by...wait, what are you waiting for anyways? what did you order this time?"

sure enough, there was a package. chris surprised me with an early gift for our 5th anniversary!

i am in heaven! needless to say, the 1/4 of the craft closet that i hadnt gotten to, was literally thrown back into place :)

last week i made 4 BIG cookie dough logs to put in the freezer because i had to return delayna's mixer to her this weekend. the recipe my family uses for chocolate chip cookies makes enough in one batch to cook up 3 dozen monster sized cookies. it takes a powerful machine to churn dough out like that! this puppy has got a 5qt mixing bowl, 350 watt motor, and this is my favorite part, 10-cup flour power! oh yeah baby! this is the cream of the crop! i smell tortillas and cookies in the near future....

happy thursday

can you believe its already OCTOBER???? we are filled with anticipation for the upcoming holidays!

because i can't sleep

its almost 1 o'clock and the kids went to bed hours ago. my sinuses are so congested i cant sleep. and thats frustrating to me. so to cheer myself up, i logged onto one of my favorite sites www.foodgawker.com . if you enjoy looking at good food, drooling all over your lap, and wishing you knew how to cook....check out this site. you'll be hooked.

bienvenidos a miami

last night we headed over to miami for the dolphins/colts football game! as im sure most of you know, im not THE BIGGEST FOOTBALL FAN in the world, but im married to him so...

i was excited to go because we were going (without the kids) with our good friends, ben and katie smith, from the ward.

we got to miami early enough to stop somewhere for dinner. we wanted to try something a little different. we decided on jamaican food and plugged it in the GPS. we ended up at this place:

yes, thats right, it is called "nice mon".

on the menu were things like oxtails and curried goat. this was the real deal folks! while all five of the people in the restaurant were watching us, we decided to head next door to a very local restaurant called chilis....ok i suppose some of you have probably heard of it.

eating at chili's was quite an experience in and of itself. i dont want to go into too many details, but im pretty sure its safe to say that our waitress didnt like us because we were white. i dont usually talk about race and all that mumbo jumbo, but she was quite obvious about it. she was rude enough that chris didnt even leave a tip, which i didnt feel good about, but im trying to get over it

the game was really really fun! the stadium felt HUGE and we were lucky enough to sit in the 11th row! i realized that an NFL game is nothing like attending a BYU game. this struck me as the guy next to us had beer thrown at him before the game even started. but besides all the drunks and insane amounts of cleavage, i had so much fun with katie. we are always laughing and have a good time together. i will be so so so sad when their family moves next spring.

apparently there were supposed to be a few celebs at the game, but we only saw one. luckily it was one of chris' all time favorites! thats right, MR. TIGER WOODS was at the game!

he stood on the sidelines and we had a perfect view of him the whole time. it was pretty amazing, i have to admit.

we call this picture "crouching tiger (no) hidden dragon"

someday...

i will have a beautiful kitchen like these. i dont particularly love everything about these individual kitchens, but i do love the over all feeling from them.......mmm kitchens, how i crave them!