Halloween Dinner

Since Kevin has parent-teacher conferences tomorrow night, and has an away football game on Friday night, I decided to have our "spooky" Halloween dinner tonight. This is what I came up with-

Kev's cousin Sara made this for her family last week, I stole the idea because I thought it was so cute. This is our "yummy Mummy Calzone". (Before I baked it)

Yummy Mummy Calzone (after baking, it needs a little help), and our "bone breadsticks"

"Blood Red Jell-o" and of course, our yummy drink-"Green Goblin Snot".

We are also having salad, I wouldn't be a good mom if there were no vegetables offered at the table. However, I wasn't creative enough to come up with a fun name for that. It's not like a tricky name would make my kids eat salad anyway,right?

Carving Pumpkins

So I tried to take some good pictures when we carved pumpkins the other night. Apparently my kids are not up to taking good pictures lately, so this is what you get instead.
Tyler taking the guts out. He wasn't going to do it, but we told him he either had to take the seeds out of his own pumpkin or go to his room. After he chose to go to his room, we told him he just had to take SOME of the seeds out himself. That worked a little better, but he still whined when he did it.....woosie.

Ty watching dad carve Jay's pumpkin

Decorating and eating sugar cookies while Kev and I cut the pumpkins

Ty with his finished product

And Jay with his (of course, not looking at the camera)

On the porch with their pumpkins ( Jay is thinking he's a little bit scared, and Ty is thinking "Holy smokes, it's cold out here, why did I want to wear shorts for my pajamas tonight?")

Pumpkin Patch

We finally made it to the pumpkin patch today. The boys were so excited last night that they didn't want to go to sleep. we have to drive a little over an hour to get to our pumpkin patch, but it was well worth the trip. We decided to make a day of it, and took along a picnic lunch, stopped to let Kevin fish for a while, and made a quick stop the the pepperidge farm factory for some cookies-yummy!! The boys loved tromping through the field looking for their perfect pumpkin. Tyler said he wanted a huge one, which he found. Even though it is kind of lopsided and looks like it needs a little help. He also wanted a smaller one, because he found one he thought looked perfect. And since Tyler got two pumpkins, Jay also had to have two pumpkins. The fun wasn't all for the boys though. Kevin found the perfectly round pumpkin, and I decided that five pumpkins for our family of four was plenty. (especially since when it comes time to carve them, nobody but me will take the seeds out.) After the pumpkin patch we headed to the Cub River for our lunch and so Kev could spend some time in the water. He loved having a little time to fish, and the boys loved playing "Pooh Sticks" from the bridge, and running through the trees and leaves. It was a beautiful sunny day and we all loved the Fall weather. We take any kind of weather, so long as it's not snow.

Tyler with his big ugly pumpkin, it actually doesn't look so bad in this picture

Jay and me with his pumpkin. Please ignore Jay in any and all pictures for the next few months. He has been less than steller when it comes to pictures lately.

Kev and the boys

The boys, myself and Tootie. (She enjoyed the day, too.)

Kev fishing

Ty took this picture of Jay and me. Not to shabby for a five year old.

Ty and Jay enjoying the beautiful Fall day!

Homecoming Dance

So as most of you know Kevin is a teacher/coach at a SUPER small school in Idaho. Really..there are about 50 kids in the highschool. There is only one building for all the grades,K-12. But what you may not know is that he is also the student council advisor. I guess when you work at a tiny school you have to do a ton of different things. Last week was homecoming week, and between coaching, and being in charge of all the homecoming activites, we hardly ever saw him. Let me just give you a little insight into our lives here. This town gets TOTALLY into their homecoming week. I am talking the whole town. There is a different homecoming activity EVERY night of the week, they have a special coranation show for the royalty one night and the ENTIRE town shows up for it. They have a parade on the day of the football game, with a tail gate party after, and of course, the big dance. Now, I am all for community spirit, but at my house, homecoming week is OVERLOAD!!! But heaven forbid we get rid of any of these activities because every single one is a tradition that has been around since like 1910 or something crazy like that. Anyhow, since Kevin is in charge of the homecoming dance, guess who gets to chaperone every year? That's right-us. This is the fourth year we have done it, and let me tell you, we are awesome at decorating a school gym. I wanted to take a picture this year just so I could blog and show you all how small of a dance this is. There were a whopping 35 kids at the dance, and we have to partition off 1/4 of the gym just so they have a place small enough to have their dance. I will say that they do still end up having fun, and they don't know any different, so it doesn't bother them. It does however, kill me every year.

Believe it or not, this is the majority of the kids dancing

Kevin's football team did win their game also, so that made it an even better dance.

A Laugh a Day

I have watched this like five times now, and laugh every time-is that bad? Sorry RaeAnn, i stole this from your blog. I had too, it's so funny!

Doughnut Recipe

I have had some requests for my doughnut recipe from my last post. I actually found it at http://www.allrecipes.com/ , one of my fave sites for finding new recipes. The recipe I used is listed under crispy and creamy doughnuts. So you can go to the site and browse around, look at the doughnut picture, read reviews, etc. Or I have listed the recipe below. If any of you do go to the site and find any spectacular recipes, let me know. Enjoy!!


INGREDIENTS

2 (.25 ounce) envelopes active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup shortening
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 quart vegetable oil for frying

1/3 cup butter
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 tablespoons hot water or as needed

DIRECTIONS
Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, and let stand for 5 minutes, or until foamy.
In a large bowl, mix together the yeast mixture, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, shortening, and 2 cups of the flour. Mix for a few minutes at low speed, or stirring with a wooden spoon. Beat in remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough no longer sticks to the bowl. Knead for about 5 minutes, or until smooth and elastic. Place the dough into a greased bowl, and cover. Set in a warm place to rise until double. Dough is ready if you touch it, and the indention remains.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and gently roll out to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut with a floured doughnut cutter. Let doughnuts sit out to rise again until double. Cover loosely with a cloth.
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in confectioners' sugar and vanilla until smooth. Remove from heat, and stir in hot water one tablespoon at a time until the icing is somewhat thin, but not watery. Set aside.
Heat oil in a deep-fryer or large heavy skillet to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Slide doughnuts into the hot oil using a wide spatula. Turn doughnuts over as they rise to the surface. Fry doughnuts on each side until golden brown. Remove from hot oil, to drain on a wire rack. Dip doughnuts into the glaze while still hot, and set onto wire racks to drain off excess. Keep a cookie sheet or tray under racks for easier clean up.

Gearing up for Halloween

This is what we did for family night on Monday:

This is the spooky tree that we got to decorate with "scary" monster ornaments. Scary acording to Jay anyway. If you look on the very bottom of the picture you can kind of see part of a spider ring that is hooked to our "spider web". Jay thinks this is real, he will not look at it, will not touch it. He had quite the fit when I put it on to show him it was a toy and a ring. He thought it was going to bite my face and he grabbed it and tossed it to the floor. Apparently plastic spiders are dangerouse now too.

These are the spiders that we made. We even gave them all their own faces. Jay however is terrified of them and he thinks they are going to bite him, so he won't go anywhere near them. I have tried to explain that they are pretend,(and made out of paper) but he won't have any of it. so cross paper spiders off of your list of safe Halloween decor. Between the window spiders, and the plastic spiders on the piano, Jay won't hardly go in the living room nowadays. At least it will stay clean.

These are the tasty donuts I made for dessert. Can someone give me a shout-out for being so domestic please? All I can say is Y-U-M-M-Y! (Oh, and maybe a LITTLE BIT fattening.)

Keith and Heather's Wedding

We just got back last night from our trip to Portland for Keith and Heather's wedding. Keith is Kevin's younger brother and he married a girl from Oregon City. So it was nice to be able to go for the wedding and see my family for a short time as well. It was a VERY SHORT time. We got to Gresham on Thursday afternoon, Friday was spent with wedding activities, Saturday we hung out with my fam, (actually, Kevin went fishing with my cousin) and we drove the ENTIRE way home on Sunday. We are talking 12 hours in a car with little kids here people. They actually did fairly well. The biggest fight we had was over who got to use the "CARS" blanket. So I guess it could have been worse. I wish our visit could have been longer, but since this was a "bonus" trip to Oregon, meaning it was unplanned until a couple months ago, we are glad we got to go even for a little while. Usually with Kev's teaching and coaching schedule we only get to leave for the Holidays or over the summer. So we'll take it. Here are a few pictures from the night.

Tyler and Jay with the happy couple. Ignore Tyler's odd face and Jay playing with the bouquet.

The cake that I loved!

Us at the reception. Again, ignore the odd face from Jay, and REALLY ignore Kev's scary eyebrows.

They had fresh fruit, marshmallows and rice crispy treats with a chocoalte fountain. This is Tyler enjoying ALL OF IT.

And of course the couple during their dance, I love the back of her dress, it just looks so heavy.