Nate & The President are BFF's

So Nathan and George Dubbya are buds. Nathan sent a Flat Stanley to the White House and got back a letter and a couple of pictures. Nathan is way excited and feeling very proud that he has a letter signed by the President of the United States that is addressed to him.

killing 'em with cupcakes

We have eaten so many cupcakes and given quite a few away the last few days it's crazy. I am on a cupcake baking spree. I have purchased a few cupcake recipe books as well as cute cupcake boxes for packaging when delivering goodies to friends and neighbors.

Here are my latest cupcake creations...rootbeer cupcakes!

These were easy and were a big hit. Take a yellow cake mix and follow the directions on the box but replace the water with the same amount of rootbeer. Add 1/3 of a cup of smashed up rootbeer barrel candies to the mix and then put in muffin tins and bake as usual. For the frosting I used a basic frosting - powder sugar, butter and milk. I thought about using rootbeer instead of the milk but I was worried about an overpowering rootbeer flavor. Now that we've had them though I think I would try rootbeer in the frosting as well. On the top of the cupcake I added more crushed rootbeer barrels - Yummy!

My next cupcake creation was lemonade cupcakes. These were made by scratch and I don't have time to grab the recipe but I will add it to another post. These were yummy as well and I thought adding the lemon candy stick made them look cute - because you know all cupcakes should look cute.

a Snizzard?

I really shouldn't be taking time out of my day to post to the blog but my stress level is rising and I need to take a break from my long to do list for the day. So here are the latest happenings for the past few days.

The boys were out playing in the backyard the other day trying to catch lizards (that is a favorite activity at the moment) I went out to take a look at the little guy they were trying to catch and realized the thing wasn't so small and didn't look like the lizards we normally find in our yard. I ran inside got the camera and then stood on the wall in the backyard so the monster wouldn't charge me and swallow me whole.

Megan named our evil looking friend snizzard since he looks like a snake and a lizard. Derek googled "ugly, gross reptile that scares kids and wimpy moms" and we now think the little guy is an alligator lizard. All I know is that I hope he finds someone elses yard to take up residence in.

Good Times

Derek and the kids are getting close to performance time for our stake musical so Luke and I don't see them very much right now. They had rehearsals last night from 6-10:30. They headed back to the stake center this morning at 8am and are there until 6pm. Next week they have rehearsals or performances the whole week from 6pm until 10pm and then performances the following week as well.

Here are some rehearsal shots. I seem to miss the girls numbers every time I visit rehearsals so I have no shots of them. These aren't the best shots but you get the idea.Derek can totally out sing Sanjia (spelling?) Too bad he's too old to be the next American Idol Nate playing the part of the annoying little brother. How'd he get that part?

For those of you that are interested you can check out the website for the stake musical at http://missionviejostakegoodtimes.com/

For Denise's little sis

I love the website www.stupid.com it is exactly what it's name implies...stupid stuff you can buy over the internet. You never know when you might need bacon band aids or a bacon wallet. Or how about glowing rubber ducks? It's a great place to get the white elephant gift you've been looking for.

Anyway, my sister Lauren just recently got a job at a library - she is a huge book lover. I found these librarian tattoos at stupid.com and instantly thought of my sister. So here you go Lauren...tats for your wild days at the library.

Step away from the phone

Who is voting for him?

A few more cards

Here are a few more cards that I made. I love the elephant paper - who am I kidding, I just love paper. I was going to teach one or both of these cards at the class I'm doing but decided against it because of time restraints. I think these cards are a bit too involved for a class with a lot of people and not much time.

Since I'm not going to teach these at the class I have been trying to figure out who to send them to but am having a difficult time giving them up. I don't know why these two cards are hard to part with but for some reason they are.

If any of you should end up with this card in your mailbox please know that you are loved and that it was a huge sacrifice on my part :)

Oh Luke

Thought I'd update with some pictures of Luke. When this kid is happy he is the funniest little guy. He has got some dance moves that would put professionals to shame. He says things that are funny but are even more hilarious because they are being spoken by a 5 year old.

As I was looking for pictures of Luke to download I ran across this 2nd one and realized that although it doesn't show his face it sums him up well.

Luke can be full of drama, as evidenced by the multitude of band aids on his foot. His injury was not a 3+ band aid injury mind you but to him death was near. Last Friday night when we were dealing with Nathan and the ER Luke's comment was "I don't get any attention, everyone is concerned about Nate not me" He yelled this fact loudly because it was the only way for him to be heard over his excessive high volume crying. It's tough to be the baby in the family and not have all the attention directed towards you - poor little guy :)

I love that in this picture he is standing on a huge pile of crumbs. Luke makes a mess when he eats - always. This picture captures his eating habits so well. This is one of those things that when Megan and Emily were younger moms would say "enjoy the messes, they grow up too fast" I would roll my eyes, think that they don't understand and proceed to clean up the mess feeling tired and a bit angry. I still don't like the messes but I have learned to calm down and recognize that part of being a kid is making a mess while you eat.

The other thing one notices in the picture is the pull-up. I won't go into this with much detail but let's just say that Luke is the kid that is teaching mom and dad patience. We'll thank him one day for teaching us this lesson, right?

He's a good boy and we're glad that he's the little caboose in our family.

Wish we owned stock in styrofoam

It's time to play everyones favorite game...NAME THAT ELEMENT! Here is your picture clue...
Emily has been hard at work on her Atom model and presentation for science. She has had a lot on her plate with school and stake musical rehearsals (she has a few more projects due at school this month too) She is balancing it all really well but I'm sure she'll be thrilled when the her schedule eases up.

Economy Day Again?!?!

Nathan had another economy day at school. If you are unfamiliar with economy day you can check out our previous post regarding the big event. For those that read our blog you'll remember that Denise and Nate had the cinnamon roll fiasco preparing for the last economy day.

This time we decided to steer clear of homemade food and went for cheap plastic toys and suckers - what kid doesn't go for that? We created Nate Baker's amazing bag o' fun. Each bag had a sucker and one of the following games...mini (and we do mean mini) uno, rock 'em, sock 'em rings, or a wolly willy magnetic face thing-a-ma-jiggy. The bags nearly sold out and Nate only came home with 2 out of the 20 he went to school with.

The Birthday Celebration & Target Rocks

I love Target! I was shopping yesterday for some party goods for Derek's birthday dinner and I found this 4 foot birthday cake on sale for $10. It's one of those fan inflated things and it is now becoming one of our family traditions - to be used for everyone's birthday. I found these paper plates at Target and if I'm being completely honest they make me way happy, really they do! I love the graphic on them with all the bright colors. They make me smile. I wish I could figure out a way to use the few extras that we have. Maybe I can scan the plate and use the design for paper.
This picture cracks me up. I realize that it is not the best photograph but look at Derek's face - it's too funny. Too bad the cake doesn't look better. I blew it on the frosting but Derek being the good husband that he is didn't seem to mind.
We had a great time celebrating Derek's birthday last night. We're thankful for him!

Birthday Wishes!

Happy Birthday Derek

Happy 37th birthday to the best husband and daddy. We hope you have a great day and that all your birthday wishes come true.

Is there such a thing as ER lag?

So we spent Friday night in the ER and we seem to still be recovering from the endless hours spent sitting in the super sanitized, soothing green colored room. Why does it take so long to catch up on lost sleep?

Nate was home sick for 3 days last week but ended up back at school on Friday feeling much better. That night he and Derek went to stake musical rehearsals. I took Megan, Emily and Luke to the stake center to meet up with the boys with plans to go out to dinner after rehearsals.

To make a long story short Nate's ear started hurting and within a matter of minutes he was screaming - you know the type of screaming that makes it sound like you are ripping every limb off your child's body. I drove Nate home while Derek ran to the pharmacy for some ear drops. By the time Derek got home Nate was asleep and we thought for a brief, very brief, second all might be well. Nate woke up screaming again and we decided that from the noise he was making children's Tylenol wasn't going to cut it so we headed to the ER.

We spent 3 fun filled hours from 11pm-2am at the hospital only to spend 4 minutes with the doctor finding out that Nathan has pus blister/bubble thingies in his ears. After a dose of antibiotics and Tylenol with codeine we were on our way.

Nathan is doing much better and got a clean bill of health from his doctor yesterday at his follow-up visit. Now if we could just get caught up with sleep all would be right with the world.

Yes, I did take my camera into the emergency room - doesn't everyone?!?!

Hallmark

I (Denise) have been on a card making spree. Here are just a few of the cards I've done. I'm teaching a card making class for enrichment at the end of this month so I have been making a ton of cards trying to decide which ones to use for the class.

It has been nice to spend time creating. Before these cards I hadn't been spending much time being creative. I have enjoyed sitting down at my work area and playing with paper and colors. It's also been nice designing cards, creating them and then giving them to people. Giving them is the best part. I'll be glad when the class is over so that I can share the example cards with people.

Also on a creative note...my photography class starts next week. I am so excited. It will be nice to have all these creative outlets to pursue.

Tear Jerker

Denise and Emily spent the early part of Friday night at the movies. All the 5th graders from Em's school just finished reading Bridge to Terabithia so the teachers arranged an outing to see the movie. The theatre was full of way more kids then parents and Denise thought they might never quiet down for the movie (but they did) The movie was great and both Denise and Emily enjoyed it. Denise hadn't read the book since elementary school so she was not prepared for the story line and cried her fair share of tears. Em didn't cry but that might have been different had so many classmates not been there. If you haven't seen the movie yet it's worth the trip.

Denise's Favorite Boys

Of course Derek, Nathan and Luke are my favorite boys but for now we're talking American Idol. Her are my fav boys for this season (in no particular order)...

You have to love that Chris Richardson sang a Jason Mraz song last night and he lists Mraz as one of his favorite singers - Blake Lewis also lists Mraz as a favorite. I really like all 3 of these guys.

We'll see how the girls do tonight. I'm still not sure on who I like for the girls yet. I did think that Lakisha Jones "brought it dawg" last week. She was unbelievable. I am anxious to see how she does tonight.

So there you go...my deep thoughts on my television viewing.

Fighting the Dark Side

The kids had school off the Friday before President's Day and Derek happened to have the day off as well so we headed to Disneyland to enjoy the day at the park. It was kind of crowded so we did a few rides and then hit a bunch of shows that we would normally not take the time out of our day to see. Well, one show in particular was the highlight for Nathan - Jedi Training.

The show starts with the Jedi Masters picking about 15 "students" that seem to have the force with them. Nate was one of the students chosen and from that time forward he got super serious about the training. The first picture shows Nate working on the moves that the Jedi Master is teaching. His concentration was unbelievable (maybe it's all those scholarly attributes he is learning)
The highlight of the show however was when the training was interrupted by none other then Darth Vader. He brought along a few Storm Troopers as well as Darth Maul. The young Jedi trainees were encouraged to head over to the dark side but they all stood firm in their resolve to fight evil not join it (although if truth be told, Denise thought Nate might join Darth Vader) Each "student" was able to fight Vader or Darth Maul one on one and Nate took on DV without the least amount of fear - yeah Nathan!

We were sitting in a bad spot to get pictures of Nate fighting DV but rest assured that is him as a little padawan (is that the correct terminology? - Denise's brother will correct us if it's wrong) Denise also didn't have her new camera (didn't feel like lugging it around the parks) The minute Nate got chosen to participate in the show she was regretting her decision to not bring it.

We saw the show within the first hour of our day so you can only imagine how excited Nate was the rest of the day. He worked on his moves as we walked through the park and even began to teach Luke in the fine art of fighting evil with the force, as well as with a good light saber.

Another Commendable Cub

On Valentines Day Nathan received a Commendable Cub for the scholarly attribute of ponder. His teacher Miss Tomczik really stresses to the kids about the importance being a scholar so they are always working on acquiring scholarly attributes. Nate loves his teacher and wants to please her so he is becoming quite the scholar this year. Something to be said for the power of a good teacher. Congratulations to our little scholar!

Valentine Treats

So we're a little behind on posts, here is our update...

The night before Valentines Day we had an assembly line going so that we could put together the kid's valentines for school.

We assembled 80 valentines! Denise wishes that all the kids classes were 20 to 1 but no such luck, Em and Luke both have 30 kids in their classes so 80 valentines it is.

Each take out box had fortune cookies in it and a few other candies. The sticker on top said "It's my good fortune to have a friend like you. Happy Valentines Day. Love (insert name here). We are pleased with how they came out and the kids had a great time passing them out.

Here you go Derek

I got an amazing Valentines gift from Derek. A brand new camera. I'm so excited and can't wait to take some photography classes. Before Derek left for work today he said he expected to see some photos taken with the new camera up on the blog. Well, here you go Derek - some shots of Megan enjoying a Valentines treat. What do you think?