This Thanksgiving

While driving to Stillwater to spend Thanksgiving with my family, we overheard the following conversation from our kids:

Samuel: "Look horses!"
Lillian: "Yah Samuel, we can be cowboys!"
Samuel: "But we don't have cowboy clothes."
Lillian: "Oh."
Samuel: "But I have a blue dinosaur costume."
Lillian: "Yah, and I have a butterfly costume, Samuel." 

And this epitomizes what I'm grateful for this year most of all: my children.  I love taking time and listening to their conversations which only make sense to them.  I've learned to take a step back and appreciate their logic, humor, and curiosity.  Like last night when I found them playing under Lillian's bed with all of their blankets and when I asked what they were doing I was told by Samuel "To just walk away Mommy." 

Samuel loves to make me laugh and not just in a "oh Mommy found that funny I'll do it again" way, but I'm rather convinced he comes up with things he thinks will make me laugh.  And when I do respond with real laughter his little face lights up and he gives me a hug.  I believe he takes after his Dad, both make it a goal to make me laugh once a day and it works.  I mean who wouldn't laugh between Carlin's "old man pants dance" and Samuel's "bum-bum dance."  (In which he holds one hand in the air while the other one holds his bum and he bounces it up and down.... don't ask, cuz I have no idea).

Lillian literally sings and dances her way through life and I love sharing in her enthusiasm and imagination as she scares monsters and ghosts away for me.  She is truly a ray of sunshine with her curly blonde hair and big blue eyes.  She loves being included especially when cooking and I'm happy to share it with her. 

Yes, this season I'm grateful for my children.  And while we have our ornery moments and our bad days, most of the time if I just take a step back and listen I find two children who are completely amazed by the world around them. 

Thank you Samuel for squishing spiders for me.  Thank you Lillian for always knowing when I need a good cuddle.  And thank you to both of you for fighting over my lap and begging for one more book at night.  It might be a stalling tactic, but it also might be that you just love to read.  

Happy Happy Halloween

As Samuel says. 

We had so much fun celebrating Halloween and we didn't wait till October 31 to start. 

We made Spooky Trail Mix (complete with ghost droppings and witches broomsticks), Mummy Hot Dogs, Creepy Rice Krispie Treats, Jack-o-Lantern Quesadillas and Mouths the days leading up to Halloween.

We also decorated the house and made pictures and played pumpkin games.

We couldn't go without making some Jack-o-Lanterns.  I carved the kids pumpkins via their instructions and cheering and was done after that, hence only three pumpkins this year.  I'll let you guess which one was Carlin's... 

And then it was the much anticipated day of Halloween! 

We had chili, cornbread, junk food, and oatmeal pumpkin cookies that I tried to make into oatmeal cream pies using marshmallow fluff...

Trust me - they are oh so delicious and moist!

Then we were invaded by a blue dinosaur.

And it was very important he was a BLUE dinosaur.

And the cutest butterfly I've ever beheld!

As with most butterflies, they are constantly in motion and it is hard to capture them on camera, especially your phone camera.

It was everything Halloween is supposed to be and I woke up suffering a sugar-hang-over.  The kids however wasted no time getting into their candy and have been bouncing off the walls since...

Lilly-girl

Pretty sure Lillian is going to be one of those girls who wears skirts, does her hair and wears commando boots. 

Yes, she's that awesome.

Oh and crafts...

Identity Crisis

Sometimes being a Mom makes one lose their identity. At least it makes one feel like that sometimes. 

Especially when Dora is in the background shouting something that sounds eerily like my name with a Spanish accent: "Aubray!  Aubray!" 

Halloween

I have a love-hate relationship with Halloween.

See, I LOVE it.  I love the candy, the costumes, the decorations (cute ones, not creepy ones, but I can appreciate the creepy ones), the good food and did I mention the costumes?

But I have to be original and creative in my costuming and never under any circumstances may I BUY a costume.  Kind of snobby that way.  Doesn't help I married someone whose favorite holiday is Halloween.

Every year I try to come up with something creative for not only myself and husband but also kids.  They are getting to the age where they just want to be a princess and dinosaur, but I still have to find something for Carlin and I.  (It's a lot of pressure people, hence the love-hate relationship).

While I try to think of something creative, I looked back on Halloweens past.  Here is one of my favorites, I believe we were engaged at this point... or maybe first year married.  May I introduce the scooby gang:

Yep, that's KeLei at age 12 or whatever.  Hahaha!

And I thought I would enter this contest at the Dating Divas.

So, my dear friends, family and readers (assuming I have readers who have no relation to me except through my blog... and that's a pretty big assumption), I ask that you vote for me starting October 16.

Until then, I might be stealing some ideas from other contestants, because some of those costumes are pretty good...

Awards...

My dear friend Whitney nominated for me an award - or did she just give me an award?  Because technically nominations just mean I'm a candidate for the award.

So, it's called the Liebster award.



And there's a million steps I'm supposed to do for it, so I'll just plunge in:

11 things about myself:

1.  I actually don't like these award thingys.  It feels insincere when you're supposed to tag 20 other bloggers or something crazy.  It's kind of like those annoying emails that you're supposed to forward to 20 people and then you suddenly realize you don't have 20 friends to forward things to and so you just get depressed.

2.  That being said, I would feel left out and hurt if I didn't get nominated/included on at least one or two a year.

3.  Also, I'm doing this mainly because it's from my best friend Whit, and I'm bored and too lazy to come up with an actual post.  Hahaha.  (So, what this has to do about myself:  I'm a bit of a pleaser when it comes to people I love and I'm also really lazy).  :)

4.  I've recently taken up running and really enjoy it.  Except I seem to be attracted to the "weird" races like the Warrior Dash (a mud race), the Color Me Rad race, and most recently I would love to do the Zombie races in October!

5.   I'm a bit of a health-freak.  My family always complains that I don't have junk food in my house when they come over.  One of our friends recently informed me that Lucky Charms isn't a true sugary cereal, it's a wanna-be.  Darn.

6.  I love to cook and bake.  I might not have Twinkies and other disgusting pre-packaged, processed foods lying around my house, but I'll make Banana Chiffon cake, cookies, and cinnamon rolls in a heartbeat.  Mmmm.

7.  People always wonder how I can possibly read so many books.  They always say they don't have time to read.  Well, it's pretty easy to find time when you don't clean, do crafts, or really anything extra in your life.  Just the basics.

8.  That being said, I do love my children and they are some of the only people I will put my books down for so we can go to the park or even better, the library.  :)  They just crack me up and I'm always amazed at how they went from being helpless little infants to these little people with personalities, running and jumping and getting into all kinds of mischief.

9.  I'm a hopeless romantic.  I get lost in romantic movies, stories, and live vicariously through fictional characters.  However, whenever my husband tries to be romantic and say some line from some movie or something I crack up laughing - because when you take those lines outside of the context and put them in real life they're just cheesy.  No way around it.

10.  Whenever I go out for alone time I end up at the library (if I have no money) or Barnes & Noble (if I do have money, because then I can buy a cookie or something while browsing books and most likely talk myself into bringing home a new book).  Carlin knows not to expect me home till closing time.  He also knows that I'll come home with a new book to read, even if I have a stack of books currently sitting by my bed waiting to be read.

11.  There are times when I'm doing something mundane like the dishes, the kids are playing in the backyard and Carlin is working on something on the house and I suddenly feel completely content because no matter how much I wanted to be swept off my feet and married to some rich prince when I was younger, when I really thought about what I pictured my future to be, it was this.  Just living my life with the people I love.

Okay, now if you haven't had enough of me yet, you get to read my answers to Whitney's questions:

1.  Favorite candy? (you knew it was coming)  Gummy Sweet-tarts and M&Ms.  I'm both fruity and chocolate-y.

2.  What's one thing you'd change about yourself?  Nothing because I'm awesome!  Haha.  Honestly, I would love to be more patient, especially with my family.

3.  To cuff pants or not to cuff pants?  That is the question.  I am not even sure what you mean by this Whit...  I don't cuff my pants.  I think...

4.  Favorite type of crafting?  Hahahaha - oh you're serious.  Okay, I'll admit I actually really like to make wreaths and am currently looking for cute spring and summer wreaths to make, so I'm open for any ideas. 

5.  The best book you've read recently?  Oh, that's a hard one.  I'll have to go with "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer.  It's definitely now on my top 10 all-time favorite reads. 

6.  Favorite way to unwind at the end of the day?  Watching TV - bet everyone thought I was going to say reading, huh?  I do read before bed, but in order to unwind I usually curl up with Carlin on the couch and watch something mindless or play video games with him. 

7.  How did you meet your husband?  At institute, we were trying to keep him from running home every weekend so the powers-that-be called him as my assistant to help with a thing on campus we were arranging.  Found out later that it wasn't purely coincidental, apparently they thought I would be interested in him.  Which makes me wonder about the two other guys I had to work with before Carlin... apparently some people were trying to set me up...

8.  Hot cocoa or hot apple cider?  Hot Cocoa hands down.

9.  Do you hang-dry your shirts or dryer-dry them? (odd question, I know, but I'm kind of OCD about my laundry)  Dryer-dry unless it specifically says to hang-dry.  I am SUPER lazy when it comes to laundry.

10.  Biggest pet peeve?  People who suck the mucus into the back of their throats - sniffling.  Just blow your nose already!

11.  Favorite holiday?  Christmas, although I love Fall (but it's not really a holiday is it?).  I just love the decorations, the colder weather, the music, the good food, and the fact that Carlin gets a week paid holiday.  :)

So, I think that does it.  I'm too lazy to come up with some questions so just use the questions Whitney gave me.  As for nominees - anyone can do it.  I'll pick on my Mom and Nichole.  I know, I'm supposed to come up with 11 people (who chose 11 anyway?  My Monk-side is coming out, couldn't we just drop it to an even 10?).  But I'm kind of done with this post for now.  So, Mom and Nichole - go for it!

It all started, when one day...

I decided to make pasta from scratch.  I had recently stolen - I mean, borrowed, my Grandma's pasta attachment to my Kitchen Aid Mixer and was dying to try my hand at homemade pasta.

So, I got out the flour, salt and eggs and started mixing.  Except that I was one egg short of the recipe I was using and the dough wasn't coming together, it was just really dry and in little chunks.  However, undaunted, I simply added water.  Now I had a rather stiff, chunky mix of flour and eggs.  My kneading wasn't making the dough "soft and smooth." 

But, I wasn't to be stopped so easily.  Oh no, I was making pasta that night no matter what.  I decided I would just run the dough through the roller attachment and see what happened.  Except I didn't have instructions on how to attach said roller.  That's alright, I'm pretty good at figuring things out on my own.  After a little bit of critical thinking I had the attachment on my stand mixer and was ready to insert my dough. 

The dough was tough, I apparently did not have the attachment on correctly and the whole thing (attachment and dough) started flipping itself in circles with the dough making a smacking noise.  My kids started laughing hysterically.  My own personal cheerleaders.

Finally I figured out the attachment was locked into place.  So, I locked and started shoving my dough through the roller.  It came out looking like this:

Yeaahhh....  However, I was going to have pasta no matter what, so I thought I would just skip the rolling out process and run it straight through the spaghetti cutter.  In case you were ever wondering if this is acceptable, it's not.  In fact, it's a very, very bad idea.  I'm just lucky I didn't break anything. 

Now what?  My kids were still laughing and cheering me on (so, I thought) and I really wanted to have homemade pasta that night.  I stood there thinking for a moment casually gathering up all the scraps of dough when I realized the dough was a lot softer.  All the work I had put it through had softened it quite a bit.  I ran it through the roller one more time and got something that resembled the soft, flat sheets that was in the picture, if one used their imagination greatly...  I then ran the sheets through the spaghetti cutter and voila - I had something that resembled spaghetti!

Yay me!  I turned around to proudly show my children what a little bit of determination and hard work can do when I found this...

Apparently the laughing and cheering was not for me after all... Water was EVERYWHERE. 

At this exact moment a rather over-zealous splash sent water flying into my vicinity of the kitchen.  Now I was covered in water, the stove was covered in water, even the dining room table was covered in water.  I figured there was nothing to be done right now, the kids were soaked, the floor was soaked, might as well keep making dinner.

I started to boil the water on the stove.  Barely a minute after turning on the burner my GAS stove became possessed.  It tried to light itself.  The clicking got louder and louder as I frantically tried turning off burners that weren't even on in the first place.  I suddenly had an image of a fireball erupting from the kitchen and made a quick decision.  We must evacuate.  It is a GAS stove after all.

I shoved the kids out the front door while calling Carlin and flipping breakers trying desperately for the ticking noise to stop.   Finally I got the ticking noise to stop and decided we would wait for Carlin to get home outside playing in a box.

After all this one would think I should have given up.  That it was fate, something telling me to not make pasta that night.  But Carlin unplugged the stove, we started it manually with a lighter and were soon eating homemade pasta with canned spaghetti sauce (I did have to stop somewhere, obviously fresh sauce was out of the question).  It was delicious.

We later found out that the water from the splashing had caused the lighter on the stove to short-circuit, hence the ticking noise.  A few hours of drying and our stove and oven were back in business.