snow

christmas

shots from around the house

fondue

I am a lover of a fondue party.
white chocolate with strawberries and marshmallows the kiddos favorite.
cheese pot with ham, crunchy bread, and apples.

appetizers anyone

happy feet party!
march of the penguins party!
carrots
olives
cream cheese
and
toothpick
Ender and Maya had a blast putting these together
after I had finished the prep work.
You drain and lay the olives out to dry
cut slices of carrot and cut a little wedge out of it
just large enough to fit in an olive as beck.
Roll out small balls of cream cheese.
cut a wedge out of second olive and stuff cream cheese in it.
have a rag handly to whip fingers on.
Get kiddos and have them stuff toothpicks through.

thanks to my friend Sara for fab appetizer idea.

Nutcracker

christmas time is near

Nativity Festival

Jared did these really great cutouts of the whole story of the

Nativity for me. This is black foam core so it was no easy task.
It works out fabulous being a designer married to a really great artist.

This is one of my booths for the church Nativity Festival.
I placed all the nativities in the beans.
It turned out how I had imagined it in my head so I was happy.

T.V. turkey dinners

Most every holiday I like to try some new craft,
or possibly a new food craft if you will this happened
to be one of my Thanskgiving "craft drugs of choice"
These are cupcakes decorated to look like a T.V.
Turkey dinner all out of sugary products.
I was pretty happy with how they turned out.
This is out of the Hello Cupcake book or the second book they wrote.

thanksgiving break

we had a really great day during break that we
spent with friends making stone soup and reading the
book. Girls are performing a skit for us above and
we did some really fun dancing. Thank goodness for friends.

Fall

It just feeds my soul to see Maya up on a horse.

Halloween

Grandma and Grandpa Read go all out with costumes.
Best costumes I have ever seen.

Ender (dementor), Grandpa, Grandma, Maya.
Funny thing about Enders costume is that he was
reading through the Harry Potter books and thought
it would be fun to be a dementor.
So I am at Joann's craft and see this mask totally
discounted and think perfect it looks just like a dementor to me.
Couple weeks later I am at the Red Box and I see a movie
cover with this mask on it and am like hey that is the
mask I got Ender. Well it turns out it is the Scream 4
movie and I have bought my 9 year old an adult horror
film mask. Of course by then Ender loves it so what can you do.

our very own little yodi

Oh!!! Yodi you're so cute
Oh Yodi
Oh Yodi
That is what I would always say to Maya in this costume
and she would just giggle and giggle.

Let the games begin

Slide Rock at Opal Creek

Last weekend as we hiked back to the car we saw people
sliding down this. We had done our fair share of adventuring for the day
so we went back yesterday to check it out.
The weather was perfect, super hot and muggy felt a lot
like a hike I once took along the Na Pali Coast in
Hawaii (let's go again Emily name the time and you know I am in)
so of course I was loving every minute of it.
The Earth is so beautiful.

I love flowers

Don't you just want to spend all your time planting flowers and watching them grow.

love lies bleeding

What a dramatic name for a flower.

swim

sprinkler dancing

check her out dancing in the picture below.
She was really just dancing with all the freedom you can imagine.

Mary's River

That is Ender up for the jump.
Jumping below.

What an amazing thing it is to be a mother.
To be responsible for little spirits.
You can only hope that you are cool enough for them.
How do you choose activities for them?
I have been so impressed with the amazing personalities of Ender and Maya.
Spending time with them this summer has been a pleasure for me.
I love to see how they respond to different people and situations.
Loves to them for helping me understand what life is really about.