My Favorite Things

I loved watching Oprah's Favorite Things episodes. How fun that would have been to be in her audience and get all that cool stuff! I'm in love with a few things right now so I thought I'd share what a few of my favorite things are.

These are mini scoop spatulas from Williams Sonoma. My Mom was given one as a gift from a friend and since I used hers it was love at first use. :) They come in groups of 4 and are a little spendy at $18, but totally worth it! I have 2 of them and use them multiple times each day. I use them for getting peanut butter out, getting soup out of cans, getting shortening out of measuring cups, scraping small jars clean, etc.

I have had this mini whipper from Pampered Chef for several years now. I used it so much that I ended up getting another one so I can have 2 of them. I use them for whipping up some eggs, stirring chocolate breakfast drinks, making sauces, etc. And it's nice because the bottom is flat and gets the food at the bottom of the bowl. It's only $4- what a steal!

I buy my Clorox wipes from Costco so they look like this. haha! I use them every week for cleaning the bathroom floors and use them on door handles, stairway rails and anything else that needs disinfecting. It's proven that all those new natural products don't kill all the bacteria so I love using these knowing I'm actually killing something! And with the latest coupon booklet from Costco I saved a couple bucks on mine.

I LOVE our Ipad2! I'm so glad I talked and begged Kyle into letting us get one. We use it all the time for surfing the internet, checking email, checking facebook, playing games, checking the news, using it for Church videos and more. It's amazing!

These are Tweezerman tweezers and they are wonderous. I have had mine for years. Marci convinced me to spend $ on buying a nice pair of tweezers and I'm so glad I did. It's well worth it considering how often you use them!

My mirror looks almost just like this one. It has a light which is a must and is magnified a "million" times on one side. I use the magnified side to put on my mascara and put my tweezers to good use. I got mine at Walmart for $30ish and it's well worth it.

This is a new perfume for me introduced to me by Marci. Kyle got it for me for Christmas and I love smelling like something (compared to my other perfume I had for a while that I couldn't tell I was wearing!). I get excited to put it on each day knowing I can actually smell myself. And if anything, the name is fun. :)

What are your favorite things?!

In With the New!

In October 2010 an arsonist (still not caught) set our Church building on fire destroying the entire structure. It was sad. We knew we would rebuild and things would be fine, but it was sad that someone would do that and sad for people that had memories with that building. The community was very nice and offered places for us to meet while we rebuilt, if needed. In the meantime, our ward met in the Stake Center with 3 other wards that were already there and the other ward we used to share the building with met in a different Church building in a different stake. Well about 15 mo's later we moved into our new Church building and needless to say, we were all very excited! It's nice having a new building, but it's even better to have 9am church again! We had 12:30 and 1:30pm church for over 2 years. Yikes!

Here's some pictures of the building after the fire.

On Saturday, we had the ribbon cutting ceremony followed by the open house. Then on Sunday night, we had the dedication. The Church is bigger, has more rooms, but the rooms are smaller. The gym is smaller too. The wood is dark and the upholstery is a dark, paisley blue. Very pretty.

Sledding Time

During our winter storm last week, we headed over to Kate's school to go sledding down some hills. Some friends came with us and this time around (we went a couple days earlier too) the kids didn't last nearly as long. School was cancelled all week so we had to get out a few times. Thank goodness for four wheel drive and it was actually fun driving in the fresh snow.

Darbi was pulling Lindsey on the sled and she laid down like this and then stuck her tongue out. So funny!

Kate loving the snow and sledding. Preston did okay at first, but wanted to go home not long after we were there. We got to listen to him whine/cry for a long time. ugh.

Ready or Not

Surprise!!!! Baby #4 is on HER way! We found out this morning we are having a girl! I am due June 16th. We are excited (nervous) and decided to keep it a secret until we found out what we were having- just for fun, why not, especially it being our fourth kid. I was really nervous to tell people, but excited to be able to finally talk about it. I've been waiting a long time to tell and wanted to tell my family SO bad at times! We were kinda hoping for another boy, but happy everything looked good on the ultrasound, I was nervous. Good thing I like my sisters, I will have fun with my girls. :) I felt a little more nauseous at the beginning of this pregnancy than I did with the others. Now I feel good. Clothes are getting tighter so I need to pull those maternity jeans out soon. I'm almost 19 weeks and due only 10 days after my sister-in-law, Sadie, (she's having a boy) and we were due a week apart with our girls, Lindsey and Reagan. Crazy we are due close together again! Fun times for cousins.

And it Finally Snowed

We have had some snow this last weekend and today it hasn't stopped snowing. There's some big storm that's supposed to come through tonight so we should be getting even more. It's fun to get snow, but then school gets cancelled and when that happens too much then it's not a good thing! Kate has been checking the weather on the iPod to see when it will snow so she was super excited when the snow came on Saturday because according to her weather report it wasn't supposed to snow until today!

Kyle helped Kate build a snowman with the little bit of snow we got on Saturday. Preston did not want to go outside AT ALL. He kept opening the front to door to check on us, but he would say "no way!" when we asked him if he wanted to come out.

Going on the sled. Lindsey loved the snow and was up for doing anything. Our neighbors have 2 Siberian husky dogs that they hooked up to a sled and was pulling the kids around.

Today, school was cancelled so this morning we had pretend school (Kate did some homework while I helped Preston cut, write his letters, match items and sort/count legos- I wouldn't want to do homeschooling!), we had story time, snack time then recess. :) It has been snowing non stop so we bundled up (even Preston, I forced him) and we went over to Kate's school to go sledding. They have a hill that's perfect for it. Preston actually loved it and had fun. Lindsey's hands got really cold toward the end so after an hour and a half we went home for lunch. They were even going down all the slides on the playground. It was fun. Kati and her kids met us there to play.

Lindsey wants to dress up when she sees Kate playing dress up. Well, Kate helped her get dressed and put the leotard on backwards, very revealing! It was pretty funny.

My Name is...

Preston wrote his name for the first time (at least that I've seen, unless he's written it at school)! I was so excited for him and he was pretty excited too, probably because I made a big deal about it. ;) His is the 3rd line down. I helped him with the 2nd line. Poor kid has such a long name to write too!

What's for Dinner?!

I was feeling adventurous and tried some new recipes last week for dinner. One night I made Sweet and Spicy Bacon Chicken (recipe and picture off of pinterest), twice baked potatoes and oven roasted green beans. I was excited for my new meal, but the only other person who liked the chicken was Kate. So that was a no go. I thought it was rather tasty.

Then the next night I made Chicken Tetrazinni, which is a recipe from my friend, Kati. Her family loves it and I've eaten it at her place before so I thought since it was pasta it would be a safe bet. Well, it wasn't too bad. The kids ate it okay except they didn't like the crunchy part (you bake it in the oven). So that's a maybe for the future.

Then another night I made chicken enchiladas with a green chili sour cream sauce (recipe and picture off of pinterest). It was pretty tasty, but a little too saucy for me (and I even like saucy stuff). I wish it had a little more kick to it.

And then because I was craving cinnamon rolls, I made these vanilla pudding cinnamon rolls (you guessed it! recipe and picture off of pinterest! :)) and they were amazing! We loved them. I shared a bunch of them with my friend and she loved them as well. I will definitely make them again.

I bought some whole chickens from Costco, they come in a 2 pack and aren't that big. So one night we had roasted chicken, mashed potatoes with yummy chicken gravy and green beans. That was a good home cooked meal after a LONG stressful day.

Some weeks I have a hard time deciding what to make for dinner (I try to make a list of 8 or so ideas and go off of that for a couple weeks) and then other weeks I am dreading dinner time because I don't know what to make! What to make that all my kids will eat- that's the big issue.

Happy Cooking and Baking (my fave)!

Doll Party

Kate and her friends all came up with birth dates for their dolls and Kate chose one in January. She insisted we should have a birthday party for her doll. So I caved and had one for her. :) I made cupcakes- big and small, got a balloon and tried to make it somewhat festive. The girls brought their dolls and we sang happy birthday to Kate's doll, Kaley. I made little party hats for their dolls too (found the pattern on pinterest).

Kaley getting sung too. ;) Kate even wrapped some gifts for her doll.

New Things

I made pretzels a couple weeks ago for the first time and they were yummy. They are sitting on my new cake stand I got from my parent's. :) I had seen a friend on facebook make the pretzels and just used her recipe.

Kate was watching a show and made some popcorn, but made sure to get a small bowl of popcorn for her new doll. She includes her doll in a lot more stuff.

Today, I had put the gate up to keep Lindsey out of the kitchen and office and she was jabbering off and on when all of a sudden it got super quiet. I went to check on her and found her asleep on the floor!!! She never does that! It was cute, but I woke her up a few minutes later for lunch and then put her down for a real nap.