Crafts for Christmas

Aspyn has told me on a number of occasions that she wants to go to school.  For this purpose I have started doing more crafts with her and have tried to teach her things that I think a preschool would teach. 

  Well last week while I was putting up Christmas decorations I found this.  It was a craft that was left over from the Westbrook 6th Ward Christmas party last year.  Of course I didn't put it together so I thought that now would be a great time to have some mommy time with Aspyn while Sophy was sleeping.  She loved it!  It surprised me how much she loved it so we made a wreath too! 

  I had to glue on the pieces with a hot glue gun so I had her stick the pieces onto the felt.  I am learning that I have become somewhat of a perfectionist in some aspects.  I guess having kids has taught me that.  Well, I have to admit that when she put a piece on the felt I had to fix it so it wasn't sideways or whatever way Aspyn put it on.  I am going to have to work on that.  So when we made the wreath together it wasn't "perfect."  It was really fun just watching her have fun and watching her learn.  She was so excited for Aaron to get home from work so she could show him what we did together.

  I realized that when we were putting together the nativity scene that she didn't know the story.  I know that she has heard it before but it was when she was younger so she didn't remember.  What a fun experience/memory I now have of this teaching moment.  Well, when she showed Sophy she told her the story.  How AWESOME!  Now they both want to play with baby Jesus.

  Since Aspyn loved putting this together we went to the store to buy more.  Yeah for inexpensive crafts.   Will I keep this or chuck it in years to come I am not sure but I do know that it has created a cool memory in my mind and heart. 

Sleeping Angels

A couple of weeks ago Aaron walked in and saw Aspyn sleeping like this.  He told me to come in and see so I took a picture of it.  Then a couple of days latter I walked in and saw Sophy sleeping like this.  They are so dang cute!

These are the BEST moments of having kids.  They look so peaceful and it shows how fun kids are.

Halloween Trunk or Treat

In years past we have had the Trunk or Treat inside the church.  This year was the first year that we actually had it outside.  Why you ask?  My guess is that it is much warmer in Texas during Halloween then in Utah.

Aspyn is a Witch and Sophy is a Fall Fairy.  I had so much fun doing their hair and getting them dressed up in their costumes.  Having girls is so much fun!!!

I could not get Aspyn to look at the camera.  She was constantly looking at
Sophy.  The picture above is of Aspyn and Porter.  He is from Utah as well.  He and Aspyn are fast friends.

Banana Bread

I had two bananas that were brown.  You know what that means?!  Yes, time to make banana bread.

Before

My cute Aspyn wanted to help me and since I wish that I spent more time learning how to cook when I was younger I thought that it would be okay to let her help me.  She is great at dumping in the flour and other ingredients.  She loves cooking and helping.  My favorite thing is after we put whatever we are baking into the oven, she flips the light on and says she wants to watch it grow. 

During

Here is the recipe if anyone wants it.  I got it out of a recipe book that my mom got us girls. 

After

1 3/4 cp. flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cp. shortening
1 cp. sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cp. nuts
Bananas

Set oven to 350 degrees

Mix flour, soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.  In separate bowl, cream sugar and shortening; add eggs.  Add bananas and dry ingredients alternately to creamed mixture.  Mix well; add nuts. Pour into floured and greased pan.  Bake for 60 minutes.

I do not like nuts so I don't ever add them but I do love chocolate so I add semi sweet chocolate chips.  I don't do it all the time but sometimes when I feel like I want to eat a little bit of chocolate.  It tastes so good when it is cold outside.  It makes me feel all warm inside.  















 

Ring around the Rosies

This is a movie clip of Aspyn trying to get Sophy to do Ring around the Rosies.  They don't start dancing until the end. 

This other movie is one of Aaron playing with Sophy and tossing her up in the air.  I don't know if you can hear her but she is saying "Again".

Carving More Pumpkins at the Lindsey's

I think that because we haven't carved pumpkins for five years now our due diligence was up.  We were invited by our dear friends the Lindsey's to go and carve pumpkins and make caramel apples.  It was so much fun!  It was the first time that all of us decorated apples like that.  We sat around carving the pumpkins while talking about how each couple met.  It is great listening to other peoples love stories and hearing our's again.

Mike and Camille Lindsey

Jonathan and Tasha Biesinger

Steve and Tacee Barney

So Yummy!

 The kids played games and watched a movie.  They were also dressed up in their costumes.  Kids make Halloween so much fun!

Ellie Biesinger as a pirate.  So cute.

This pumpkin is a haunted house.

Carving Pumpkins

I have a confession to make.  Since Aaron and I have been married we have not done pumpkins.  Not even in years past when we had kids.  The excuse always was, Oh, our kids are not old enough.  That chapter has ended and we can now say we have carved pumpkins! 

Aspyn thought that they were yucky to feel.  She did taste it and did not like it.  Sophy couldn't keep her hands out of the pumpkins.  She loved the stringy ewy gooieness of it all.  She even ate it and liked it!  There is a picture of the pumpkin on her face.

My pumpkin died after two days of being outside even before we started.  That is okay because I got to do the other pumpkins and Aaron said that he would share his with me.  Aspyn wanted a regular pumpkin face and we did a silly face for Sophy's.  Aaron did a scary face.  We put the pumpkins outside and after three days they were grouse.  We have learned that pumpkins do not last long in El Paso.  At least we have the memories!

In Memory of Grandma Helen

Every fall growing up my mothers mother would buy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I was missing her and so I decided that I would look up a recipe and make the cookies.  So here are a couple of pictues of the cookies.  You can see the before they go into the oven and the after they come out.  They are cake like cookies and oh so good.  The kitchen and house for that matter smell fantastic.  I love you Grandma and thanks for getting me hooked on these cookies!

In case any of you want the recipe here it is:

Heat oven to 365 degrees

1 cp. canned pumpkin
1 cp. white sugar (some of the reviews said that they used brown sugar instead)
1/2 cp. veg. oil (again you can use applesauce if you want)
1 egg
1 Tbsp. vanilla
2 cps. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. milk
3 drops red food coloring
2 cps. chocolate chips (some people used white chocolate)

Combine pumpkin, sugar, veg. oil, egg, and food coloring.
In seperate bowl stir together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.  Disolve the milk and baking soda and stir in.  Add to the dry ingredients.
Mix dry ingredients to the wet ingredients a little at a time.  
Once mixed add chocolate chips. 

Put in 365 degree oven and bake for 10 minutes. Each oven is different so do whatever works for your oven. You may have to experiment a little.  Also pull the cookies off the cookie sheet right when you pull them out of the oven.  I found this was easier to get them off the cookie sheet.  Again do what works for you.

I put in white chips and semi sweet chips.  I had a few white chips left over from a previous batch so I just threw those in.  

I also had a little help from a little person.  She loves helping me make cookies or is it that she loves eating the dough/cookies?

Air Show at Fort Bliss

This past weekend El Paso had an Air Show.  It was so much fun!  We went with another family that moved from Utah to El Paso for work.  The Biesingers are becoming our fast friends.  It is always so much fun with them.  They have three daughters and their girls are wonderful with our two girls.  It is nice having someone there to constantly watch and play with them.  Their oldest daughter was back in Utah for the Air Show so she wasn't there. 

In a couple of the pictures you can see two of the seven people that jumped out of the air plane.  They had some sort of smoke thing attached to them so you could see where they were.  The girls had a blast and so did we.  Later that night we went over to their place and had a barbecue and played games.  Yea for friends!!!

Buchanan Family Reunion

For the past four years I have been going to the Buchanan Family Reunion.  I must say that my type of camping is with a bed, a shower, and flush able toilets.  It was so much fun.  We were in charge of it this year so we went up to my parents cabin.  I love going up there because it makes me think of the two families that I love the most being able to have memories in one place.  I don't know if that makes any sense.  Anyway, the cabin is the place where Aaron and I were able to create memories when we were friends, then dating, then when I decided that he was the one that I wanted to marry.  I love the cabin!  So I love it when we have the opportunity to be with our families up there.  So many fun memories come to my mind. 

Well, this past year we went to Smith and Morehouse reservoir.  We took pictures of the families spending time together.  The dad's took the kids into the water and us mothers stayed on the shore watching the fun and had fun chatting.  I love being a Buchanan and feeling like I came from an amazing family and joined another one. 

Us women made flower hair clips thanks to Charla.  She is so crafty and she was so nice to bring them up and teach us.  THANK YOU Charla!!! 

What would we do without Uncle Marky?

The only bad thing about the reunion is that it seemed empty.  We didn't have Uncle Adam (Elder Buchanan) and Jon and Sarah's Family.  You were all sorely missed!  

She is so cute!

For those of you who don't know, this is Quinn!

Halle enters everyone's heart full force

Us women!

Aspyn misses Pieper

Preview of Halloween Costumes

This year for Halloween I asked Aspyn what she wanted to be for Halloween. She changed her mind a few times as expected but she kept going back to the idea of being a witch.

Sophy was voted to be a fall fairy. We got both of their costumes at Peekaboo Bowtique. I could not be more pleased with how adorable the costumes are! They were wonderful to work with and I am so excited to get them dressed up for Halloween.

It was so fun to see Aspyn get so excited to get her costume. The day that it arrived I told her that the mail man may or may not bring her costume today. Well, we happened to look outside the front window when we saw the mail man pull up to the mailbox. I told her that if he pulled out a box then he had her costume. Well, he did and she jumped off the couch and ran to the front door and had to wait for me to open it. She was so excited she ran outside and told the mail man, who was walking up to the gate, "Thank you, oh, thank you so much!" It was so cute to hear. She just kept telling him that over and over again. Well, he started laughing so I thought that I would explain to him that her and her sisters Halloween costumes were in the box. He laughed some more and gave us the box then we thanked him one more time. We went inside and I just couldn't get the box opened fast enough for her. As soon as I pulled out the dresses she had to try it on and she told me that Sophy wants to put her's on too. So as soon as the dresses were on Aspyn grabbed Sophy's hands and they started dancing. Such fun memories. It was so cute. I just thought that I had to share! I am sure that there are other families with similar stories. Kids sure do bring out the fun in life!

I know that a few parents out there do NOT like Halloween and for very valid reasons. Some don't like all of the candy (i.e. hyper children) and others don't like it because of all of the scary/sleazy costumes as well as the cost of either buying or making costumes. I do not like Halloween for those reasons either. Recently I have chosen to think of Halloween as something that I do not dread but to look at it as a time that we get to choose to be something else.

I was at a parable of the princesses devotional and one of the speakers said something that struck my mind and I haven't been able to forget about it since. She stated, "How many of you know a child who loves dressing up?" I thought I know lots. Mainly thinking about my nieces and nephews ( I have 34 counting both sides). "Why do they dress up?" Then she continued to explain that all of us were born with something inside of us knowing and wanting to be those super hero's or princesses.

This is the reason why I have chosen to look at Halloween as something inside of my children and tune into my inner self wanting to be something better, something more, something that I knew I was put on this earth to be and that is to be the best me that I can be.