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.

Chocolate Pudding

Today I told Aspyn that we would go to Chick Fillet but we ended up eating at home. She was very sad so I told her that she could have chocolate pudding after she ate her lunch. These are some pictures of her and Sophy while they were eating.

Sophy will NOT let anyone feed her. She has always been a good eater but she has decided to become more independent lately. Pudding, however; is a different story for me because I knew that she would get it everywhere. Well, predictable Sophy she wouldn't eat it unless she could feed it to herself. Well, you reap the benefits because you don't have to be the one to clean up the mess but you do get to see the mess.