Happy Birthday Craig (a couple weeks ago!)

See how nicely they play together!

Thanks Yaya for the peace jewelry! As you can see, "Peace Rocks!". If only everybody in the world agreed with Old Navy.

Cute hat Squof! (we call Sophie, "squofi" or "squof").

He's showing you how "freakish"ly esctatic he is! Wow! That IS freaky!

See! Look how happy he is with his new toy!!

How cute is this!!! After fighting tooth and nail for the past couple weeks it's nice to see some love!

EVERYBODY had fun on the carousel!

Who wouldn't want to go to the mall for their 33rd birthday???

Party appetizers! Check out Taylor's new specs! They're fashion specs, he thinks he wants glasses! Yaya is so indulgent of my children's crazy whims! (I'm pretty sure that's what grandparents are for!).

Check out this guys' name! We had some fun with it. Hope he wasn't listening from the dead and getting ready to hex us all!

We threw rocks in the river to console ourselves after getting turned away from the museum.

Taylor is going to be and astronaut when he grows up. Maybe he'll live in one of these!

Happy Birthday EGG!

Sophie came up with this on her own!!!

She takes after her Great Grandpa Howell. If anybody has a pic of him on his motorcycle doing this, I need it so that I can post it next to this!

A couple weeks ago (Labor Day weekend) we celebrated Craig's birthday. We were fortunate enough to convince Craig's parents AND Hailey, Steve, Jack and Griff into coming up to our house to celebrate the event! UNfortunately, it was cool and windy and rainy. No worries, I planned a trip to the Public Museum of Grand Rapids and even made sure it was open and checked on admission. Too bad for us, their power went out, and they even had a hand written note telling us, in no uncertain terms, that the museum would NOT open again even if they got power back up and running. Well, we had already promised the kids a carousel so we took poor Craig to the mall food court for his birthday. I still feel a tad guilty about this. But we had a great time. We rode the carousel and ate junky mall food court food (french fries, rootbeer floats, fried cheese curds and movie theater popcorn w/ the extra butter, all of this sounds even crazier as I type it out) and laughed ourselves silly and then went home to eat more food and even have birthday cake!

For those of you who contributed to the GPS THANK YOU!! He LOVES it!

Laura's french bread recipe

French Bread

2 pkgs of dry yeast (about 2 tablespoons)
1/2 c. water
2 c. hot water
3 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
5 tablespoon oil
6-8c. flour

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 c. water and let stand 10 minutes.

In large bowl combine 2 cup hot water, sugar, salt, oil and half of the flour. Mix well and add yeast and the rest of the flour (I start with 6 cups but always have to add more to get the correct consistency). Knead well. Let rise until double--about an hour.

Punch down and divide into two large parts or three smaller parts. Roll each into a 9x13 inch rectangle. Starting at a corner, roll into a loaf. Seal edges and put seam side down on a greased cookies sheet.

Let rise about 30 minutes and bake 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees.

Look!! You did it!! You made awesome homemade bread!! (Now send Laura an email and thank her for giving you your self-esteem back).

School Days

Taylor really likes riding the bus(Katie doesn't because it's too loud).

Katie at her new desk in her new classroom. Cute hair cut, huh? She wanted to get it cut short just "like mommy and Ramona".

Taylor at his new class room. People keep asking me if he's in "young 5's" a program they run for kids her turn 5 in the fall and just miss the kindergarten cut off. NOPE! His birthday is in March. He's just a shrimpet. Smart as a whip though!

Walking into the school on the first morning!

Katie got her Halloween costume last Monday! She has been so excited to get a poodle skirt! The glasses and scarf are so cute with her hair cut!

Last Tuesday was our kids' first day of school for the year. Taylor just started Kindergarten. I'm on the fence about how I feel about the schedule though. This school district is running every other day Kindergarten this year in order to accomodate the bus schedule. hmmm....who cares about education as long as the bus schedule doesn't get messed up, right? We'll see. Anyhow, Taylor is going to school on Tuesday, Thursday (8:35am-3:45pm) and Friday afternoon from 12:30-3:45. I kinda like that he and I still have some days together, but it doesn't seem like much time to be in school and it does seem like I've been waiting a LONG time for this kid to get into school and now that's been put off another year. It'll be nice that he'll be around to play with Sophie though.

Taylor likes Kindergarten alot and there are 9 other kids in our neighborhood in his class so he knows alot of the kids already and some other kids are from his preschool class last year.

Katie is going into 3rd grade this year. She has Mr. Williams. This is our first year with a man teacher. He seems very nice and organized. I'm anticipating it'll be a great year for her. She did lots of hard work over the summer to help with her Audio processing disorder and we're hoping that getting help in the resource room for math will allow her to keep up and have a wonderful time in 3rd grade.

I am experiencing some anxiety about flu season starting, homework,early bedtimes, and making lunches but I am hopeful that this year will be better than the schedule I was desperately trying to keep up with last spring.

Old Amy learned a new trick!

I made it into Garlic bread to go with our Spaghetti when the missionaries came over.

Sophie is asking for "just one more piece"!

It was really good fresh out of the oven with homemade raspberry freezer jam or local honey from the farmers market.

Looks good, huh? I made 2 of these huge loaves. Should I have brushed it with butter before letting it rise the second time or do you put and egg wash on it like pie crust??? Or a milk wash??

I finally successfully made bread. I know plenty of people who make bread on a very regular basis, but I always rush the rising process and end up with "unleavened" bread and have never been very happy about it. Last week I got up my courage to try it again. Laura gave me an easy recipe and I was actually able to make it happen!!! My next goal is Parker House Rolls. I hope eventually I get as good at making bread that it will come as naturally as it does for Laura and Rachael!! (I may just keep making pies and cookies).