Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Cute Kids



Torry's sister, Stephanie, got married a couple days before Christmas. Unfortunatly, it was so cold and windy, we weren't able to get many pictures. But the kids looked so cute in these outside the temple, that I just had to post them.

Meeting Santa Claus



So, this year it's been really fun because it is the first year that Elaina "gets" Santa Claus. I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her and she said "colors" - meaning the bath tablets you put in the bath water to color it. I thought that was a doable request. I asked her if she wanted to see Santa and she said "yes" Well, when we finally got to see him, she was so sacred, she looked like she was trying not to cry. Santa had to lure her close with a candy cane - and there was definetly no requesting of presents. Poor thing. I was reminded of "A Christmas Story" when he finally meets Santa. Maybe she'll be more brave next year. Camden sure liked him though.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Stephanie's Wedding Cake





So I found another outlet for my creativity. I really like the magnitude of the project of decorating a wedding cake - and there is something oddly satisfying that soon after you are done finishing this very expensive, very time consuming piece of art - you cut it up into a bunch of tiny pieces and people eat it. I don't think I have the energy to do this very often though - even with my mother-in-law baking the cake, and making the fondant and frosting in advance, it still took 13 hours the day before the wedding to decorate. Yeh - not - very - often. Still fun for once and awhile.

Friday, November 07, 2008

I've been tagged

I've never done a tag before because I have a hard time thinking of these kind of things, but I enjoy reading other people's lists so much, I thought I'd give it a shot. So here it is:

7 Things I plan to do before I die

1. Learn how to oil paint
2. Sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
3. Tour Europe
4. Get all my pictures into a nice album with commentary
5. Have at least 4 kids
6. Eat something that costs over $100
7. Go on at least 2 missions with Torry

7 Things I can do:
1. Make fancy wedding cakes
2. Pick up things with my toes
3. Make, like, a 100 different kinds of soup
4. Survive a Chicago winter
5. Create desserts out of my head
6. Make Torry mad (trust me, it's hard)
7. Plug my nose with my lips

7 Things I cannot do:
1. Learn right and left (seriously - why can't I get it?)
2. Lead a well-balanced life (I tend to focus too much on one thing in a day - I'll get a lot of it done, but nothing else)
3. Wait (I'm terribly impatient)
4. Dive
5. Drive (with a stick) downtown Seattle without getting an anxiety attack (have you seen those hills?)
6. Program my oven to timed baking, so I'll quit burning things
7. Read enough to Elaina (we read for at least 1-2 hours a day, but she is always asking me. I am always feeling guilty when she asks and I have to say "Not now")

7 Things I would have on a deserted island:
1. Torry (Not only is he my best friend, he knows something about everything and would definitely come in handy)
2. ipod full of movies and music
3. solar ipod charger
4. my bed
5. fishing pole
6. salt (for all the fish I'll be catching)
7. matches

7 Things I say most often:
1. "Is that so?" (To Elaina)
2. "I Love you" (I'm afraid it's become a default when I don't know what else to say, although I always mean it)
3. "Just a sec" (Elaina is constantly asking me to do things while I am doing something - she hears that a lot)
4. "Hey" (It's how I answer the phone - polite, huh?)
5. "That's right" (I say it so much, Elaina says it all the time now)
6. "Good job!"
7. "I'm hungry" (Nursing mother syndrome)

7 Celebrities I Admire: Yuck, I don't really admire any celebrities - but here's some I enjoy watching
1. Reese Witherspoon
2. Nicole Kidman
3. Hugh Jackman
4. Matt Damon
5. Daniel Craig
6. Mark Ruffalo
7. Meg Ryan (prebotox)

7 Favorite Foods
1. King Crab with butter
2. New York Strip medium rare with butter
3. Homemade, white yeast rolls with butter
4. Hot Chocolate and popcorn with butter
5. Hearty Winter-time soups (often with wheat-sourdough bread and butter)
6. Lindt Creme Brulle Petit Dessert chocolate bars (not with butter)
7. Ice cream

7 People I Tag:
1. Kristen
2. Lindsey
3. Audrey
4. Wendy
5. Amy
6. Lyndi
7. Anita

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

My new favorite Holiday

Okay, so I think Halloween is the coolest. I don't feel any stress, and it's just a ton of fun - candy, costumes and cute kids. Elaina had a blast trick-or-treating. The first door we knocked on, she walked right in and started petting the dog. We had quite a time trying to get her to leave. After that she got the hang of it and loved it - also we went with some friends which added to our fun.
We always have fun carving jack-o-lanterns. Torry did Jack and I did Mr. Cyclops. We tried to involve Elaina, but after a couple of handfulls of pumpkin goop, she decided (correctly) that watching "Nightmare Before Christmas" and eating candy would be more fun.


So, we've had the Tinkerbell costume for almost a year now, so in order to make it a little more special for Halloween, I found some glitter stardust stuff to sprinkle in her hair. She loved it and went around showing everybody. It also made a mess of our house. Her enjoyment of it was well worth it though.
For one of our pre-Halloween family home evenings we made shaped sugar cookies. True to Elaina form, she dumped colored sugar all over them. The black sugar on her cookie was so thick that it turned her tongue black.


On another Family Home Evening night we made a haunted halloween graham cracker house. Although Elaina enjoyed helping out, she spent most of the time just eating the candy.




Torry here - Heather's tired and fresh out of caption ideas. So, here I go:
One Saturday we took a drive to a pumpkin patch. In addition to thousands of pumpkins in a big field, they had a big wagon and several bins full of pumpkins. But wait! They also had an area where you could use large slingshots to launch small pumpkins at targets.

On the non-pumpkin front, there was also face painting - Elaina loved her ladybug.










For those who don't know, we live in a planned community called Issaquah Highlands. As required by law in all planned communities, we had a fall Halloween festival in the neighborhood. Also mandated: a "green" theme. They even had all-natural gum flavored with mint extract and cane sugar, made of naturally occurring gum bases (tree sap I think) and colored with--get this--chlorophyll. It tasted vaguely of a lawn mower grass catcher. For those who didn't want natural mint tainting their consumption of chlorophyll, there was even a booth handing out free samples of wheat grass juice.

However, the green theme was contained to the gum and a few small signs. Everything else was pure old-fashioned Halloween fun. A costume parade, plenty of candy, pumpkin-carving contest, giant inflatable funhouse toys, fresh cider and pony rides made for a fun afternoon just blocks from our home.






Tuesday, November 04, 2008

That's not very nice





So, Elaina loves the story of the Gingerbread man - what child wouldn't? It's about a cookie that comes to life - cool, huh? Anyway, I thought I would be a super neat mom and bake a gingerbread man/woman with her. We had tons of fun and she loved dumping pink and purple sugar all over it. After it came out of the oven, I asked if she wanted to eat it and she said "yes", but she didn't watch me cutting it up. So she ate a little of it and went down for a nap. Meanwhile I cut it up and put it on a plate because it was so big. When she woke up she wanted to see the gingerbread woman and I showed it to her all cut up on the plate. She was not very happy with me. "Mommy, you smashed it! That's not very nice." She proceeded to tell everyone we ran into the crime that I had committed. She made me feel like a villain - not really. It was really cute.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008


Okay, so I know what ya'll are thinking - Heather doesn't take pictures of her son - is he ugly, does he have a hideous birth defect she doesn't want us to know about? Seriously - I feel like a bad mom with the lack of pictures of Camden - and he is just about the most handsome little man that I have ever laid eyes on (no bias there). I think with all the moving and upheaval of our lives, I have just lost track of time, so if you don't mind, I'd like to take a little trip down memory lane and go back a couple of months and catch myself up.This seems to be the only time she ever wants me to take her picture - when she has the moon boots on. She thinks it's sooo cool.




Camden's first time with gel in his hair - he's already competing for the girls attention at church.

Torry climbed Mt. Timp this summer - he couldn't convince me to go. I enjoy not having sore muscles. Plus he got some good male bonding time with his best bud from highschool.


Torry's sister, Stephanie, is getting married this Chirstmas to a very sweet guy - Kyle. Kyle scored big points by helping Torry unload our stuff into a storage unit after we moved to Utah from Chicago. He also survived a camping trip to southern Utah with extended family, a rite that all potential spouses in this family must pass through (except for Todd, but he made up for it by actually picking up a rattlesnake Steve Erwin style during last year's trip). Welcome to the family!
Elaina got her first haircut this summer - just a trim. I was worried that she wouldn't like it very much, but she did and she is always asking me if she can get another one. I'm afraid I'm raising a salon junkie.
Elaina had so much fun hanging out with her grandparents this summer. Marie was always doing fun things with Elaina. Here they are making play dough.


We camped down in Capital Reef this summer with Torry's mom's side of the family. We went on some pretty sweet hikes. The first day we hiked down a river bed with lots of waterfalls. It was so much fun.










We also went home to visit my family in Montana this summer. My parents sold their house on the lake, which is kind of sad - but my grandma's house is on the same lake and she's willed it so that it can't be sold for 40 years after the death of the last surviving child. I feel pretty confident that we will always have a place to go boating.
Camden hated the life jacket, but after awhile he just gave up and fell asleep. I think my mom has a similar picture of me at that age.