Sisters

August 2010:

(My sister made these adorable matching dresses.)

June 2011:

Samantha left yesterday to fly out West to spend a week with her cousins. I miss her already!

Clara does too.

Muffins

My friend, Shannon, and I got together to make 13 dozen muffins for our Stake's Young Women Camp.

156 muffins plus extras for our children and husbands to "sample".

We were a good team and got them all done and cleaned up in about 3 hours.

We made Blueberry Muffins, Classic Banana Muffins, Apple Spice Muffins, and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins.

Click each kind to see the recipe. I didn't include a link to the Pumpkin Muffins, as I decided to share it right here. Yes, it only has 3 ingredients.

And they are SO good!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 box Spice Cake Mix

1 can Pumpkin Pie Filling

1 cup Chocolate Chips

Combine in mixer, bake at 375 until done (about 15 minutes). Enjoy!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Scott went away to Scout Camp for a week, and while he was gone he missed Brett's birthday. So when he came back, we decided to celebrate again, this time at a baseball game.

We've been to a couple major league baseball games with the kids, and they have been pretty fun.  But this was SO much more fun for our family than any major league game.  Because of the much smaller crowd, our kids were able to really get involved in the game.

They got chosen to go out and play games for prizes in-between innings.

They were chosen as the "fans of the game" and we all got free cupcakes.

They got to go onto the field and run the bases during the seventh inning stretch.

They got to meet the players after the game for pictures and autographs.

Scott kept whispering things into Nathan's ear to yell to the players at bat.  Don't worry, they were nice words, just funny to hear a 4 year old yelling them.  Everyone thought it was pretty entertaining.  And since we were sitting right above the dugout, Nathan would run over and ask the players for a high five when they got a run or a good hit.

Later on he ran about 10 rows back and asked a man if he could have some of his sunflower seeds.

After that I started pretending I didn't know him.

It was a great night, and a fun memory for our family.  

Brett's Birthday

Brett turned 9 and he chose to spend the day at Storybook Gardens. He invited a friend from school, and Grandma, and it was a lot of fun.

Before we left, we had a breakfast of bacon & eggs, toast, fruit and chocolate milk.

It was really hot outside, and super sunny, so the kids are squinting in most of the photos.

The bubble station had some fun wands. Some of the bubbles were huge!

We came home for chocolate cake before the soccer games.

JD's present to Brett... 2 goals at their soccer game!

Happy Birthday Samantha

Eleven! Hard to believe.

Thanks to all who sent cards and called to say Happy Birthday.

New roller blades.

Samantha is such a fun girl to be around. She is friendly and thoughtful and loves to be creative and inventive. She is an amazing big sister and she loves her family. She especially loves to spend time with her uncles, aunts, and cousins, and her grandparents. We are so blessed to have her in our family.

Happy Birthday, Samantha!

Our Play On! Anniversary Weekend

This past weekend kicked off the first of 17 Play On! events we will have in 2011. Remarkably, all of these events will be held over the next 6 weeks.

We had a great event in Hamilton! Except for the lousy weather, it was really an outstanding weekend.

Scott and I celebrated our 12th Wedding Anniversary on Sunday, and it was definitely a memorable day.

Scott spent the weekend walking the site, talking to players, putting out fires, and training the Hamilton team on the ins and outs of running a Play On! event.

This is where I spent the weekend, in the Scoreboard Tent:

I prefer to stay as dry as possible.

I was really touched that during a busy event day, others would take the time to play a song for us from our first date (thanks, Jeff!), make a loud-speaker announcement, send text messages & emails, and join us for cake, which we ate off paper plates in the Registration tent.

We came home that night to a kitchen full of gifts from our children:

It might take us a while to get through all of those cookies... !

I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful husband. Scott is a devoted, thoughtful husband and a fun, caring, and loving father to our children, and I love being married to my best friend. Happy Anniversary!