Starting at 1:00pm today I will do something I have never done before. I will have a whole and complete weekend all to myself. Andy is leading worship at a men's retreat and the kids are going to grandpa and grandma's house.
I have not had this since we have had kids and I am so excited!
What will I do? Not laundry or house-work. Maybe some shopping, definitely some digital scrapbooking, coffee with a friend, and some girl movie-watching.
Oh yes, and waiting for a phone call about the arrival of my newest nephew. My sister Katie is being induced today...........
Next week is spring break so hopefully I will have some pictures of some good family time.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Baby it's cold outside!
Today was one of the coldest days we have had all winter long, and it happened to also be the day we had planned to go tubing in Alexandria, MN with Jan and Luther at Andes Tower. So we bundled up in 3-4 layers packed in the car for the 1 1/2 hour drive and had a "we can do this because we are hardy North Dakotans and Minnesotans :)" spirit.
When we got there, there wasn't a single soul on the tubing hill and I started to get a little worried that they had closed it because it was so cold. No sirree, Bob! Cold does not stand in the way of this family. The tubing hill was open, so we chugged down some lunch and headed up the hill.
You sit in the tube you selected and it's attached to a tow rope and you are pulled up the hill. This is definitely the way to go. The hill was very large and to have to walk up it, would have done us all in.
Kaelynn, our "no fear" girl was the first one to go down. She had no hesitations about going speeding down the hill at 30 mph.
We thought it might be fun for Julianna, Lydia, Isaac, and Jonah to have a taste of what it feels like to tube down a hill, so we took the following video for them:
We also celebrated Valentine's Day and Kaelynn's birthday as Jan will be Indonesia on March 23rd.
Kaelynn got a DS for her birthday this year. She was really excited as were her brothers because now they don't have to share with her anymore.
One of my favorite pics from the day is this one of Carson and Kaelynn:
There can be some tense moments between these two some days, so it warmed my heart to capture this sweet moment.
When we got there, there wasn't a single soul on the tubing hill and I started to get a little worried that they had closed it because it was so cold. No sirree, Bob! Cold does not stand in the way of this family. The tubing hill was open, so we chugged down some lunch and headed up the hill.
Kaelynn, our "no fear" girl was the first one to go down. She had no hesitations about going speeding down the hill at 30 mph.
We thought it might be fun for Julianna, Lydia, Isaac, and Jonah to have a taste of what it feels like to tube down a hill, so we took the following video for them:
We also celebrated Valentine's Day and Kaelynn's birthday as Jan will be Indonesia on March 23rd.
Kaelynn got a DS for her birthday this year. She was really excited as were her brothers because now they don't have to share with her anymore.
One of my favorite pics from the day is this one of Carson and Kaelynn:
Thursday, February 2, 2012
A little piece of humble pie (or cupcake).....
I'm betting my sister Katie, "cupcake maker extraordinaire" will get the biggest kick out of the following story:
We have a family carnival at church on Saturday and I volunteered to bring a couple of desserts for the cake walk. Of course I want my desserts to be something kids will want to choose first, so I remembered some super cute cupcakes Kaelynn brought home from a friends house this past fall. Rainbow cupcakes with white frosting!
My first thought was, how hard can it be? Just split the batter into however many colors you want and put food coloring in. Done, no problem. My next thought was pretty clever too- Put each color of batter in a ziplock bag and cut the tip off so I can easily layer the colors on top of each other. Done, no problem.
As I was layering my five colors on top of each other, trying to completely fill each layer so as not to make it look like tye-dye gone bad, I was thinking to myself, "Boy, there's a lot of batter in these cupcake cups. I suppose I'll have some pretty big cupcakes."
In the oven they went, with great anticipation of what was about to come out. When the timer went off and I opened the oven door, this is what I saw:
How awful does that look??????????????????????
In fact, Carson came rushing over and stated, "That's awful!" To which I replied, "Ya think???"
I was able to salvage them by peeling off the excess cupcake, but they are still not cake walk worthy. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
If you can get past the large chunk missing from the side of the cupcake and are willing to taste one, the inside looks really cool:
I'm actually quite curious how the pink got down to the bottom because I only layered each color once and the pink was on top. Maybe we'll have to use this as a science experiment.
Note to self for next time, if it looks like too much batter in the cupcake liner, it probably is.
Katie, if you have any tips for me for next time, pass them along. I obviously need the help :)
We have a family carnival at church on Saturday and I volunteered to bring a couple of desserts for the cake walk. Of course I want my desserts to be something kids will want to choose first, so I remembered some super cute cupcakes Kaelynn brought home from a friends house this past fall. Rainbow cupcakes with white frosting!
My first thought was, how hard can it be? Just split the batter into however many colors you want and put food coloring in. Done, no problem. My next thought was pretty clever too- Put each color of batter in a ziplock bag and cut the tip off so I can easily layer the colors on top of each other. Done, no problem.
As I was layering my five colors on top of each other, trying to completely fill each layer so as not to make it look like tye-dye gone bad, I was thinking to myself, "Boy, there's a lot of batter in these cupcake cups. I suppose I'll have some pretty big cupcakes."
In the oven they went, with great anticipation of what was about to come out. When the timer went off and I opened the oven door, this is what I saw:
In fact, Carson came rushing over and stated, "That's awful!" To which I replied, "Ya think???"
I was able to salvage them by peeling off the excess cupcake, but they are still not cake walk worthy. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
If you can get past the large chunk missing from the side of the cupcake and are willing to taste one, the inside looks really cool:
Note to self for next time, if it looks like too much batter in the cupcake liner, it probably is.
Katie, if you have any tips for me for next time, pass them along. I obviously need the help :)
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