I love the Holidays...

I'm sure everyone is being reminded of how much they LOVE the holidays. Well, there is nothing that brings me more warm feelings and "Oh, I'm so excited for the holidays" then when I think of oranges and cranberries. Today I finally had all the ingredients to make my favorite holiday sweet bread. The smell, taste, everything is exactly what recalls all my feelings for the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions. I just wanted to share the recipe with you all. It really comes on the bag of Ocean Spray Cranberries, so it's not extra special other than it is fantastic!!

Cranberry Orange Bread

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 egg, well beaten
1 1/2 cups Ocean Spray® Fresh or Frozen Cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped nuts (OPTIONAL for nut lovers...I am not a nut lover!)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. (or 4 mini loaf pans)

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in orange juice, orange peel, shortening and egg. Mix until well blended. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Spread evenly in loaf pan.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about 35 minutes for 4 mini loaf pans). Cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely. Wrap and store overnight. Makes 1 loaf (16 slices)-(or 4 mini loaf pans).

I really enjoy College Football!

Go Utes!!! What a great game...I'm sure it was exciting if you were in the stadium the whole time...but at home it was FANTASTIC the last few minutes! Bring on BYU!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

~HAPPY HALLOWEEN~

Here are my two little Super Heroes!!

The kids were NOT interested in getting a family picture...they had their mind set on filling their pumpkins with CANDY!!!

Livvy and Alayna are ready to go trick-or-treating!!!

Drum roll....here are all the super heroes and two twin cowboys...Kierra, Conner, Jake, Alayna, Olivia, Kennady (trying to reach and grab her candy!), Isaac, Logan and Sawyer! There are the all grand kids.

Here's a shout out to the "SUPER PECKS!" Krista ran away with the super hero costume idea! She did a matching family costumes! Looking good Riley in tights!!!

Here's to year #3 of cooking hot dogs on the barbecue! It was another success.

Our cute neighbor Karen came over dressed as a giant hot dog, exclaiming, "Todd, I've eaten too many hot dogs!!!" It really was hilarious.

Once again Aunt Ashley and Uncle Brian came to support our cute little kiddo's. Brian dressed up as a Ute fan! He was quite the sport to have to wear RED all night long! I just think we should have had Jared wear all of Brian's BYU clothing! Maybe next year!

Grandpa Randy came also to spend some time with the grand kids. Danette was lucky enough to spend Halloween with her grand kids in Chicago. We were happy to have Grandpa Randy come join in the crazy fun.

Here's to Papi. The Halloween fanatic. He thrives on taking the kids out all night long until the get the most candy. His famous line is..."Who is up for one more house? Just one more???" The kids LOVE to go with him. So thanks dad for being a trooper with so many grand kids!

I don't think she could be any happier! It's amazing how a little bit of chocolate can bring us all so much happiness! (This is a total candid picture!)

Joy School Halloween Party

Here's Alayna showing off her proud work of a candy corn craft.

Enjoying what little kids do...frosting sugar cookies and eating TONS of sprinkles!! YUM.

We tried our best to take a good picture of ALL the Joy School kids, but one was still missing. But overall we were able to get all those cute kids smiling!

Here's a Sneak Peak before Halloween!

Here is Super Girl herself!

Here is Super Boy himself! (Yes, he is wearing tights!)

It's become a tradition from year to year that we go visiting the Grandparents before Halloween. On Halloween it is so busy with parties and elementary school parades that we just don't have enough time to go visiting everyone. So off we went. The kids new exactly what to do.

Our first stop was at Grandma Lucy and Grandpa Perry's house. This was the house to go first, the kids received BIG sized candy bars. I was lucky that Jake picked a Twix. They are a personal favorite. I don't think he will be missing it!!

Next stop was at Papi and Grandma Lou's house! (Grandma Lou was still at school! No worries, she will see these adorable super hero's on Halloween.)

Grandma Denny and Grandpa were eager and excited to have our super hero's join them for the evening. They were so excited to receive Nemo fruit snacks.
Thanks to all the grandparents having a few early trick or treaters!
*If your wondering where these adorable costumes came from...well, I must admit I learned how to sew. The good thing is the pictures can't show close up. Either way, I am happy I took on the challenge. I no longer am too intimidated by the idea of sewing. It really became addicting and fun! Thanks Emily for the pattern and idea!!*

Barnyard Boo...

FHE this week was with the Perry family. We went to another Thanksgiving Point activity. This time it was the Barnyard Boo! It was a really fun atmosphere. We lucked out with FANTASTIC weather. Each child was given a ticket with 5 punch pumpkins. So they had 5 activities that they could choose to do. This was the first, a witch ring toss. After each activity they would win a few taffy's.

Here is my brave little girl who finally has warmed herself up to animals. I was really impressed when at her own doing went to pet the baby cow. Way to go, Alayna!

Another activity that Alayna picked was bracelet making and frosting a pumpkin cookie.

Here are all the little kids who won scary teeth posing in front of the haunted house decoration.

Here is the gang of kids we travel around with. Yes, we know how to multiply and replenish the earth! But these cousins sure love each other!!

Here is Alayna milking a cow for her very first time! Once again, I was totally impressed by her touching animals.

Jake and Isaac are anxiously awaiting there turn to ride the ponies!

Jacob was very apprehensive at first and then he relaxed and was a little more content. Good thing Grandma Lou is around to teach the kids to enjoy animals. I was suffering from animal allergies, from behind the gate!
Once again, I was TOTALLY impressed that Alayna rode the pony all by herself! And she even had fun.

Finally, here are our dear friends Summer and Ethan. They came to visit from California. We are SO glad that they came to visit. It was fun to have them around so we could get to know her kids darling personalities. We enjoyed their visit so much. Ethan and Alayna are the same age, so it was fun to watch them play and interact.

Here is the cutest little thing ever! Baby Bella was adorable. She would smile so much. I was the lucky one to have her cuddle and fall asleep on my shoulder last night! I was in heaven. Summer we can't wait till you come back again!!!

Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point...

Here are a bunch of animals...ha ha ha...or should I say family! We had a fun family night out with Grandma Nettie, Grandpa Randy, Uncle Brian and Aunt Ashley. We first had some yummy chili and cornbread and then we headed off to Thanksgiving Point. We ended up doing the Cornbelly's actvities.

Here is our little Big Horned Sheep.
Aunt Ashley and Uncle Brian
This was hilarious. The family is always intrigued with Alayna's ability to be a good leader and director. Or in other words...bossy, in a nice way of course! But this was a tractor that she insisted on driving us all...the funny part was she went to each of us individually instructing us where to sit and to "Sit Down!" We just had to laugh at our little boss.
Here we are trying to stay warm while watching the Pig Races.

Oh...a family picture...don't those snow bunnies look so happy?

This was a riot! Alayna was making snow corn angels. It really was so adorable.

There was a huge hay stack with tons of different wild slides that we went down. Jake LOVED the slides! The entire way down you could hear him say, "Weee - Weee." So cute!

We had to take a large group picture of course! If you can't tell it was FREEZING!! It was a super fun night for all. After we left Jared and I were so COLD and FREEZING we stopped at Maverick for some good ole gas station Hot Chocolate! We lucked out any hot drink size .99 cents! Oh, we had hoped it would be SO tasty...but it was so gross! Oh, well it was hot and it thawed our hands. Thanks for all the fun, Sukers!

Joy School yet again...

Well, last week I forgot to take pictures of my cute Joy School kiddos. Last week was a raging success. We learned about food from the earth and where we get it. So we made homemade butter and whole wheat bread. It was a HUGE success, because of a great recipe! (Thanks Emily!!) I sent mini loaves home with all the kiddos and they got to try their yummy homemade butter.
This week we learned about who we share the earth with and about going GREEN! Yeah, it's never to early to teach kids about recycling. (Don't think I'm over the top, it was just a cute activity!)

Here is Alayna showing off her picture of who she shares the earth with.

Olivia and Alayna showing their "I can Recycle" plates.

We also made animal hand puppets. She was super excited about her silly bunny puppet. It was cute, because we then sand, "Old McDonald had a Farm." It made for another successful Joy School day. Next week is our Halloween Party! Fun.

What kids must think...

Kids must think that life just isn't fair! Late Saturday night the upstairs and the downstairs tenants decided to make a run to the new Iceberg in Herriman. So we returned with yummy shakes and the best onion rings. As we gathered around the table enjoying our late night treat and enjoying the peace and quiet of sleeping children, a child woke up and caught us! We all sat their silently, looking around at our somewhat rebellious behavior, wondering how it might look to him. Conner was struck with a little "That's not fair!" in his eyes, but he didn't say anything. He just walked past us as we were struck with almost embarrassment. We felt so bad having him have to watch us enjoying life so much, and knowing that he couldn't change his lot. He had to go back to bed. He didn't say anything. Shandra and I said, "Conner, we will save some for you tomorrow!" We new it was an empty promise, but we felt it needed to be said. He lingered at the top of the stairs as we talked and laughed.
Watching him watch us from up above, down on our little party, I had to snap a picture to document my childhood memories of the unfair lifestyles between parents and kids. I have SO many clear memories of the "kid table" and the "adult table." The "munchie runs" to the store for just the Uncles and Aunts...and not the kids. I can't forget the kid cereal and the dad cereal, the kid popcicles and dad popcicles! There were so many, I can't list them all!
For those of you who know my personality you wouldn't be surprised that by my very young age of 4 or 5 I'd hold such feelings, that "Life is unfair for kids and parents can do so much more!" But let me tell you, I still am enjoying the fact that as a mom I can eat sugar cereal anytime I want!
Anyways, this was a fun moment for me to remember how it feels to be a kid. I hope that I have learned to include the kids on some of our super fun adult parties. The second best part of the night was we introduced "Ticket to Ride-Europe" to Todd. It was a fun competitive game (for us all but Todd) to try and win, Shan came out the winner - but Jared's streak of the "longest train ever!" has continued about 8 times now! I lost so bad I couldn't even be upset. Either way, it made for a great relaxing night!

Staying busy this week...

We have another stow away for a few days. Andrew has stayed with us while his parents were partying in California. He and Jake have had lots of fun playing catch with footballs, basketballs, etc.
Yesterday, the sun was shining so much I couldn't stand the thought of staying in doors. So out we went to the park. We met up with some cousins and the kiddo's had a blast! Well, not really a blast trying to pose in a picture. But we had to take one.

Here are my triplets. Isaac, Andrew and Jacob. I was watching them for a few hours and this was their favorite activity. Sitting on the bench and watching the neighbors dogs. They were in a trance.

This was my favorite, because the boys are anxiously making their doggy sounds and pointing, and then suddenly the dog started coming closer towards them. You can sense in their body language they were overly excited!

Here is Miss Alayna playing sweetly in her toy house out side. She's been a good trooper the past few days. She's had two baby brothers that I've had to tend too before her. She really is so patient and willing to wait a little extra until it is her turn for attention. We really haven't been up to much...having three kids really has kept me home for the nap schedule or too the park. Other than that, we've just been doing the kid thing. Thanks heavens for this beautiful weather it's kept all these kids sane the past few days!