Canstruction

Last week, Ryan’s work held their annual Canstruction competition for the Houston Food Bank. What they would do is divide into teams with their departments and then purchase a bunch of non-perishable foods and then build something festive out of it. They have to build it within a certain area and time.

They can make plans ahead of how they want to build it, but they can’t put any of it together before the competition. It might sound kind of silly, but it’s a lot of fun for Ryan and his co-workers and their canstructions turn out pretty cool.

 Ryan’s team got second place, last year, by making a Christmas tree out of their cans. This year they made a stocking with a Santa on one side and a tree on the other. Ryan went out one night after work, with their donation money, and picked up the cans for his team. I think he nearly cleaned the store out of their canned corn.

It turned out pretty awesome. They got first place and the people’s choice award. They got a few nice prizes for it. So, it was definitely a fun way to get food a donate it. J

Karltastic

Karl is nearly a year old now and it has been so much fun getting to know him, he has such a big personality  for such a little guy. He's become a very vocal, playful little guy. He loves to tease. He's found some good hiding spots, behind chairs and under the table so he can run away from Mommy. He loves to be chased, it's so cute!

Jared has two good teeth on bottom, and just this last week cut two top teeth. He sure makes the most of those little teeth, chewing on Daddy's shoe laces and other things.

This is a picture of Karl eating snacks in his play-saucer. He got a yogurt bite stuck on his chin and didn't even know it.

This is a video of him playing at the back door, one of his favorite spots.

This is him sound asleep in his crib, one of his other favorite places, where he can have some quite time to himself, which is nice when he's pooped out from all his play time. :-)

Coconut Cream Pie

October 31, Friday

This is my latest pie, inspired by Ryan’s mom Kris, who was planning to make one. It’s a Coconut Cream Pie. I had never made one yet, so I didn’t have a recipe to recommend her, but I was glad to change that as soon as I could. A Coconut Cream Pie sounded really good, and I think it turned out pretty good.

We had it for our Halloween night treat. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner and then the pie for dessert. I was able to get their opinion on the pie as well, and they liked this recipe. It uses coconut milk and coconut flakes in the filling and is topped with toasted coconuts. It was really good! Ryan got home a little late, right when the sisters and I were getting ready to have pie. So he decided to just skip dinner and eat pie. Lol! I’m definitely glad he likes pie, but he still got in trouble for it. ;-)

This is just a video of my sous-chef doing what he does best, playing and having fun, making me smile, and keeping me company in the kitchen. :-)

Halloween Night!

October 31, Friday

We had a fun day on Halloween. In the evening, Jared ended up falling asleep. We let him get some rest and then after dinner we woke him up so he could eat something and get ready to go trick-or-treating.

He woke up a little cranky and wasn’t too excited about changing his clothes while still being sleepy. I decided to take him outside and I showed him our jack-o-lanterns all lite up, and we watched some of the trick-or-treaters going down the street. After that, when we went back inside he asked Daddy to help him put his costume on.

So Ryan and Jared got out and had a great time trick-or-treating. I guess some of our neighbors do some scary things at their houses for the trick-or-treaters; but Ryan says they were nice and didn’t scare Jared when they saw him coming. Karl and I had a good time staying home and getting to see more of our neighbors and all the different costumes.

This is a video to show how the claws extend. They can also say retracted.

When Ryan and Jared got home, Jared told me about how he saw ninja turtles, Elsa’s and Ana’s, and five Iron Man’s! Ryan says they actually just saw the same one or two Iron Man’s a few times during the night, but it was still pretty exciting for Jared, who loves the Avengers.

He was really hyped up after the trick-or-treating, so he didn’t want to take his costume off. He had fun showing me his claws and pretending to be Wolverine. I got a video of him being Wolverine and saying “trick-or-treat.” J Ryan did a really good job on his claws; they were all his own mechanical design. Jared liked to say “fuh-ching” when he released them. He was pretty cute!

We had a fun night, and we hope everyone else did too!

Trunk-or-Treat

October 25, Saturday

Three weekends ago we had our ward’s Fall Festival, a.k.a. Trunk-or-Treat.  It was a lot of fun finally being able to spend an evening in our costumes and see what everyone else dressed up as. Our wards pretty into Halloween so there were a lot of good ones. Jared was especially excited to see other superheroes and Elsa and Ana.

Sister Davis and Sister Bonner

Our sister missionaries dressed up as Ms. Cap. America and an elder. They were pretty funny. Before eating, Jared and I went around and played some of the games. I took a turn first on most of them so Jared could have more confidence after seeing me do it. He was feeling a little shy having people see him in his awesome costume. I had a hard time with some of the games because of my gloves, and Jared had a hard time with some of them because of his claws. It was kind of funny.

Mystique, Pro. X, and Wolverine

Ryan took Karl around in the stroller to visit, while Jared and I were playing and eating. He got some funny reactions when he’d tell people that he was Mystique. First confusion and then laughter, some people are a little quicker and go straight to laughter. One of the boys in Ryan’s y.m.s asked him what else he could change into. Ryan told him the truth, “Only this.” J

Pro. X's hovercraft

We had sloppy joes for dinner, and when it started to get dark we all went the cars to do some truck-or-treating. Jared was more interested in the cool things some people had on their cars than the candy, so I had to keep reminding him to say “trick-or-treat” after he was done looking. I took Karl around in his stroller, so he got candy too. That was his first time trick-or-treating. I would’ve felt bad taking a baby, who can’t even eat candy, but everyone seemed happy to see him and wanted to give him candy too.

Wolverine, Rogue, and Pro. X

Karl’s hovercraft didn’t want to move with the stroller so we had left it by the car for the evening and just took a couple pictures with it before throwing it away, so it didn’t last long but it was fun to try it out. We had a great time but were very tired by the end, so we went home and rested and ate candy!

Halloween Preparations

October 18-27

There always seems to be a lot of anticipation for us with getting ready and excited for Halloween. We really like planning out our costumes and putting them together.

This year we decided we didn't need to ask Jared what he wanted to be; he was already having us call him Wolverine all the time. When he turned three, we taught him to show that he's three by doing Wolverine claws with his middle fingers. With Jared being Wolverine, I decided to be Rogue, and Karl was Professor X. That felt like it made sense since he'd be in his stroller anyway. Ryan wanted to be either Colossus or Beast, but with Jared's costume taking so much time, Ryan decided to be Mystique. To dress up he would just go in his normal clothes. It makes sense if you think about it. ;-)

Ryan is very creative and inventive, so he engineered retractable claws for Jared, but he also designed Karl's hover craft, like Pro. X has in the cartoons. Ryan was the mastermind behind all this but I was able to help with cutting out some of the different pieces of clothe and cardboard so he could assemble.

For my costume I kept it simple. Between shopping at Goodwill and Walmart I was able to put my Rogue costume together, with just a little bit of sewing.

We had some fun carving pumpkins, a week before Halloween. It was fun to do together, and we wanted our neighbors to know they could come to our house for trick-or-treating. I think our pumpkins turned out pretty good. The scary one is mine and the cute one is Ryan's. Jared was our little helper for both pumpkins. He liked stabbing whatever we could with his little carving knife.

Alfred

October 14, Tuesday

This is Alfred; we call him Alfie. He’s very gentle-natured and loves to be close and cuddling all the time. He takes naps all the time just about anywhere he can get comfortable. He loves to go on walks and run around in the backyard; and we love him! Three weeks ago now, Alfie came wandering around near our house. Most the dogs that come around are strays and they look it. But Alfie, though he looked dirty, behaved more like a lost dog. He came right up to us and was very sweet. We saw him when Ryan was leaving for work and again when I was getting the boys in the car to go run an errand. That was the first time Jared and Karl saw him and they both really liked him.

I petted Alfie one last time before closing my car door and then he followed us down the drive way, down the street, and ran to chase us around the corner. It was almost heartbreaking; he was so cute! Well, he was there when we got home and again when Ryan got home. So, Ryan and I talked about it and decided we really liked him and he’s just the kind of dog we’ve always wanted, so we decided we’d see if we could keep him. The next day we took a couple pictures of him and printed off some Found Dog flyers for our neighborhood. We posted those, and sent in some reports about him to the county Public Health & Environmental Services department and a couple other places. After a few days we even talked to a few people who had lost a dog like him, but he wasn’t it, so we were happy to still be able to keep him.

The very first night we had him I had gone out and got a bit of dog food and other supplies. We gave him a flea and tick shampoo bath and made him a spot to sleep in the garage. He was a pretty bad mess, so by the third day of having him, we decided to give him a hair-cut and get rid of all the matted, flea infested hair. That was actually a lot of work. The matted hair was thick and Alfie was always trying to get away. My job was to hold Alfie while Ryan cut. It was so hard knowing and seeing that there were still ticks crawling all over himl. :-P I ended up putting on some cleaning gloves and it was much more bearable. Ryan’s very brave and didn’t seem to worry about it. Alfie got another bath after the hair-cut. He looked and started acting like a new dog. After that he seemed like he felt like this was his home and we were his family.

Once we were sure he was clean of pests, we made him a spot inside the house near the fire place and now he gets to be inside most the time. We’ve been having a great time getting used to having a dog around. We couldn’t have asked for a better dog to come our way, and we’re very grateful for him. Karl’s excited to see him and crawl to him whenever he gets out of bed, and Jared probably spends more play-time outside than inside anymore, so he can run around with Alfie. It’s been a lot of fun having him. We’re trying to remember that what’s most important is that he has a good home, so if someone claims him we’ll give him back and be glad we helped him find his home again. But, we’re also really hoping that his good home will be with us!! J

Halloween Cookies

October 8, Wednesday

A couple weeks before Halloween, Sister Pugh and Sister Davis came over to help me make Halloween sugar cookies for my neighbors. I’m so glad they wanted to come, because I’d forgotten how much work it is to make sugar cookies. We ended up making about eight dozen I think; enough for five of my neighbors, one investigator, and a couple dozen for the sister to take home for their neighbors.

We had a lot of fun. Sister Pugh was very experience at making sugar cookies, so she did all the rolling and cutting once I made the dough. Sister Davis was next to her to place the cookies on the pans. Meanwhile I put the cookies in and took them out of the oven and made the frosting.

By the time the cookies were done baking we were all hungry, so I made lunch while the sisters frosted. Sister Pugh brought some candy corn to decorate our frosted cookies with. It was fun; the sisters were very creative with their frosting! When we were done frosting, we plated the cookies, put them in bags, and I tied a note to each of them that I’d prepared the day before. It wished them a “Happy Halloween,” told them our names, and on the back it told them about the “Meet the Mormons” movie that was coming out. We also attached a Mormon.org pass-along card.

Before going out to deliver the cookies we practiced a little Spanish, like how to wish a happy Halloween and explain that we were members/sister from the LDS church. Sister Davis played with Karl a bit while we were getting ready to head out.

We were pretty successful and found nearly everyone home; we had to use our Spanish at two of the houses and I think we did pretty well. We drove to see the investigator and shared a short message with her. From there, we and the sisters parted for home.

It was a long day of cookie making and sharing, but definitely a fun one!! I’m not certain how much will come of it, if any of my neighbors will go see the movie, but one thing I know for sure is that our neighbors know our names now and that we’re Mormons, and hopefully they know that we’re nice and want to be friends. I’m so thankful for the missionaries!! J

Chocolate Bottom Vanilla Cream Tarts

October 5, Sunday

One day, Ryan and I were invited to go have dinner with a neighbor. I offered to bring a treat, so I made a pie, of course. I decided to make a Chocolate Bottom Vanilla Cream Pie; one of our favorites.

When I’ve made it before I felt like there was too much crust and too much filling for a 9” pie. So, this time I made it with the plan to also try out making tarts with it. I made the recipe as normal and there was plenty enough for a dozen tarts.

Ryan was pretty excited about that, because we took the pie to the dinner and then we had the tarts all to ourselves at home! They were pretty good! J

Robot Captain America

September 2014

These are some pictures of things Jared did recently. He is wearing underwear in all of them because he was at the stage where he was using the potty often enough that he didn't need pull-ups any more, but since we were home all day, it was easier for him to go potty if he had just undies on, and less clothes to wash if he had an accident.

This is a picture of his running and playing softball with Sister Davis. She and her companion, Sister Pugh, have become very good friends to our family and Jared knows now that Sister Davis loves softball. So when they were over one afternoon, they were taking turns batting and pitching in the entry way. Jared would say "switch!" and he and Sister Davis would run and switch places and roles as batter or pitcher. Jared then decided to just keep saying, "switch! switch!" making Sister Davis run back and forth, back and forth. It was pretty funny for Sister Pugh and I, and I think Sister Davis got some good exercise.

In this picture and video, Jared is Captain America. The plate he's holding is his shield. He loves the Avengers' cartoons. He's been earning to get to watch them with each "work page" he does each day. He will often ask me now if he can do a work page so he can watch an (20m) episode.

One day, I had asked Jared to pick up all his guys in the living room. I was distracted with Karl for a minute, but I was pleasantly surprised when I came back and saw he had picked them all up and tried to put them all in this one little basket. I thought it was pretty comical too, so I had to take a picture. :-)

In this picture, the goof-ball had grabbed a soda box I had put in the garage to be thrown away. He brought it back in the house thinking it'd be a great "boo-bop" (robot) helmet. He gave Ryan and I a pretty good laugh. He's definitely our little entertainer!! :)