Daddy and Daughter

Before I forget about this picture and it gets lost in the gazillion photo folders I have...
This little girl really loves her dad, sometimes. Sometimes, she really loves her mom. You never know who she's going to love more tomorrow. :)

My Little Artists

Chris was on the computer and I was in the back room long enough for this to happen:
I came around the corner (it had been too quiet) and Max says, "Mama! I'm painting Sydney with Desitin!" She looked like a little Indian ready to go off to war.

She was helping him out with some war paint too. It happened on Mother's Day too. So I made Chris get it off. :)

Freezer Meals

A friend and I sat next to each other at a church activity that was about freezer meals. I told her I'd heard about women getting together and exchanging freezer meals. She took the initiative and six of us have been exchanging meals since October. It's been AWESOME. I love seeing what I come home with and love cooking one day and getting six meals out of it. It's a lot of work depending on what you make, but fun too. One time I made bbq chicken pizzas - all from scratch - and I had to take a picture.

There are some great freezer meal recipe books at my library and I've borrowed books from a friend too. Some are good, some not so good, but it's been worth it. All of us have very small children who don't eat a lot so it's basically just cooking for the couple. I'm becoming a huge fan of freezer meals.

Max in a Suit, Syd in Pajamas

The jacket finally fits.
And isn't Sydney cute?

I Should Start a DIY Craft Blog

The title is a joke. But I am pretty excited (that's the word all the craft bloggers use) about my latest project. It's magnets that have all the foods we eat color-coded by type of food. Mexican is blue, breakfast foods green, Italian pink, etc. I even have magnets for "Out to Eat" and freezer meals that I exchange with friends (which deserves it's own blog post). And pizza and hamburgers have multiple magnets since we eat those more than once a month.
Then I just take my magnets and line them up for the month. I used to write out the menu on this board. But then something would come up and the meals would switch around and I'd have to either erase or remember the changes. Now I just switch around the magnets. And the colors help me see when we ate that type of food last. Also, I have blank magnets so that when I find a new meal, I can write it in and not forget about it.

Ok, I'll admit it, I really am excited about this! It's not super pretty or crafty, but it has been SO useful!

Proof

Sydney is not as sweet as she looks. She bites. HARD.

Poor Max.

The next day he screamed every time she came near him.

Pumpkin Patch!

We went to Staheli Farm here in St. George to go to their pumpkin patch. It's about 2 miles from our house. They had so much for our little kids to do. Max (and Chris) got to rope a steer.

Then we jumped on the "Redneck Trampoline." A bunch of mattresses surrounded by haystacks.

Sydney laughed and loved it.

Sydney especially thought Max was funny. Other little kids having fun make her laugh more than anything else.

Max, of course, had a blast running around and falling into the hay.

Chris got to try to shoot a tennis ball through a tire out of a potato gun. I showed my ignorance of toys-kids-play-with-in-the-west by having no idea what the thing was.

A great picture of Chris - so rare.

A picture of Max actually smiling towards the camera. He wasn't really in the mood to say "Cheez" that day. What we didn't get was a picture of the purple face that Sydney got as soon as we started swinging her. She held her breath because she couldn't get out a scream. Apparently, she hates to swing. Chris got the pleasure of taking Max down the irrigation slide (something else I couldn't have named if asked) and got the bumpy ride down. Max loved it though so they went down the other one too.

Then came the petting zoo. Max fell in love with sheep (Baaaaa!) and liked the goats too. But especially the sheep. Good thing they are tolerant animals.

Sydney was again scared to death of anything strange until she saw Max. He's so fearless that she overcomes a lot of her fears watching him. That's good because we can't raise a sissy.

Sydney LOVED the pumpkins though. Max is looking at me like, "Why do you keep telling me to look at you when that bright, bright sun is in my eyes?"

He had fun playing in the dirt and by the pumpkins though. And Sydney ended up being very cute.

She constantly does this head tilt and Chris and I both think it's absolutely adorable. Then she gives you a big, cheesy, teethy grin.

Yep, to her parents, she is the cutest little girl in the whole world.

To get a decent picture of all four of us requires something short of a miracle. We all smile, but for some reason, never all at the same time.

I tried to get a picture of the two kids next to the barn. Wouldn't it have been a cute picture if they had smiled and stood by each other?