I'm Alive!

Just in case any one has wondered about my absence, everyone is doing well around here, we've just been busy and since Jacob is home most of the time now I don't spend as much time on here. We just got back today from spending five days down with my siblings while my parents were out of town, which was a lot of fun! We had a lot of late nights and some "not enough sleep induced laughing"! A late night run to the store to get chocolate syrup and a few other things and some how we managed to make it 24 hours before we realized that we had forgotten the chocolate syrup! At least we remembered the ice cream and soda for floats, which wasn't on our list...that was definitely important! :) We also made two Boston Cream Pies and an Angel Food Cake, which was quite an adventure in itself, but I will have to go into details another time.....because......Bethany is spitting on the computer and trying to get my attention by pretending that I'm playing with her. :)

Wishing Everyone A....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope everyone has a wonderful day with family....and enjoy this white Christmas...those of you who have snow! :)

Merry Christmas Eve!

We've been having a fun Christmas Eve and it all started by waking up to beautiful snow that has continued throughout the day! I love how it covers all the trees...snow makes everything look beautiful.....well, with the exception of roads when you're trying to drive on them! :) Our Christmas Eve will also conclude with snow ice cream...hopefully...I haven't told Jacob of my latest plan, but with the abundance of snow and the influence of Abigail and Bethany (and of course, ME!), it shouldn't be too hard to convince him! ;)

The other day, with some help from Jacob, painted our toenails and fingernails to match and be Christmasy...the girls fingernail polish didn't last very long though, so we just got pictures of our toes. :) Jacob declined getting his nails painted, for any of you wondering. ;)I have no idea why, but the girls decided to go around in nothing but diapers....
and in Abigail's case, a hat!
Bethany carried a jacket around...I guess assuming that if she had a jacket I would let her out the door, which she tried on several occasions to escape through!
This picture is a little blurry, but it makes me laugh! Some day they both will want to kill me for posting a picture of them in only their diapers....yes, Bethany is wearing a diaper, but it's hilarious because it looks like she isn't! :)

So, while the girls ran around naked, Jacob made a little snowman for the girls....
Isn't he cute! Maybe tomorrow we can make some big snowmen to be his buddies! :)

Have a good Christmas Eve!

It's Been Crazy Around Here...

I guess December is a busy month no matter what, but it has seemed extra crazy around here. We were all sick last week with a cold and the girls are still getting over it, but thankfully they didn't seem to get it as bad as Jacob and I. The week before that Jacob had hurt his ankle really bad and at about the same time, work quit because of the cold weather so that's been pretty tough. He's been applying for a bunch of different jobs, but that bad thing is that a lot of them can take months before they let you know if you have the job or not, so it's tough to know which direction to go since in a couple months someone could be contacting him with a job. He is actually working today though, so that's a blessing, but I'm not sure if he'll be working tomorrow or not.

Sunday morning, my sister Elisabeth, who is a flight medic on the Staff for Life, was in a helicopter crash. It was one of the scariest things and I didn't even know the whole of it till later, but it's truly a miracle that all three of them on the helicopter survived. They all have similar conditions (broken back/crushed vertebra), but nothing life threatening. Both the pilot and nurse had to have surgery right away and they thought Elisabeth was going to have to, but then they decided since she was young and strong to see if it would heal on its own. So she is wearing a brace and if it looks like its working, she will be wearing it for the next 6 weeks. She went home yesterday and I got to see her and spend some time with her, which was really nice! She is such an amazing person and definitely one of the strongest people I know and she kept up her wonderful sense of humor through the whole ordeal and it was funny to get to hear her yesterday. :) She has an amazing story though. There was no reason what so ever why that helicopter didn't go up in flames immediately on impact, other than the grace of God, because when they hit the ground fuel was spraying up into the helicopter (they were all soaked in fuel) and there were flames on both sides of the helicopter. She said she knew she wouldn't be able to get out quick enough because her legs weren't working right, but then the flames just went out! God truly was working and had His hand on them and I am so thankful that they all made it out alive! We'll probably be visiting my sister often over the next couple of months since she's going to have a lot of down time and she still needs prayer, since it'll be pretty tough for her.

On another note....Jacob and I had our 4 year anniversary on the 9th! It's kind of hard to believe, but it's been a good 4 years...even during his deployment there were some good times too. We went to a nice steak dinner for our anniversary...the first time in a long time where we didn't have one of the girls with us, so that was nice and relaxing and so like the times before we had kids. Including the toothpick finale! I love you Jacob! :D Then the next evening we went to see Narnia-Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where we snuck food into the theatre (that is where big purses come in handy!) and then Jacob had to go get a pretzel along with a big soda....then we proceeded to watch the movie! :) Of course, both of us throughout the movie would worry about it being too loud and waking up the girls or trying to cough quietly so as not to disturb the girls! Yeah, I think we need to do it more often...we're out of practice with it just being the two of us since we're so used to doing things with the girls. :) After the movie we went to Toys R Us (I really do love that store!) to do some Christmas shopping for the girls and that was a lot of fun...I could spend a really long time in there just looking at everything! Then as we were leaving we saw a Krispy Kreme Donuts.....so, Jacob stopped just for me and he even got milk so we could eat donuts in the car! It was a fun two day anniversary!A lot can happen in 4 years and we were blessed with two beautiful little girls!

More Baking Adventures

I didn't take a "final" picture of these, but this was the beginning of Homemade Oreo Cookies. They were amazing! So easy to make and they tasted incredible....everyone who had them loved them, including the girls. Abigail in particular loved "her chocolate cookies"....she even got really upset at Jacob when she thought he took all of her chocolate cookies! I'll definitely be making them again...and hopefully taking more pictures. I've realized I'm hopeless when it comes to taking pictures. First off, I always forget to take pictures, second of all, they are generally horrible pictures.....well, other then this first one. I think it turned out pretty well...probably my best picture of food ever....which isn't saying much I know! :)

Yummy granola...I eat this stuff a lot.
Yes, I know this isn't a baking photo, but I was cooking when this happened....Bethany loves cheese and I guess I wasn't cutting her a slice quick enough so that is what happened to my block of cheese. Maybe someday she will be my helper in the kitchen, not just the "eat and lick everything in sight"......especially my chocolate covered pretzels!

I made a lot of chocolate covered pretzels for deer season on Jacob's request...including white ones, but of course, for some reason, I have no pictures of the white ones. *sigh* They were so good though, especially the white ones! :)
Mini Cheesecakes.....oh yummy! These were sooo good. I made oreo ones too, but they were all gone by the end of the day, which (being me) was when I thought I'd better take a picture of them.
Please excuse this horrible picture, but trust me it was the best of all the ones I took (pretty bad, I know). This Chocolate Cream Pie is probably the best pie out there if you like chocolate pie....it's amazing and it sets up so nice! It's also easy to add either meringue or whipped cream to the top of depending on your preferences.
Peanut Blossoms! If you want to attract any ones attention, especially kids, then make these. They were really good and I'll be making them again, probably around Christmas. :)

Thanksgiving Fun!

It's hard to believe it's been almost a week since Thanksgiving....fun times always go by so fast! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving even though it decided to rain and sleet as soon as Jacob had the turkeys ready to deep fry outside! It then snowed while he did the second one! Making memories for sure with that experience. :) We had a lot of yummy food, and I most certainly mean a lot of food....it was all delicious though. My desserts all turned out good...no flops or anything so that was good. The mini cheesecakes were a hit so I'll definitely be making them again...I will post dessert pictures another time. :) My sister and her husband had also gotten my family Band Hero.......so, yes we did a lot of "rockin' and a rollin'"! :)There was some serious concentration going on...... :)
Mom was having a lot of fun on the drums! It was fun having her and Dad both playing together....we had a hard time convincing Mom, but I think she liked it after she tried it. :)
We played lots of card games.....
Did lots of silly stuff! .....
Played with toys....lots of them....
Sat around and talked....a lot!
We worked out....oh wait, that's Bethany! I guess she thought she needed to work off her turkey dinner! :)

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I feel horrible that I haven't blogged in awhile...like always, time gets away from me and then before I know it I'm behind. Extra stuff has been going on this month so the past two weeks have gone really fast for me and of course this week is Thanksgiving so it's another busy but fun week since we're going to be heading down to my family's place tomorrow! That also means I have some "sweet" baking to do, but I'm excited about that because I love to bake...the bad thing is limiting myself to a few things and not trying to convince myself of making "just one more dessert"! :) The desserts right now are: two Chocolate Cream Pies, mini Oreo Cheesecakes and some cherry ones, and Peanut Blossoms. I'm really tempted to make Pumpkin Cream Trifle though...I just found the recipe last night (after I went to the store) or else I'd probably be making it. I keep telling myself I don't need to make anything else, especially since I already went to the store and I shouldn't go again....it is sooo tempting though!

Ok, moving on to less tempting thoughts....ummm, yeah, now I'm completely lost and forgot what else I was going to write about......never mind I will show you all some pictures till I gather my thoughts. :)They love their daddy! Jacob did shave off his beard and mustache not long after I took this picture(he did it just for me...I suppose I do prefer the clean shaven look a little bit better, but I do love him no matter what :) ) so when Abigail looked at this picture she started asking about where his beard and mustache went to!
Abigail and I were having fun taking pictures......Bethany, not so much. :) Here they are waiting to head out the door again. A week and a half ago Jacob's granddad died, so last week was pretty hectic with the visitation and funeral. Jacob was also a pallbearer so we had to make a late night run to Kohl's and get him a suit (thank goodness for holiday shopping hours!) and something for me to wear. I don't know what you can really say about a funeral...you can't really say "it was a good funeral", since that doesn't really fit the occasion, but the guy in charge from the funeral home said he had never seen so many people come to the funeral service at the church and then come all the way out to the cemetery. So, it was impressive how all the family and so many people connected to him came together.

We also got to spend another weekend down with my family, so three weekends in a row coming up this week! I love it! My brother Nathan was home from college for his week long break, so it was awesome to see him again and I can't wait till tomorrow to see everyone again! We had some fun game times too, which hopefully we'll continue tomorrow! :)
Abigail was pretty happy to see Nathan since she's been talking about going to college with him ever since he left....I should be happy she isn't anywhere near college age or I wouldn't be able to keep her from going! It's pretty neat how close she is to all her aunts and uncles...one of the benefits of having spent 6 months with them while Jacob was deployed. I hope she and Bethany are always close them...it's pretty special.

Well, since I know I won't be blogging till after thanksgiving......

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!