Everything is Better with Butter!

When I got home from choir practice this afternoon, my family had just about eaten everything in the kitchen available for lunch. After the last few bites of leftover soup and some tortilla chips, I was in the mood to bake something. I didn't quite expect to use a whole box of butter, but yes, I did indeed blow through FOUR sticks of butter. That's what I added to my thankful list today. I started out making a recipe from my Grandma White for Apple Dumplings, but they weren't coming together very well, so I just made the biscuits after awkwardly trying to fill two of them with the apple filling. I must not be as coordinated as Grandma. There went one stick of butter, and I still had to do something with all of the apples I had chopped up and rolled in cinnamon sugar. I knew exactly what I wanted to make.

I have been eying these Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars for a while. OH MY! They were worth every single stick of butter it called for. Just yesterday I was telling Nate about how my clothes are getting tight and I have to get up to work out in the mornings. After today, I think I just need some elastic pants. :) Just kidding. Now that my butter is gone, I guess I'll have to find something healthier to eat!

Good Read

Okay, I just got this book from the library yesterday, and I finished it already. It's a great young adult read that has some great messages in it. It's nothing like any other Richard Paul Evans book I've read. I didn't know that Richard Paul Evans has Tourette's syndrome. He did an interview on Glenn Beck's TV program. If you wonder if you would like it, watch the video. It made me really want to request it from the library. Funny that I listed electricity as the first thing I was thankful for in my list in my last post!

What are you Thankful for?

In years past we have tried the idea of coming up with something we are grateful for each day in November leading up to Thanksgiving. It's always a great tradition, but today I saw the idea of trying to come up with 1000 things we are grateful for by Thanksgiving. Really?! I think we can do it. We certainly have more blessings in our lives than we can count, so why can't we come up with a list of 1000? Talk about having an attitude of gratitude! I'm going to put up a list on the wall and as a family we'll keep adding to it all month. I thought about doing it on the blog, but I don't want to be on the computer that much. Maybe I'll put some of my list up here. At least I'll start it right now.

1. electricity

Last of October

This should probably be spread out to a few posts, but I'm just going to finish up with October here and move on.

 We made candy apples. Funny how the caramel always gets eaten and the apples thrown in the trash.

Here's a picture of my ghost cake. I was happy with it, but now looking at the pictures I wish I had made more ghosts on it. That's alright, it tasted really good.

 These are pictures from our trip to the pumpkin patch. It was a fun afternoon.

 

We took a nature walk one afternoon where the girls took pictures of the signs of fall. I'll only share a few of the MANY they took. :)

Our trip to the zoo. This elephant was putting on a show giving himself a mud bath.

 The otters were a lot of fun, too. I love how playful they are. Ryan was completely worn out by the end of the day! It was a fun trip.

This is our coolest Halloween decoration this year. I saw the idea to paint this on your storm glass door, which we don't have, so Nate drew and cut this out. We were going to put it on the front of the door for trick-or-treaters, but it ended up raining Halloween night.

Carving pumpkins

 This is what Ryan thought of this activity.

And our costumes... All I can say is, Hooray for hot glue and duck tape!!

 What do you think of the Easter bucket to collect the trick-or-treating candy in? Ha Ha! My poor kids!

Thomas may look a little beat up, but hey, he cost me $4.00 for blue duck tape, and that's just because the blue paint was peeling off of the silver duck tape. Did you know that tempera paint peels off of duck tape? Yeah, that's probably why the lady who blogged about this online said to use a non-water based paint. Ryan had been begging to be Rosie, the pink train from the Thomas movies. I was so relieved when he was excited about this box!

 I think Hannah should have won one of the costume prizes, but that may just be because it was my idea and I made it. :)

And I made Nikki's veil and bouquet of origami lilies, too. We decided her baptism dress needed to be used at least one more time.

It was raining last night, so we suckered the kids into turning the lights out, watching a movie (Annie) and eating popcorn and the candy we had been planning on handing out to trick-or-treaters. Surprisingly, they went for it. And we certainly did not miss out on the candy train, since we had a trunk-or-treat at church last Saturday.

So, October was a fun and very busy month. Now I'm ready to move forward to November!