Carving Pumpkins!

It was so funny to see just how serious Bryant was in carving and he had to do it by himself too!  Todd helped with the face and then if you look closely, there are stab marks all over his pumpkin!

For Family Home Evening last night, we carved our pumpkins.  Bryant had gotten his from the pumpkin patch visit with a friend and the other three were from our garden!  The large orange one that Taylor carved grew under the cover of our fireplace, she had to dig a hole to pull it out from under the house!  One of the green ones was slightly soft, so Sydney carve the other one.  The wierd thing is that they both had a ring around the middle and we did nothing different to them while they were growing all in the same area.  Sydney carved a face on both sides of the pumpkin.

The lighter pumpkin goop is from the green pumpkin and it had super tiny seeds and not very many of them at all.  The other ones are from Bryan'ts pumpkin.  Taylor's large pumpkin didn't have very many seeds either, but it was the right color!

Soccer Season 2008

Taylor is in the middle taking the ball from the number 25 girl in purple. Taylor made the McKnight Middle School soccer team of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.  She gets to play some, but not as much as she'd like.  She tells me that the sixth graders don't get to play much because they are sixth graders...  

Taylor is the far left player during warm ups before the game.  They have a short season of games twice a week during the month of October.  Thursday will be her last game.  Their first game they won 11-0 and Tay scored three of the goals!  Last night they lost 0-5.  

Can you see what I see?

The girls were having so much fun outside the other day and called me out to see their new swing that held them both at the same time!  If you look real close you'll see Todd's cargo net tied up in the tree!  But Mom, it works really good!!!  So we had a talk about asking first and how someone would love to steal this item that was Dad's!  Whining the whole way, they reluctantly untied it and took it down.  Now they have a piece of wood tied up as the swing.  Their whole lives they've wanted a climbing tree.  We had this crab apple tree next to our driveway that dropped tons of crab apples all over and was a huge mess!  So Todd cut off all the branches, leaving enough branch for the girls to still climb.  I really hope it doesn't grow back next year---NO MORE CRAB APPLES PLEASE!!!!

Halloween Tradition

Last week we had our friends over for dinner and to help decorate sugar cookies.  This is our family tradition for every holiday we make and decorate iced sugar cookies.  This is the Allen family:  Eden (Is Sydney's age), Benjamin, Jonathon (is a year older than Bryant), Thomas is five months and not in the photo.  We had a kid friendly dinner of tacos and then made and ate the dessert!  Yummy!  

First Halloween

This was at our church Halloween party.  We were asked to bring Halloween themed finger food.  I brought a queso dip.  Ground beef, green onions, chopped tomatoes and velveeta cheese, can you say yummo!  Served with tortilla chips.  There must have been five plates of mummies, bread dough wrapped weiners...  Anyways, there were stations around the gym: grabbing apples on strings, jail, face painting, bowling, bean bag toss, cake walk, friendly witch story telling and a spook alley.  Different families decorated a classroom and/or door and the children went trick or treating around the building to the classrooms.  I think they went around three times before I was out of candy!  This is Sydney, she is Hermione from Harry Potter.

Taylor is a Knight... kind of.  She started out wanting to be a pirate, then put on an old football jersey of Todd's to be a football player, then ended up with part of her Knight outfit.  She was a half knight...
This is Bryant "bowling" down pumpkins, notice the pumpkin in mid-air!  Right on Bry!  How about rolling it next time, like everyone else.
This is Rylee Mitchell and Bryant, she is his good friend and is a monkey.  The guy behind them is a visitor or a grandchild of someone.  I'm trying to say, I don't know who he is!  Bryant is Woody from the Toy Story films, missing his gun...again!  I finally took off his sheriff's badge as it was always lost!
This was Bryant's favorite game, the bean bag toss.  He has a good throwing arm and was in his element!

My Favorite Soup

I got this idea from my friend Michelle's blog.  It made me think of my favorite cool weather recipes.

Gonnuscio's Italian Vegetable Soup

1 cup diced celery

1 cup diced onions

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup sliced carrots

15 oz. tomato sauce

1 to 2 quart tomatoes

15 oz. can kidney beans

2 cups water

1 tsp. oregano, dried

5 tsp. beef boullion

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. basil, dried

1/4 to 1/2 tsp. pepper

parsley, fresh is best

4 bun size sausages, sliced (John Morrell brand)

Add all the above listed ingredients together an boil.  Cover and simmer 20 minutes.  Add more broth or water if you prefer thinner soup.

Before serving add:

1 cup macaroni

1/2 cup frozen corn

1 cup frozen green beans

Cook 5-10 minutes.

Serve with parmesan cheese.

I love the flavor of this soup and it is great with garlic bread.  I'll post more recipes later.  Enjoy!

Remodel is finished... finally!

This is Stan and Tom, they installed the tile backsplash.  It took them a day and a half to get it finished.  As I was posting this, I realized I hadn't taken a finished photo.  After Taylor finished the dishes, I will take one and get it posted.  It looks so nice and I just have to paint on the sealant tomorrow, 72 hours after the grout is put on.  OOOOh, I just love it!