Brownies for Young Women's...we can't keep up!

Susie Homemaker in the making:

Jenny and Kayleigh made Christmas cookies last night. I think Kayleigh's will be going to her little friends in the neighborhood. (She has many more than we do - friends.)

I wish we had friends...

Have you ever made Amish Friendship Bread? Gone through the ten-day process? Split it into four batches to pass on? We did the first round (and I really think it tastes good!), split the batter and made bread to go with it to pass along to some neighbors. Then we started round two (because it really is good!). After splitting the batter into four baggies on Day 10 again, I never really quite got around to distributing them to anyone. I really hated to just throw it away, so I've been nursing all four along. Sunday was the third Day 10, so we had to split four baggies into four each and bake again. I made six loaves, four of which we gave to Matt's home teaching families (thank goodness he happened to be going that day!). We kept two because they kind of fell apart - and who would we have given them to anyway (and did I mention that it's really, really good?)? Now we're overflowing with baggies of goo and running out of "friends." They're like rabbits that won't quit multiplying!

I've Been Converted!

Kayleigh's Pumpkin #2 became Turkey #1. We spent a good amount of time trying to come up with a name for her, but were unsuccessful. She's just "Turkey." I guess that's better than "Girl," which was what K originally wanted to call her.

Happy Halloween

Halloween was fun for us all. We started early in the day by carving a pumpkin for dinner. Actually, we cooked our dinner in the pumpkin. Sounds gross, doesn't it? We were scared, too, but it turned out okay. It was supposed to be "soup," but it ended up being thicker like a casserole. We put browned hamburger, cooked rice, onions, cream of chicken soup, brown sugar, sour cream and carrots in the pumpkin and baked it for an hour. It had a slight pumpkin flavor to it, but mostly it wasn't very warm after being in the oven for that long and we're not big on onions, so there were a lot to pick around. The carrots were also still hard and crunchy even though I had cooked them in the microwave some before adding them. I think next time we'll use onion flakes or powder and corn instead of carrots. It had a good flavor though. I'm always looking for new traditions to start (ones that are different from the same ones everyone else always does). Maybe this is it. Maybe we can try cooking different things in the pumpkin now that we know kind of what to expect.

While the pumpkin was cooking, Matt and I took K out trick-or-treating around the cul-de-sac and about halfway up the block and back. It took an hour just to go that far. She had to stop and check out everything along the way and inspect all of the decorations. We also had to take pictures of her with her little friends. Princess Leia is really Princess "Tayah" - Kayleigh's friend who we babysit a few days a week. Tara and Garrett went out with some of their friends while Jenny stayed home making treats and handing out candy.

Our little pumpkin

Yesterday, when Kayleigh and I went to WalMart, she noticed a huge display of fake pumpkins. The whole time we were there, she kept talking about them. In the produce department, they only had the little ones (which worked for me), so we picked out a good one for her. When we got home, she told me it needed eyes, so I took care of that. She then spent a good amount of time coloring it with some markers. She was so proud of it! We put it outside on the front porch for all to see. There were three little neighbor boys (probably 3-4 years old) across the street playing and she kept yelling to them, "Show you the pumpkin!" They eventually came over and told her that it was "beautiful." It was fun listening to these little kids all having a conversation with each other.