A quick update

I've been gone for quite a long time from Blogger! The reason behind this is I've been working. I started as a seasonal employee at Victoria's Secret last October. They asked me to stay on after the holidays. In February, I began working at a nearby preschool. Right now I'm still working at both jobs and even though they don't add up to "full-time", I feel like I'm always gone. I have to really plan my week out to get everything thing in. We've done a lot of fun things since I posted last October but for now I'm working on a post about spring break trip to Washington. We have family living near Seattle and it's a really fun place to visit! I don't have all my pictures organized yet, but I'll publish the post as soon as I do.

Thanks for the request Sausha :)

Fall

I'm always sad to say goodbye to summer but I really love fall. Today I made one of my favorite fall recipes, Pumpkin Waffles. They smell so good. I love cooking with pumpkin because it's always a challenge to make it taste just right. Pumpkin can be really bland and gross but if you do it right it's the best!
This afternoon, I took the kids to our favorite park. Talon loves fish. He always asks if we can catch some in the ponds at our park. I actually said yes today and all three of us were able to catch a few guppies in our net. We brought a bucket to put them in and after a while we let them go. The kids also played on the playground. Kaila tried to turn everything into a competition. Half of her sentences ended with "ha-ha"... little brat ;)
Tonight we are making Teryaki Burgers (<--- my newest favorite cooking blog). I've never made burgers with turkey so this could be interesting! I've been looking for new recipes all over the place lately. I hate eating the same dinners over and over.
I didn't take pictures of anything we did/made today because I'm lame. Usually I'm on top of pictures. I'm really looking forward to Halloween and all the fun little crafts, activities, and fun it includes. Two things I really want to do this month: 1) Make a fun Halloween cake. 2) Take family pictures in the pretty leaves. I'll definitely be trying to make up for my lack of pictures today in my next posts.

Pizzucchini

Picture from www.dashingdish.com

This is such a yummy recipe! I made it for my family tonight and everyone loved it. That's amazing. It's really healthy and easy. I'm excited to try more of Katie's recipes, especially this one. I've never tried the Vitatop muffins she mentions in that post but I'm excited to try her version because I have a really terrible sweet tooth!

October, Part 1

Kaila has been going to the after-school cooking club. She gets so excited for Monday afternoons! So far she has made pizza, smoothies, and a hot dog wrapped in biscuit dough??? I don't know what you actually call that. It was sorta gross. We chose to walk home that day, so I had to carry it while the dog was trying to steal it.

These are the (hopefully) pretty cards I made for the YW that earned their Young Womanhood Recognition Award.
Halloween cookies!
For some reason I deleted the picture of all the best cookies. It had ghost cookies too. This picture has Kaila's vampire and Talon's...um...zombie?

My new shoes!
The are leather and I only paid $21 for them on Overstock.com!

It spent a ton of time working on two cute Halloween projects. I didn't realize how expensive this blanket would be or I never would have made it!

It looks busy but you should have seen what Kaila picked out originally! It included Spongebob material and had a blue backing instead of black. Kaila's favorite blanket that she has been obsessed with since she was about 17 months old is past the point of mending. So sad :( This is her replacement, even though it's a seasonal blanket. The second project didn't turn out so well. No pictures of it for the internet!

Fall Break was sadly boring. I wish we could have gone to Washington like we did last year. The only fun thing we did was go to Vinyard Garden Center's Pumpkinland.

Of course I was asked to be the witch ;). We went through a little corn maze. There were Halloween jokes written on signs throughout the maze. Kaila LOVED that. Talon kept asking if the maze "had a bloody end." I'm not sure what that meant, but it was pretty funny.

We saw goats, peacocks, ducks, roosters, hens, and bunnies! This little guy was my favorite, besides the peacocks of course.


One goat had it's head stuck in the fence. Chris tried to help, but he was too stubborn.

The kids loved everything, especially the bounce houses, "Hungry Caterpillar" tunnel, and the playground.



It's hard to see, but if you look closely, you can see a lot of gourds hanging it that last picture. They grew a huge canopy of gourds (the picture just shows a small portion). Chris and I thought it was really neat.
Each of the kids picked a pumpkin and for some reason Kaila picked the weirdest, non-round one available. It wasn't a funny gourd or anything. It's the most pathetic pumpkin I've ever seen. Chris picked the one that inspired dirty jokes (to be told to his wife). We ate at Diego's Taco Shop for dinner. It was yummy!

September

I've been super busy with Kaila's gymnastics,

Talon's soccer,

the PTA (which I will not do again), and a few little projects I have. I had two job offers. I turned both of them down because of their schedule. Family comes first.

We had a fun dinner with Chris' cousins at Ichiban. Too bad I didn't take a picture. It was fun, especially with Mark...



Somehow I managed to get Kaila to a dance clinic. YAY! Timpview Dance Company was having their annual fundraiser clinic for little girls. I used to do that with the drill team. Their clinic was 7 hrs. long on a Saturday. I was nervous Kaila would be miserable so I promised to bring her Subway for lunch (mostly just so I could check on her). She had a blast, didn't ask to go home early, and instead asked if she could do it again next year!



We love having Sunday picnics up Provo Canyon with ALL the family. This is the week before the Storytelling Festival at Timpanogos Park (hence the ugly canopies).

Best cookies ever.

Kaila chopped off her long hair!

My new little headache. He wandered into our backyard on the first day of school. For some reason I wanted to keep him. He is a wild menace. His name is Jasper.

Here, the kids are celebrating their uncle's 20th birthday. He is serving a mission in Brazil.

I'm not sure what I did all month but somehow I was super busy and for the first time I got sick of hearing my cell phone ring.

A Goal

I was forwarded an email. It was based off of this article. My email was more fun to read than that article because it included a lot of pictures like this one:

My email also mentioned an HBO movie called Iron Clawed Angels. It's all about these women and what they did back in 1917.
To sum up the email's message: What would these women who lived 90 years ago think about women like me today? I want to vote and I know I should vote but I never make the effort of learning about the candidates. Lame.
I've been running outside a lot lately. I keep seeing candidate's signs and thinking I need to get on the ball. I need to figure out who all these people are, what they want to do, and who I want to vote for. This email was a definite shove in the right direction for me.
I believe voting in the smaller local elections is most important. That's how you get your city and state to be the type of place you want it to be. Also, it's the local government's vote that really counts in the Presidential elections since we use an electoral vote. Get good local leaders and it will trickle up to higher the higher levels.
I found an interesting chart in the Women's Suffrage Wiki. Scroll down to "Timeline of international women's suffrage" and they click on the little arrows in the year column. It looks like the Pitcairn Islands win.

The Little Man's First Day

This is Talon on his first day of preschool with Miss Kirsti. He's four years old. Talon was so excited and silly while I tried to get a nice picture.

Here is Talon's first soccer practice. He loves it and is a great player!

Talon is really easy going and happy. He is such a sweet little momma's boy. He's always telling me he loves me and covering me in kisses. Who knew little boys were like this? I sure didn't.