Adventures in Baking--Kid Style

The kids did all the work in baking the cake for Nielson's birthday on June 6th. As I was poking along in preparation to pour the pudding frosting on top, my fork suddenly hit something foreign. Upon further investigation we discovered a spoon had been baked into the bottom of the pan. Oops.

What Season is it Anyway?

On Monday morning, May 24th, we woke up to this:

I immediately thought, “There go the peppers!”  Everything else in the garden seems to be fine, but the pepper plants I just planted are definitely gone.

Rollerblading Ballerina Princess

Last Saturday I ran a few errands and when I came home Allison was outside dressed as follows, rollerblading up and down the sidewalk in front of our house.

Honestly, how can you not smile at her free spirit and uber personality?

That’s Our Princess

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Changing Blog

Today I have been playing with changing my layout, background, and header. Some things are working better than others. It's fun to learn how to manipulate these things, and I hope to make it all work soon, but if it looks a little slapped together for a while, just know I'm using my own blog to experiment.

Pinewood Derby

I survived my first pinewood derby last night. We had a little pain and suffering when it came to the weigh-in; the scale we were using wasn’t as precise as some of the electrical scales people had used to weigh their cars, and as a result several of the cars had to take weight off to match our scale. Other than that though, things seemed to go well. There weren’t any tears (that I saw) and the boys had a great time racing their cars over and over again.

As part of the awards I made little trophies for all the boys to put their cars on. This way everyone received something. The trophies were very simple, just a small board for the base with a piece of 2x4 glued and nailed onto it as the upright. Then I spray painted them all gold and called it good.

Here is the base made from scrap particle board.

After measuring two or three times for the same length of board I quickly brainstormed for an easier way. It’s not like my cuts had to be New England-furniture-perfect, after all we’re talking about pinewood derby trophies here. A line on the miter saw at the length I wanted (in this case 3 inches) turned out to be just the answer. This way I didn’t have to measure for every single cut. Halleluiah!

Nineteen 3” wood blocks later (for participation), a 4” block for bronze, a 5” block for silver, and a 6” block for our first place winner and we were done making all our cuts. Next came the “puttin together” stage and I couldn’t quite bring myself to spend the time drilling pilot holes and putting them together with screws, so instead I asked Catherine to share here wonderful nail gun (again). She helped glue and nail them after Sunday dinner at my house. Thanks Cath!

Hunter and Ashton and their award winning pinewood derby cars

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We didn’t win 1st, 2nd or 3rd but we had a great time racing and Hunter was definitely one of the most enthusiastic little racers. Just watch out next year…

Allison's Baptism

Allison was baptized on May 1, 2010. It was a wonderful day and she was bouncing out of her skin she was so excited. All of the Ashton's were there except for Jens who is on his mission in Chile. Grammy and Grandpa Day even came from North Carolina just to be here for the special occasion.
(Note: My camera had something on the lens so some of the pictures have a little blurry spot. Super Sadness! For better pictures see Catherine's blog.)

Allison outside our ward meetinghouse before going in to get dressed and ready for the baptism. She is wearing the new dress she found with Grammy Day just that morning.

Outside the church after the baptism we all gathered for pictures before heading over to our house for lunch.

Allison was baptized and confirmed by Dave. It took two tries to baptize her because her foot came up the first time. I think she might be a little proud of that. At least Dave remembered her full name. The other father in our ward baptizing his daughter accidentally said her older sister's middle name and had to do it over again with her own name. Oops. He felt a little sheepish.

Mommy's Little Angels

Spaghetti Night

Oh yeah, this is why we don't have spaghetti as often as Allison would like. How could I forget?

Kristen doesn't understand why I think she needs to have her face washed. Why would I want to torture her like that? (Loryn hams it up in the background.)

Loryn tried to convince me she could just lick it all off with her tongue.
"See Mom, I just lick it."
I wasn't convinced she could get it off her eyebrows though.