Homemade Ice Cream

A couple of weeks ago we were watching some cartoons on PBS and in between some shows they put on a few craft ideas. This time they put on how to make homemade ice cream with just 2 ziploc bags and within 5 minutes. I was skeptical as I know how long it takes for our electric homemade ice cream machine to make ice cream, but I told the girls we would try it someday. Well, they have good memories and definitely do not let me forget! Once I figured out how to print it off (part of the procrastination was that it was so dang hard to find on their website!) But today after we got home from the doctor and before naptime, we did it and it did literally take no more than 5-10 min. It probably wouldn't have taken as long, but I had to keep reminding the girls that they were the ones in charge of shaking the bag, not me! It turned out pretty good I thought. Here's a pic of them enjoying it! I didn't get any pics of the process, but I will include the recipe below! Enjoy!
Ok...for some reason my copy and pasting won't work in the blog, so here's the link for the recipe! www.kcptkids.org/letter_pages/activities/I_Zip-Loc_Bag_Ice_Cream.pdf

A Mini Spa Day

This last Saturday was Michelle's neighborhood garage sale among many other neighborhood garage sales in Liberty, so we made a trip up to check them out. We got a few good things, which is always nice! But we also got to visit with Grandma! Grandma came up for the weekend because Michelle was going to be induced the following Monday (pictures of that will follow later!) So she just made a weekend of it and came up early. I had planned on stepping out of my box for a bit and giving Michelle a pedicure/foot massage since she was getting ready to have her baby. Apparently one of her friends had already set it up for them to go get one together, so I gave Grandma one instead. The girls were enthralled watching me do Grandma's feet. Then I painted Gma's toes and they wanted theirs painted too...so Gma lined them up on the couch and did them all at the same time! Sadly on Sunday it was a bit chillier so they both had Sunday shoes with socks on, so they couldn't sport their newly painted toes, but that didn't stop them from sporting their newly painted fingernails! Everyone they talked to, they mentioned that their Gma had painted their fingernails. Who'd thunk a little bit of paint would go a long way! Oh...and notice that Kayley was very specific on getting paint on every bit of the nail (shown in the bottom left she is pointing out a spot that Grandma missed!) It was a fun day!

28 weeks

Wow! I can't believe I'm already at 28 weeks! I guess that means I'm officially in the third trimester...crazy!! There are times when I can't wait to be finished being pregnant and then other times where I am just fine with this little guy cooking just a little bit longer! I've actually been feeling pretty good lately. Some pains I've had in the past that have plagued me all day/everday have subsided and only seem to come back every now and then, I assume maybe just when he's growing lots?!? Also a good thing, my headaches have started to subside some. I still have them, but lately they haven't been everyday like before. I think last week I only had 3-4! I still feel huge!! I think part of it is because I've forgotten what it feels like to be pregnant maybe? I have an appointment in 2 weeks for another ultrasound to check if my placenta previa has corrected itself...I'm still kind of nervous about that as if it hasn't it increases my odds of having a c-section (one of my biggest fears of labor/delivery), but I'm trying not to stress about it too much. I'm sure it will be fine whatever the case! I also had to take my sugar test twice (luckily only the hour one twice!) reason being because the lab messed up my results somehow....grr!! I'm just glad I didn't have to do the tolerance test that's 4 hours long and you have to drink 4 of those nasty drinks, plus you have to do it fasting! I had to do that with Kayley and it was awful! One of my favorite things now is that for some reason Kayley constantly says, "Mommy, you're pretty!" Just what a pregnant momma needs to hear!

It still amazes me what your body is capable of when pregnant and what such a privilege it is for me to be able to have this experience, even amongst all the aches/pains! I'm very grateful to my Heavenly Father for all the blessings I have with being a parent and having this experience! I know my family is only mine if I do what He wants me to do in raising them correctly! I'm glad that Heavenly Father has trusted me with caring for my sweet children!

This picture was actually taken by Kayley...I think she did a pretty good job! One of their favorite things to do lately is to take pictures with my old camera. Someday I'll have to post them to show off their camera skills! I actually let them take one picture of me with my new camera, but that is now off limits so it doesn't get broken!!

Our Girls

Well, I was all excited about these matching dresses for the girls for Easter because I found them on sale and they had Kayley's size in them, which is getting harder to find Kayley's size in something that matches Cora! However, since General Conference was on Easter Sunday, we didn't get to wear them until later. Anyway, here are the pictures from their matching dresses debut. They had to do some cheesy/funny faces as well as the usual cute ones. Now I just have to find a cute little boy outfit that matches these dresses and then when our little boy is born, we can get pictures of all three of them!
Here'a a random picture of the girls trying on hats at Bass Pro while we were waiting (patiently, I might add) for Daddy to finish up at the shooting range. Cora refused to wear the racoon hat, so she opted to just wear her hat from home that they had both brought in. Have I mentioned that I love our girls!?!

A funny thing they did yesterday, we were on our way to church we saw one of the Blue Springs water towers. One of their favorite things to do is to figure out whose water tower is whose...this particular one has always been Olivia's and Katrina's water tower because it's by their house (old house now)...so yesterday Cora got excited about seeing Olivia's water tower and I had to sadly remind them that they didn't live over there anymore. Kayley responded that they should take the water tower down and move it to where Olivia lived now so that Olivia can have water where she lives now. I told them they have water towers by where they live now and would have plenty of water. It's still taking a while for it to sink in that the Carles live so far away now..for all of us!

Three Little Pigs

I forgot to post this video a while back. A couple of weeks ago our ward had a Primary Talent Show. It was lots of fun to see all the kids do their talents and let us learn a little bit more about each of them! Have I mentioned that I love my calling as Primary Pianist!! Anyway, Cora was the only one that wanted to participate. She wanted to tell the story of the Three Little Pigs. We practiced for it quite a bit and she was doing great practicing at it! My favorite part is when she acts as the big bad wolf and blows the piggies houses down! However, when we got up there, she chickened out and I was the one that told the story. Oh well, I was just impressed that she had the courage to get up there. Kayley didn't want to do anything, a stark difference compared to last year's talent show when she sang a Taylor Swift song. Oh well, maybe next year both of them will want to do something!

Again, don't forget to pause the music.

Cora & Kayley Dancing

This is a video of Cora's new kind of dancing. It's so cute cause she puts her hands on her hips and kind of does a twist thing. I'll let you be the judge of her cuteness. It's kind of hard to see at first because we forgot to turn on the light until Kayley came in and she tries to dance with Cora too.

Don't forget to push pause on my music below so you can here them!

Our Trip to Farmington and St. Louis

This last weekend was very nice and relaxing to say the least, even though it seemed jam packed with fun! It was Nick's 4 day weekend, which we love as it comes every 5 weeks and love the extra time with Daddy at home! So on Friday we got up and headed to St. Louis to the Temple where we met Grandma (Nick's mom). She graciously watch the girls so we could do a session at the Temple. The girls of course loved the time with Grandma, in fact when I called her on our way there to make sure about what time we were meeting, Cora got extremely mad that we weren't seeing Grandma right there at that moment! I sadly didn't get pictures of the girls at the temple, but looking back I should have taken the time to and will try and do that next time. I'm glad though that they do get excited to go to the temple even though they aren't old enough to go in. I look forward to the Kansas City Temple being built soon so they can go through the Open House.

After the temple we headed to the zoo in hopes of catching a few animals. We were short on time, so everyone was great troopers (including us adults) as it had been quite a while with a decent meal. I was glad I packed a lot of snacks, which tided us over. Luckily the girls each had their own animals they wanted to see and they were both in the same area. Cora wanted to see the Lions and Kayley wanted to see the baby Camel. I was just glad no one wanted to see the elephants...they always seem to take forever to get to! Here are some pics of our animal sightings!
More animals, including the baby camel, it's kind of hard to see them all underneath their shedding coats! The baby camels humps were laying flat, which was weird too. I guess that's something that comes as it gets older.

Then after the zoo, we headed to Chilis for some yummy food then headed to the condos in Desoto. Thanks to Grandma being so willing to come and get us in the condos, we got to stay for the weekend. The next morning we said goodbye to Grandma who wanted to head home and then headed to Farmington for the JDRF (Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) walk. We were amazed at how many people were there. Apparently their goal was to raise $1500 as this was Farmington's first time doing a walk (I think), they actually ended up raising $15,000! We were amazed! We were just glad to be able to be there with family! The Farmington Felkers were there of course and my Mom and Otto also made the trip. It was great to see them as well as all the other Farmington family/friends! I just love this picture of Elizabeth and Kayley (thanks to Stephanie I have more pictures as I had my camera, but didn't get very many taken at all!)

Here are some pics of the girls (Kayley, Mallory, & Cora) playing. My girls loved playing with this hot wheels car...I think Santa or the birthday fairy has her work cut out for her to find one of these! Also some random zoo pics that didn't get in the spot earlier. We also got to go to Lix, the beloved Ice Cream shop that is only in Farmington. I have to say, Nick and I are not fans of Custard at all, but this one was the best custard place ever! It almost took the place of Maggie Moos! Too bad it's only in Farmington...I guess we need to take more trips there now!

Here's some more pics of the kids playing on Saturday. Edward and Stephanie were gracious enough to let our kids play all day with their kids! They loved spending time with their cousins!

Nick got schooled in basketball by Elizabeth...and by me of course!! We had many fun games of Horse and Pig! It brought back memories playing Edward as he and I used to play many games when I was younger...all of the time I would beat him of course!! :)

All in all it was a great weekend seeing lots of family and having lots of fun! We were sad to see it end all too quickly!

Lately and Projects

Well, about a week ago, I opened my camera to take pictures of the Carles before they left and found out that my camera was broken! It still took pictures, but the screen was messed up. So, I was very upset at first as we only paid $15 for the camera and now we were going to have to pay tons more money, but honestly once I started looking for cameras, I started to get excited to have a new camera with new features! So for about a week we've been casually looking at any store we can think of that has cameras and found some I liked, but I didn't want to pay that much! Finally I decided if I wanted the features I wanted, I was going to have to pay a little bit extra and the fact that my other camera was so cheap, I felt I could splurge a bit. I had it narrowed down to two and I was headed into the store to buy one of them, then we forgot about another store we hadn't checked yet, so we went there first. We are glad we did as we found a camera that was on a great clearance price and it had all the same features of the other cameras I was deciding from before for about $100 cheaper! I was way excited and I have been pleased with this camera. So, the girls have been my guinea pigs on testing out all the features, so here are a few of the pictures.

The girls cheesing...
Then we had to take them to the park to test out some other features and for the girls to play. I won't bore you with the pictures of the sunset, landscape, distant pics, etc...so I just included the pics of the girls! Einstein also had his share of sliding down the slide...as well as Nick!

Then last night we went to Liberty so Nick could go to his favorite store, Great Guns. The girls and I stayed and played with Ashlyn and Preston while Daddy did his boring gun shopping! Kayley has lately been into working on things like Daddy works on things with his tools. We don't have any tools at our house, so she's had to pretend, but she was in 7th heaven being able to play with Preston's tools. I guess we are in really big need of a boy in our house! So here's our Handy Manny!

Then, here's my projects I've been working on...the outside of the house! Here's one project to check off my list. I pulled up that nasty black plastic stuff that just kept pulling up more and more with each mow and replaced it with the smaller landscape rock. I'm also in the process of changing out some landscaping on our retaining wall along our fence as this is where I got these small rocks! I'll put pics of that up later once I start planting the new plants I want to put in there. Here's the rest of my to do list for the outside of the house:

1. Paint the front door

2. Put up the new doorknob on the door

3. Paint the trim along the garage doors

4. Put up the new lights on the outside of the garage (this is Nick's job with my assistance)
5. Build a retaining wall in the front landscape (also Nick's job with my assistance)

6. Plant plants along the retaining wall

7. Put the extra small landscape rocks around the willow tree in the backyard

8. The small landscape rocks around our trees in the front need to be dug into the yard, they are just sitting there and get turned everytime you mow/weed eat

9. Start our garden...it will be on a much smaller scale this year than usual with the baby coming

10. Pressure wash the deck (more of a spot clean as I did this last summer) then stain the deck

11. Lay the tile in our bathroom

Don't worry Grandmas and Grandpas, I am not over doing it! I just want these things finished before the baby comes and Nick won't let me paint anything inside that I want to paint, so I have to settle for the outside projects! Plus I want to get these done before it starts to get stiffling hot and before our pool opens so we can go swimming instead of working!!

Here's the before pic...notice how it's all coming up!??!!

Here's the after pic...I have to seed some of the lawn now as it's much easier to curve the black plastic stuff than it is to curve the landscape rocks! I just love it so much more now this way!

Easter Festivities, etc.

We haven't been up to much lately, but for some reason I have a lot of pictures to post. Here is what we've been up to lately...

Preston celebrated his 2nd birthday in the middle of March. It was a fun quiet celebration. I'm going to have to take tips on cake making from Michelle when I'm ready to start baking boy cakes.
Also this last month we've had to sadly say goodbye to the Carles. JT got a job in Idaho, which we were really glad for since Fed-Ex has been making some changes lately due to the economy and his job here was going to be non-existent in the next few months. However we were really sad to see them go. The girls have just loved having them so close! When Cora wants to play dress-up, she always asks if she can play dress-up with "Olivila." I'm not sure if it's clicked (for either of us) that they are so far away now. I'm still half-expecting them to be just down the road from us.

Here are some pictures of them the night they came to our Ward Talent Show with my cousin Jack, who is also getting ready to be deployed. The other pictures are of the girls when we went to eat dinner with the Carles at Minsky's the night before they left.

I didn't get one of Judson posing with the girls, but they played with him with all the games. I'm just glad they aren't old enough yet to know that the games actually take money. They are still ok with just pretending to play!

Then the Saturday before Easter Bass Pro was having a fun day with the Easter Bunny, an Easter egg hunt, and an Easter craft. The girls were excited about all of the events! When we first got there we started the egg hunt. Apparently it was just all around the store. Nick's first thought was "This is my kind of egg hunt, let's go to the hunting section first!" Well, no luck, so we ran into someone on our way off the elevator who said someone was putting out eggs in the camping section. Sure enough we found some there. There was a 5 egg limit, so it didn't take long for the girls to hit that limit. Then we headed over to the line for the Easter Bunny while Nick went to the shooting range. After about a 45 minute wait, it was finally our turn. I was worried Cora would be scared as she still got scared with Santa Claus this year. Surprisingly though she did great and even let the Easter Bunny put her up on his lap for the pictures. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Then Easter morning the Easter Bunny hid the girls' baskets with lots of goodies in them! They both got a June from Little Einsteins and a copy of Princess and the Frog and of course lots of candy! Then we all got to watch the "prophet movie" (General Conference) and then headed to the Walkers for the afternoon session and an Easter dinner.

We did an Easter egg hunt at the Walker's house too. Originally our plan was to have it outside, but it started raining a bit, so Nick hid all the eggs inside...there were a lot of them! The kids had fun finding them, so much fun that later that night they were just hiding the eggs and taking turns finding them! It was cute and a great Easter!

Disney on Ice

Last week we took the girls to go see Disney on Ice. It's come every year (which I think it does come every year to KC area), but we've (I've) been wanting to take Kayley especially since every year Ariel comes, but we finally went this year and I was glad we waited as Cora is now old enough to love and be into princesses too. She's not quite as much into Ariel as Kayley is and has been since she was 18 months old, but she does love princesses and loves Ariel the best only because her older sister does!

It was a crazy night! I started out driving even though I had asked Nick to because I hate driving in the city because he's more daring than I am and we always get into an argument! So, finally after driving around for 15 min, we switched and he dropped the girls and I off to get in line while he did the stressful parking. Note...he hates to pay for parking, so he will drive around forever until he finds cheap or next to cheap parking! It about killed him to pay $5 to pay for parking for Phantom and it made me crazy that he took so long to park because we were about to miss the show!! So he finally got a spot as we had finally waited in line for 15 min and found our seats. Then he calls me and tells me he has to run back to the car for the 2nd time because he left his set of keys (since he was driving with my set) in plain view and of course he parked in no-man's land because it was free...but the first time he had to take back his conceal carry gun because they had metal detectors at the door. So he actually only barely missed the very beginning and then we got to enjoy the show with him.

Here are pictures of Mickey and Minnie's introdution:
Here's pictures of Cars...they were pretty impressive cars I thought...

The much anticipated, Ariel. Kayley wouldn't talk to me during this, she was so embarrassed that she was liking it so much! It was cute to watch how excited she got!

Lion King pictures...neither one of our girls have actually seen this movie, so it wasn't as exciting to them...but Nick got a little bit of his own excitement about this time as a kid behind him ended up throwing up on the back of his head. I didn't hear it and he didn't say anything about it until Cora mentioned that she had to go to the bathroom and Nick said he'd take her so he could wash out the throw-up. Apparently the parents didn't even apologize, but I'm not really sure they knew their kid had thrown up on him either. I was just glad Nick didn't throw up trying to clean himself up in the bathroom.

The Tinkerbell pictures...it was actually the longest of all of them. I think just because it's the newest of all the Disney movies. By the end of it, both my girls were ready to go home. They should have ended with Ariel and they would have wanted to stay the rest of the night!!

And the MAIN EVENT...our girls! Cora dressed up as Tinkerbell and Kayley dressed up as Ariel, or at least wore her Ariel dress. I forgot to get a picture of them all dressed up before we left, but I did get a picture of Cora in her outfit, Kayley refused to take her jacket off during the event. And at the very beginning some small fireworks went off during Mickey and Minnie's debut and Kayley from then on until the very end plugged her ears. It was cute and took lots of coaxing to get her finally take her ears down. It was a great night and we all had a lot of fun!