William is ONE!!

I can't believe our baby is already 1! Friday, November 28 was his first birthday. He also shares his birthday with Uncle Johnny. Happy 31 Uncle Johnny!!

Thanksgiving

No picture with this post because I forgot my camera. Thanksgiving started with the kids and I driving up to Atlanta to pick up Tom from the airport. He was be able to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us before having to fly back to school in Missouri. We came back home and got ready to go over to a friend's house for Thanksgiving. I made the Turkey because our friends didn't want to cook a Turkey, but I couldn't have Thanksgiving without the traditional fare, and besides, Turkeys are the easiest thing to cook on Thanksgiving-just put it in the oven.... Anyway...
We got ready to go over to have our friendly feast and when we got in the van, we realized we'd locked our keys in the house. What's worse, the spare key wasn't in it's usual spot. So, we had to go in through a window. I had the bright idea to pry open the window screen with a small, rusty, dirty, hand shovel. Tom went to work on our heavy duty storm window screens. Unfortunately, the shovel slipped and hit Tom in the face and he split his lip open. It was pretty bad. We finally got in the house and when he looked at his lip, Tom realized he needed stitches. But, because we had the Turkey for the feast, we had to go over to our friend's house first.
One of our friend's is a nurse, and he took a look at Tom's lip. He thought it needed stitches too, but thought he could do it. So, Tom let him. After dinner we cleared off the giant island counter they had in their house, and turned it into an operating table.The missionaries were there and were video taping the stitching "surgery". Tom was a really good sport. Poor guy. He finally gets to come home for a few days and this happens. Four stitches later Tom was all sewn up, and we all sat down for pie.

It was quite an eventful Thanksgiving. Oh, and while the kids were playing, the little boy who's house we were at broke his arm. So after we left, they had to make a trip to the ER for him. We should've just waited on Tom's stitches and all gone together and let Tom get stitched up by a real doctor.
So.... that was our Thanksgiving. We're just thankful we're all together.

Getting ready for Turkey day

I know it's a little late, but we've been a little busy this week. Wednesday night I had the kids help me prepare the stuffing for the Turkey. I have happy memories of doing this with my family the night before Thanksgiving.

We always make the traditional , old-fashioned sage stuffing. It tastes like Thanksgiving to me. Alan got to use a knife for the first time and cut the celery. Sarah got to use our onion slicer, and Kaitlyn put all the ingredients in the pan to cook. William sat and looked cute.

Cake Mix Cookie Cut Outs

If you've read my blog for very long, you might've noticed that I love to bake, and that I especially love to try out new types of cookies. Tonight, for a fun little activity, we wanted to make some cut out cookies. When you have small children, sometimes the quicker things are, the better. I have alot of cake mixes from the commissary because they often sell them for .59 cents each. So, I thought I'd try to find a good cut out cookie recipe using a cake mix. Here's what I found:

Cake Mix Cookie Cut Outs

1 cake mix-any flavor

2 eggs

1/4 cup of oil

1/2 cup sugar

Mix all ingredients together until it forms a dough. Roll the dough out and cut out desired shapes. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

The cookies in the picture are made from two cake mixes. I made one yellow cake mix batch, and 1 chocolate cake mix batch and swirled them together. The chocolate ones were neat because I've never made chocolate cookie cut outs. Yummy!

In case anyone wants to know, the pinwheel cookies were made by rolling out some yellow dough, and then rolling out some chocolate dough, then stacking them on top of each other, then rolling them together, then thinly slicing the roll.