Stuffing

I have memories of making old-fashioned sage dressing/stuffing with my family the night before Thanksgiving. We'd get out the celery, the bread, the butter, the onion, the sage, and all work together to put it together. My mom would get out the large stainless steel bowl to fill it with stuffing, and large frying pan, then we'd get to work. This is a tradition that I like to continue especially since we've never had Thanksgiving with my mom in the 13 years since we've been married.

Here's what we do:

First, we'd put two cubes of butter in the frying pan:

Then we tear a whole loaf of bread into peices. William and Kaitlyn had this job, mostly. Then we'd chop up an entire bunch of celery and one large onion. Sarah chopped the celery with my help, and Alan chopped up the onion with Tom's help.

Then we'd sautee the onion and celery in the butter until the onion was clear and the celery was soft. Then we add 2-3 TBspns of sage and some salt and pepper to the pan and mix it with the onion, celery and butter. Then we pour the frying pan mixture into the large bowl of torn bread and mix it all together. You put it in the refridgerator until ready to stuff the bird.

I know it may not be the most exciting recipe, but it's tradition, and being so far from home, I'm very thankful for family traditions.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Family Home Evening

For FHE tonight we learned about the first Thanksgiving. We sang Hymn number 93 "Prayer of Thanksgiving" and then we watched "William Bradford: The first Thanksgiving" from the animated Hero Classics. (You can click on the picture and it will take you to the listing for it on Amazon.com for $10.50)

After that we made "pear turkeys" and "plymouth rocks".

Here's our "Plymouth Rocks" made from nuts, marshmallows and melted chocolate:

Once there was a snowman?

This morning Kaitlyn was playing "monster" with William, and pretending that there was a scary monster in the Family Room. I didn't like her scaring him, so I told them that instead of a monster in the family room, there was a snowman. They liked that idea and began to build a snowman out of the pillows from the couches. Soon Alan and Sarah came in and helped to build the snow man...er um... the "couch" man. So here he is:
Here's couch man with a white blanket on him to make it look more like snow. He's also decked out in a lei, backpack, and Sarah is fixing his "tu tu" :

Alan decided if the snowman was going to have a tu tu, then he needed to have a light saber too. It's a little hard to see, but it's on the left :

The boys at bedtime

Everynight at bedtime after family prayer, William races to Alan's room to play before I can get him and put him into bed. I took this video back in June or July, but they still like to do this before bed. It's very cute.

October 30th Halloween

The city of Columbus designated Saturday the 30th from 6:00-8:00pm as the official "trick or treating" time. I find this fascinating that the city would actually dictate a day and time to go Trick or Treating, but I guess it's because we live in a small city in the South. Well, for whatever reason, it was nice because we wouldn't have gone out on Sunday. Tom and I actually thought people wouldn't be "trick or treating" last night because it wasn't the actual day of Halloween. We told our kids that if no one else is trick or treating then we won't go either, but as soon as 6:00pm hit, our neighborhood was swarming with costumed kids!! It was crazy!

So here's some pics of the night:

Here's our ghost lights on the bushes.

We spray painted Sarah's hair black and I let her put make up on.

And the biggest suprise is.... Alan was another Star Wars Character!!

Kaitlyn the dragon slayer from "How to train your Dragon"

Riding the wagon as we go trick or treating. William loved being Buzz light year. He wore a costume I made for Alan several years ago.

Here he is trick or treating

William and the Worm

Ok... call me crazy, but....

...I got a little tired of sending Kaitlyn to a kindergarten where they had no recesses, no free time (unless you call turning on cartoons and making them watch free time), no self-directed learning, just 6 1/2 hours of worksheets and discipline. She was so stressed out that she was getting really bad stomach aches everyday, and playing "school" in an intense feverish manner whenever she came home, and crying all the time.....



So, I talked to her teacher. She said that she'd love to be able to slow down and do more developmentally appropriate practices, but the things they're forced to do make it nearly impossible to do kindergarten the way she'd like to. HUH?


Unfortunately this is not the only school in Columbus that is like this. We left another school years ago because of the very same problems. ...


It's like I stepped into a parallel universe where it's ok for children to be yelled at, and ordered around and humiliated, and where all tried and true developmentally appropriate practices for teaching children are completely thrown out the window.


....So (and here's the part where you'll probably call me crazy), I brought her home to do Independent Study through Georgia Cyber Academy-AKA-Home school. It was the hardest decision I've really ever had to make, and over General Conference weekend, Tom and I were fasting and praying a lot. We got the answer that she should come home.
Since she's been home with me she's made lots of progress, she's learing things that she just couldn't get before, and she's so much happier. So for now, she's home, ... and some times, I call myself crazy.

Finally! We can go out doors!!

Well now that summer is over we can go outside without melting our faces off. So, we've been taking advantage of the cool 80 something degree weather we've had this weekend. Here's Alan reading a starwars book that Grandpa Rose got him. Grandpa Rose has been visiting this week. It's been nice.

Here's Kaitlyn and William watching "Shelly" our snapping turtle enjoy the great outdoors.

Dancing in Pajamas

Sarah had hooked up her mp3 player to the stereo in the family room and was playing Highschool musical songs. I was out of the room, and when I walked in I saw William "dancing". Then in came the other crazies in their pj's. It's always a party at the Rose home.

Fall project

Yesterday we decided it was time to decorate for fall. It's been depressingly hot all month-the high 90's even into the 100's some days. ... I was really hoping it'd be cooler by now, but I got tired of waiting for it to feel like fall and we decorated anyway.

Inspired by some Halloween napkins in our box of Autumn decorations, I got out the "mod podge" and some jars. I gave them each an old paint brush and told them they could cut up the napkins and decorate the jars anyway they wanted. They had so much fun!

Here's a picture of the secret ingredients:

Here are the jars drying:

Kaitlyn's Lengthy Locks

Kaitlyn's hair grows really fast, just like mine. It had gotten so long that it was causing some problems for her. . This is her hair caught in the curtain on our side door. I'm not sure how this happened. Tom was the one that got her out of this mess. I would've just cut her hair to get it untangled, but I didn't. Last week though, I finally cut it. We forgot to take a good picture of her new hair cut, but here's a picture of her at her party. I cut over 1 foot off. She doesn't mind at all because it's not as hot and it's way easier to brush and wash.

Kaitlyn's 6th Birthday Party!

Kaitlyn had a teddy bear birthday party today. A few weeks ago Kaitlyn said she wanted her own stuffed animal. I told her that she had plenty, but then I realized that all the stuffed animals in our house originally belonged to Alan or Sarah. She didn't have one of her own. So, we decided to have a "make your own teddy bear" party. I found this place online that makes teddy bears that you stuff yourself (waaaaay cheaper than "build-a-bear"). The bears are 14" long and all come with their own adoption certificate, heart to place in side, and stuffing. It was at http://www.buildables.biz/ if anyone is interested. ..... Anyway, we had a ton of fun at our teddy bear party!!

Here's Kaitlyn coloring on her bear's shirt, with friends stuffing their bears in the background:

Here you can see one of the bears after it was stuffed, along with the kids coloring their bear shirts.
Kaitlyn opening her presents:

Enjoyting cake, ice cream, and pink lemonade:

Here's the Birthday Cake!! The "fondant" is not really fondant, it's just marshmallow cream and powdered sugar mixed together until it became a dough. Not the greatest to work with for covering a cake, but nice for making little teddy bears!! The teddy bears had some powdered unsweetened cocoa in them to make them brown,.. the chocolate made them taste awesome.

Happy 6th Birthday Kaitlyn!!

Cupcakes for Kaitlyn

Yesterday was Kaitlyn's 6th Birthday. We'll be having a party for her on Saturday, but I took cupcakes to her class yesterday for fun. I made cupcakes in mini ice cream cones and I tried to frost them to look like ice cream cones. I guess I didn't use the right tip because as I was frosting them, I noticed they looked more like pink flowers in a flower pot than ice cream. So, I added some green leaves, and took the potted flower cupcakes to Kaitlyn's class. Everyone loved them!! I also decided to make a little wooden cupcake for fun this morning as well. I used food coloring to stain the wood for the first time. It worked really well. William has been having fun taking the candle and the top off and on all morning.

The big 1 1

For Alan's 11th Birthday party, he wanted to just invite a few friends over to play some video games and have pizza. (At our house, the kids only get to play video games once a week on Saturday, and only after their chores/homework/piano practicing are done. So it's a big deal to be able to play video games in our family) I was more than happy to agree to that party idea.

It was the easiest birthday party we've ever had. Because he's 11, I don't really pay attention to what he's putting on, and I didn't notice his fashion choices until after the party had started. Oh well.

He got a U-Command Wall-E, which is basically a robot that he controls with a wireless remote. He was so excited to get it. He's wanted that since Christmas.

And of course it wouldn't be Alan's Birthday if there weren't something resembling Star Wars. He asked for a cake that just said "Star Wars" on it. Funny. But it's so Alan.

Activity Days video!

This a video we did to help the 8-11 year olds in our primary accomplish one of their goals in theif Faith in God books. Part of the goal was "Tell a story from the book of Mormon that exemplifies faith in Christ". We decided it would be fun to make a movie!