Skate Party

Friday night Chris took the girls to the school's roller skating costume party at the local skate rink, while Asher and I enjoyed a date night of dinner. Alivia has been skating for a couple of years and has grown comfortable on skates, moving on to roller blades. Addison, however, has just started skating, skating maybe 3 or 4 times in the driveway. Chris thought for sure Addison would need help the entire night.

They arrived just before the official party started. Chris and Addison skated around a couple times. Then, Addison saw a friend from school. She pushed Chris out of the way and was off, never to be helped the rest of the night! Chris reported that Addison was a social butterfly, flying around between friends from Kindergarten through 6th grade! Chris said it was crazy! Really, whose kid is she?! Chris and I are the complete opposite of social! Alivia stuck to her friends skating around.

Chris caught up with one of our friends while girls skated. Sounds like they had a fun time. Asher and I had dinner before chilling out to a movie of his choice at home. It was very quiet and relaxing (perfect!).

I believe there will be plenty more skate parties in their future!

Alivia with 2 of her classmates (taken by another Mom, Rhonda).

OCM AGAIN!

So, when I took Asher to the Children's Museum this week, Addison was mad. She heard me say there was a vet exhibit and wanted to see it. So, while I took a 3 hour nap (yes, that is what you get after working overnights!), Chris took the kids to the Children's Museum.

I guess the kids ran and had a blast upstairs. Chris said it was busy, but the kids never seem to mind (it is just us parents that are about to freak). All in an afternoon of fun at the Children's Museum!

Kids Halloween Party

Today Asher attended his first friend Halloween party. Asher was thrilled to be invited, and Lord knows I need to meet new friends. I am not a social butterfly at all, and I have a really hard time opening up initially to people. But, today, Asher and I both walked away with new friends.

Asher played a pumpkin bean bag toss, pin the nose on the pumpkin, treat or treated to the rooms of the house (with the mommy's delivering the candy), made their friends into mummies with toilet paper, decorated their own pumpkin, and they decorated their own cupcake treat. Very cute and fun! Asher ran around with his friend Maggie, who is a twin and dressed as Bat Girl. And, you know, Asher loves Super Heroes!

I got to drive with Captain America in the backseat today! That was pretty cool!

Bean Bag Toss

Pin the nose on the pumpkin (Asher is talking with Brave. :) ).

Decorating their pumpkins

How cute are these!

What a yummy snack!

Toilet paper fight after the mummy game. Then we played, "Who can pick up the most toilet paper?"

It was a fun morning off from preschool. Next Tuesday is his Preschool Halloween Party! So let the fun continue!

OCM Take 2

After a really bad night, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I had to smile when a friend sent me a text at 8:30 asking Asher and I to meet her and her son at the Omaha Children's Museum for a picnic and to play. How did she know that I needed to get out of the house on this gloomy day? I mean really, who can cry at the Children's Museum?! So I texted back..."We'll be there!"

Yes, we were just there on Friday. But, since then, the new display, "Itty Bitty City" opened up on the top floor. Asher could not wait to check it out. So, after a little indoor picnic lunch, the boys went to play in the Itty Bitty City. How cool!! They have everything up there! They have a mini airport with a really cool little airplane, runway, and control tower. They have an ambulance, police car, bus, semi truck and a fire station. There is a pizza parlor, a vet (that Addison would LOVE!), a bank with play money a drive through fitted with a tube system, and a play working ATM! Asher and Will made their very own super hero capes and Asher made a mask, too. It was so quiet at the OCM!! It was a 180 since we were there on crazy Friday. Funny, there were 4 moms there from Shadow Lake out of maybe 20 moms total (maybe, that is probably pushing it!). Crazy! Anyway, Asher had a blast before it was time to return home to get the girls.

Although I was not giddy happy (perhaps I needed some of my Dad's scotch today), I could not help smiling watching Asher have so much fun. Thank you Krissa for pulling me out of the house! Love ya!

Pinterest Tested by Krista Blog

I started a new blog specifically for my Pinterest tests. You can find it at http://pinteresttestedbykrista.blogspot.com/. Happy pinning!

Pinterest Tested: Snickerdoodles

Another test from Pinterest, this time Snickerdoodles. Again, this recipe came from Amandeleine (see what I mean, she has wonderful recipes!).

I will put this out there, I am not a fan of snickerdoodles. I have not made them since I made cookies for my uncles business in high school (yes, I was a baker! I made 18 cookies a day for maybe 2 years! I love baking, and clearly, someone loved eating my cookies). Anyway, my Dad loves Snickerdoodles, so we made these cookies for his birthday along with the chocolate chip cookies. Here is the recipe from Amandeleine.

Snickerdoodles

Adapted from Amandeleine

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Cream together butter, shortening and 1 1/2 cups sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each, then blend in the vanilla.
3. Whisk together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. Add to wet mixture and blend in.
4. Mix the 5 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon in a small ziploc bag.
5. Shape a heaping tablespoonful of dough into ball and place it into the cinnamon sugar bag. Shake the bag and roll the dough around until completely coated. Repeat and place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.
6. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets.

Makes approx. 4 dozen cookies

Results:

Addison loved them! I have not heard if Grandpa Bill did, so I'm not sure what that means. The rest of the Austin Family believes a cookie is not a cookie if it does not contain chocolate. At least I had Addison to eat all of the leftovers, right?! The cookie itself was easy enough to make and turned out great. I would recommend if you are into snickerdoodles.

Pinterst Tested:DoubleTree Hotel Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have already found THE Austin Family favorite chocolate chip cookie off of pinterest, but it is always fun to try another one, right? This recipe was off of Amandeleine, a website I have been following for a while. Unlike other recipes found on Pinterest where I do not know if they will turn out, I was pretty sure this recipe would since it was from a reliable source. Amandeleine has wonderful recipes!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (I did not use walnuts)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grind oats until fine. I used my nut grinder since it was easy, but a food processor would be great, too. Combine the ground oats with the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
3. Cream together the butter, sugars, vanilla, and lemon juice in another medium bowl with an electric mixer. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
4. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture and blend well. Add the chocolate chips and nuts to the dough and mix by hand until ingredients are well incorporated.
5. Spoon rounded spoonfuls or cookie scoopfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Place the scoops about 2 inches apart. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes or until cookies are light brown and soft in the middle. For the best results, chill the dough overnight in the refrigerator before baking the cookies. I only chilled mine for a few hours while I made other cookies. They turned out perfect.

Makes approx. 20-30 cookies

The Results:

I loved them! They are a great cookie for fall with the hint of spice in them, and I love oatmeal. Chris liked them, but he was hung up a bit after I told him that they had cinnamon in them (He did not notice while eating the 4 spoonfuls of cookie dough or the first 3 cookies. After telling him, he thought they had too much cinnamon!) Alivia was the same way. She would not eat them when she heard me say they had cinnamon in them. Gees! Addi and Asher (and Grandpa Bill) thought they were good. :)
I would recommend them. They are not better than our favorite chocolate chip cookie, but they are at least 4 1/2 stars out of 5...and that is pretty good!

Double Tree Hotel chocolate chip cookie PIN
Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Pin

Jumping through the Day Off

Today is the girls' last day off of school. All of the kids, including Asher, return to school tomorrow (then Asher is off for a week!). I woke to a cloudy, dreary looking sky. I was glad I had made arrangements to meet friends at Jumpin Jax in Papillion this morning!

At 8:50, the kids were all still asleep! Crazy! The girls had somehow ended up in the same bed, so I am not sure how much they slept. Asher, again, somehow ended up in my spot in bed after hearing the rain. So, perhaps their lack of sleep during the night had something to do with their late sleeping this morning. Anyway, at 9, I woke up the kids, had them shower, eat breakfast, and we were out the door by 9:20! Amazing, right?!

We arrived to just us and our friends there to jump! Yeah!! That is why we love Jumpin Jax, it is never over crowded. More kids soon showed up to play, but it was nothing awful. The kids had fun, and we only suffered one injury (Asher bit through his lip going down the slide! Not pretty, but no ER visit required. :) ).

After 1 1/2 hours of jumping, my friends little nearly 2 year old boy went over and got everyone's shoes to pass out. He wanted to go home! Too cute (and funny!).

This afternoon will be filled with quiet time inside and more play dates. Days off of school are nice to reboot but now it is my turn to reboot! :)

Top 10 Sunday

Today was a Top 10 Day, weather wise, for a Sunday, and overall. We spent the entire today together doing fun stuff around our home.

We slept in. That never happens. And, I should mention, everyone slept in except me. The girls woke up at 4:15 am and thought it was morning. They were playing and laughing, waking me up. I got them back to bed, and returned to our bed to find Asher in my spot. I laid in bed for an hour before I just gave up, got up, did Turbo Fire, a body rock, and ran. I returned to the house at 7:30 and all was still quiet. I so wanted to shower but I did not want to wake everyone. So, I caught up on computer stuff. Finally, at 9am, everyone finally got up. Gees! I wish I could have slept in!

We went to the 10:30 Mass, ate lunch, walked the dog, we met our new neighbors, and then the kids had a play date this afternoon. Chris cleaned up the yard for winter (grrr), then we all played kick ball, Frisbee golf (don't ask, we like to invent games), baseball, and then Asher and his friend traded off doing sprints (and that was their idea!). These kids had some serious energy to burn! After the play date, Chris took Alivia on a date to kayak in Shadow Lake. All of the kids have now gone with him and have loved it. Who knew it would be so fun for all of them! In order to see them, we took Pippa on another walk to the lake. I do believe we wore little Pippa out.

Back at home, we grilled up hamburgers for the kids for dinner before Chris started a fire in the fire pit. The kids still had endless supply of energy! Hum, I wonder if it was the smores?

It was a beautiful day, light wind (until we lit the fire pit anyway), maybe 80 degrees. FABULOUS!!

Too bad every day could not be spent like today. It was wonderful!

Belated Birthday Party

Last Friday was my Dad's birthday. That was also the night Chris flew in from Florida. So, our annual birthday bash was postponed to last night. We picked up Mama's Pizza and drove to Iowa to celebrate. Since we were a week late, the kids and I had already made 2 new cookie recipes during the day, snickerdoodle (one of Dad's favorites) and a new chocolate chip cookie recipe. We gave those to Dad. Mmmm.

After chowing on our favorite Mama's Pizza and onion rings, we stayed and hung out with the P's for the evening. Chris and Dad had a little scotch, a new acquired taste for Chris. I do believe one sit may have been too much for Chris. He was giddy most of the way home, wearing his sunglasses because the moon was too bright, saying how he could not feel his face, and how he was SO RELAXED. Seriously! After our fun filled day of playing outside, going to playdates and baking, the kids were wiped.

It was fun, as usual. Happy Belated Birthday Boppa Bill! And Many more...

Giddy Chris. He is a fun drunk!

UNO Hockey Game

On Friday night we took the kids to a UNO Maverick Hockey Game at the CenturyLink Center.

Addison and Asher had gone to a hockey game with Chris in the past, but Alivia had never gone (or wanted to go). Chris won 5 tickets from work along with a garage parking pass, which was really nice! With that said, I am not sure where Chris' work got these tickets as they were front row seats IN FRONT OF THE STUDENT SECTION! The seats were quite loud as the puck hit the glass and wall in front of us during practice. It sounded almost like gun fire! Crazy! It felt like we were sitting on the ice. Then, the match started. I thought the view was good, but Chris was not impressed. The crowd behind us was NUTS! The language used was completely inappropriate for children (or anyone for that matter) and unnecessary. They were yelling at the goalie, swearing at the other team, talking about what to do with the mascot (wildcats), etc. It was bad. We had a great view of Northern Michigan's goalie who just happened to be 6'4". He was huge with his equipment on! It was funny to see Asher get into it, though, clapping and cheering with the goals. We lasted one period before Chris decided it was a good time for cotton candy and new seats.

We grabbed some seats up higher but still with a good view (really, it appeared as all the seats had a great view). The kids enjoyed their sugary cotton candy without the loud and unnecessary language. Alivia even thanked Chris for moving us. :) UNO won the match 5-2.

Overall, we had fun and would recommend the going to a hockey game, just stay away from the student section. Day one down...3 more days of fun to come.