New Family Pictures...

Here is a preview of our fall family pictures - http://alisonandoliver.blogspot.com/2009/10/todd-andrea-luke-brooke.html

I once again super shocked that there was any good pictures at all. Since Luke's been about a year old, and basically not sitting still for 10 seconds, I have no idea how anyone captures pictures of our family at all. And then to throw our baby Brooke in the mix just makes it all that more interesting!

The first day of our shoot ended up getting rained out. It started out just cloudy and sprinkling. We braved through it and got the chair/field shots and then went to a giant sunflower patch b our house before it started to really pour. We rescheduled for three weeks later and thankfully it worked out pretty good. The leaves had begun to change and the day was beautiful, but chilly and windy. Brooke was not real happy about it, but she did great! Luke didn't get his nap that day either. Can you tell? Anyone hope everyone enjoys them as much as we do!

Plus, the highlight of the shoot was actuall finding out some super information about our photographer that I had been praying about nightly. I even bought her a little something already because I couldn't contain my excitement! ;P Yeah....

Feeling accomplished!

It's almost bedtime and I just had to come blog about my day, I just feel so accomplished, like the old me. I did take a half day off work today since I apparently slept wrong last night and needed some heating pad time and lots of Mortin, but still. I woke up as usual at 5am with the babe. I'm not complaining considering she's zonked out by 7pm....hoping she'll last anymore than 5am is wishful. So I get her her bottle and of course uke just somehow knows we're up and comes right in asking to watch "Inky, Inky mama" (aka - Monster's Inc.).


Anway, I'll spare you the rest of the lame details of my day and get to the good stuff. So basically, I was super bus at work this morning, but hunchd over my keyboard at work was just not working for me. So I headed home at lunch time, took some Motrin, laid on the heating pad and took a little nappers.

I was feeling better so I thought I'd run some quick errands before starting dinner. In less than an hour, I dropped off my WAY overdue dry cleaning (I'm pretty sure I'm going to wear the same pair of black pants three days in a row), dropped by the grocery for Halloween candy ($1.48 a package - score!), and got some lost books taken care of at the library. Funny how I found them on their shelve huh?

Then I came home and made this delicious salmon dinner. Normall, I try to make fish about once a month. Really, it's all we can handle. I've tried recipe after recipe and we just eat it because I made it but you can tell no one likes it, incuding me. I saw reviews for this recipe saying it didn't taste fish, some said they hated fish but loved this recipe, etc. So I figured, well salmon is only $3.99/lb for fresh wild caught salmon, so why not give it a shot. OH MY GOSH! Wonderful! Of course allrecipes.com is down right now (go figure), but it's called Baked Salmon II I believe. I'll come back and edit this post with the recipe. I just paired it up with some white rice (with the marinade poured over it) and grilled broccoli. Even Luke ate every single bite and kept saying "mmm, mommy, mmmm."



We also decided to start Brooke on her solids tonight. I had made that butternut squash this weekend and there was about two servings that wouldn't fit in an ice cube tray. She ended up LOVING it and being totally read for it. She did great!


She also enjoyed plaing with her "spoon" afterwards too. I picked a few of these up at Target when Luke was starting solids and they work great. It's a little gross to me to let them use our finger like a lot of the books suggest, but this is very similar. Hopefully I can find some more at the store since I can only locate two of them in our house. I'm sure the'll pop up sometime when she's around a year. Hehe! So much for my super organized pre-kid self huh?

And here ou can tell just how happ she was about her first experience with solids. =)

After dinner I had my last table decor sewing class at JoAnne's. I honestly thought about not even going to the second class. I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out (the front of the pattern looked really ugly) and I had some major issues in the first class with getting the wrong fabric, not knowing how to use the machine at the store, etc. BUT, I paid for the class, I was going to go. So in I went and not only finished my first placemat, but also finished a second one in a little over an hour as well. YEAH! It's amazing what nice fabric really does for something. Goes from looking like something grandma made to something hip. Oka, so maybe hip people don't sew placemats, but hip moms do right? Can I at least be a hip mom?

Oddly enough, while I was in my class, our local Kroger store had trick or treating for the kids and a big sale. Of course I'd already told him we got plenty of candy, but of course he thought he needed an extra 10 bags for whatever reason. He also decided he needed enough carmel apples and frosted brownies to feed an army. The kids got ANOTHER huge bag of candy too. Seriously, we now have three giant bags of candy from three different Halloween events and trick or treat isn't until Saturday! Gesh people!

All in all, I can say we had a pretty exciting day. Hard to believe it's onl Tuesday.

Finally feeling like myself...

I don't know if it's Brooke sleeping through the night, the change of the season, or the fact that I basically "got a week off" since I went to Chicago for business last week, but I'm feeling more like myself again. Regardless, we've had a super busy weekend, full of all kinds of Halloween festivities.

First, Friday afternoon was my office kid's Halloween party. Last year I was basically in charge of the entire thing by myself, so I didn't get to enjoy it with Luke. This year I told them I'd help before hand, but I was enjoying it. And enjoy we did. Luke's favorite parts were of course the eating (cookies galore!) and trick or treating around the cubicles in the office. Everyone goes all out decorating and it really gets spooky. Luke is still talking about all of the "scary guys" as he says.

Then I started making Brooke's baby food. Can you believe she's 5 months already?!?!? Where has the time gone? I still plan on starting her on bananas, avacado, and brown rice cereal, but butternut and acorn squash were on sale this week so I decided to freeze some of it into cubes too. Just chop the squash in half, la in a baking dish with 1=2" of water and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

Then scoop out of all the "meat" and place in a food processor or blender. Then add a little bit of the water that the squash cooked in. Roasting squash as I've read retains the most amount of nutrients and adding the water which it roasted in adds back some of those nutrients.

Then process and spoon into ice cube trays. Cover with seran wrap, freeze, and then pop them out and play in freezer bags. Be sure to label what it in the bag and the date you made it. Butternnut squash looks and auwful ot like carrots and sweet potatoes and acorn squash looks a lot like pears and applesauce. =)

Then toss the skins into the compost pile. Did I mention Todd put a compost pile together for me??? I can't WAIT to start a garden next spring!!!

Then,take the flesh that you scooped out at the beginning, put it in a strainer to seperate out the seeds. Then toss the seed in olive oil and kosher salt. Sprinkle with fresh ground black pepper. Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 min! I also saved a few before cooking to plant next year. =)

Then we had our neighborhood annua Children's Halloween Party in the Park! This is our third time going and thie first one where the weather has actually been decent and we didn't have to come home after 20 minutes because we could no longer feel our toes. =)

Anway, it all starts off with a police escorted "parade" from in front of our house down to the park. Of course the kids get a big kick out of this.

Then they have the custome contest. Luke won 1st place last year for his "duct tape" costume. This year Brooke won in her $2 Walmart bee costume. I'm sure it didn't hurt that she smiled the entire time we stood in line...

There was also a chili cook off forthe adults. I submitted Rachel Ray's Tex Mex Corn Chip Chili. It was okay, but didn't win. There was some tough competition though.

Then there are tons of games for the kids to play. We could not get him away from bean bag game. He NEEDED another set of dracula teeth. =) That's his new thing b the way....everthing is "but mom, I NEED it!"

And Luke's other favorite thing was the hayride. It's nothing big, just a neighbor who takes his "tractor" (aka riding mower) through the "haunted woods" (aka the tiny patch of woods with a couple older neighborhood kids that jump out with masks).

Oh and the other boys in the picture are our new neighbors. They are such well beahved boys and take Luke under their wing just like another brother. We're been really blessed with great neighbors and getting to know them better and better has been great.

Time for bed, hope everyone had as wonderful of a weekend as we did!