Cupcakes II

We took some autumn-themed cupcakes to our church's Harvest Party this weekend. These cupcakes are not easy to make!

The process involves collecting actual maple leaves (fresh ones are easier to work with, FYI), and actually painting them with melted candy/chocolate. Then once the candy sets, the maple leaves are to be peeled apart from the candy, and voila! -- A perfect candy maple leaf! But no, it is not that easy! Most of the candy leaves ended up breaking as we tried to peel off the leaves.

The acorns are made by softening caramels and forming them into acorn shapes. Then you dip the top part of the acorn in chocolate, then dip the chocolate in sprinkles.

These are tough to make, but they seemed to make a good impression. At least, they were all eaten!

Autumn Day in the Grove

We headed out as a family a couple of weeks ago to check out the Sacred Grove before it gets too cold outside. It was a perfect, beautiful day!

Callie enjoyed going for a ride in the stroller wearing her mommy's old sweater from when she was a youngster. Of course, the sweater fits Callie at 7 months, while it fit Mom when she was a toddler!

Jack loves to wear his sunglasses on sunny days. He's a pretty cool kid and it shows.

The trees in the grove are so beautiful. The sun shines through the leaves and makes the whole grove glow in beautiful fall colors.

Jack took a turn pushing the stroller for a little while, but the path was pretty bumpy. We couldn't risk the kids falling into a ditch!

Jack loved the freedom of running around on the paths and exploring the sticks and rocks. He loves going outside whenever he gets the chance.

Here are Mommy and Jack on the path, pausing in front of the Palmyra Temple. It's pretty far away, but it's there!

YouTube Mania

We have some recent videos to share and we've found that youtube seems to work better for sharing videos. They show up bigger and seem to load faster, so we'll just post the links!

Here's a video of Jack singing (more like "saying") Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNwkW-nNpQc

Here's Callie learning to crawl and attempting to eat an envelope:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4YRwCSBshc

And here are the kiddos just being cute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPob5KgV5Q

Hopefully the links work and we can share more videos in the future!

Rebel Without a Cause

The good people at McDonald's have decided to give out tattoos in the happy meals nowadays. Not only tattoos, but Star Wars tattoos. Jack wasn't sure how he felt about having one on his arm at first. When he first noticed it, he said, "Wash it off?"

But then he was okay with it.

Callie loves taking baths with her brother. She tries to crawl around in the tub, though, and that could cause some problems since she is not very steady. She loves having all the toys floating all around her, and she likes to watch Jack act silly. These kids are so cute together!

7 months for Callie!

Callie is seven months old! Well, technically she won't be until tomorrow, but close enough! She had a check-up recently and had to get 3 shots. She was pretty sad, yet again, about the shots.

Callie is still a big baby. Here are her stats:

Height: 27.5 inches (90th percentile)

Weight: 18lbs 13oz (90th percentile)

Head Circumference: 45.5 cm (above 95th percentile)

Hmmm... Maybe if these kids didn't have such huge heads, they wouldn't have to be born by c-section! Let's hope the next baby will have a small head so we can avoid surgery!

Callie is growing and learning new things so fast! She loves to eat and is trying so hard to get this crawling thing down. She sits up very well and has two teeth, with more on the way soon!

We love her so much! She's a very sweet little girl, but seems like she is going to be a little more "feisty" than Jack was. Then again, pretty much any child would be considered feisty compared to Jack!

Oh, and in other news, we recently acquired a free piano! Jack loves to play music (but not when Callie is taking a nap). We are going to try to fix it up a little, since it is a little old. We're looking forward to enjoying some beautiful music as a family!

Cupcakes

Aunt Miriam and Grandma Culwell have been busy over in Washington baking lots of fun cupcakes, so we decided to give it a try. These are two books that have tons of way cute, very easy ideas for decorating cupcakes.

Jack and Mom decided to attempt to make the fishbowl cupcakes. This picture is taken of the book. Below are the pictures of the actual cupcakes. Keeping in mind that this is the first time we had attempted them... I guess they turned out okay.

We only have limited resources out here in the boonies, so we couldn't find the proper fish bowl "rocks." We used some crushed nuts instead.

At least they're edible, even if they're not the most attractive fish bowls in the world.

Jack seems to think they taste pretty good!

Jack's new profession

Jack took control of the camera the other day and took some pictures. He kept pointing at everything and saying, "Say Cheese!"

All the pictures are dark and/or strangely tinted red because Jack wasn't really holding the camera properly. His fingers blocked the flash sometimes.

Here's Mom!

He told Callie to say, "Cheese," and this is what she did.

Laundry.

Jack's self-portrait. He feels his face is too bright for the public to view.

Another picture of Callie saying, "Cheese."

Mom's computer.

And the new piano.

He's got some real talent, eh?