Halloween Fun

Halloween in Rowlett is FUN! What a fun night. It was 80 degrees out and there were tons of kids. Every other house was decked out in full Halloween garb - lights, music, inflatables, props, etc. There were so many kids that most people were just camped out in their driveway handing out the candy. We took Stepahnie out for almost an hour and she was great. She said, "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you" at every house. When we got home, Christian, Stephanie and Erica sat at the door giving out candy. Erica was loving every minute of it. She was thrilled to see all the people come to our door. After a while, Stephanie got into handing out the candy, too. We had a steady stream of kids for about an hour and then it dwindled off. Poor Stephanie was so upset. She wanted more people to come get candy. Even Darth Vader made an appearance!

Daddy helped get the costume on.

A neighbor's house. Stephanie didn't go to this one - too scary!! Ha ha.

Ft. Worth Air Show

We indulged Daddy and went to the Fort Worth Alliance Air Show on Saturday. We were joined by our friend, Josie, and her daddy (co-worker of Christian's). It was a great show and we had a great day.

More cooking fun

Well, I went a little crazy again. I had already committed to making gluten-free cheesecake (followed my usual America's Test Kitchen recipe for NY style cheesecake, but used a nut crust made with gluten-free baking mix) for our church community group tonight. Then, I heard about the Fall festival that the church is having Saturday night. Our community group was supposed to bring hot chocolate and marshmallows. Before I could buy any, though, another lady in the group found them in bulk and bought a bunch of it. I was already inspired, though. Then, I decided to make macaroni and cheese for dinner Friday night. Normal people might plan better than me and not do it all in one day, but not silly me! We had fun, though. In the end, I made homemade marshmallow ghosts, chocolate spoons (to stir into hot chocolate), gluten-free cheesecake, and macaroni and cheese. Since I had cake scraps left over from Erica's cake and left over frosting and I was going to have melted chocolate for the spoons, I thought I'd go ahead and just make cake balls, too. I am nuts, but I love it!

So, here are the marshmallow ghosts. Stephanie helped me paint eyes on some of them. She had a ball. I got distracted at one point and realized that she had started eating them. I asked her how many she had eaten and she said, "Twelve ... or thirteen?" Ha ha! I know that she really can't count that high yet, so I don't think she had that many, but it was cute.

Here are the chocolate spoons. I experimented with different decorations and added Andes candy mint chips to some.

Here are the cake balls. Yum!

Happy Birthday, Erica!

Wow! We can't believe it has already been a year since we made a mad dash for the hospital in NY. Erica is growing so fast and is such a sweet, cuddly little girl. She is a joy.

I have been digging into the hand-me-down bin for Fall clothes and found the outfits that Stephanie wore around her first birthday. I had Erica wear Stephanie's birthday dress to church.

We decorated with Hello Kitty decorations. Erica spent a long time inspecting the table cloth.

She was a little wary of the cake and candle, but once we cut it up, she had a great time just poking into the fondant (see post below for more details on the cake) and smearing the cake across the platter.

As far as milestones, I found her two top teeth finally poking through Sunday night. We were finally able to turn her car seat around. So far, she has HATED riding in the car. She has always seemed pretty miserable. Tonight we had to go to gymnastics, so she got her first ride with the seat turned around. She gave me the most priceless look when I buckled her up. Then, on the way to gymnastics, she couldn't stop looking around with WIDE eyes and letting out a periodic squeal.

Psychedelic Baby

Here is our baby ...

Here is our baby on cake ...

The Cake

I had a horrible time figuring out what to make Erica's cake look like. She likes everything and doesn't seem to have a favorite animal. I finally decided on doing a lion.

For anyone who is interested ... I made a 9x13 cake (from a cake mix). I sliced it into 2 layers. I used the top layer (that was oddly shaped due to the domed top) to cut out the face, ears and nose. I shaped the bottom layer into an oval with triangular scraps to support the ears. Then, I covered the bottom layer with a thin layer of butter cream frosting and attached the ears and face. I covered them with frosting and attached the nose. Then, I laid some tan colored fondant over the whole thing. (Homemade fondant. If you haven't ever tried it, it is FUN. Check out the recipe at: http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/Fondant.htm ... I also use her buttercream frosting recipe) I thought the frosting would be a lot darker and wanted a textural and color contrast between the mane and the facial features. However, in the end, they were almost the same color. So, I used a trick I learned in the Wilton class and used a paint brush to put three stripes of brown frosting color in the bag before I filled it with frosting. This gave me the contrast I needed and resulted in it looking more like fur. I know how hard it is to make black frosting, so I just bought the pre-made black tube to make the eyes/mouth. By the time I got to the face, it was 4am and I didn't bother with a tongue and whiskers.

Fall Fun

Our friends, The Cooks, invited us to join them at the Frisco Fire Safety Town Halloween Event. When we got there, the crowd was overwhelming and the line so long, we decided not to go. Stephanie was SOOOO dissapointed, but we salvaged the evening by having fun with her first school bus ride (free shuttle to the event) and going to a fun Chuck-E-Cheese type pizza place instead. Erica was so cute on the bus - wide eyed and fascinated with riding in a vehicle without having to be strapped into a car seat.

Here is Stephanie with our friend, "Little" Josie (we need to distinguish her from Ms. Josie from gymnastics). Stephanie was all gung ho about wearing her costume until we got to the event. Then she didn't think it was such a good idea. Ha! We'll see how Halloween night goes.

We don't have a costume for Erica, so we borrowed our friends' dog's costume - a jester collar. She was very cute.

We also went to a Fall Festival/Art Show.

On the way home, we saw 3 or 4 cloud formations like this one. Apparently, they were caused by some crazy winds East of us.

Adventures in Clothing

Stephanie is really enjoying getting herself dressed and picking out her own outfits. She really does have a good eye and I try to give her freedom in her choices. The other night, we went out to dinner and she got herself dressed in 4 layers of shirts! Ha ha! She likes to change her clothes multiple times during the day.

She is also very aware of daily events and considers them in her choices. Today was Erica's birthday and we chose Hello Kitty decorations 2 weeks ago. I mentioned to Stephanie that I was going to decorate last night, but didn't make a big deal out of it. This morning when I went to get her out of bed, she was dressing her cat in her own Hello Kitty shirt. I didn't make the connection and made a comment about the outfit. She nonchalantly explained that she wanted her cat to match Erica's decorations. Then I realized that she had also chosen Hello Kitty pajamas last night!

Here is the outfit she put together for church on Sunday. She HATED this yellow shirt this summer. I don't think she liked the straps. However, now that she does the layered look, it has become a favorite.

She found this really cool leaf on the ground. It was HUGE!

Big Girl

Erica has been interested in dishes/utensils lately. She also loves to play with this table and chairs (Thank you, Nonna and Grandpa Piccolo!) So, the other morning, I set up a snack for her and she looked so proud.

Sweet Sister Moment

I was cleaning up from lunch today and the girls were playing in the living room. All of a sudden I realized it had been quiet for a while so I went to investigate. I found them both in their cat house and Stephanie was reading a book to Erica. So cute.

Latest Developments

Phew! It's been a busy month. I am sorry that I haven't posted much lately. If you scroll down, I added a number of posts tonight.

The girls are both growing up so fast.

Stephanie is picking up new skills and words every day. She is working on puzzles every day now. She is really good with them. She might ask for your help the first time, but then she'll do it over and over again herself. Tonight at dinner, she suddenly looked up and said, "Mommy, I want to tell you a story." I said, "Ok", but wasn't sure what I was going to here. Here is the gist of the story.

"Once upon a time, there was a bad lady. She was with Snow White. Snow White had to get home. There was a BIG giant coming after her! There are mice at Cinderella's house." There was more, but I can't remember it all now. It was her first story and it was amazing. You could tell that she loved telling it. When she was done, she proceeded to come up with 4 or 5 more stories. I have also noticed that she has been looking at books again by herself (she hasn't done that in a long time) and is starting to recite nursery rhymes.

Stephanie also seems to have a "word of the day" in her head and tries to find ways to insert it into the conversation. The other day at breakfast I was getting out one of her play knives so she could cut up her kiwi. This is a fairly normal activity, but she found the need to ask very intentionally, "Mommy, are you getting my special knife?!?"  You could tell she was leading somewhere, so I said, "Yeesss?" Her face lit up and she said, "AMAZING!" It was so funny.

Here you can see Stephanie's new hair cut. We had the hairdresser take off a couple of inches and put in some layers. It is very curly now and very cute.

Erica is getting ready to walk. She'll go pretty far if you hold her hands and has been observed going from chair to coffee table on her own. She has also done some cute things lately. She loves to unpack the cupboard that I have their towels and washcloths in. I was getting Stephanie dressed the other day when Erica came crawling out of the bathroom with a washcloth. I said, "Are you going to clean me up with that?" and she came right over and started rubbing my leg with it. Another time, I was in the process of changing Stephanie's diaper and Erica grabbed the clean diaper and started shoving it under Stephanie's bottom exactly like I do. She is such the little mommy.

Skeleton Dance

When Christian was little, his mom would ask him to do the "Skeleton Dance" for her. He would wiggle around and make her laugh. We found these PJs for Stephanie and when I put them on her the other night, I told her she had to do the skeleton dance. She looked at me inquisitively and said, "What is that?!?" I said, "Well, you will just have to come up with one." Here is what she came up with.

"Look, Mommy! I am using scissors!"

Stinker. She was on the other side of the island from me, so I didn't see what she was doing. I knew she had rummaged around in the junk drawer, but I was too focused on making dinner. She was so proud and finally brought my attention to what she was doing.

That is my measuring tape in pieces all over her Learning Tower. I didn't know how to react. At first, I wanted to grab everything away from her and tell her no, but then I laughed, and then I realized it was really too late to do anything about it and went to get the camera. She really did a very good job with the scissors.

More cooking adventures ...

Well, I finally made my first batch of cheese!!! I went to a local dairy licensed to sell raw milk (as recommened by the book that Chrsitian got me for my birthday, but I had to pasturize the milk before making the cheese) and I made some mozzerella. It turned out fine, but I stretched it too much and it ended up being a bit tough. I was in Target a few days later and I found milk for 99 cents. I thought I'd try that and it worked out really well. The curds didn't form as nicely as the local milk did, but it resulted in a fine cheese. I barely stretched the second batch and it turned out MUCH better. We enjoyed just munching on it, but finally used it on pizza the other night. It melted beautifully and was delicious.

All this cheese making resulted in vats of left over whey. Left overs have been a theme lately and I have been trying to use as much of them as I can. For example, I had some left over sweet potato casserole. So, one morning, I made sweet potato doughnuts and made "cheesy" scrambled eggs with my homemade cheese (on the cutting board).

I still had some casserole left and I made some bread with it following a recipe for pumpkin bread. It didn't call for any milk or yogurt, but I went ahead and added some whey. It turned out great. The flavor has actually gotten better the longer it sits. I kind of wish I had included mini marshmallows in the batter.

I used the whey to make the pizza dough. The dough was marvelous. It rose nicely and stretched perfectly. It turned out kind of soft, though and we prefer a crispier crust.

I want to make dinner rolls and perhaps biscuits with the whey, too .... yes, I have A LOT.

Fun at Central Market

We ventured to Central Market for our groceries again and had fun on the playground. Stephanie also found some flowers that she really liked.

Columbus Day at the Dallas Arboretum

The Dallas Arboretum celebrated Columbus Day with a Pumpkin Festival. We had a great day. The girls loved all the pumpkins, hay maze and petting zoo.

There was a music concert featuring Eddie Coker (http://www.eddiecoker.com/). It was our first Eddie Coker concert and it was amazing. If you ever get the opportunity to see him live, go. He's funny and very talented. Stephanie really enjoyed the music and found her own personal stage to dance on.