C is for cookie

We've had a good past few days. We've been baking treats, trying to give them away, and then getting way too many back. Luckily I ran a half marathon on Saturday and burned off some calories there, though at this point, I'd probably need a marathon to do that!

The race was lots of fun. I'd never done a half before and it went by so fast. It was great. About halfway through I thought to myself, I wonder if I'm going fast enough, but decided to be safe and not push it too much more and thanked myself for that around mile 11. The race was in Charlotte, a little over 2 hours away, and we'd planned on all going up the night before and having a little family outing, but then Ben had to work so I ended up waking up at 4:30 in the morning and driving there that day, running the race, and then driving home all by myself. But, I had a good race and ran a 1:30:29 averaging 6:55 miles so it was pretty much worth it.



Anyway, I really enjoyed the treats I made this year so I thought I'd share. Nothing original here, everything I made I found on other cooking blogs. I made chocolate turtle cookies from My Kitchen Cafe, Sugar cookies and the best icing/glaze ever from Our Best Bites (it looks much prettier there), hot chocolate mix from here, and orange cranberry bread from King Arthur flour.

I wish photography was as easy as baking. The cookies looked even better in real life.

It's never too early for presents

Christmas came a little early for Ben and I this year. We've been eyeing my brother's camera all year and finally decided to take the plunge into the world of digital SLR, or fancy pants , cameras. It's a little intimidating. We just stared at it the first few days, too afraid to touch it, but we finally broke it out of the box and read just enough of the massive manual to figure out which button to push to take a basic picture. Hopefully we'll get a little braver soon and check out some of the cooler features that I assume it has, but here are some of the better pictures we've taken so far. Laura Bruschke here we come!

Dancing to the beat of a different drummer

Today was Elise's last day of ballet class. I'm not sure how much ballet she actually learned, as seen in the videos, but she had lots of fun with her little friends and was always good for a laugh and some awesome moves.

How to make your children love you

Go out and buy them a $10 used slide on craigslist, even if it doesn't fit in your car's trunk and you have to make the man you just bought it from tie it down for you. This will make your children happy and pleasant to be around.*

* This effect is, unfortunately, only temporary. And some fighting will occur as a natural result of the acquisition of a new toy.

Bonus: How dads can make their children happy while the moms are away on a long run.

See how easy it is?

Take a closer look

Yeah, I know. All you see is a bunch of leaves completely covering up our driveway and sidewalk. But take another look.
Ok, I'll break out the zoom lens here.

Yay! Our first deer sighting at our house. I've seen lots while out running, but none right next to our car like that. I looked out our bedroom window this afternoon and saw a deer browsing through our bushes. I showed it to Elise and she loved it and we went outside to look at it before she scared it off.

Oh, and I was shamed into raking those leaves up for an hour afterwards, even though I know they'll just be back.

Birthday girl

Elise’s birthday is the day after Halloween, and to be honest, it’s kind of a pain. I know it could be worse, on Christmas or Thanksgiving, or Columbus Day, but I get into the Halloween zone and kind of forget about her birthday. We get home from trick or treating and all I want to do is go through the candy and pick out all the good stuff, but I still have presents to wrap, decorations to put up, and a cake to plan.

I've been thinking about starting her in some sort of dance class for a little while and when some other girls we know decided to sign up for one we decided to along with it too. Luckily for us, the first class was on her birthday so we went along with it and told her it was all part of her birthday present. She looked so cute in the dress she picked out and was spinning around all morning in it. Her class went pretty well. She hasn't shown a huge amount of natural talent for it, but it’s only for 6 weeks and she’s having fun so it doesn’t matter. And it puts a smile on your face Saturday mornings to see 8 little girls prancing about in ballet dresses.


She saw a Barbie cake at the grocery store a few months ago and was very impressed by it so I thought I would give it a shot, though Ben really wanted to do this cake for some reason. I am horrible at decorating and I had some issues with drippy homemade frosting, but she loved it. Opening presents took forever because she wanted to play with every single thing immediately but she got plenty of new books and toys to at least keep her busy for another month until Christmas hits. We got her this Princess laptop with a bunch of learning games which I know she likes because I had to take it away to punish her for something yesterday and she completely flipped out for about 15 minutes. That was fun.





Looking back on this year, I can't believe how much she has changed. She has become her own little independent person who now talks back to her mother and bullies her baby sister and will only eat Life cereal. But along with that she loves to cuddle and read books, she's incredibly generous with her hugs and kisses, she gets so excited over the littlest things, and mostly is just the cutest thing ever and scares me with how much she learns every day.

Halloween finally

Our computer crashed last week and even though we got everything up and running again the next day, the one thing that didn't work was the internet. Computers are funny right? Anyway, we finally got everything up and running and I am back to play catch up.

The girls had lots of fun on Halloween. I didn’t want to revisit the sushi costume with Chloe so I tried to put her in a few different things lying around the house. She was very anti-costume and resisted strongly being put into anything so finally I threw her in Elise’s ballet leotard I had just bought and there was no crying so one girl was done. I asked Elise if she wanted to be a Japanese princess again or Snow White and she said Snow White so we threw her in last year’s costume and away we went.

I wasn’t sure how long the girls would last since they both had colds and we already had plenty of candy from the trunk or treat, but after going to a few of the neighbors’ houses they were loving it so we decided to go to another neighborhood more conducive to trick or treating (all the houses in our neighborhood are kind of spread out and have long driveways). By the time we finished in the other neighborhood, Chloe was spitting out an approximation of “trick or treat” at every house and a pretty good “thank you” too. She was super excited and wanted to walk everywhere all by herself.

Elise was cute and told everyone she was Snow White. I was worried some of the houses were a little too scary for her. There was a house with 2 boys with scary masks passing out candy but they took their masks off and she said, “Silly boys,” and laughed really hard to herself so I guess she was fine.


I’m glad the girls had fun, but now we are stuck with way too much candy.

Exhibit A:



Exhibit B:

Those plastic pumpkins hold way more candy than they should.



Comparing candy the next morning. This was before they really realized what it was they were holding.

Sushi-phobia

When I was in college, I used to make sushi sometimes for social functions and there were invariably people there who refused to eat it. Maybe it was the seaweed or the suspected association with raw fish, or even the smell of the rice; there was just something about sushi that bothered to them to the point where they wouldn’t even try it.*

I’m afraid that Chloe is now one of these sushi-phobic people. I spent several hours putting together an adorable HANDMADE Halloween sushi costume for her. And either it was the claustrophobic large cardboard roll, or the smell of the Styrofoam peanuts, but something about the costume screamed no way to her. Our ward’s Halloween party was the Wednesday before Halloween. I put the costume on her that afternoon to make sure it fit ok and she punched out the front panel. I knew the costume was doomed, but the selfish part of motherhood kicked in. I spent hours on that costume and she was still young enough to be able to force her to wear it. So we took it to the ward party and we put it on her for a little bit. She looked so cute, but she bawled the whole time, unless I was forcing candy down her throat, so we took her out of it after a while. Elise wore a cute little kimono. I told her she was a Japanese princess and she was adorable. I wish we had taken more pictures of her, but we were so focused on getting pictures of Chloe while she was still in the costume that we skimped on Elise. She had fun running around and getting way too much candy.

As for Chloe, I’m hoping this incident doesn’t have any sushi repercussions, though luckily she had no idea what her costume was so I think we’re ok.

*Other notable sushi-phobes: My brother’s 5th grade class. He used to ask my mom to give him sushi for lunch so he could gross out his entire class when he opened his lunchbox.

Chloe learns some manners

Chloe finally learned to say "please" and "thank you." Some of the other finer points of etiquette still escape her, she loves to eat cereal with her hands, milk and all, but I think we're moving in the right direction here.

Halloween ideas

I totally want to do this costume for Halloween. I'm thinking for Chloe since she's slightly more Asian looking and because she won't care what I put her in. Because let's face it, most kids don't want to be a piece of sushi for Halloween. But Chloe will still do anything I tell her to do, and look cute doing it! Go Chloe!

A recap

I haven't blogged for over two weeks. The answer why is hidden somewhere in this post. Extra credit to whomever can guess it first. Anyway, this is what we've been doing the past 2 weeks. It sounds much more exciting when you put it all in one big blog. We are really fun people, I promise. Look at all the interesting things we did!

Elise started a really adorable dinosaur stage. I love hearing her say all their names. "Stegosaurus." It cracks me up.
Chloe dropped her morning nap but still refuses to sleep longer than 1 1/2 hours
10k for me two weeks ago (41:05). It was really small and I hate to brag, but I totally beat all of the guys (and girls) in this race by a lot. It was pretty fun.

The girls built a slide in the family room with some help from the big fuzzy red chair.
Ben read lots of CT scans (at least I think that's what he does all day).
Elise refuses to wear pants while at home. Even putting panties on her is something of a struggle.
Chloe came this close to jumping all by herself
Elise stopped napping altogether
Another 10k a week ago (40:26)
Our friend Jenny qualified for Boston!
We watched most of conference. It's hard with 2 squirmy kids so I'm looking forward to reading the talks when they come out.
I made Vietnamese food; it was pretty good.
I held a butterfly at the science museum. It miraculously escaped Chloe's swatting unharmed.
The weather is suddenly perfect for running.
We rode on the carousel at the mall. I wasn't sure if Chloe liked it because she was just kinda starey eyed the whole time, but when we passed it again she ran right up to it. Elise loved it. The whole time she was yelling, "This is fun! Wahoo!" At the end of the ride she climbed off very nicely and said sincerely, "Thank you merry go round."

Chloe's current word of the week: "flower"
Last week's word: "more"

Chloe fell and hit her head approximately 37 times

The girls just keep getting cuter and cuter! Isn't it weird how that happens?

Overheard

Elise handing Chloe Ben's credit card (she loves to go through his wallet): "Here you go baby. Don't spend it all in one place."

Sisters

Sometimes my girls seem completely different from each other. Chloe is super clingy (STILL!) and Elise has always been completely independent, and they don't look anything alike. But when it comes to playing, they can be exactly the same!


Yesterday Chloe was running around in the morning with the doll stroller, stuffing everything she could think of into it and having a great time and for some reason I flashbacked to some pictures of Elise around the same age, wearing the same pajamas, playing with the same stroller, and having a ball, just like Chloe. Can you tell which one is which? (Of course you can. They look completely different remember?) Isn't it funny how sometimes the pictures stick more in your mind than the actual memory? Thank heaven for digital cameras, and cute girls!

A pig pickin' good time

Here in North Carolina they have these things called "pig pickins." Let me show you why.

We went to one on Saturday courtesy of the Duke Radiology dept. It was actually at one of the faculty's house/farm/fishing hole/basketball court/giant tract of land. Please let that be us at the end of this residency. Though the guy was kind of old too.

There was a hayride for the kids and lots of eating. Elise was pretty unfazed by the pig. I asked her whether she wanted chicken or pig, and she said pig. She's going to grow into a little Southern girl after all.

Playing together on the gigantic hammock

Elise and her friends, Trent and Aubrey. At least they know how to pose for a picture. Getting ready for the hayride with Daddy. I don't know how the tractor pulled so many kids!

An update on the apple situation

Is it normal to have eaten so many apples in just a week??

I blame Chloe. Elise just ate the last of the fruit leather this morning too so we have truly eaten that many apples. Notice how Elise likes to take a few bites and toss it back in the basket.

I heart farmer's markets

We went to a farmer's market after my stupid race on Saturday and maybe it was the disappointment from not officially winning or maybe it was our love for a good deal, but we found ourselves buying, amongst other things, this basket of apples (yes, it came with the basket, how cute is that?). Now, it doesn't look like that many apples. Sure it's more than you normally buy at a time, but would you have thought it was half a bushel of apples? Ok, I can tell you're still not impressed. People's knowledge of bushels not being what it once was, I'll tell you that 1/2 a bushel is 24 pounds of apples! We bought 24 pounds of apples. All at once. All because it came in a cute little basket. And it was $15.

When we got home I decided I needed to do something creative with the apples before we all got sick of them. So I decided to make fruit leather, because I just bought some for the girls and they were going nuts over them. I combined the apple cooking part of this recipe with the baking technique of this recipe and made a batch of blueberry apple and strawberry apple (I threw frozen fruit in the blender with the cooked apples). It was so easy, the girls loved them (see Elise shoving large amounts into her mouth at once below), and I feel like the best mother in the world, for at least a few minutes.