asking all moms

Ever since Stetson has learned how to open doors, he's had a tendency to occasionally wander out of his room into ours and try to get in bed with us. Well lately its been every night and he asks us to lay down by him, but even if we do lay by him 'til he falls asleep, he still gets up a while later and comes into our room. I'm so tired! Any suggestions??

Day lily

This is called a day lily. I didn't know it when I bought it, but it only blooms for a day then whithers (guess I should have paid more attention to the name). Then a few days later another one will bloom just for a day, then whither. I guess it makes you appreicate your flowers more! I took some pics of our yard this morning when we were still in our P.J.'s. I love being outside, especially when I know our days of nice weather are numbered. Plus we have a gorgeous view, so I wanted to share it with you all.Here's our little swimmer! We went swimming for F.H.E. on Monday. Even Kandace got to try out her swimsuit-I'll have to post pics of that later. At the beginning of the summer when I enrolled Stetson for swimming lessons, I was afraid I was going ruin it for him, thinking that maybe I jumped the gun and should have waited another year, but I felt relieved when he finally went out on his own with his arm wings. Such a proud mama!
"a present from Kandace" Michael was holding her up in the air playing with her yesterday and she puked all over his face. Good thing he closed his mouth really fast. It was pretty funny though.
my little toe head and baby Kandace
our back yard
This is the cornfield we see out or bdrm window

For Cara Hadley!!

Nevermind the unattractive woman holding the zuchini, but I had to "one up" my old roomie Cara and her post of the giant zuchini. Her blog is private so you won't be able to see it, sorry. But hats off to Asay's and their fabulous garden growing skills (no this didn't come from my garden)!!

summer in the mountains

Monday for F.H.E. the Simmons' went to 5 Springs and then on Friday we went fishing on the Big Horns with Asays's. SO FUN! It is so beautiful up there and I'm glad we could go and have some fun!! Both times we used Asay's awesome grill and cooked up some yummy hamburgers and hot dogs. I'm starting to get my s'more recipe mastered. :)

Today I gave a talk on building a gospel foundation. Its still weird to me that I'm the adult speaker and not the youth speaker and that I'm supposed to speak 15-17 min. I didn't fill up all my time (whoops) but I learned a lot in preparing for my talk.

Kasi and Daniel are officially engaged. I love weddings!! And we love Kasi and so its exciting for us. Oh and Steston of course loves her because she always plays with him and gives him lots of attention.

I've been canning like a crazy woman with Jan. She's an expert canner so I'm grateful she's teaching me. We've done lots of applesauce and choke cherry jelly (syrup if it doesn't thicken, which is deLISH on pancakes).
5 springs
Travis, Cole & Adam

just chilllin. This is when we went fishing. Matthew caught like 8 fish and Michael caught...well just one I think.
Kasi (soon to be Asay), Jan, Stetson & me


This is what our girl wore to church today--so cute! The black shoes were mine when I was a baby-my mom kept them and then gave them to me...pretty cool! I like taking their pics outside because they turn out better.

hanging on...

This is the time of year I look forward to all year long--summer. I wish it would last forever. I love fall but I'm loving this summer weather and all the fun that comes along with it...whose with me?? :)

6 months

Our girl is 6 months today! I took her outside to our front lawn to take these pictures this morning. She is little miss photogenic I think. In the last month, Kandace has:
*learned to sit up really good on her own
*gotten a lot better at eating rice cereal.
*started making high picthed squeals when she wakes up from her nap or whenever else she feels like it
*really taken an interest in her toys--she grabs anything/everything in sight and puts it straight in her mouth.

Some other favorites...

When I go get her in the morning or from a nap, as soon as she sees me she starts kicking her legs like CRAZY, I mean she takes all her energy to get her legs way up the air and then flings them down as hard as she can on the crib with a huge smile the whole time. We love this girl!!
Kandace is pretty laid back. She lets Stetson pretty much maul her and rarely makes a squeak about it. Plus,after her naps or in the morning she'll lay in her bed for a really long time and just suck her thumb until I'm ready to come get her. It seems like Stetson was sure to let me know he was ready to come out NOW, but Kandace is a little more patient. I love it!

Home improvement

When we moved in about a month ago I had a long list of "to do's" to make our house a little homier. One was to put up window coverings throughout the house. Well since I'm pretty much useless in the "domestic" domain (sewing mostly) I went to my wonderful wonderwoman friend, Brenda. :) She's amazing! She's an expert in home repair, she remodeled practically her whole house BY HERSELF, she's a fabulous cook, she does darling homemade crafts..the list goes on. Anyway, she said she'd help me and I could NOT be happier with the results. She made way cute curtains for Stetson's room taht match his bedspread perfectly (he's sleepin in there so I'll have to post later). Then she helped me put up the rods in the living room with her cordless drill and we put up some really pretty white curtains in there (she has the same ones in her living room and they're so pretty). Yesterday she made my bedroom window coverings which we used out of my bed sheets because they match the bedspread. I know, how awesome is that?? I just got some material for the tabs that matched the bedspread and voila. I'm absolutely in love. She even made draw backs (?) that I'll have to put up later. Right now I am just loving it all.

before
after

The other thing we've been working in is our flower garden. I've ALWAYS loved fowers and loved adirming other people's flower gardens. I like to see how different people use their flowers, what kinds they use and how they arrange them. I wanted an "overflowing" garden of perennials but learned that they take a couple years to really fill out, so I got to work. It took a while but its finally come together. I only wanted perenials because they come back every year and I didn't want to replant again, so I went to a greenhouse in Cody and got $50 worth of perennials (which wasn't that much). Fortunately, the WONDERFUL, very talented lady who helped me had some starters from her flower garden that she shared with me. She also brought dirt, cedar mulch and then helped me plant. I am SO thankful for people who are willing to share their talents with me. Hopefully I can get better at these kinds of things and one day be able to help someone else!
we didn't have much to start with
getting there...
ta da! This is a horrible picture of it, unfortunately the lighting wasn't working with me but its actually really prety I think!

The way of a disciple

I've been struggling with something lately, well for a long time actually and I decided a while back that I was going to "fix it for good." I was dilligent about praying, reading my scriptures and doing other things in attempts to "fix" my problem. A week or 2 went by and nothing. Well I was expressing my frustration to my husband tonight, and he brought something huge to my attention. He reminded me that we shouldn't always expect answers to prayers (or anything for that matter) right away, Heavenly Father works at his own pace, not ours.

Anyway, this really reminded me of a great talk given by Elder Uchtdort called "The way of a disciple." He teaches that "We don’t acquire eternal life in a sprint—this is a race of endurance." And that "Too often we approach the gospel like a farmer who places a seed in the ground in the morning and expects corn on the cob by the afternoon."

I'm going to try again and keep this in mind. Just thought I'd share.

recipes

I said I'd put a couple recipes on my blog., so here they are! The first one is from my trusty Cowley relief socity cook book. We had it last night for dessert and it was so good! Its so easy and all the ingrediets are stuff you usually have on hand anyway.

Fresh apple cake
cream together:
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
2 t baking powder
2 c sugar
1 t salt
add:
1 T cinnamon
1/2 c water
2 C flour

mix well and stir in 4 c chopped apples
pour into 9x13 cake pan. bake 50-60 min at 350.

we beat some heavy whipping cream plus powdered sugar of course and put that on top...serve it warm.

I got this next one from Emily's relief society blog. She got it from the sister's cafe. IT IS DELISH!!! TRUST ME! (Brenda this is the one u wanted)

Poppy seed cake


1 yellow cake mix
1 (3.5 oz) box of instant vanilla pudding
1 tablespoon poppyseeds
1/2 cup pinapple or orange juice (I used pineapple)
1/2 cup oil
1 cup sour cream (I use reduced fat)
4 eggs

Mix yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding and poppyseeds. Add juice, oil, and sour cream and mix. Add 4 eggs one at a time, mix well. Grease and flour a bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes (don't overbake).When the cake is about 10 minutes from being done start the glaze.

Glaze:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup butter (1 cube)

Bring ingredients to a boil and keep bubbling until ready to pour over cake. You can either pour the glaze over the cake while it is in the pan or turn the cake out onto a cooling rack and pour the glaze over the cake that way. It is really like syrup that soaks in. (Some commenters have said that glazing the cake in the pan makes it hard to remove because the glaze gets sticky. I glazed it out of the pan and it worked great.) Give it a few minutes to soak in and then turn it out onto a cake plate.
Optional: dust top of cake with powdered sugar.

Not my idea of fun

So far Kandace has had rice cereal, banannas, green beans and carrots. It is no fun. I seriously don't remember it being such a MESS with Stetson. The thing of it is, baby food is expensive, and at this point in the game she's only getting like a teaspoon (if even) of the baby food and the rest gets spit out and saved for later (not the spit out part), but its only good for like 2 days. AHHHh!!!! With Stetson I was supermom and made homemade babyfood and froze it in ice cube trays. I'm losing my ambition this time around. Maybe later. In the meantime, things are messy messy.