Midwest Keech

I really need to find something else to read. You may (or may not) recall that I posted about having read the 1st, 2nd & 3rd Fablehaven books. I absolutely loved them! Well, I've been waiting patiently for book 4 to come out. It was released Tuesday. I bought it Wednesday. I finished the last 2 chapters Saturday morning. Now I have a dilemma. What do I read next? I read both The Princess Academy and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. Should I read, I think the next one is Enna Burning ? Or, a couple of my young women suggested that I read The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanley. Some people have suggested the Inkheart books too, but others have said they were a little slower & kind of boring. I got book 1 of The Sisters Grimm at the library, but haven't tried it yet. We'll see if it's "too" little-girl for me. Anyway, fire back with any suggestions you might have, or if you just want to throw in your 2 cents about these. I guess maybe I should just su...

I know, it's officially Spring and almost April. We actually got snow in the wee hours of the morning. When I went to bed last night, it was pouring down rain. I honestly figured that it would continue & never change to rain. I was wrong. Obviously. Of course, Adam started a snowball fight. Poor Allison pretty much stayed on the sidewalk most of the time. This is right before she tried to pick up some snow. - She lost her balance & ended up stuck on her back like a turtle. So funny! Mia thought it was HILARIOUS to through snowballs at me. Adelaide kept making faces at me. They all had a great time playing for the short time they withstood the cold. Good thing too. - All the snow was melted by the afternoon.

After work on Tuesday, Daddy brought home a present for Mia. She was surprised to get a new bike & helmet. She's so excited to learn to ride. She keeps talking about how she wants daddy to take off the training wheels after she rides it "one more time". She's so pretty isn't she? I think she knows it though. Meanwhile, while Mia rides back & forth... Daddy swings with the other girls. Adelaide LOVES the swings.

After the tea party, I started working on the cake for Bryan. He loves Red Velvet Cake. The trick is, he has to have a special frosting that has to be cooked then whipped FOREVER with butter & sugar. I don't care for the flavor...it's not very sweet, but that is exactly why Bry likes it. I wasn't happy with the way it came out. I didn't whip the frosting long enough, I think. I also should've doubled the recipe. - Bry likes lots of THIS frosting. At least the cake looked OK... and he was sweet. He told me it was delicious. You're sweet...a liar, but sweet.

For Amelia's birthday, we had a princess tea party. We even had a fireman & Spiderman join the mix. Aren't they just too cute? The 1st thing we did, was let each kid decorate a crown. I had a bunch of foam stickers to use. The kids had fun making each crown unique. I love the look on Adelaide's face...she wants to know when they get to eat. (Can you see Allison trying to put her blue crown on upside down?) Even Allison got to Dress-Up. She was too funny running around saying "Pree-Pree". Which is either "princess" or "pretty-pretty". We had quite a turn-out. I think they're just SO cute! Our other activity was that they got to decorate their own teacup with permanent markers. I played-up the princess theme with strawberry & rasperry cream cheese sandwiches in crown & slipper shapes (I had cute cookie cutters). We had Chocolate Milk for our "tea". We also had chicken salad on crackers, carrots, grapes, marshmallows, pop...

This week has been Spring Break. I decided about 2 months ago that we would dismantle the crib during Spring Break. Last Saturday, we did it. Allison was in there watching & running around the room. I wasn't sure how she would deal with it. She's been pretty good. She was totally excited when we had the toddler bed all set up for her. It's been a week & things are pretty good. The baby-gate keeps her in the bedroom, but the other girls keep talking & playing forever after they go to bed. I guess we're still adjusting .

Adam had his 10th birthday. Can you believe it?? It's crazy. This year, he begged to have a sleep-over, but I haven't really decided if we "do" sleep-overs yet. Anyway, we had a "late night" instead. We ended up with 8 additional boys ages 7-10. They ate pizza, chips, popcorn and drank lots of soda. A few of them brought extra controllers for the Wii & the Gamecube, so SEVERAL played at once. I think they had a good time. For the most part, the girls remained sequestered upstairs in my room. (Except when they escaped to come get some more food.) Aunt Katy sent Amelia 2 Barbie movies for her birthday, so they watched them. They were really good & got to stay up late too. The boys stayed until 10pm. - We put the girls in their room about 9-ish. Adam decided he wanted brownies instead of a traditional cake. Here, Adelaide wants to make sure we know which ice cream she wants. I find it hysterical that no matter how old kids are, they all huddle around th...

I know...I've taken forever to update the blog. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Bryan & I were invited over to a friend's house for an 80's party. We had a great time. Everyone dressed up in their 80's clothes. We listened to 80's music & did Karaoke. We also played 80's trivia. I was at a bit of a disadvantage being that I was in grade school during the 80's. It was fun though & I actually knew some of the answers too. These were our hosts...Rubiks Cube & Eazy-E. The Guys... The Girls... I don't know how well it shows, but it's been a VERY long time since I had my bangs "poofed" that high. It will definitely be a long time before it is again.

OK, so Bryan came home today & went straight to bed. Amelia's still sick too. I took Adam, Adelaide & Allison to Denny's for dinner. I HAD to get out of the house. We returned our redbox movie @ Walgreen's and went inside to get a few things. Usually, I'm pretty good at staying away from the candy aisle, but tonight I wanted something sweet. So, I broke down & let the kids pick a candy too. One of the cheaper candies in the row happened to be these things called Wonka Tinglers. By the description on the package, I was kid of expecting something akin to Pop Rocks coated in chocolate. I was shocked that I really liked these things! They were SO fun. They popped like Pop Rocks, but they were much more like Nestle Buncha Crunch. I don't know how they did it, but the "krispies" themselves seemed to pop. I would totally get these again. I don't know about anyone else, but they seemed to last a long time with me eating a few at a time. And, I thou...

OK, I don't know who scrapbooks or what. Anyway, some people do what are called speed scraps. Basically, you start with one instruction. Then you get 1 instruction every 10 minutes for an hour. Then, after the last one, you have an additional hour to finish & post your completed page. This was the first one I was able to do. It was pretty fun, and I really like my layout. Before I show you my page, here are the instructions. 1. Find 4 papers-2 solid and 2 prints 2. Crop only one paper. The others must stay square. (any size will do) 3. 1 picture altered (b/w, tinted, sepia) Picture must stay rectangular or square. 4. Use a wrap of some sort on your picture. 5. Use a ribbon (must be separate from your wrap), a couple of buttons, and a flower 6. Word Art/Title your page-But, it must include some type of embellishment in it. It can even be one of the ones from step 5. 7. Date your layout

I'm going a little crazy the past few days. Adam was sick Tuesday & Wednesday. Amelia was sick Wednesday & today. I'm tired of being in the house. Today is such a nice day too. I mean, it's REALLY windy, but it's like 65 or something outside. FINALLY! And where am I? Stuck in the house. I feel bad for Adelaide too, because Mia is resting & Allison is down for her nap. Earlier today, Adelaide brought me her Cinderella dress to help her put on. Allison pulled on it & tried to take it away. I sent Adelaide to get the yellow Princess Dora dress (which belongs to Adelaide) for Allison. Here they are. Aren't they adorable? Can you say "Get off me Sis?" Adelaide decided that SHE wanted to wear the yellow dress, so we put another one on Allison. She didn't really care. This is the first time that she's gotten to play dress-up with the princess dresses. She was SO happy. She spun around & flipped her dress. She was so funny. Hopefully, e...

A couple of weeks ago, the cub scouts had their Blue & Gold Banquet. As a tradition, the scouts decorate cakes (which end up being dessert). This year's theme was the ABC's of America. There were so many fun cakes. There was a baseball cake. One was frosted to look like a T-bone steak, complete with grill marks (chocolate syrup). Adam had a hard time focussing on figuring out what he wanted, so we ended up finishing very last-minute. I made homemade frosting so we could color it & use a decorator bag to decorate the cake. It was so easy & yummy. Here's the recipe . Everyone got in on the fun. The girls got to lick the bowls & spoons. We messed up a little and had to scrape some of the frosting off. - Hence, the big spoonful of multi-colored frosting on Mia's spoon. Adam really liked using the decorator bags. It took him a little while to get the hang of it. I think it was a little harder than he initially thought it would be. With dad's help, Adam ha...