Thanksgiving Baking

On Tuesday Cameron and I headed to my grandma's to do some Thanksgiving baking!  We made two pans of bars and two pumpkin pies!  

My grandma is much more skilled at baking than I am.  I definitely learned a lot!  The pies didn't even spill into the bottom of the oven!  I thought they were going to, but grandma was right.  We didn't fill them too full.  

I would have a picture of the bars, too, but I didn't take it right away so the pan I took with me is already gone.  Oops!   

I think we might have had almost enough for a third pie with all of our extra filling... But if I would have filled the pies as full as grandma wanted me to there wouldn't have been so much extra.  One of the pies was made with pumpkin from our garden and the other was from a can.  I'm curious if there was a difference! 

I'm pretty sure we are going to have to make baking with Grandma a weekly project.  I love baking and it's nice when I'm not the only one there to eat it!  

Wishing everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!  We are enjoying some time with Hubby's family.  I'm sure we will have lots of nice pictures to update later tonight!  I promise I won't be glued to my computer obsessing over Black Friday sales.  (Although I have my heart set on getting a good deal on Cameron's big boy car seat!) 

Weekly Wednesday: 23

Hey 23 Weeks!  You sure came a lot faster than I was expecting...  

My little man is getting better at rolling over!  His legs are getting pretty strong, too!  He likes to practice standing so we will be getting use out of the jumparoo and exersaucer soon!

Hubby thinks that I've gone crazy but I have really been liking baby leggings lately.  They are WAY EASIER for diaper changes than having a whole outfit.  And they are cute.

See Pepper?  She wanted to be in the pictures so bad!

 I went crazy with the pictures this week.  But watching Pepper and Cameron play gives me warm fuzzies.  I just love them so much!  I think they are going to be serious trouble when Cameron is old enough to run around the pasture with her.

A Little Photoshoot

Guess what!  We took 5 month pictures and I forgot to put them up!  

Weekly Wednesday: 22

Here we are!  Week 22!

Miss Pepper decided to roll in something AWFUL so she didn't get to be in the pictures this week.  She is staying outside until Hubby comes home and washes her.  Pew.

We are still battling little man's cold.  He woke up pretty stuffed up and has only napped for about 45 minutes today.  Yikes.  I'm hoping that the thieves oil I have been putting on his feet will help him along.

AH!  I almost forgot!  He rolled over from back to front on Saturday.  Good job baby!  He is just not excited about it and hasn't done it since.  I've been trying to put his toys just out of his reach, but he will still only roll to his side to grab them.  He still loves to scoot, that's for sure.  Maybe I should be enjoying this time that I can set him on a blanket and he will stay in the same general area while I do other things.  I will probably miss it a little when he is really able to move!  

5 months!

We didn't do a photo shoot today because my little man isn't feeling too hot , but I promise we'll do a "5 month" shoot before he turns 6 months. :) 

I can't believe it's already been 5 months!  

So to celebrate I made a pumpkin pie! 

So when I took this it maybe wasn't quite done.  Or it was done in one spot and not anywhere else.  Anyway, I put it back in the oven for about 10 minutes and that did the trick! 

It's not the prettiest pie ever.  I don't think anyone will be chasing me down to buy one for Thanksgiving.  And there may or may not be a coating of burnt pie mix on the bottom of my oven now.  Betty Crocker didn't tell me that there might be too much mix for my crust.  She also didn't tell me that if my oven rack isn't exactly straight (apparently it isn't) that the filling will just run right out! 

Oh, not to mention my inexperienced attempt at covering the crust with tin foil. I didn't do a very good job at that either and it ended up baking into the pie.  So when I went to pull it off, I also pulled off chunks of pie.  

So after all of this I was a bit frazzled.  But my house will still smell yummy like pie, right?  Hubby came home and I was excited to tell him that I was baking a pie.  I was in the living room with Cameron.  Before I could say anything he shouted at me 

"Hey!  Something smells burnt!  What did you burn?!  I'm opening the window!"  

So now I know not to overfill the pie.  Good thing I have more pumpkin so I can give it another try.  Maybe in a different oven.  

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Cameron was so into the cartoon that he didn't even want to look at me. 

So I think they are watching the weirdest cartoon ever.  The part that I heard was two little boys spying on an old lady playing music in a big crater.  One boy says 

"She must be trying to communicate with the aliens using the universal language of 80's synthesizers!"

Umm... Ok. 

Weekly Wednesday: 21

Well I certainly haven't been very good at keeping up with "Wednesday" specific posts.  Oh well.  :)  I don't know what's going on with the weather but it has been so nice outside!  So that's where we headed for pictures!

The past week Cameron has been busy scooting.  Scooting everywhere!  I'm starting to wonder if he will skip rolling over and crawling and just go straight to sitting up and scooting on his bottom.  He has rubbed most of the hair off of the back of his head because of his wild scooting.

Lately I've been trying hard to be better at cooking new things... or maybe I should just say "cooking."  One of my favorite things that I've made recently was sweet potato black bean chili!  Yum!  I used this recipe if you want to make it!  I didn't know that I liked sweet potatoes until sweet potato fries came along.  I honestly never thought that I would cook with them unless they came frozen as fries.  Well it turns out that I really like them in chili, too!

I also spent a whole day processing pumpkins from our garden.  I've never done anything with pumpkins other than carve them, so this was a completely new experience.  I scooped out all of the seeds and made roasted pumpkin seeds.  Then I baked all of the pumpkins so I could scoop out the puree.  Wow.  I'm not sure how many pumpkins I ended up baking, but by the end of the day it felt like millions.  I ended up with about 13 cups of puree that I put in freezer bags and two ice cube trays of the puree to use for baby food.  I have big plans to make a pie, but that's going to have to wait.  We will see if that ever happens.  I still have a few pumpkins that I'm going to pass along to Hubby's mom. I was going to surprise her and bring her the puree already made, but I couldn't stand to think about cutting into another one and starting the whole process again!  Sorry Carol!  I was sure that I was going to have dreams about pumpkin but if I did I don't remember them.  However I don't think I'll be doing anything with the puree for a while!

This week we are going to start our adventure in baby sign language!  I don't have any experience with it.  Actually I haven't even heard that much about it.  I just started looking into it so hopefully it works for us!  If anyone has any helpful hints please share.  I'm excited!     

Weekly Wednesday: 20 (yeah, I know it's not Wednesday)

So this week has been a rough one as far as sleep goes.  Poor little guy just didn't want to stay sleeping for longer than a couple of hours at night and almost completely refused to nap.  Every once in a while we could get in about 30-45 minutes of napping, but only if I rocked him.  Needless to say we haven't been very productive around here.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to bake some cookies with Auntie.  He fell asleep in the car seat on the 30 second drive home and slept for two hours in the car seat.  I didn't think he would sleep that long but when he finally was able to get some quality sleep, I wasn't about to take him out of the seat and disturb him!  I was so happy last night when we only woke up at 2:00 and then not again until 6!  Awesome!  I'm hoping for a repeat of that again tonight!

My little man is still refusing to roll over from back to front.  Little stinker.  He is SO CLOSE though, so I think it will happen any day.



Anyway, look who is sitting in his chair!!

I think almost all of the pictures this week are a bit out of focus.  But that's ok because Pepper and Cameron were having such a good time.  :)

Halloween Highlights

We started off the day celebrating with the twins.  

What an adorable pile of babies!  Audrey loves Cameron.  In fact, when we were taking these photos Audrey crawled over to him and gave him his first big smooch.  Silly ladybug.  

By the time we got home from our adventures with the twins, baby bear was ready to be out of his costume and in comfy jammies!  But we had to give Pep her chance to dress up!  So here is Goldilocks with the three bears. 

Weekly Wednesday: 19 (playing catch-up)

Whew!  It's Friday!  We've crammed in so much in the last few days that I wasn't sure where to start!  

I've learned a lot about being a parent lately.  I've learned some valuable life lessons.  And I've neglected my blog because sometimes it's more important to just live life than worry about documenting it.  So today I plan on catching up.  

We spent the night with the twins on Wednesday night so Pepper didn't get to be part of the weekly photos.  But here is my little bear, 19 weeks old and growing like crazy!

This week we've been working on having more of a routine.  I'm not really a routine kind of person, so you can imagine how that is working for me, but we are trying.  It's nice to have a specific "nap time" break where I can try to get some things done around the house.  And instead of napping in the swing, he's been good at napping in his crib!  Cameron has started fussing like crazy when he gets tired, so I think it has been nice for him to have his own special space, too.  I've been so thankful for the sound machine lately, too!  I was never 100% sure that it would be a worthwhile investment, but it is definitely a must have item! 

Cameron also had his first try at the exersauxer!  It is so cool to watch him grow and get stronger.  After spending the night with the twins I'm thankful that I will only have one baby on the move when he starts crawling!