Claire's First Day of Preschool (again)

This was Claire's first day of preschool, and she was so excited because it was also the first day her best friend was coming with her! This is Kate (Kemari's daughter) and Claire's best friend, they play almost every day together and they are so excited to be in the same preschool class... and Claire was also very excited about this new outfit that she picked out in Park City... Cute!

Happy Birthday to Zach... from Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma Connie and Grandpa Mark sent up a present for Zach, I wish this was a video, because I swear it took him about a half hour to open it (which killed his sisters and his Dad, hilarious). He was ripping one inch squares of paper at a time, too funny. Then when he opened it, he was scared of the cute Lion hooded towel, so we were showing him how fun it was and I think I may have had even more fun with it then he did (initially)...
Thanks Mom and Dad! You always spoil us!

Zachary's 2nd Birthday!

Here is the table spread with hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, chips, watermelon, 8 layer salad, candy, and spider man cupcakes! Yum...The girls were always hovering a little too close... but he loves Spider-Man!
Oh, what is it? What is it? What is it?
Yeah, more toys for Mom to clean up... Spider-Man, Hulk, Tonka truck, Ratatouille, Tonka police car, and a Transformers Potato head... so much fun!
He's patiently waiting while Mom lights the candles in his cupcake... Happy birthday to Zach!

For Zach's 2nd birthday, we had a barbecue at the park with some of our friends and family. It was a lot of fun, of course, I made too much good food... but that is never a bad thing! Zach got spoiled rotten, and loved the Spider-Man tablecloth, cupcakes, wrapping paper, and new toy... "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a Spider can..." I can't believe my BABY is TWO!!

Chris Likes Nice Things

Nicole always says, "Heidi likes nice things." But the truth is that "Chris likes nice things." AND he's completely spoiled rotten. How do you tell the guy that works so hard to provide for his family that he can't have the new toy that he is obsessing about!!?? I think it started when he found some funny clips on YouTube called, "Will it blend?" (funny if you want to go look them up, I particularly like the Glow Sticks). He watched hours of some dry old guy blending CD's, iPhones, cans of pork n' beans, Wii games... you name it! Then he decided that he couldn't live without that blender... so when that same week, it was a promotional item at Costco (what are the chances?) he couldn't resist. He spent every lunch that week at Costco watching the demos and pestering the guy with questions and calling me every hour to see if he could get one. I finally caved and he came home with a brand new BlendTec blender! I told you he is spoiled (I could do a whole blog on why that is true in so many ways). So he came home with pounds of fruit from Costco for Smoothies, and I stocked up on pounds of fruit so he could play with his new toy and we have been in Smoothie heaven ever since. You might be wondering why I was hesitant for him to buy a blender (afterall, I'm the cook, and I LOVE kitchen gadgets!) I knew I would love using the blender (and I do, it's awesome!) but I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the money on the blender, I'm not going to say how much it cost, but let's say it surprises everyone who asks! But now that we have it and use it and love it and play with it--- it IS awesome, and whips up anything like you can't believe! x Oh, and then if our original fruit binge wasn't enough, I bought a huge box of fresh peaches from our local Orchard and went and picked 12 lbs of fresh raspberries! YUMMY! So if you want a Smoothie, come visit me, we even have choices for flavors... so far, Peach Banana and Mango Lassies are my favorite.

First Day of School

First day of School-- new clothes, new shoes, new books, new crayons, yeah... we love back to school!! Isabelle's in third grade now... Abby's in first... and Claire has another year in preschool. Abby cracked us up after the first day of school, she came home and plopped on the couch. One of her friends knocked on the door to ask if she could play, and she said no, and plopped back on the couch. That wasn't normal so I went to talk to her, and she said, "It was a long day, I'm tired!" Yeah, finally something that will wear out even Abby! (And Mom gets a few hours to get more done... Yahoo!) But they love their teachers and have new friends... all is well!

No time for Blogging

I promise pictures for Jodi and details for Nicole but I had to share some quick thoughts. I can't tell you how many times I pulled the camera out this week and said, "we have to take a picture so we can blog about this." But then, the reality is that I'm too busy doing the things I say I will blog about, to find the time to actually blog about them. So here is the quick list of obsessions and business for the week: picking 12 pounds of fresh raspberries, making 2 1/2 batches of fresh raspberry jam, making one sample batch of Raspberry White Chocolate Almond Blondies for Isabelle to enter into a baking competition, making three different kinds of Peach-Raspberry tart/pies to decide what I'm going to enter into the bake-off, buying: 2 cantaloupes, one pineapple, one BIG box of peaches, four pounds of black grapes, 5 pounds of strawberries, 2 pounds of champagne grapes, 3 mangoes, 7 bananas, 12 pounds of raspberries, and 1 pound of cashews just so we'll have choices to play with in our new blender!! Which brings me to our next obsession, Chris' new BlendTec blender (more about that in a different post!) and Smoothies! Not to mention, just this week I added 3-6 new piano students, I have a new calling, and I just agreed to be the Room Mom in Abby's class. I've been making craft samples for Super Saturday, along with some extra projects for myself. I've been working on designing another Halloween wallhanging to work on with some women in my ward. I'm batting around the idea of finishing Abby and Claire's quilts for their birthdays (in less than a month) and possibly decorating their whole room... I'm starting to think about Christmas projects and gifts, and have started conspiring and working on our annual Halloween party too. Just today, I've done three loads of dishes and ignored that many loads of laundry. I threw a party for Zach's second birthday, washed my van inside and out, caught up on the second season of 30Rock, and last season of Eli Stone, helped my kids with their homework, watched neighbor's kids, tried a few new recipes and made up a few of my own, enjoyed the Onion Days carnival last night, played an all night game with Chris and some friends, ran too many errands, and arranged some food storage stock up, I've been making good use of the fresh veggies from ours and others gardens, and even shared loaves of Zucchini Bread with our new neighbors from the 3 batches I made (now I've got big plans to learn how to can peaches and spaghetti sauce), and I still managed to keep my house clean, and take care of Chris, our cats, and our four brilliant kids! Hopefully this next week will be more productive! And yes, I will try to find time for some pictures...

Heidi's Mosaic

Heidi's Mosaic, originally uploaded by heidimaloy.

This is for Scott, Nicole, and Jodi who say I don't play along!

Concept:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker. (choose four columns and three rows, also choose individual URL's)

Questions:
1. What is your first name? Heidi
2. What is your favorite food? Southwest/Mexican Food
3. What school did you go to? Brigham Young University
4. What is your favorite color? Green
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Matthew McConaughey
6. Favorite drink? Milk
7. Dream vacation? Venice, Italy
8. Favorite dessert? Grand Marnier Souffle
9. What you want to be when you grow up? True to Myself
10. What do you love most in life? My Family
11. One word to describe you. Tornado
12. Your nickname. Animal