OurLittleMcFamily.com

METRO PIZZA

PUMPKIN PATCH

Family Date Night was that much more fun because of the company that joined us. We don’t see Tio Rob’s face as much lately because of his MBA program schedule so we were grateful to have a few precious moments of fun with him.

We have yet to carve our $20 pumpkin for fear it will rot before Halloween. I guess I really have learned a thing or two since moving to the desert. Although, I suppose it is finally time to break out the knives and scoopers!

Easter with the McCrackens…..4 April 2010: Las Vegas, NV. They didn’t have fun at all!

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Easter with the Pennings………28 March 2010: Logan, Utah.
Uncle Brian surprised the kids with an early Easter egg hunt.

Here’s some awesome sledding video from our trip to Washington. Where it gets really interesting is at about 1:50. Adam’s true colors shine through. I love being married to this guy!!!

Adam uploaded all of our sledding videos here.

Tio Brian and I took Danny, Ezzy, and Brooklynn up to White Pass on our Christmas vacation. It was the first time for the whole McFamily. It was Brooky’s 2nd time and about the 10,000th time for Brian :) We had a blast. Danny was a natural – he went with Brian and Brooky on a longer, higher run, while Ezzy and I got lots of practice on the lower slope.

Brian got some pictures also that can be seen on the Hirschi’s blog. Stay tuned for more Christmas adventures!

Felt. Felt. Felt. That is what I am up to these days. I don’t have a cool picture of felt like Jaime, but I did buy 28 yards of it. At half off, I walked out of the store only spending $60. Why felt you ask? We are making felt playhouses for Christmas. See Here

I don’t sew, but my girlfriends do. They are determined to teach me. So far, I have kept myself busy with cutting, stuffing, and pinning the pieces. Jaime and Jena have helped me with the sewing. Adam also sews so we borrowed a machine from a wonderfully generous someone. We are excited to finish the project together for the kids.

My kids are a little too big, and our space is a little too small, to make use of our kitchen table. So I came up with the idea of making panels that will hook onto the kids’ bunkbeds. Two for the girls and two for the boys. My panel themes are: Cupcakery, Grocery Store, Stargate, and Buried Treasure. The ninos are great at imaginative play, and playing together in general. So this is the perfect gift. They can pretend to walk through the stargate–ready to conquer another world one day, and then go shopping pastries and tea at the cupcakery the next. So Cool. I am planning a beauty parlor for Nikki’s birthday in February. So many ideas. So little time. I will definitely post pictures of the finished project.

The best part about this project is that I have been super productive while spending wonderfully abnormal amounts of time with my girlfriends the past few weeks. We could quite possibly never stop crafting for that reason alone.

This Halloween was soooooooooo much better than our first. What a difference a year makes! No meltdowns over the food. No confusion over people dressing in strange costumes. The kids knew what I meant when I asked what they would like to be for Halloween. They knew how to say trick-or-treat. They didn’t freak when I took their candy at bedtime. It was AWESOME!!!!

Just for the record, I made both tutus. Ezzy wanted to be a bee and Nikki wanted to be a fairy princess (go figure). I even broke out my scrapbooking glue dots to adhere the antennas to the head band–genius! Thanks, Jena and Jaime, for helping with the tutus and the “bee wing” crisis.

The boys were good sports to go as superheros. Danny wanted to be Harry Potter, but I refused to pay $40 when all said and done to get everything I would need. Wompy wanted to be a chocolate chip cookie–so that people could eat him. But that didn’t work out so well. He became Superman at the last minute. Actually, the costume fit him much better than it did Danny last year. Oh yeah, I also made Danny’s shirt. Well, I bought a plain red t-shirt and sharpied the design.

We trick-or-treated at grandma’s. Took pictures with the Demarco’s. Won first place in our church’s chili cook-off!!! And brought home more great candy than any one family needs for the year. Seriously! It was a great Halloween.

If you live in Vegas, or anywhere similar temperature wise, then you know not to carve your pumpkins until the week of Halloween. We broke the cardinal rule this year since Grandma and Grandpa Penning were here for the baptism. It was worth having to “deep-freeze” the pumpkins so that grandpa could help carve. We also dipped carameled apples and made Squished Witches with Grandma McCracken.

The next Saturday, we had the McCracken clan over to paint pumpkins and decorate Halloween cookies. Yeah, the kids have been celebrating for two weeks now. :) The ninos had a blast with their cousins.

Check out more pictures here and here. The amount of candy that was piled on top of the sugar cookies is totally kid ridiculous. Don’t you think? And yet, they ate the whole cookie. :)

So, the plan was for all of the kids to help make breakfast for mommy and deliver it to her in bed. Mom tried to pry the secret out of them during the day on Friday, but they stayed strong! Saturday night trouble landed the girls in their bedrooms though, so it was just Daddy and the boys; they were super excited to help with Mommy’s special treat. We made French Toast and eggs, with juice and some strawberries. Bon Appetit!

How does a new mom of four celebrate Rachie Day:

1. French Toast and strawberries in bed

–delivered by the most adorable brown-skinned beauties you have ever seen.

2. Gorgeous flowers arranged in my grandmother’s carnival glass vase

–arranged by mine truly. 

3. Watching three of the four ninos sing (I Often Go Walking…) their hearts out with the primary

–the fourth was, well, singing his own tune in the van with daddy. :)

4. Dinner with the McCrackens

–the men planned, prepped, and cleaned a “Tour of Italy.” (I am sure it was delicious)

5. One yummy back massage, and another amazing card from Adam

–a perfect ending to a perfect day…………as a new mom!