Halloween Cooking 2011

Every Halloween, we have a tradition of making a creepy crawly, Halloween-themed meal or two. Here are the girls working on the preparations.






And here are the results!

Jack O'Lantern Sloppy Joe Pie... Yummy!!

Amanda was very proud of her detail with the dough here. Impressive, don't you think?

Bloody Mummy Toes!

Wormy Apple Bars!

The girls aren't so sure about eating this stuff!


Cyclops Eyeballs! One of them exploded...


We had so much fun making this stuff and even more fun eating it!

Hike at Effigy Mounds

Saturday, October 8th, I happily accompanied my girl's Young Women's group to the Effigy Mounds National Monument Park on the Mississippi bordering Wisconsin.

We had a very physically challenging, spiritually uplifting day! The round-trip hike was about 7-1/2 miles up and down hills. The views along the way were absolutely beautiful and just being outside in God's amazing world all day was so wonderful! And then the icing on the cake...getting to spend the day with my wonderful daughters, my mom, the awesome young women and their leaders and moms. The purpose of the trip was a for a spiritual activity reminding us all to live virtuous lives. At the top we would be planting a banner stating "An Ensign to the World: Return to Virtue." We stopped at 2 lookout points on the way to the top. At each stop one of the Young Women leaders spoke on a topic along the lines of Returning to Virtue - Mom spoke on how the the world can poison us by degrees, another leader spoke on taking our goal to return to virtue one day at a time. This was one of those lookout points. Look at that gorgeous view and those even more gorgeous girls!
The whole group...patiently posing for pictures!

Amanda found a little friend along the way...

Mr. Frog!!

The last stop was this lookout point called Hanging Rock. SOOOOOO beautiful up there!! At this stop, we took some time for a snack and to write in our journals, our Young Women's President gave a wonderful talk on the importance of temple attendance and worthiness, we sang some songs and the girls recited the Young Women's Theme. Then they unfurled and lifted the banner...



And, of course, ended with a group hug!! It was a wonderful, memorable day!

HOMECOMING WEEK

Eliza was in the HOMECOMING COURT!!! In the Homecoming Parade, she got to ride in this convertible. It was so cool!

This is the Senior float. Eliza spent hours and hours working on this with her class.

Amanda on the volleyball team's float.

Before the football game, the Janesville Band did a pre-show. Doesn't Amanda look awesome?!!

I just love this video - Amanda is right up front and you can really hear her play!!


The Color Guard team also performed. Eliza, the team captain, is front and center.

Here's Amanda in the Color Guard. I love it that the girls get this year to be in Color Guard together!

Here's part of their routine. I think Eliza was very nervous because she dropped it a few times and she doesn't normally drop it at all. I wish all the stupid people would've sat down and gotten out of the way, and actually, a little after this video, I yelled at a really rude guy to sit down! I wanted to see my girls!! Anyway, it's pretty cute. They're a litte rusty - it's their first performance this year, but they did pretty good!


During half-time, the Homecoming Court rides in a convertible around the track. Here's Eliza with the other two girls in the Court. Doesn't she look so beautiful and happy?!!? She was so excited to be in the Court!

They ride in the convertible around the track to the opposite side of the football field. Then each girl and guy in the Court walk down the football field while the announcer introduces them and tells about their accomplishments and goals.




This is the full Court and attendants. The Court is 3 Senior girls and guys, and the attendants are a boy and girl from each of the Freshman, Sophomore and Junior classes. The guy and girl in jeans are the Queen and Duke from last year. The girl on the end in the beige dress holding the bouquet of flowers won Queen this year. Eliza was super happy for her because she's one of her good friends and she's a really nice girl. Eliza said she is always nice to everyone. Eliza was just so happy to be in the Court, she didn't care about winning. She's so cool! By the way, the guy in the tan jacket and blue hat crouching in front of me taking a picture is Dad!



A closer shot of Eliza. Don't you love her dress?!!?

Eliza with the Homecoming Court and attendants.

We went shopping at the Mall of America a couple weeks before Homecoming and Amanda got this dress plus a shrug to wear with it. We had planned on having Grandma add something to the bottom of it to make it longer, but just never got it over to her. So, it's a little shorter than we would have liked. Amanda wasn't very comfortable in it, but she sure looks cute!! She really needs to stop growing up so fast, don't you think?

Ohio Trip July 2011

This year for our vacation, we spent a WONDERFUL week in Ohio with the Santillan family. We arrived late Sunday morning. We just spent the day relaxing and visiting. Aahhh how nice!!

Monday, we spent the day at Kirtland. One of my favorite places was the Newel K. Whitney store. I love the story about Joseph Smith showing up at the Whitney's store and saying something like, "You prayed me here. Now what can I do for you?" It was so cool to stand in the very spot Joseph stood. Here we are inside the store...

And here we are outside the store. You like how we got Jaime in the picture?

The Santillan fam as we're leaving the Visitor's Center.

The group of us in front of the Kirtland Temple.

Eliza & Amanda at the front door of the Temple. It's SOOOOO tall!

We left Kirtland and went out for ice cream (July is National Ice Cream Month, so we tried to make it a point to eat ice cream every day!) and then we went to the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame.


Notice the sign above us says WOMEN WHO ROCK! We SO totally rock! :0)


After the Hall of Fame, we went back to Kirtland to see a few places we hadn't seen on the tour since we left early to make it to the Hall of Fame before they closed. I was so glad we did that because it was really neat to see the Kirtland Sawmill and the Ashery. We had two wonderful young sister missionaries, one of them was from Korea, to give us the tour and tell us about the Saints building and working in these places. It was so interesting! On the way home, we went out to eat at Cracker Barrel. Yummy!! We don't have a Cracker Barrel anywhere near us, so it's been ages since we've been there.

On Tuesday, we went hiking through Hocking Hills to Old Man's Cave. It's incredibly beautiful there! We had such a wonderful time together. I love this picture of Tammy & Jaime. This is how we saw Jaime through most of the hike!

The next 10 pictures are of us on the hike. We had such a great time!










After Hocking Hills, we went out to eat at the most wonderful little restaurant close by. It's like a log cabin style, bed & breakfast kind of place. It was so beautiful there! And the food was wonderful!

Next we drove for what seemed like a thousand miles to a horse ranch and went horseback riding. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any pictures, but we had a wonderful time! My horse's name was Hank, Eliza was on Sunny, Amanda had Gambler, Daddy rode Slim, Tammy was on Juice, Jaime rode Jake, and Emmy's was Denver. Some of us had pretty obstinate horses who only wanted to go when they wanted to go and only wanted to turn when they wanted to turn (yes, my horse was one of them!). Couldn't have been the riders' fault, right?? It was Tim's first time ever horseback riding. It wasn't his favorite thing in the world to do, but he and Slim got along great and at least now he can say he's done it! Some of us were pretty sore for the next day or two. It was SO worth it, though, cuz it was really pretty wonderful!

Wednesday, we planned our Harry Potter party and went grocery shopping and to the mall. Before leaving for shopping, we played the Friends trivia game and had a blast! Wednesday night, we started our Harry Potter movie marathon and Kim, Megan & Heidi arrived! Yay!!!

Thursday, we watched Harry Potter movies and prepared food for the party, all day long! We're not obsessed with Harry Potter at all! Here are some pictures of us in the kitchen, pictures of all our Harry Potter treats, and some great group pictures before we left for the movies. For dinner, we had "Toad-in-a-Hole", a traditional English casserole which is basically sausages in a pastry kind of thing. We also had chicken wings, snake shaped rolls, mashed potatoes, peas, and butter beer to drink. It was AMAZING!









Can you believe it? Professor Trelawney showed up at our party!!! Isn't she lovely?? And Sara and her friends look SO COOL in their Harry Potter glasses!
I think maybe Professor Trelawney got a little tipsy from all the butter beer!

We all got Harry Potter T-shirts at the mall. Tim and I have matching "MUGGLE" T-shirts. Amanda's is a Slytherin shirt and Eliza's says "Butter Beer."

Here we are at the movie theater. They had people dressed up as characters to take pictures with. This guy is the Snape look-alike. Crazy how much he looks like the real guy!

The Hogwart's Express.

The Sorting Hat.


The girls with Fred, George and Mrs. Weasley.
And then, of course, was the midnight showing of The Deathly Hallows, Part Two! Wow!! It was so awesome! It's pretty great when you have super high expectations of a movie and then the movie exceeds your expectations! We all loved it. We laughed, we cried, we were on the edge of our seats. Some of us, who shall remain nameless, were crying in the opening credits!! It was just awesome! We didn't even notice it was the middle of the night. It was so great to be all together - I was so happy Kim, Heidi and Megan drove all the way to Ohio to see it with us!

Friday, we slept in after getting to bed around 3 a.m., and then Tammy's own personal hairstylist came over and gave us all haircuts. (Seriously, he CAME TO HER HOUSE! How cool is that?) Then Jaime took my little family to a beautiful park there called Innis Woods for pictures. He took Eliza's senior pictures, family pictures, pictures of just Amanda, just Amanda and Eliza, and some of me with the girls. We will be forever grateful to Jaime for doing that for us!! The pictures turned out great. I'm pretty sure we can find a few we like...he only took 659!! Just a few...(wink, wink)!

Saturday was one of the best days of the trip. We went out to eat for lunch at one of Jaime's favorite places, a Peruvian restaurant! It was SOOOOOO delicious! Wow!! We still talk about how amazing the food was...especially the Tres Leches cake! YUMMMMMM! Then, we went back home, got ready for our bike ride, and took off, in an attempt to work off some of the calories from lunch. We rode to Hoover Dam and saw the Swallow's nests, which were really cool, then on to Innis Woods where Jaime took beautiful pictures of beautiful Megan, then to Graeter's for ice cream... in an attempt to gain back all the calories we worked off! In my opinion, Graeter's has the best ice cream in the world, so it was totally worth it! The day was SO awesome! I didn't realize how much I would enjoy bike riding! The day was also awesome because it was the only full day we got to spend with Sara since she had work and school all week. We love you Sara!!

Saturday night, Tim and Jaime watched soccer - the Peruvian team was playing, of course! All us girls went downstairs and played games. One was the Michael Jackson dance game on the Xbox Connect. I didn't know Heidi and Emmy and the girls could move like that!! Then we laughed hysterically for hours playing Apples to Apples. We didn't want to go to bed because we didn't want to get up in the morning and leave. It really sucked saying good-bye! It was such a wonderful wonderful week!!! We had so much fun, just even on our car rides. Emmy and the girls totally bonded - found out they all like Michael Jackson, the Backstreet Boys and the Beetles. We love you, too, Emmy! We LOVE hanging out with family...I wish we could have seen ALL of our family this year! We miss you and love you all!!! Thanks to Tammy & Jaime for hosting us all week and making us feel so welcome and at home. You guys are awesome! We love you!!