Halloween Festivities

I'm combining pictures from our church's "Trunk Or Treat" event with the ones from trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Our church had our yearly Fall Festival on Sunday night with one little change...we had all of the games and activities inside, but the candy was outside! As people walked up to the front door to enter the event, they walked through a line of cars with our trunks all decorated and adults dressed up, passing out candy. It was so much fun! We got to meet so many kids and interact with their parents; I didn't even have a chance to take Bella inside to play the games. (I promise we'll do that next year!) I didn't get many pictures of us outside, but here are a few of us before we left.

Our family picture. We had to put tights and a long-sleeve shirt under Bella's Tinkerbell costume, but she still looked adorable!

Steve is dressed as Captain America and I am ready for a masquerade ball! We found all of our goodies at Target and I was pretty impressed by Steve's willingness to participate! My dress is an old prom dress that's been in my closet. I got it zipped at 14 weeks pregnant! I'm not sure how and it wasn't the most flattering look, but at least it stayed on and it was an easy costume to put together. I'm pretty sure I've tried this dress on while not being pregnant and couldn't get it zipped, so I think God was having mercy on me!

...and masks off! We had a great time and I was very happy to get home that night and take the dress off!

Bella was so excited by Steve's mask on Sunday night that she chose the mask over her Tinkerbell costume when we went trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood. Of course, after about 5 minutes, she freaked out about having the mask on, so she just walked around with her Captain America t-shirt on. We must have looked like really lazy parents! :)

At our very first house, the people weren't there, but they had left a bucket of candy. Bella was pretty convinced she could just "swap" her bucket for theirs.

This is how Bella and Liam approached every door. At two of the houses, they knocked and then opened the door before Erin and I could get to them! Good thing people were very laid back when they saw two, adorable toddlers!

Carrying our loot back down the stairs.

Walking with Daddy.

Worn out and ready to go home. Next year, we might make it a little longer, but the kids had a great time, we got some good candy for Mama, and Bella was in bed at a decent time!

Steve's 30th Birthday!

Happy Birthday to our wonderful husband and daddy!

Having a major milestone birthday when your wife is pregnant is not a great recipe for a huge party weekend. Friday was Steve's birthday; we had a fun dinner out at one of our favorite local restaurants. We took Bella with us and she did great. We headed over to Trey and Whitney's after dinner with Steve's favorite birthday dessert - an ice cream cake!

On Saturday, we dropped Bella off at Whitney's again and had a lunch/shopping date. It's so nice to get out every once in a while without the little human! We went downtown, ate sushi at our favorite Thai restaurant, and did some birthday shopping. It wasn't exactly a party weekend, but Steve had fun and I was awake after 9:00 PM!

In honor of our handsome, strong, wise, and gooooood-lookin' man, I've been thinking of some ways that Bella is the mirror of her Daddy:

Bella LOVES spicy food! She definitely gets this from Steve (and he seems to get it from HIS dad, so it's a cool connection!).

She tries to whistle; this may seem random, but Steve and his dad are always whistling. And they're really good at doing it on pitch! I can barely whistle and definitely can't do it on tune.

Her little blue eyes make her sensitive to the sun just like Steve, so they always sneeze as soon as they step outside.

I'm sure there's many more, but these are some of the little things that Steve and I noticed this past weekend.

Dance Party In "St. Louis"!

I will be so amazed if this video actually works! I took it on my phone, so no promises on sound and clarity. This is the video of Bella and Mel dancing to a scene from "Meet Me In St. Louis".

My phone can only take 30 seconds of video at a time, so we continued the fun below...

Puggles-Mania

I finally ordered a Puggles shirt for Bella this week! I have to confess that my main motivation for taking her to church on Wednesday nights has been the cute shirt. She loves it so much that she wanted to sleep in it last night, so I took some pictures of her playing on the couch this morning.

Moments Of Chaos, I Mean, Bella!

I posted this morning about our missions conference, but I couldn't resist adding a few updates about Bella. Some moments that I want to make sure I remember...

Picture day at preschool. I tried and tried (and tried!) to get a cute one of her without her cup or jacket, and actually standing up, but no go. At least her smile is pretty stinkin' wonderful!

Rolling all over the floor right after I did her hair for church tonight. I have no doubt that she does this on purpose; she's a crafty little human!

I love that her attempts to say "cheese!" come out silly. She usually looks just slightly annoyed at the camera; like she's about to tell someone off.

Bella's favorite movies this week are Pocahontas ("ahontas!") and The Little Mermaid ("arel"). My favorite thing to watch lately is whenever songs come on during these movies...Bella will sit down on the floor at the edge of our bed and try to sing along. She only figures out every few syllables, but it's priceless! It's one of those "pride" moments as her mom. I love to sing and have grown up singing with my dad. I like to think that she gets it from me.

Hmmm...what else? She likes to put her head on the floor while she's standing, peer back between her legs, and say, "I see you!" It makes me smile, even if I just got done scolding her.

Her favorite movie last week (and for about the last three weeks) was Meet Me In St. Louis. If you don't know this movie, I weep for you. Bella learned how to copy some of the dance moves and I'm going to see if I can post the video of her and Mel dancing. It will make your day, even if you don't like musicals!

Acts 1:8 Missions Conference

This past weekend was our church's missions conference, and I finally have the energy to write about it! There were ups and downs, and just a few kinks, but overall, I have to say it was an amazing, inspiring, humbling, and challenging event!

The weekend started off with a dinner on Friday night that was for our missionaries, our church staff, elders, deacons, and missions committee. i was very nervous about this event, because I had never planned a dinner event like this before, but it turned out to be my favorite part of the entire weekend. The food was delicious and we had a warm, intimate time with our missionaries, just sitting around and talking.

Saturday was our "get serious" part of the weekend. There were teaching sessions on evangelism and some great lessons on Acts 1:8. Traditionally, this verse is always taught from a geographic perspective - your "Jerusalem" is your family and friends, your "Judea" may be your neighborhood, and so on. We're trying to teach people to look at it from a cultural perspective - your "Jerusalem" are those people who are most like you in values, ideals, background, etc. and your "ends of the earth" are those who are the most different they could be from you, even if they live next door.

Saturday night was an evening of dinner parties with our Sunday School classes. We divided our missionaries and Sunday School classes into host homes and let them visit and share about their ministry. On Sunday morning, we stayed with our normal schedule and did the same idea as Saturday night - missionaries were assigned to different classes to share. our whole goal for the weekend was to allow our members to be exposed to as many missionaries as we could. We ended the weekend on Sunday night with an incredible prayer and praise service where we broke into groups of 3 or 4 and just spent time in prayer for our partners in ministry.

It was a busy weekend as you can tell, but it was such a blessed event, too! I'm doing one of Beth Moore's Bible studies and last night in her video lesson, she spoke about how we should be involved in ministry work that we know was only possible with the power of the Spirit. That's how I felt about this weekend! There is no reason I should have been able to work on this weekend with no energy, growing a baby, and watching 3 small kids. It was truly a "Spirit work" and I felt so thankful to be a part of it! Steve is very thankful to have his wife back, too!

White Chili and Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

I don't post recipes very often, but I'm hoping that it will remind me to actually make these wonderful foods again! What I love about chili is that you can't mess it up, especially white chili. I am not a huge fan of spicy food, so it's always hard for me to make regular chili - I never know what level of seasoning will taste good to other people. With white chili, I just throw in a bunch of food and let it simmer. Yummm!

White Chili Recipe

• 
  
  2 tablespoons olive oil


• 
  
  2 onions, chopped


• 
  
  2 cloves garlic, minced


• 
  
  1 tablespoon chives


• 
  
  2 cans corn [I used a Southwestern mix that included black beans.]


• 
  
  4 cooked, boneless chicken breast half, chopped


• 
  
  2 cans chicken broth [I used 1 regular box of Swanson's Chicken Broth]


• 
  
  5 cans Great Northern beans


• 
  
  2 cans large Butter beans

1. Cook the chicken. We bought thighs instead of chicken breasts, because they were on sale and the meat came out so tender! Also, Steve grilled it for me instead of boiling it; this added an amazing smoky flavor to the entire dish.

2. Once the chicken was cooked, I literally just poured everything into a pot, added a lid, turned the heat as low as possible, and let it simmer all day (12 PM - 5 PM). I stirred it about 3 or 4 times throughout the day. So easy!

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

• 2 cups packed brown sugar


• 1 cup vegetable oil


• 1 1/2 cups solid pack pumpkin puree


• 2 eggs


• 3 cups all-purpose flour


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon


• 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger


• 1/2 tablespoon ground cloves


• 1 egg white


• 2 tablespoons milk


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 2 cups confectioners' sugar


• 3/4 cup shortening


• 1 pkg. of cream cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease baking sheets.
2. Combine the oil and brown sugar. Mix in the pumpkin and eggs, beating well. Add the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, 1 teaspoon vanilla, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix well.
3. Drop dough by heaping teaspoons onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cookies cool then make sandwiches from two cookies filled with Whoopie Pie Filling.
4. To Make Whoopie Pie Filling: Beat egg white and mix with the milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 cup of the confectioners' sugar. Mix well then beat in the shortening and the remaining cup of confectioners' sugar. Beat until light and fluffy. [The only thing Mel changed was to add the pkg. of cream cheese. It made the mixture a little less fluffy, but really enhanced the taste!