Friday, April 23, 2010

finger sucker!!

With all of my kiddos I have thought at one time or another that they are going to be a finger sucker. This one is the only one that actually does it on a consistant basis. She fell asleep the other day in the bouncer like this and I really don't think she meant to flip us all off...but the proof is in the picture!
Still, doesn't she have the sweetest face?

Domestic Diva's!!!

Sometimes all you need is some good food and some good friends!
I thought this picture was too funny. We had the camera on a timer and it was hard to get it just right...and somehow we got just our legs...but hey not bad huh!
These aprons are SO adorable. I LOVE LOVE them. Jamie...the red head on the left, her mother in law made them for all of us...in fact one friend wasn't there. She went to Boston for the weekend...not fair!! Anyways, I just think a cute apron makes cooking food that much more fun. I had this super yummy avocado dip the other night and LOVED it. I had to make it...so a play date with food is always a good time. Thanks ladies for taste testing for me. Here's the recipe...which by the way another friend gave to me....THANK YOU DANA!!!!!!
Avocado Dip
2 Haas Avocados, diced
1 medium tomato, finely diced
1/2 small onion finely diced
1/2 cup coarsley chopped cilantro
3 T. Fresh lime juice
1/4 teaspon crushed Red Pepper Flakes
1 t. kosher salt

In a medium bowl toss the tomato with the onion,cilantro, lime juice, red pepper flakes, and salt. Let sit for 5 minutes. Add the Avocado and gently mash with a fork....serve immediately.
Next time I will double it..because it was gone way too fast!

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Rainbow cake

The blog idearoom.blogspot had a really fun cake called the rainbow cake. The girls all fell in love with it. I thought hey that sounds like fun. So over easter weekend we got together with Brett's family to celebrate all the birthdays that happened in March and April for a grand total of 5 people. There was a whole lot of Happy Birthday singing going on.
I decided to use yellow cake mix insted of white because that is what I had. It turned out ok, but next time I will go and get the white cake mix so the colors will be more vibrant. This was 5 layers...it was HUGE!!! I cut out little pics of the kids bdays we celebrated rather than try to write all their names..plus I have terrible handwriting. Then we put the amount of candles in front of each picture!
The top has skittles all around it...can you taste the rainbow?
Umm...so a little lopsided obviously...haha it was fun trying to keep it even. A little trick of frosting the cake...put the cake in the freezer for like 20 minutes than frost...it is so much easier that way.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

White House Egg Roll!!!!!!!!!

A friend at our church sent an email out saying that the White House egg roll is doing a lottery this year and that if you want to go you have until this weekend to enter. I thought " I 'll try, but no way we'll get picked"....a few days later I got an email saying congratulations you were picked....NO WAY!!!! I was in Group B 9:45-11:45. We had 4 children tickets and 2 adult tickets. I immediately emailed them back and asked if Giselle counted as a ticket, since she is 3 months old. They said yes every child regardless of age HAS to have a ticket. Bummer!!!! So we thought a lot about it but decided it would be best to keep Jacob home. Luckily we live by family so Brett's mom watched him for us. We decided to do the Metro since we knew parking would be impossible, especially since the Cherry Blossom festival was also going on.
The girls were super excited to ride the Metro, and we found out age 4 and under is free...sweet! Jillian and Giselle were free. The novelty wore off pretty quickly and all we heard for the next 8 stops were....is this our stop..no we will tell you when it's our stop.
Finally we made it to the White House. We had to wait in a long line to show our ticket. Then wait in another LONG line to go through secret service...the most thorough check of my diaper bag ever. 30,000 people came that day to the egg roll!
When we finally made it to the grounds there was so much to choose from. I wanted to go see Reese Witherspoon read a story but thought they we should do the egg roll first and get that over with. We took our time walking over there looking at all the various characters there, like Spongebob and Super Why amongst many many more. We stopped for a quick sec and took a pic in front of the white house, which we weren't supposed to do...oops! Then got in the line for the egg roll. We got up to the front which didn't take long at all and a lady asked if I wanted to keep my girls together, of course I do so I said yes. She said ok one sec and then had us follow her over. She put the girls on the line and we went to the other side where the parents stand. We were standing there for a while when a volunteer next to me says...hmm something big must be happening if we are just sitting here waiting. I turned to her and said have the Obama's been out yet? She said nope and it's getting late, he still needs to go to the National's to throw out the first pitch. I was like oh my gosh I think he's coming to our group. There was another lady running around kinda like she was important, so I stopped her and asked if the President was coming out to our group. She looked at me and gave me this look like yes but said I don't know very much like Yes he is but i'm not telling you he is. OK now i'm like no way this is crazy..... We waited and waited and waited. I couldn't believe how patient all the kids were. We probably sat there for at least 30 minutes.....but it was worth it!
Brett and I got our camera ready- and sure enough they come right down to our group. It was the craziest thing. Brett leaned in to shake his hand. President Obama was walking around talking to all the kids completely relaxed.
President Obama blew the whistle and they took off...it was pretty close between Jolie and Genna but in the end Genna triumphed! She was super excited for winning, which by the way they didn't get anything for winning, but we didn't care. It's been super fun to watch the girls on all the local news stations and a few national stations as well.
We told Genevieve to go up to him and shake his hand. He was very nice and she was very excited...it's not every day you get to meet the President of the United States.
Jolie went up next and shook his hand. We printed off this picture and Jolie took it to school. Her teacher thought this was really neat and kept it in the classroom. I am so glad they are old enough to really remember this.
Jillian on the other hand didn't understand the importance of meeting him and wouldn't shake his hand, she was way more interested in twirling on the grass!!

I couldn't believe it when he walked up to us and started talking to me and Brett. He asked who this cute baby was? We talked for a minute about the kids.
Brett asked if he could take a picture with him. He said sure...then Brett told him this is for his facebook page..the president laughed.
Michelle Obama was super nice and asked me about all the kiddos. I told her I had one more that wasn't here. She asked if we had all girls and I told her no we have one boy...she goes oh my we will pray for him. I laughed and said he'll need it. She actually stayed for a few minutes chatting with me...it was all so crazy that I can't even remember what we really talked about.
Malia was so nice to the girls she shook their hands and told them that she really liked their dresses! This is who the girls really wanted to meet...beside there dog, which we didn't meet the dog.
Afterwards we walked over to the play with your food station and got a bag of fruit and fruit smoothies...by now we are really hot and it's been a long day. We stopped to take a pic and a nice volunteer offered to take our picture. Right afterwards a lady walked up to me and told me she saw me talking with Michelle Obama and thinks that my girls look really pretty. I thanked her and thought oh yeah I guess people would've been watching us.....Crazy!!!
The very last thing we did was watch the cast of Glee sing....They are SO good. I loved it. I felt bad for those in sweaters and jackets because it was HOT out. This is Mr. Shuster and Puck singing over the rainbow. I really need to get their CD's, because they rock!!
I know how incredibly blessed we were to be picked to go and then to be in the right spot at the right time to meet the President. Something our family will remember for the rest of our lives!!