Me, Fall, and Baking...a dangerous combination

I am very willing to admit that I am rather addicted to baking. If I had my way, I wouldn't do any form of preparing food other than baking. There is something comforting and inviting about preparing baked goods for your family. I always bake on a fairly regular basis that includes our family's bread (on weeks I can keep up with hungry mouths), our pizza crust every Friday night, and random muffins and yumminess when I have time.

But something about fall, kicks my baking addiction into high gear. Anyone else? Suddenly, I feel compelled to begin baking anything that requires cinnamon, pumpkin, nutmeg, or anything that requires a brown sugar crumble to be layered on top of it.

So, my family will be benefiting from my addiction this week. On top of all of our usual home baked food, we'll be indulging in apple muffins, sweet and savory crepes for dinner tonight, and maybe a loaf of pumpkin bread thrown in there somewhere.

What's your favorite go-to fall baking recipe?
Happy baking!!

Birthdaypalooza

Thing 1 and Thing 2 would not listen to me, and decided to turn 2 even against my advice to stay babies for a little while longer. And since I couldn't stop them, we had a great birthday weekend full of trains, friends, family, cake, and gifts.

On their birthday, we spent the morning lounging around and opening a few presents. They love playing kitchen, so we got them their very own little kitchen set up and they LOVE it!!

Yeah, our boys are rarely fully dressed. Especially on lazy mornings. It's just too much work with two : ). I think the adorable diapers work as an outfit anyway!

Then I made them a Fishing Hole game I found over here. They have been fishing non-stop and love to show us what they caught!

"Momma!!!" Translated to, look what I caught!

A little birthday loves on the way to lunch. They love to hold hands in the car or the stroller until one gets tired of it and starts screaming. Which, of course, causes the other one to hold on tighter. So, it's cute while it lasts.

We went to Fritz's for lunch at Crown Center which was a smashing hit. I wasn't sure we'd even get them to eat because they were so busy watching all the trains and letting us know when a new one was coming out. (Fritz's is a local restaurant that uses motorized trains to bring the food to guests. It was started during WWII - I think- when the owner didn't have enough workers to service the tables.)

After lunch, we walked out on a bridge connected to Union Station that crosses over the "real" train tracks. Luckily, after a few minutes of waiting, a big freight train came through and we got to watch it rumble right underneath us. The boys were mesmerized and just stood and stared as it passed.

The next evening was their party, and we were lucky enough to have about 20 of our closest friends and family sharing with us in the festivities. The boys had so much fun seeing all their family and close friends from church. We ate some food, opened lots of presents, watched the fabulous movie S makes each year of the previous year's highlights, and ate some yummy cake.

I have always made the boys' cakes, but I started branching out of the typical molded cake frosted with stars when Bub turned 5. He was having a pirate themed party, and he had to have a pirate ship cake to match. So I created this for him and it's still one of my favorites.

The next year, our party was all about Legos. So I scanned a Lego guy and blew it up on the copy machine and then traced the cake around it. The babies were only 3 months old, so I'm still not sure how I pulled this off.

This was Thing 1 and Thing 2's 1st birthday cake. They each had their own monkey cakes to smash/eat.

But this year, I was in a bit over my head. I saw a cake with four different Thomas engines coming out of tunnels and I knew that's what I wanted to make. Needless to say, I've never covered a cake in fondant before or made train engines and covered them in fondant...but why not??

By Wednesday, the four trains had become two and I was totally fine with that.

So, we had Thomas and Percy coming out of tunnels.

I have never been so happy to have a birthday cake done as I was this year. S estimated I spent about 20 hours on prep time (practicing) and the actual making of the cake. But the boys loved it and went crazy when they saw the trains coming out of the tunnels, so it was all worth it in the end!

Even though it has been hard watching my babies turn 2 and enter the world of being toddlers, I am blessed every day by my three boys and so excited to watch them grow up together.

So, in the immortal words of Thing 1 and Thing 2 " I Two!!!"

Milwaukee Weekend

We got to take a great trip to Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago to celebrate my brother-in-law's graduation from medical school. We were so excited for him, and excited for our first real road trip with the little boys. In the end, we didn't attend the actual graduation - even though that was the reason for the trip! The little boys didn't sleep on the ride to Milwaukee and then had a really hard time getting to sleep once we got to the hotel at 1:30 AM. We were afraid if we pushed through a 2.5 hour graduation, there would be a colossal meltdown that would prevent us from attending any of the other family activities for the weekend.

So, in lieu of attending graduation, we celebrated at a fun little kids' hangout we found. It was part Wonderscope (kid's museum here)/part McDonald's play area. But, showing up on a Friday morning means we were the only ones there for about an hour and a half, and by the time we left, there were only 4 other kiddos there. So, it was really nice for the little boys, because no one was running them down.

The little boys loved the climbing play place.

Rockin' the tunnel.

The tongue out helps for crawling concentration.

They had a room full of soybeans for scooping and digging. You could even load up a hopper and dump the beans into huge Tonka dump trucks to transport them. They definitely spent the most time in this room.

Bubbles!!!! They had a bubble machine that kicked on about every 20 minutes. As soon as the boys heard the buzzer go off, they went running for the bubbles.

And of course, they had a train room. Although it was a bit disappointing. When we read train room on the website, we were expecting a bit more than this...we have this at home. But it was a hit with our two, or course.

After graduation, about 15 of us went out to eat to celebrate Mike's graduation at a fun Mexican restaurant. We actually ate in a train car. Yeah, pretty happy little boys; except I'm pretty sure Thing 1 wanted it to "goooo!".

It was a great weekend, and all three boys traveled really well, which gives us hope for future vacations. And we're really, really proud of Dr. Mike!!

Happy Easter

We hope your family had a wonderful, blessed Easter weekend; our house certainly did. We spent a wonderful weekend enjoying time with family, church friends, and, of course, some fun presents.

Egg dyeing went better than I expected. No eggs were harmed in the process, and the newspaper soaked up most of the "stirring" process. The boys were thoroughly intrigued by eggs turning colors.

We had done several practice runs with empty eggs, so imagine the delight when there were puffs and yogurt melts in the eggs the Easter Bunny left!

Str-e-e-e-e-tch!

Best puffs ever!

The Easter Bunny brought Thing 1 and Thing 2 Elmos. They haven't left their sides since. So, Thing 1's hands are getting awfully full because he's my collector. At any given time, his hands are full with rhino, Elmo, his dog (woof, woof) and a train engine or two.

I love that S caught Thing 1 in perfect running form.

My three loves.

A little post-nap viewing of "Tangled" that the Easter Bunny brought us.

When did this happen? Where did my baby go, and who is this big boy?

Feeding My Boys

Most people who know me, know I love to bake - with some cooking thrown in there. That love is probably a bigger reason for me being on Weight Watchers than giving birth to twins. But I do love it; and I love providing my family with food they love and is good for them, for the most part (I mean, I can't really claim that soft, buttery pretzels fresh from the oven are really good for us).

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across this website, Tastebook, where you can design your own cookbook and enter all of your own recipes. So, you end up with a fully customized cookbook with just the recipes you want/use. I, of course, had to have it! My wonderful hubby got me a gift card to the site for Christmas, so I could design our family cookbook. I was ecstatic!!

Well, then my business took off, we got pregnant with twins, we moved, we had twins...

But I finished it! Not until last night, but I finished it and sent it to the printer! It's a great site, easy to use, and the book looks amazing. You have the opportunity to choose your cover and title, and add a dedication page with a picture if you want. The cookbook is tabbed by categories for easy finding. And, even if you don't fill it up on the first printing, you won't be wasting your money. The price point I ordered allows for 50 recipes (the books hold 100), but I only entered 30 recipes to get started. The great thing is, I don't lose those other 20 recipe spaces. They simply credit my account for 20 recipes that I can order at a future time and add to my book. Genius!!

I cannot wait to receive our cookbook and start using it. Each time I use a recipe, I know I will be cooking a meal I selected especially for my boys. And I'm sure that will make it taste even better!

Booktime

Thing 1 and Thing 2 are just as crazy about books as their big brother was. We have dozens of books in every room in our house and the van, because a good book always seems to hit the spot. I love reading to all of my boys, but there's nothing better than doing a little independent reading.

Or even working together to read a good book.

Who knew the footstools in the bathroom made such a great reading nook?

There must be some big words in this book judging by the concentration on Thing 1's face.

Zoo Trip

As previously mentioned, we headed to the zoo yesterday to enjoy the gorgeous weather and our day with S home on vacation. As usual these days, we didn't manage to get a photo of all five of us, but managed to snap a couple of me with the boys.

Some day we'll be able to consistently get a picture of our entire family again.

Now let me say, I am in no way an advocate of my kid walking around with a pacifier hanging out of his mouth. Our pacifiers are for sleeping time only; however, it was nap time at this point, so they got lovies and pacifiers to ensure there were no melt downs before we exited the premises. But look at Thing 2's pacifier. He rarely sucks on it when he does have it; he just chews on it like it's a stogie hanging out the side of his mouth. I seriously think I birthed two 80 year old men sometimes.

Now, I know what you're thinking..."that's a pretty good picture for three kids, two of them being toddlers." Um, yep, here's what most of our pictures look like.

Notice the look of Bub's face. "Here we go again."