Welcome, season of light!

Happy Santa Lucia Day, umm, yesterday :)

We had many Lucia's at our house this year since everyone was awake before we were ready! That never happens to us! I've slacked and Ally didn't even have a dress! She wore my temple dress that (shocker) I didn't even have to pin up! Granted it touched the floor but we tied her in a red ribbon and that was it! Livvy followed in her baptism dress and red sash, I've decided that once they are baptized they can be Santa Lucia's helpers if they want to. The baptism dress becomes their first Lucia dress. I like that :) One good moment for this year anyway :)

Ah, how can I complain? The rolls were good, the kids were happy, and Alex took care of Jack before breakfast! And there's still yummy hot chocolate waiting in the fridge for me!

Life is good!

And Happy Birthday Joshie! I bet you love that we can never go a year without thinking of you! We love you!

Holiday Mantels

I love Holiday decorations don't you! And a mantel makes such a statement :) I'm thinking of doing something a little different this year.... What do you think? Still maybe I should add a little greenery. Hmmm... Oh well! Merry Christmas!

Can you guess what day it is?

Here's a Hint.... My baby boy is turning one!!! Here's my big boy on his big day! Happy Birthday Little Jack! We all love you! Can't wait to see you demolish some cake tonight!

Holy freaking cow. Jack's taking his first steps tonight!! ...and I have no camera. I'm reduced to cell phone pics and video. Yuck. I'll see if I can get anything even slightly decent tomorrow.

Hi there! I'm Little Red!

Ally did a full page monologue awhile back and I finally figured out how to get a video you could see and hear because the ones I brought home were awful. We got home from the talent show and this is what I wrote: I'm incredibly proud right now! Ally just preformed at her school talent show, and did AWESOME! I have only silent video from there and black video at home... geez! Here it is anyway :) (I've edited it up and lightened the black video so that you can see what's going on but the color is horrible.)

Tons of compliments and she just looked so at home up there!I think she blogged about it when it happened!

Building tents

OK this happened way back in the summer but it was awesome! I remember building tents when I was a little girl and whatever day this was the girls filled the entire basement family room almost wall to wall tents! They were so proud! So was I :)Everyone got in on the game :) I hope they are always building such happy memories!

Back 2 School

These are my back to school pics that never quite made it. As you will see at the bottom I started this post on time. Yesterday was quite the big day! (Yesterday? Sheesh what happened?) I thought you'd want to see some pics anyway. Even if I'm a slacker :)

Hey guys I made a little video of Jack while trying to catch him practicing his crawling.

Kind of fun and you can see how big he's getting!

And, to head off any comments on the subject,

I don't know when I'll be seeing you all next but we think about you all the time!

Love you all!

Lake pics

As you probably gathered from the last post it was lake weekend last week. And everyone but my camera had a great time! I have a few good shots, but mostly it was so hot that anytime I tried to pullout my camera to take pictures my lens would fog over

Phoeb's havin' a good time!

The girls tried laying out a few times of course they decided you couldn't do that without a stack of magazines. Here's Liv enjoying her Midwest Living or some other magazine not geared for teenager's or girls laying out :) I guess I should be genuinely happy but I can't help but laugh a little!

Here's Ally being taught by Anna how to hold her sparklers :) We've never been as careful with the fireworks as we probably should!

We of course had tons of fun in the water! This is Alex, Jack, Layna, & Livvy enjoying some float time :) They all came back crispy!

Surprise, surprise, this is where Layna spent most of her time!

Here's my boys wishing you a happy summer!

Happy 25th Anniversary at the lake!!

This is the cake I made for the 25th anniversary of lake house ownership for the Malter/Sperry/Blackburn Clan

We celebrated with chocolate cake and marble cake both filled with rich chocolate ganache and topped with a layer of the same yummy stuff!

It was wreathed in fondant leaves

I thought it looked pretty cool! The chocolate stripes remind me of a hat box :)

Oh do you know the muffin man?

This face is not unusual at our house... I decided to pull out the muffin tins today... Now I'm seeing faces like this....

He particularly likes it when there's food in the muffin tins :) ....

I might actually be able to make dinner now!

Thank goodness! We've finally met the muffin man!

Jon and Anna's Wedding Madness!

Well it was slight madness for me but that's all it takes right now! So 2 weeks ago it started with truffle making... ha, ha, ha! Yes I had planned on making 1,000 truffles.

What can I say I think big :) I only made it to 700 with the help of the lovely Suzanne who is currently staying with us. They were milk chocolate dipped in either white or dark chocolate. and most were specially decorated with little pink flowers or a squiggly S type of Monogram.

Then after leaving for Missouri last Friday morning I spent Saturday at a Civil War reenactment with my Mother and Sisters. Fun! Pretty much I love anything that involves dressing up! Then Monday morning we imposed on my good friend Laura and I started the cake. Wow! It was gorgeous! 6 tiers, the 1st one chocolate with chocolate chips and filled with chocolate buttercream, the 2nd was white filled with a cherry filling, then Marble with a coconut and pecan buttercream filling, then we had 2 layers of strawberry filled with strawberry buttercream :) , and it was topped with another chocolate layer filled with strawberry buttercream!!! Aah! It was so good! Here's pictures!

All the stuff sticking out of the sides was from a flower display behind it :)

This is a good close up so you can see a few of the details :D

I have to thank Both of my good friend Lauras! Laura McDavitt was absolutely incredible hosting us while I destroyed her kitchen and my children overran her house and she watched my baby and helped settle many of the decisions that were made during the cake and pictures process! And thank you Laura Aitchison who so willingly put us up in her house while we stayed for the wedding in Nauvoo, she guided me around to help with picture ideas, and helped me prep and choose pictures! Thank you Thank you to the fabulous Laura's in my life!

And this is a picture of the wonderful new little family that we did this for!

Congrats Jon & Anna! We love you!

Sperry updates

So, Jack just learned how to hold and shake a rattle.

OK, in our best sappy sniffly voices, let's all say "I'm so Proud!"

Hehe! Things are still goin' here :)

Ally is gonna be in her school talent show doing a little red riding hood monologue. It's a full page long.. of 12 point single line typing. She's got it down!

Livvy is amazing! She does everything she's told and her only desire is to go to a birthday party... someday.. it seems every one she is invited to is on Sunday (We don't do parties on Sunday. I know I'm a mean, horrible mom. But it's our day and the Lord's.) or we are gone that weekend. It's really true! I keep telling her it's no big deal that there will be lot's of parties in her life but even I'm starting to be shocked by the odd coincidence of every time!

Layna has discovered she will be starting school in the fall and thinks she's about the hottest thing around!

Phoebe's a screamer who has taken up boys bathroom habits of spending hours on the pot. I think I need to get her a stack of board books in there while she sits. So, annoying when I have things to do.

In general, things are good. Alex has a window washing business now and I have a pattern design company. I'll post when websites go up!

While Daddy's away...

Well Alex was gone to Moab for about a week starting the 15th and I thought I'd put up a couple pictures of the fun we had while Daddy was off playing!