Brown color challenge #4

Last week's color challenge was to make a brown food. 

Tara made toffee.

Toffee

Ingredients

24 saltine crackers

2 sticks butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 ½ cups milk chocolate chips

Almonds – additional

Directions

Line 9x13 pan with foil.  Place saltine crackers on bottom.  Melt butter and brown sugar in a saucepan and boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.  Pour mixture over crackers.  Bake @ 400 degrees for 5-7 minutes or until bubbly all over.  Cover with chocolate chips.  Let melt.  Spread.  Add crushed almond on top if desired.  Put in the fridge to cool.  Note: We break into pieces and refrigerate in a container.

This recipe is from Darla Tervo.  

Rachel made Torte with chocolate/butterscotch pudding.

Mom waited for this week to make Mocha Punch . . . and then totally forgot to take a picture.  It tasted absolutely delicious!!!

Aimee made homemade caramels!  They were yummy:)

Amazing . . .  we finally got it posted . . . and we put a blog post on!  We've been horrible about blogging lately ~ not sure why!?!?   At least we all did this {last} week's color challenge . . . not been very good about doing that lately, either.  We'll get this week's color challenge on later . . .

Brown Challenge #3

So, it's Saturday night again and none of us have done our color challenge this week.  I'm sitting on the couch, holding my sick baby, and looking at my dirty hardwood floor.  My wonderful daughter, who already did her Saturday cleaning in the living room, is gone for the evening and won't be cleaning anymore for me tonight.  For some reason, scrubbing hardwood floors is a horrible job.  When I ask the kids to do it, they can't seem to see anything dirty.  I just tell them to scrub everything and the dirty spots will disappear, but they can't seem to get the concept!!!

Thought came to me!!!  I can do something with the color brown in an unusual way.  I can scrub my floor this evening!!!  (at least at my house it seems to be pretty unusual).  All of you who come here can probably agree with that fact :)  The spots I tried to vacuum up earlier this week are still on the floor, and they need to go.  So, I got my brown challenge done this week.  I scrubbed my living room floor.  This is a very unusual thing, unfortunately!!!

If you study my floor very closely it still looks kinda dirty.  It's just very scratched up!!  We're used to it and that's just the way it is. 

Hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

August 26th, 2010

This day was a very busy one:)

It started out with making cinnamon rolls for my gold challenge.

Around 4ish, I went on a walk down the driveway with the 3 oldest girls.  We stopped before we turned around and I took some pictures of them.

Laylah, Shandi, Jenae

Jenae

Shandi

Laylah

After I got back, about half an hour later, Sue & Anikka Seppala came to pick me up so I could go spend some time at their house.  After supper, we decided to go to church, so got ready & left.  When Walter & Sue came to Tim & Leona's to drop me off, Anikka stayed too & spent the night.  It was nice to be able to spend a bit of time with Anikka, getting to know her better.

It was a busy day but lots of fun:)

-Rachel

August 23rd, 2010

Kenzey

Auntie Annie, her daughter Lyra, & her daughter & son came to pick up my suitcase load of crafts we all had made for the Phoebe's Gift Fundraiser.  It was nice to be able to see Auntie Annie while I was out there, as well as the others.

Eliza just loved holding Kenzey.

Auntie Annie

Brown Color Challenge #2

Mom and I did the color challenge last week on Saturday night and the camera wasn't working then . . . so we're putting it on now:)

Mom made my skirt smaller and put a pocket in it.

I made a felt flower for a headband.  I was just going to make a hair clip, but then I remembered I'd got a few elastic headbands a while back and decided to try it.  I just sewed the flower onto the headband.

Love, Aimee

School Days

We are just starting our first full week of school.  Now my days consist of four little kids playing in the morning, sending Forrest on the bus at noon, and then the three little ones napping.  The quiet afternoons are very nice and maybe I'll accomplish something . . . sometime soon:)  Here are pictures of the kids' first days.  Forrest didn't start until Friday.  The other kids went on Wednesday.

Clayton-2nd, Clint-4th, Christopher-5th, Tara-7th

Reid-11th, Rachel-10th

Aimee-9th

Forrest-Kindergarten

First time on the bus.

Hope you all have a good week!

August 22nd, 2010

Here are some more pictures from my trip:)

Kenzey - isn't she adorable??

Rhianne

Shandi

Aidan - he & I got along real well:)  He loved me right away & always wanted to come see me.  He is the happiest little boy ever & just walks around with a big smile on his face.. except when he falls & bangs his head or something.. which happened quite often.. but when that happened, all I had to do was pick him up, give him his paci, & he was good to go:)  A few seconds later he would be grinning again.

Love & God's Peace,

Rachel

Kulla Klan in the Sand

The kids had all been hoping to make it to the beach for a day this summer, so between work and trying to find a nice day before Rachel went to New Hampshire, we picked a day and hoped for the best. . . .and it pretty much turned out the best!!!

We left in the morning at about 8:30 and took the backroads to Woodland.

We then went to Longview, where we crossed over the big bridge into Oregon.

The logs down by the water (seen through the side of the bridge).

We stopped in Astoria at the bakery to buy some korpus, then we were off to Seaside to buy candy.  At the candy store, everyone got to pick their own candy to buy.  The older kids had their own money, but daddy bought a dozen taffy each for the 4 little kids.  They had fun choosing which kind to buy out of the 170 choices!!!  Then we walked down to the store where you can buy pop in glass bottles.  We got some pop there, the best choice they had being Pepsi!!!  The boys walked back to the van then, while the girls and I stopped in at Doogers to get some clam chowder to go for David and I.  On the way back to the van, the girls stopped for some Tillamook ice cream.  We were finally ready to head further south!!  As we were leaving Seaside at 12:30, the thermometer read 86 degrees!  We'd chosen the perfect day:)

We drove through Cannon Beach (where we stopped for more candy at our favorite taffy shop - Bruce's).  As we drove out of town, we saw Haystack Rock.

Finally really going to the beach!!  Everywhere there was a parking area for the beach, the lots looked full.  It was a beautiful day at the Oregon Coast and everyone wanted to be there!  Luckily, the parking area for the place we wanted to go to wasn't directly on 101, so everyone didn't know there was a beach there.

Walker, pleased to be out of his carseat and on the move.  Daddy, getting a little rest, waiting for lunch.

We ate our lunch before going down to the beach.  When we got down to the beach, we had a huge section just to ourselves.  Walker lasted on his blanket in the shade for about 5 minutes, until he got his first taste and feel of sand!!!  Then, no matter how much we carried him back to the middle of the blanket, he crawled right back off . . .

. . . and so we just let him play in the sand:)

And he really enjoyed himself!!

Hunter had a fun time in the sand . . . didn't want to go by the water.  That's always nice, because it's a lot easier!

Bronwyn was mostly the same way, except for when big brother Reid took her out a few times.

The big kids all had a fun time in the water.

Then they decided to play in the sand.

This sand castle looks sideways to me, but the picture refused to turn for me!!!

At the end of the day, Clayton decided to make sand angels.

All in all, we ALL had a fun few hours on the beach.  When we left, we decided to go home through Tillamook.  All of the little kids were sleeping when we got to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, so David stayed in the van with them, while the older kids and I went in for cheese samples, cheese curds and ice cream cones.  It was a great day!!