5 & 6 month bear pictures

These pages were tough for me. There are some of pages where you're just glad to have them done. I am pretty hard on myself, so I know most people won't see the things I see...but some will... and that's the part I'm trying to ignore!


Good thing he is so darn cute.

Thanksgiving!

In 2008 from May to November there were 4 babies born..and all of them were able to be together for Thanksgiving. It was a perfect time for pictures! I found the stickers I used at Hobby Lobby. They are called cardstock stickers and they even had 4 little Indian/Pilgrims. I wish you could see the texture of the stickers...they match the texture of the stickers throughout the book..and lately I've been looking for some for Kate's book.. guess what I can't find? I had fallen in love with them, too!


We also took pictures of just the 3 boys... l'il turkeys. They've lived up to that name since!

Acacia, the lone girl..and first granddaughter... learned early how to hold her own. My favorite picture is the last one that shows how tired of her Kaden was by the end of the pictures.

Our Favorite People pages

Here are the next 2 page spreads. I loved this one. I just had so many pictures of Kaden with all kinds of people we love. I spent a long time getting those circles cut from the cricut and arranged to look "random". It's so true that being purposely random is a hard thing to do. See the texture under the alligator. I think this is the page that helped me fall in love with texture. I can't wait to enlarge my colection of folders.



By the way, Kaden was the first baby Brad (above picture) had every held.

This next photo is Kaden with his Grandparents and Great-Grandparents. The next one is with several of his aunts and uncles. Somehow Uncle Andrew made it on their twice... He should feel special.




He is so loved.

Finally some more scrapbook pages!

So, I've had Kaden's scrapbook "done" for about 3 months now (except for one set of pages which is my brother's wedding that we went to when Kaden was 3 months old...adn somehow I completely forgot...shhh don't tell my brother!) and, Yes, I am just now getting around to posting pictures. I'm really happy with the scrapbook, and think it's crazy how much my style has changed in the process of just 1 book. I learned a lot. The most important thing I learned is I LOVE TEXTURE. I will point it out when I can. It adds so much to a page!

These are the baby shower pages...it's so nice to remember how blessed we were at Kaden's birth and how everything we could have possible wanted or needed was given to us. In the first page, it is the surprise baby shower thrown by my highschool girls volleyball team that I coached. They each wrote "advice" on the bibs to help remind me the joys of mothering. I love them!. Also, there is a pocket with a white paper that a little girl (about 3 years old) drew for him as her baby shower "gift"...it was so incredibly sweet.

The diaper shower was thrown by our church in Gillette...we had only been here 6 weeks...how cool is that?

I don't have pictures of the shower Luke's extended family threw for me, or the one our church in Butte through. Like I said before...so blessed.



Oh and Kaden was about a week late. Hardest.week.ever. It's so much easier after the first baby!

I wish I had another recipe to share...

I have this amazing sandwhich (?) I really want to share with you. BUT I refuse to do it until I have a picture. And I'm not making it just for the picture. SO I do promise the next time I make it, I will share it promptly. Until then, know that I am hiding an amazingly mouthwatering secret easy recipe.

Did I mention that it's amazing and mouthwatering? And easy?

Breakfast Casserole

Thanks to my good friend Rachel Allen who gave me this easy overnight breakfast bake recipe the night before I needed to take a "main dish" for a brunch at MOPS. If you know anything about me, I don't eat breakfast. If I do, my idea of breakfast is a really chocolatey granola bar. So, here's to Rachel, who helped me look like I had it all together in the morning.

Ingredients:

8 slices bread, cubed
3/4 lb breakfast sausage, browned (I used 1/2lb plus about a half a cub of fried ham)
2 cups cheddar cheese
2 1/2 cups milk
4 eggs
1/4 t mustard powder
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 c milk

Layer the bread, then sausage, then cheese in a 9x13 baking dish. Mix the milk, eggs, and mustard powder, then pour evenly over the bread, sausage, and cheese. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or more (overnight). Mix cream of mushroom soup and 1/2cup milk to have ready for the morning. In the morning, preheat oven to 300*. Spread cream of mushroom/milk mixture evenly over casserole. Bake for 90 minutes or until the egdges are turning brown.

*If you like mushrooms a can of mushrooms would be a a great addition to this recipe. I think green pepper would also do well.

Chicken Noodle Soup

This recipe is so very "ish" it's not even funny. I will try hard to give amounts but please realize it's different every time I make it. I just add things til it tastes amazing and then I quit. I am laughing because my recipe literally says "add desired amount of water and boullion" and "saute some onion".... amounts? HA!

Ingredients:

1/2-1 onion, chopped (I probably do a small onion worth)
2 T oil or butter (I always like butter better)
2 chicken breasts, cubed
4-6 cups Water
4-6 bouillon cubes (1 per cup of water)
poultry seasoning
thyme
sage
rosemary
spaghetti, alfredo, egg noodles or other desired noodle
1-2 cans cream of chicken soup

Saute the onion in butter of 1-2 minutes. Add chicken and 2 bouillon cubes cook until mostly done. Here you can either add 4 cups water and 2 more bouillon and a sprinkling of each of the other spices, bring to a boil, then add desired amount of noodles. Or you can take the chicken out and boil the noodles in the water with 2 more bouillon, and a sprinkling of each spice. Either way is fine. Once the noodles are "al dente" (cooked but firm to the bite) (add back in chicken if you removed it), add 1-2 cans of cream of chicken soup. This totally depends on how creamy you want it. If it is too water add more soup, too creamy or not soupy enough, add more water.

You really can't ruin this recipe. (Unless your lid comes off one of the seasonings. I mean, I can't imagine that tasting good.) Also, if you don't have the seasonings the soup will still be great. If you can at least add some rosemary or thyme... Come to think of it, if you can, just add them all. They really do make it taste totally home made!!!

If you want to be really cool you could always make homemade noodles to. Oh my goodness they are good. I do it occasionally (when I want extra work, extra clean up, but amazing soup.) (Which actually is less often than occasionally.)