Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! It is one of my favorite holidays so I was super excited to show it to Bug and start building traditions with him, even though he's 6 months old. Why not right? Well, I did not take into account that Bug, his daddy, and myself would all be sick. Oh well. I'll just leave you with some photos. 

"What do you mean we're going to cut it."

" NO. Please don't cut it!!" 

"Wait...we're suppose to cut it?" 

"I'll hold it...you cut." 

"Never mind, I'll just watch and eat this bat." 

Bug also got a 1/2 birthday present in the mail from his Great Aunt. He was pretty excited about the box! He was NOT happy when I cut it open for him.

"Tastes good!" 

He liked the presents too!


We were able to carve his pumpkin. We wanted to do this earlier in the week, but with all of us being under the weather, it was difficult. Oh well. We got it done!!

Bug LOVED the inside of the pumpkin.

Bug went as a sick baby for Halloween. Pretty convincing hu?

Bug's daddy has a fever now and is feeling sick. As much as I feel bad for him I'm praying that Bug doesn't catch that! He hasn't gotten a flu shot yet. I hope he's doing well enough on Monday when he goes for shots so he can get it. 

Sick Day

Life has been exciting the past two days. OR NOT.

Early Tuesday AM I woke up sick to my stomach and slept for part of the night on the bathroom floor. I'm a horrible patient and know this. I'm not very nice either.

THANK GOD my husband has a job that he can call off. I do not know what I would have done if I had to take care of Bug while sick.

Wednesday AM I was hoping that I'd feel better because it was Mother Moose day. Bug loves it and I figured I wasn't contagious. Bug had other plans and woke up snotty and congested. I would not want a mom to bring a sick baby to story time, so I decided we'd call this one off.

Bug and I spent the day being lazy. I attempted to suck the snot out of his nose several times. Those nurses in the hospital make it LOOK SO EASY. It's not. It's like wresting an alligator. It reminded me of worming a horse or putting halters on unbroken horses. BOTH things I'm much better at!

Poor kid.

In other news Bug's "Big Boy" car seat came. He was 29" at his last appointment so I wanted to be ready for him when he is too big for his infant car seat. We went with the Britax Boulevard. Expensive, but good safety rating.

Where are his pants you ask? He puked all over himself and me. It was pants off dance off the rest of the afternoon. He's pretty excited about his new car seat. We played around it today and he sat in it. He seemed to like it.

Magic!

I have seen this recipe floating around the interwebz for a while now. It was called "Two Ingredient Cookies." I was skeptical. How in the world could cookies taste good without sugar, butter, etc. IMPOSSIBLE.

but is it?

So, I tried this magical recipe. Sure, I added in chocolate chips, and craisins...and some cinnamon...and a dash of vanilla...but the initial recipe has just two ingredients. I just didn't want to believe that it would work.

SO.

2 old bananas to a cup of oats (give or take on the oats) and mix until it looks like batter. At this point I added in all my other stuff, and popped them in the oven for 15 minutes at 350. They were DELICIOUS. Next time I might make a few without the extra "stuff" to see how they taste, but I'd definitely make these again.

Weekend Update!

Our weekend had a lot of "F's" involved. Food, Friends, Fun, Food (did I mention food?) Saturday morning my hubby and two of his friends went out moose hunting. No moose. Bug decided that he would practice being a teenager and slept in until 9:30! I wasn't really sure what to do with myself, so I got some cleaning and laundry done.

Bug has outgrown his 6 month clothes. I'm in the process of changing him over from one set to the next. He still has a FEW 6 month outfits that fit, but the 9 month ones fit a lot better. Plus, he has been wearing the same 3 outfits for a week or so.  I always get sad to change his clothes out, but remind myself that is a great thing. I'm very blessed that the Bug is growing big and strong.

Bug woke up and helped me finish getting ready for the day.

I L-O-V-E Halloween. I decided to use Pintrest (aka-my recipe book) to make some things for parties we were going to. I love icing. It was really hard to NOT eat the bowl of frosting before frosting the cupcakes. I can happily say that I didn't even try one part of the cupcakes until they were done.

Candy Corn Cupcakes

Cheese Ball 

Before going to parties we went to the Alaskan Federation of Natives to their bazaar. The art was amazing, and Bug loved looking at everything. We bought Bug a pair of mukluks made by an Elder. They are pretty amazing. He's getting them for Christmas, so I'll post a photo then. They are absolutely beautiful.

After the bazaar we went home and got ready to go to our first party. It was with Bug's friends from Mother Moose. He went as Bat-boy and looked super cute. I will never get tired of dressing him up in costumes.

For our second party he went as my frog. I love Duck Dynasty. My favorite episode is the one where Jase Robertson goes frog hunting in the golf course. SO, I went as Jase and Bug was my frog.

Bug's dad went as Luke Duke. He could also have doubled his costume as acting as his 23 year old self.

Hope everyone had a great weekend. If you're dressing up for Halloween what are you going as?

PONIES!

I found them! They do exist in Fairbanks.

Okay. My husband found them. He even willingly drove me out to see them. He's a great guy. We went out to a tack store that was on the property. There are 39 horses! It's a nice looking facility, and the outdoor arena looked BEAUTIFUL. I talked to the owner for a while, and asked him a bazillion questions. Mainly, I wanted to know how in the heck do you keep horses in negative 50 degrees. He said it was easy. (Sure, if you're not the one taking care of them.) Heck, I use to freeze my butt off on Sundays taking care of ponies when it was 20 degrees out. I couldn't imagine doing it at negative 50. I'd die.

They do English and Western lessons at the barn. I asked him about the lesson program, and apparently there is currently a 20 person wait list! If I've learned one thing about wait lists, it is that you don't need to say "yes" when your turn comes up. SO, I'm now on some random list (if there even is one) for lessons. He asked me what kind of riding I did, and we talked about Dressage. I told him my only goal at this point is to STAY ON THE HORSE. If I can do that, then I'll be happy. I'm not sure what I'd want to do when/if my number comes up. It's weird how you feel once you have a kid. I worry I'll get hurt (again) and not be able to take care of Bug. I'm sure it will be fine. There are no Thoroughbreds at the barn.

The one thing that is exciting to me is that the barn is less than 10 miles from my house. I have NEVER been less than 10 miles from a barn. Heck, I use to spend more time sitting IN my car driving out to see Denali than I did actually spending it with Denali (or insert other horses I've leased here.)

Who knows. I'm just excited to see ponies. I'm happy. I may be able to polish up my boots after all.

Happy Friday!

Pop Quiz:

We have these two things in our house. I never thought I'd need to have them in my house, but I'm learning a lot! Any guesses as to what they are? 

I scream, you scream....

... we all scream for ICE CREAM!


I miss Seattle. I miss my friends and I miss the food. I have a horrible sweet tooth and LOVE ice cream and cupcakes.Consequently, I also need to lose about 40 more pounds so maybe it's a good thing that I don't live in Seattle anymore. I've been trying to recreate Seattle cupcakes since we got here.

About a month and a half ago I ordered two books off Amazon Trophy Cupcakes and Parties and Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream. I also ordered an ice cream maker for Big Red. (Big Red is my mixer. He's awesome. We've been together 7 years.) Long story short, ice cream maker came, and it had the wrong parts (refurbished, and the parts that were wrong were broken AND dirty.) Kitchenaid was great and sent me replacements right away, but I still had to wait. MAN, I-HATE-WAITING! (Yesterday was national caps lock day, I'm still celebrating.) I have the patience of a 6 year old (which could be why we got along so well when I taught.)

Well, the plan finally came together and my pieces came over the weekend.

The book talks about how she uses fresh, local ingredients. Since I don't have Whole Paycheck Foods or Penzeys Spices, I did what I could, with what I had. I had planned on making Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream (to go with dinner tomorrow night) but only bought 1/2 the chocolate. Opps. I wanted (no, needed, remember-no patience) to make ice cream so I decided to make Scout Mint. I LOVE it. I loved it so much it was dangerous. I decided to make another flavor first while my sweet husband stopped to get me the goods on his way home from work.

It is not Girl Scout cookie season, so I bought the Keebler Grasshopper Cookies, instead of Thin Mints.

 I had no idea that ice cream was SO easy to make. It's dangerous knowledge to possess. After combining everything, I heated it up, threw it in the mixer and 30 minutes later- ICE CREAM! I will say that the recipe says not to boil the milk mixture...I have a 6 month old. I "may" have walked away longer than I was suppose to....it MAY have boiled...but hell, it's still ice cream.

Big Red in action.

Yummy

Does it taste the same? Pretty dang close! I'm pretty sure that Molly Moon has some magical fairy dust that she sprinkles onto her ice cream. Each year the school I worked at has an AMAZING auction. Molly Moon would donate a HUGE 5 gallon tub of ice cream for the dessert dash (tables go up by the amount of money donated.) Somehow, we always managed the ice cream. It was my favorite part of the night! 

I got all the ingredients for the Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream and got that ready to go in tomorrow morning. I keep reminding myself that I can't eat it all. 

Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream...

I MAY have found a new project at the Transfer Station tonight. I put the pictures up on FBX Adventure's in Parenting's Facebook page. Click to see it, OH, and humor me...click "like" on the page. 

First Foods

While living in Seattle I traded my dear friend a maple doughnut for her baby food maker. I thought it was ridiculous, but now that I have Bug, I might trade my car for someone to bring ME a doughnut. Okay, not really, but WOW is it hard to "run out quick" to get something. (Thanks again T for the baby food maker. It was amazing!! ) 

On Sunday I went about making "Bug Food." He has been super interested in watching us eat, and I wanted to have some food ready for him when he is ready. Saturday we ran to the Co-op and I picked up some Organic Yams and Organic Carrots. It was the EASIEST thing ever to make him food. Especially with the handy dandy food maker. 

Organic Carrots and Organic Yams-CHECK!

Two cute assistants - Check! 

Cleaned, and ready carrots - Check!

One baby food maker traded for a maple doughnut - Check! 

Ice cube trays - Check! 

Funny story about the ice cube trays. I bought them at Wal-mart. I don't like Walmart, but I don't have a million options. I threw the tag away earlier in the day when I washed them. When I went to put the food in I realized that I didn't know if they were BPA free. So, I got to dig through smelly ricotta cheese to find the tag.

Frozen baby food into ziplock bag- Check! 

I froze the carrots and the yams for a few hours. and then popped them out of the ice cube trays. Each ice cube is about an ounce, so I can take one out in the morning to have it ready for dinner.

So what did Bug think of his first taste of food? He wasn't impressed! He wanted to play with the bowl and the spoon. I bought him a high chair today, and he thought THAT was cool, but not so much into the food. I decided to give him yams this week. They are a little sweet, but not as sweet as the carrots (the carrots were amazing. I want to eat them!)

This kid knows what the camera is for. Right before my husband took this photo he was bawling his head off, but he apparently didn't want to look bad on camera.

After a while I gave up trying to feed him.
 He just wanted his spoon. Baby steps!

He made SUCH a mess. I "think" he got some in his mouth.

6 Month Photo. They grow up so fast!