Thanksgiving Feast and Stuff

Thanks to my sister-in-law, Stephanie for the snazzy picture collages (and the awful pictures of me I might add)...I stole them straight from her blog...that's what you get when you have someone else take all of your pictures for you. :)

Our Thanksgiving was great. We had Bryan's brother Paul and his family over, along with our good friends the Hardmans, and oh yeah, my brother Mike was there too. Lots of rowdy children, plenty of food and tons of fun. What more could you want?

Enjoy the stolen pics!

Back in Business

Check it out!

mariecarmel.blogspot.com

Bryan is working on getting my website up and running again. In the mean time, I have posted every piece of jewelry I have on this new blog.

Prices are SLASHED, quantities are VERY limited.

Take a look. There are quite a few new pieces. If you see something you want, shoot me an email:

sales@mariecarmel.com

Jewelry makes a great Christmas gift. (Hint Hint Hubbies!!)

And The Mom of the Day Award Goes To...

ME!! ME!! and ME!!

I am taking this honor from my friend Sarah to whom it was awarded for making her kids spaghetti for breakfast one morning...read about it here. What did I do to deserve this recognition?

Well, thanks to the lovely time change, instead of my kids getting up at 6:30am they were ALL bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at, you guessed it:

5:30am

I have already been awake for 3.25 hours this morning, served breakfast, cleaned up play dough and laid Roman back down for his "afternoon" nap.

Bring it on.

Happy All Hallows Eve!

2(Link) + A Witch + Karate Guy + 1 Gooey Marshmellow =
Way Too Much Candy and 5 Extra Pounds

The kids had a blast. #1 and #2 both wanted to be Link from the Legend of Zelda. Where do you find a Link costume you ask? You don't find, you make. Yes, I actually made them, 6th grade Home Ec class finally paid off. Good thing the pictures are small, you don't want to look too close.

Between school parties, trunk-or-treats and the actual Halloween night, these kids were loaded! Anyone ever heard of overkill?? We spent Trick-or-Treating time with Bryan's family down in Springville - always fun and fattening... We all finally hit the sack around 10:30pm (VERY late for my kids - who of course still got up at 6:30 Saturday morning, does this ever change??)

Family Pictures

Two sets of family pictures in one year is definitely a record for us - living through two sets is an even bigger achievement! My gracious, extremely talented sister-in-law, Andrea, offered to take some photos of us. We couldn't pass that up! It's a good thing pictures don't have audio attached because even though everyone looks so blissfully happy, there might have been some "#1, put those sticks down, get over here and stand still!" and maybe even a little, "#2 if you even think about touching that dirt, you're gonna be sorry!" and then there was #3 who just blatantly refused to smile in all but one photo. Oh, the joys of boys. :)

New Template

Check out my new template. Made it myself...I'm a genius (as long as Bryan is sitting next to me) - I know.

Here's A Recipe For You

For you carb watchers out there, this recipe is a treat! Now, don't start groaning, these really are yummy (even my kids like them). We prefer these pancakes over the normal ones now. So here goes:

Protein Pancakes
4 eggs
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup slow cooking oats
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
2 packets stevia (or other sweetener)

Put all ingredients in blender and mix until smooth. Cook just like regular pancakes. I've found if you lower the temperature and cover they turn out better.

We like to top with "I Can't Believe it's Not Butter" Spray, sugar-free syrup (regular butter and syrup for the kids) and cut up strawberries. My mouth is watering just writing this! Let me know what you think.