Happy Weekend

(Brett biking ahead of me on our morning jog yesterday)

Yesterday I took the three youngest to the doctor for checkups and shots.

Last night Brett woke up with a fever.  Tyler woke up with a fever and hungry a couple times (which is hard when I'm so used to him sleeping through the night).  Camille fell out of bed.  And Keith was out of town.   I'm tired!  And poor little Brett is still feeling crummy today.  He stayed home from school and is asleep on my cozy bed right now.

I'm exhausted and it's sad when kids aren't feeling well, but it is nice to have an excuse to hang out in pajamas and keep things low key around here.

Off to snuggle up some cute kids!  Have a great weekend!

Pear Butter

We got some pears from Costco last week and had been enjoying them.  They were so sweet and delicious!  But we just couldn't eat them all before they started to get too ripe!  So I searched online for ideas to put these pears to good use before they completely died.  And then I found this gem of a recipe.  Pear butter.  Yum!  I've had apple butter before and thought about making it, but never had.  And now I've made this pear butter and I think I'll always buy too many pears just so I can make it! It's that good!  And it made my whole house smell AMAZING while it was cooking!  We've been enjoying it on homemade bread as an after school snack this week.  Here's the recipe, or check out the link above.  Mine did turn out a little too thin so I put it in a fine mesh strainer to get rid of the extra liquid, but I think I'll just cook it longer next time.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 lbs. ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced
• 3 Tbsp. honey
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• pinch of groud nutmeg
• pinch of ground cloves

DIRECTIONS:

Stir all ingredients together in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about 50 minutes, covering so that the lid is slightly open, and stirring occasionally. Keep an eye on the mixture so that the bottom does not burn. Once it has reduced slightly and thickened, remove from heat and transfer to a food processor. Pulse until smooth. (Or you can skip this step and keep the pear butter chunky.)

Transfer to canning jars or a heat-proof container, seal, and refrigerate until ready to use. Keep for up to a week.

*If your pear butter is too thin, feel free to run the mixture through a strainer to remove extra liquid. Alternately, let the mixture simmer on the stove longer to reduce more.

General Conference 2016

This recent General Conference was probably the most successful for our family yet.  Keith was in Germany so I made sure I was well prepared before Conference weekend came.  Grandma Jackson had printed up a bunch of great helps for the kids and they really kept them busy most of the time.

I had to take a picture of them at their table while they were behaving so well.  :)

They really did do well though.  We watched all four sessions.  Grant was in charge of highlighting the name of the speaker on our chart hanging over there by the TV.  

Ty and I were happy to have so much uninterrupted cuddle time.

This is probably as close as we'll get to a picture with Pres. Monson.

Grant always loves watching the cute church commercials that come on after conference, before the World Report.

We headed over to Keith's parents house for their traditional waffles between Sunday sessions of Conference.  Grandpa Jackson read the kids a Halloween book and then each family got to take a book home.  I love how captivated my nephew is by the story!

During the last session of Conference I kept myself alert by making some chocolate chip cookies for dessert that night when my parents and grandparents would be coming over.

We had a yummy dinner and Camille had fun playing piano with Grandpa Guy.

Then my parents and grandparents stayed home with the kids while I went to the airport to pick up Keith.  We were so happy to have him home!  He showed all of us his pictures from Germany and gifted us with chocolates.  Yum!

It was such a nice weekend.  I loved hearing the talks during Conference.  I felt so inspired, uplifted, and well taught.  I wish General Conference came around more often!

Brett's Surf Party

Brett had a handful of cousins and a friend over on Saturday afternoon to celebrate his birthday.

We set up a giant slip'n slide, like we did last year, and let everyone have fun sliding all over it.  It was so much fun for all of us!

These silly girls kept getting on the alligator and tipping over (on purpose) again and again and again.  

I whipped up this surf board cake for the occasion.  I'd looked for inspiration online for the perfect cake and liked a bunch of them, but most of them made surf boards out of fondant.  I didn't really want to go there, so I made paint brush cookies instead.  I think they turned out great and they tasted wonderful too!

Somewhere I have a video of Brett blowing out his candles.  I'll have to keep looking for it.  I got him trick candles and he was laughing pretty good while trying to get those things to blow out!

My mom made Brett this awesome book bag to take with him to the library.

We finished up with more slip'n sliding.  

We could tell the kids were getting tired when they all started slowing down and laying around in the water.  Ha!  They all went to bed well that night!

This Brett boy was well celebrated this year.  We're so happy to have him in our family!

Brett turns 5

This cute boy turned 5 years old yesterday!  Doesn't he look taller?

The night before, we took the family out to celebrate with some bowling.

Brett did really well, and actually beat us all!

We played a few arcade games after.

Then Keith's parents stopped by to bring the birthday boy a gift before they headed out of town.

On his actual birthday he awoke to decorations and presents waiting for him.

We had a yummy breakfast together with mini pancakes, scrambled eggs, and orange slices.

Then we picked up some Bosa Donuts with sprinkles for him to take to school along with some grapes for his birthday snack.  He also took his cool new tow truck, that he got for his birthday, for show and tell.  I don't know how he did it, but he fit that truck in his backpack and even got it zipped up!  I thought he was going to tip over on his bike, but he made it.  :)

After lunch we headed over to a nearby park.  We watched some fish and ducks for a while.

Then we dug for dinosaur bones.  And we found some!

We had an early dinner of homemade pizzas and green smoothies.  Then we were off to Grant's baseball game.

After baths, we scooped up some ice-cream and sang Happy Birthday to our sweet five year old.

So far this five year old thing has been really great.  Happy Birthday Brett!

Family Home Evening Board

After a trip to Hobby Lobby a couple months ago, I whipped up this Family Night board for us.  I'd been twirling around ideas in my head for quite a while about how I wanted to do this and then I just went for it and I really like how it turned out. 

I started with the blank chalk board, measured out the spaces and applied the gold washi tape to make the lines.

Then I hot-glued the clips onto the board and added the cute arrows on top of those.  I kept thinking in my head that I'd like to have the clips on magnets, but the chalk board isn't magnetic and I wasn't about to complicate things by getting magnetic paint or finding a different board.  Glue it was.

Next I ordered up some wallet sized photo of each person in our family.  I cut them to be square and put them on heavy duty cardstock to sturdy them up.  Plus I really like the white border around them. :)

Then I used a chalk marker to write everything on the board.

I like that it's clean and simple.  And I really like that it's done!

We keep it in our kitchen so we see it all the time.  And that's been really great because the kids are always excited to see what they get to do for our upcoming family night and they are thinking about it during the week.  Mostly they count how many spaces away they are from being in charge of dessert.  :)