Emily all Primmed and Trimmed

Emily's new haircut!! Thanks to Jen's amazing stylist friend.

I love my Donna

Sandy and her boys came to see me off the morning I left Louisiana. I love my Donna. 

And I got to relish in my birthday regalia one last time :). I'm such a lucky girl.

A Big Giant Cookie Jar of Love

Before I left Louisiana to head back to Austin, I bought a huge cookie jar and filled it full of my kids' favorite homemade cookies. YUM! When they eat one they can think of how much their mommy loves them.

Two favorite recipes:

Emily's Super Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
  1/2 cup butter, softened
  1/2 cup butter flavored shortening
  1 cup brown sugar, packed
  1/2 cup granulated sugar
  1 tsp baking soda
  2 eggs
  1 tsp vanilla
  2 1/2 cups flour
  1 bag of Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
  1) cream together the butter, shortening and sugars. Add baking soda. If you're using unsalted butter, add 1/2 tsp salt here too.
  2) mix in eggs and vanilla.
  3) add flour, then chocolate chips.  I love adding nuts too.
  4) Bake at 375 degrees for 8 - 10 minutes. This is key here - don't over or under cook them. Keep an eye on the first pan and be sure to pull them our just as soon as the centers aren't shiny anymore and the edges are goldening up.


Emily's Super Awesome White Chocolate Chip Cookies
(same exact recipe, but substitute the chocolate chips with Ghirardelli classic white chips)

Enjoy ;)

Happy Birthday to me - again!

Elle showed me how to My wonderful mother in law gave me the best birthday present on my birthday! She taught me how to make her famous gumbo recipe. MMMmmm! It turned out SO yummy! I am so proud to know how to make it for myself here in Austin when I'm missing my Louisiana family and friends.

Elle even stepped in to help us cutting the onions just right. She actually did a really good job, with a butter knife to boot!

The entire day of my birthday I got to take it easy with my kids and my Voisin family. We just hung out at Sarah's house being with each other. Roland and Ellie fancied up Aunt Sandy.

Elle helped her grammy doll up too. Grammy said, "Elle came to help Grammy put on her make up almost every day that she slept over ... It was one of her favorite things to do with Grammy while she stayed in LA this summer :) . xoxoxo"

And she wasn't to be left out. Check out that long luxurious golden hair! 

General Conference Supreme

We had a sweet set up for watching General Conference this time around. Grandma and grandpa queued up conference on the internet and we set up this table just outside of the office for the kids to work on. Grandma printed up conference worksheet packets and off we went.

Guess who got distracted first. Note: her bowl of goldfish crackers came with her.

Conference Bingo was the favorite activity, well at least the goldfish crackers used as markers for the Bingo were. Hunter's friend Lizzy joined us for our conference party.

I love Conference time. The sweet peace it brings to our family is so powerful.

Eagle Projectin' Up

We were so lucky to participate in Travis Bloomfield's Eagle Scout project today. They cleaned up the grounds of Hunter and Michael's school and painted a map of the United States on the sidewalk. It turned out so great!

Isn't Hunter gorgeous!

Honoring Honor Rollers at Gattitown

In honor of Hunter and Michael and their fantastic report cards, we all hit Gattitown. If you don't know what Gattitown is, it's only the COOLEST pizza restaurant ever. The food is all served buffet style, including the drinks. The kids got to make their own soda fountain concotions and even drink icees if they wanted too. We ate in a dining room with TWO movie screens. We invited our babysitter friend Alyssa to join us for our celebrating.

After dinner, we entered the game room. I totally dreaded not only the annoyance of the loud games and chaos, but also how quickly the cash for games would dwindle and the kids would be begging for more money to play more games.  But, surprisingly, I had a blast playing games with the kids and by the time I finally dragged them out of there, we still had money left on our game cards to play more games.

Elle picked a froggie game that was really a mock roller coaster-type ride. Crazy fun. My favorite was the bumper cars. Michael and Hunter and I couldn't stop laughing our heads off.

Since Elle was too little to ride the bumper cars, she found her own game to play.

I loved watching Michael and Huntie play Whac-A-Mole and then Whac-A-Sibling shortly after.

Family Day at the Childrens Museum