Comprehensive Argument

All on one page, a narrative you certainly want to see with some very scary things spoken straight from a particular politician's mouth. Did he seriously say he wouldn't want his daughter "punished" with a baby? That is not the first or last scary comment. Just passing on some info in case you or someone you may know have been hypnotized by this man. :) Ha! Found this link at Mark's website. . .
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/21/the-comprehensive-argument-against-barack-obama/

Cousin Hailee

I am very late in posting this news. But, I am so proud of yet another cousin who has started her Journey with Jesus. My cousin Angela's little girl Hailee was baptized a while back. So now my girls have 3 of their young cousins who have shown that they want to follow Jesus! What examples for them to look up to. Hailee had apparently become a Christian earlier, but was not ready to be baptized yet. So, this summer, she told her mom that the Holy Spirit told her she should be baptized. So, during VBS at their church, she was baptized. At their church the parents can do the baptism, so my cousin Angela was able to baptize her. I'm so glad Hailee is listening to the Holy Spirit, and pray my girls will follow her example.

Mavery is home!

It is just amazing to think how just the other day, Mavery is in China without a family. Now she is in her forever home with a family that loves her, playing and having a good time! God is good!

Beginner Sewing

All of these posts on cooking and now sewing, wow, what a housewife I am. HA!!!

I learned some sewing waaay back when I was in junior high. I think I had home ec for 2 years and our teacher was great. I really did do quite a bit. My mom sewed too, so she would help me out at home too. I made some pillows for my room. ("The 'Y'!!" Only Amber will get this joke.) I started to make some quilt blocks. I never finished that, but one of my pillows was a quilt block pillow that matched. I also made a dress both years. We all had to sew a dress and model it at the end of the year. Anyway, I got a good start at learning some sewing, but haven't really done any in a long time. I asked my parents for a sewing machine a few years back when Jaylyn was a baby. I think I just used it to fix one of my curtain seams that came out when I washed it. But now, I am getting back into it a bit. Last year for our extended family vacation, we wanted to do family pictures on the beach all in white and khaki. So, Shannon had seen some cute pillowcase dresses online and we decided to make our own white dresses for all the girls. Out came my sewing machine and this was an easy enough project to try. I did okay. My only issue was the arm holes, but I think Diana has helped me out with that now. :) Martha Stewart had a white iolet set out at the time. The pillowcases had a very pretty trim. Diana did all the other girls with white pillowcases that were from grandmothers. Very sweet heirloom. Here are some pics. . .

All the kids. The nice thing about pillowcase dresses, is that they can also be shorter and be used as shirts. Makenna's worked well over tights/leggings.

Adley's is about to fall off of her, but you can see the fun iolet trim.

This is the last picture of them all before Sage was off and running. . .

Last week I finally tried making a curtain to replace the old one at the door by our stairs to replace the old one that was here when we bought the house. It was getting pretty nasty! So, I think it turned out okay. I know of a few things that I will try to be better with next time, but it works!

Not the best picture. You can see the pumpkin shadow behind it.

So, now what I am in the middle of is a couple more pillowcase-style dresses to wear to match Mavery and the Laxton girls when Mavery comes home from China. I'll post pics when they are finished. I am certainly far from being very good at sewing, but it can be fun!

Ok. . . the actual recipe

Well, here it is . . .

2 C flour
3 T oil
3/4 C water
1 t salt
1 egg
2 cans chicken broth
(I usually add about 2 more cups of water and 2 bouillon cubes)

Boil chicken and set aside. Mix wet ingredients together and then mix in dry. On wax paper, scoop extra flour on paper and begin to roll out dough. (I usually do a scoop of dough at a time. You can add a little more flour if dough is too sticky.) Cut noodles. Using broth from chicken, and extra chicken broth, bring to boil. As needed, add more water and bouillon cubes. (about 1 cup water with one cube). Add dumplings where water is boiling most and stir after every few dumplings so they won't stick. After dumplings are cooked, add chicken broken up into pieces. (And if you are cooking for TJ, you need to add pepper, but he will add more to his plate too. :))
Enjoy!

My Mom's Chicken and Dumpling Recipe

The other day I made my mom's chicken and dumplings. I hadn't made them in a while. Jaylyn has been asking for them. The family was very excited to hear what I had made for supper. Yes, they are so yummy. I think I am getting better at making them. Jaylyn and Adley kept asking for more and more. So, here are some pictures to make you wish you were here for my mom's chicken and dumplings!

Boiling the chicken.

Mix up the dough.

Roll it out and cut.

Cook the dumplings and add chicken. Voila! Yum-O! Mom, thanks for passing it on!

Gotcha Mavery

They got Mavery! And as expected, she is not happy about these strange people that have taken her away. But little by little she will feel the love!She is actually letting Shannon touch her in this picture! Check out their adventure http://2china4mavery.blogspot.com.

To China for Mavery

For those of you who might be wondering, Mark and Shannon are in China right now to get their 5th child, Mavery. We all can't wait for them to bring her home. It will be a little different experience then their last trip to get Sage. Mavery will be 3 in November so it may be a little harder transition. But, we are praying that God has placed her new family in her heart so she feels at home with them. You can read all of the great China Adventures on their travel blog http://2china4mavery.blogspot.com. Monday is the day that they get to see and get Mavery.

Weekend Trip - Part Two

Another fun FREE activity we did with the kids was also at the Crown Center. The place is called Kaleidoscope and it is basically a big art studio for kids. All of Hallmarks leftover materials go there for kids to make their creations. The whole place had a Dr. Seuss kind of appearance and had different stations set up all over the room. The pictures didn't turn out so well because it was kind of dark in there. Two favorites of Jaylyn's was the puzzle maker and the painting station! The puzzle maker was pretty fun. You designed your puzzle on a square thick cardboard piece. Then you put it in the machine, turned the crank and it cut it into puzzle pieces. Fun, fun! All the kids got a bag to put all of their creations in. Adley loves to color!

More coloring, cutting and taping!

Jaylyn painting a fish.

Adley also enjoyed the painting. They even had a drying machine for your painting projects.

One evening while TJ went out to get some drinks to go with our pizza in the hotel room, we had a little girl time and painted fingernails and toe nails.

Pretty Pink!

This is a picture of the girls in front of the alligator at the Rainforest Cafe. Adley didn't really want to stand there. We weren't sure that Jaylyn would even want to go to this restaurant. She is not fond of animals being close to her. Of course, these are fake animals, but look and sound pretty real. One night after we were home, she said this was her favorite part. If you haven't been there, it looks like a rainforest in the restaurant and the elephants and gorillas make noices and movements sometimes. Then all of the animals make noise during a thunderstorm. Pretty fun.

This is a picture of a really neat water park that was in our hotel. This is NOT free! :) And, it was probably not the greatest way for us to spend our money with our girls who are not that into swimming. But, it was really neat and we did have fun.

Here is Adley on our way out. She loved all of the fountains.

Jaylyn and Adley spent most of their time in this area for the smaller children. It had a Zero depth entrance with fountains, a FAST slide and small buckets up high that dumped water. It also had a screen on the pirate ship sail showing kid shows. Jaylyn did go down the slide a few times, but she had a look of sheer fright each time. The slide went sooo fast and she was always afraid of going under the water at the bottom. One of us HAD to be at the bottom to help keep her up. So, if you want an indoor water park in KC, just check out CoCo Key Water Park! It even has a Pizza Hut and A&W restaurant inside!

Ok, one of my favorite parts was our last day when we went all the way out to Overland Park, Kansas to the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. Once again, FREE! (Donations highly appreciated - Concession sales to help support them.) But, it was absolutely beautiful. For, St. Louisans, you could compare it to a Grant's Farm, Suson Park, Eckerts Fun Farm all in one with more added! Everything was landscaped so beautifully with flowers everywhere. And, it was fall so all of the pumpkins and corn stalks were a nice touch. There were many animals to see like buffalo, chickens, LOTS of goats, pigs, bobcats, horses, rabbits, etc. You could buy feed from the quarter machines for many of the animals. They had some fun playground equipment and several tractor type things to get on. There is an old schoolhouse where they do activities through the year, a dairy barn where you can watch cow milking, an indian encampment with indian artifacts, a farmhouse is coming soon. You could even pay to do mining for gems and go fishing. There was a lot of great stuff. A perfect field trip location! Anyway, the girls loved it too.

The girls on the "kid-sized" benches in front of the waterfall.
(They also have kid-sized toilets and sinks!)

In the fort!

The Indian Encampment

Riding the tractor bikes

Riding the BIG tractor

The Silo slide

My two little flowers!

So, now we are home and everything is back to normal. . . dirty dishes, toys everywhere . . .
I need Room Service!!!!!!!!!!

Weekend Trip - part one

We are just back from a long weekend in Kansas City, MO. We had a great time. We have intended on visiting KC for a while. So, when we were trying to decide where to go on one of our free weekends, Shannon reminded me of all the fun in Kansas City. We started off doing the Priceline Bid thing for our hotel. It worked pretty well. We definitely spent a lot less on our hotel cost. It can be a little tricky and is not the way to go if you need certain amenities, but it really worked out well for this trip. We did have to make a palette on the floor for Jaylyn because we just had one full size bed. But, she didn't seem to mind.

We left on Thursday after TJ got home from work and made our 4 hour trip with lots of "are we there yet?" comments. I am certainly sad in these moments that our portable DVD player is broken. :( Overall, the girls are pretty good car travelers. Once we arrived at our hotel, we discovered an interesting coincidence. Our hotel was the location of the American Idol Auditions. In fact, the wing that our room was located, was the same wing as the auditions. So for the next two mornings, we rode down the elevator right into the middle of the rows of people waiting and could peek into some of the ballrooms where the groups were singing for the cameras. All of the American Idol staff people were everywhere with their clipboards and head sets. At certain times the security officers had to check our bags and run the metal detector over us in order for us to get to our room. We were even walking by as the camera man was capturing one of the auditioners leaving the area. I'm sure we will be edited out. Ha! Here is a picture of the lines out the hotel in the morning.And here is the very disappointing picture I tried to take of one of the rooms of people before I was yelled at by an American Idol staff member. Apparently I was not supposed to be taking pictures. Oops! I didn't know! So, the one shot I have is someone walking in front of my camera. Nice.

So, did we get to meet the judges? . . . No. They weren't there. The audition stuff was set up two days at our hotel and then the last day was moved to some other KC location where I think the judges were supposed to be there for a short time. We did see some of the auditioners who seemed to do well for the early round judges. We got to have our own audition experience at the pool one night when a couple of them were singing for each other in the hot tub. TJ saw another guy playing his guitar and singing for a crowd of teen girls late one night. Very amusing.

So, besides the American Idol excitement, we did have some other KC fun. Friday we hit the Crown Center. It is a nice shopping center with some interesting shops and restaurants. We ate lunch at the famous Fritz Railroad Restaurant. There are trains all around that deliver your food right to your table. Jaylyn and Adley loved it.

Jaylyn enjoyed the train "window" at our seat where a train car would continually move by.

Adley enjoying the trains.

One of the delivery trains making its drop.

Our food being delivered to our table.

Here it is!

We also toured the Hallmark Visitor Center located there (free). They had a cute "passport" for the kids to stamp as we went along. Then they have an area where you can see some of the Hallmark machines making cards and paper cut outs. They also have a bow machine. You push the button and it makes a package bow for you while you watch and sends it out for you to keep. Here is the bow machine - which you can't see very well. Jaylyn waiting for her bow.

Later that evening we also hit a fun playground called "Penguin Park". I don't think I even got a picture of the 20-something foot penguin. The kangaroo was much more fun.

Jaylyn climbing on the tail.

Adley liked the long bridge.

Driving the fire truck.

Riding the elephant.

Slide!

Weee!

This is the inside of the kangaroo. There are stairs to climb and a small slide
inside the kangaroo to slide down.

A view from the inside of the kangaroo.

Another highlight of KC was how much cheaper the gas is there than here. In some places, almost a whole dollar cheaper. Hooray for Kansas City. So, now you can get a kick out of our gas price pictures. Ha!
Another fun free place we went was a Nature Center with hiking trails. It was very similar to a nature center we have in St. Louis. It had a lot of neat things for the girls to look at and touch. Jaylyn liked feeling the snake skin and antlers and turtle shell. Hey, when it isn't alive and the animal is no longer with the part, she is fine with it. Hee hee! It really was a beautiful day for walking the trail too.

Jaylyn's wing span vs. the bald eagle's wing span.

Exploring outside.

Walking the trail.

Aren't they cute?

Two pretty girls by some pretty wild flowers.

Well, that is part one of our trip. . .