Uh-oh!

"We didn't do it!"

"Well, maybe HE did."

Spotted Dick

This past spring, I was shopping in Meijer and found myself in the aisle with foods from around the world. I stopped short when something caught my eye: Spotted Dick in a can. I took a picture and sent it to a few people who I knew would laugh like 6th graders over it (like I did).



I bought the can because, really, how could I not? I got text messages that day from those select people who thought I had found the picture on the internet. They were surprised to find out that this actually did exist and that I bought it.

A few weeks ago, my parents were at my house and I remembered that I still had the can of Spotted Dick in the pantry. My dad told me that in England, "dick" also means pudding. Before I realized what he was doing, he started preparing the "pudding."

Surprisingly, it was really good. It was sorta like a bread pudding with raisins in it. It could have used some sort of sauce with it, but that didn't stop me or my family from taking more than a few bites.

Maybe next time I'm at the store, I'll look for some more dick in the aisle. I wonder how many flavors of dick are out there? Who knew Mejer sold such good dick? I could go on and on...LOL!

There's a party in my tummy!

I love this song. I can't get it out of my head, and I even bought Ella a shirt to encourage the fun!

It's all random

I haven't been much in the mood for blogging these days. I don't know why. But I figured since it's been a while, I should put something on here. So this is just some random stuff that's been going on.

Over the weekend, my family came down to visit. I don't see them as much these days as I did when I was planning the wedding, so it's nice to get together. I got to give my niece Aubry her first haircut. She will be 4 years old on December 2nd and she hasn't had a haircut until this point - she was a bald baby. She did really good until I was about 1/2 way done and then she started to get nervous. It was just a trim, but her mom was scraping all the hair into a baggie - it was a big deal for her. She was only a little bit emotional. Nothing like when I gave Ella her major haircut in May.

Yesterday I bought two newspapers with huge front page headlines announcing Obama won the election. I was at the kitchen table reading them while Ella was eating her lunch. She started asking me who the man was in the picture so I explained that he was our new president and that he would be our leader. Surprisingly she seemed to get it. I showed her a picture of the U.S. and told her that he was going to be the leader of our country and she just kept saying his name over and over. At first it was "Rock Obama," but after a few times sounding it out, she had it right.

She had show-and-tell today, and she said she wanted to take a picture of Barack to school. They had to bring something starting with the letter "B" and she said that since his name started with that letter that she wanted to take him to school. I convinced her that he was a very busy man and that she could take his picture. She repeatedly told me that she wanted to see him and asked why he couldn't come to our house. "Can I see him one day, Momma?" she asked. "One day?" I smiled at her and said, "One day, baby. Maybe one day you can see him."

When I took her to school this morning, we washed her hands, and I gave her kisses goodbye. I told her to go play and she said, "I have to tell Miss Jennifer about Barack Obama." So she walked up to her teacher and said, "Barack Obama!" I think Miss Jennifer was a little taken back by it, and she answered "He won the election, didn't he? Did you vote for him?" Ella of course said yes. I just hope her show-and-tell doesn't go badly. I mean seriously, how many of those 4 & 5 year-olds will understand what my kid does? Probably only a few. Oh well. She is happy with it!

Last night I was in the garage with Brady and the kids were playing nicely inside the house. I didn't hear any screaming so I assumed all was well. After 15 minutes, I came back inside, and I didn't see Grayson. I walked to my bedroom and the door was closed. I assumed that Grayson had just shut himself in the bedroom. Oh no. He had somehow opened the door to our bathroom and was standing in the middle of the floor with a string of wet toilet paper hanging out of his mouth and a giant pool of water on the floor. He was laughing and having a good time of course. I couldn't believe the amount of water on the floor and when I looked in the toilet, all the water was gone and there was a wad of toilet paper in it. He had taken a toy cup for bath time and scooped out all of the water from the toilet. I don't know if he was trying to put the water in the tub, but it certainly didn't make it there. It took 4 huge bath towels to clean up the floor and Grayson was so mad when I stripped off his wet clothes and put him in his crib while I cleaned things up. That's my kid. And I love him.

These are some pictures that Ella has done at school.

Trick-or-Treat!

On Thursday, Ella had her Halloween party at preschool. She got to wear her monkey costume and trick-or-treat in a parade through the school. She had a lot of fun.

This is a picture of her and Sam, who she talks about all the time.



"Trick or Treat!"




For Halloween, Brady took Ella around the neighborhood. Here, she's posing with the jack-o-lanterns that Brady carved.


Grayson stayed home with me to hand out candy. He didn't want to wear his costume, and was content eating crackers and watching cartoons.

Since we only had 2 pumpkins this year, I told Brady that he had to carve one nice and one scary. If he had his way, they'd both be scary. Ella picked out the evil queen.

For the past few years, we've had tons of kids ring our doorbell for candy on Halloween. Last year I made 140 goodie bags, and I ran out of bags causing me to open another 5 lb. bag and hand out pieces of candy. This year, I made 200 bags. I had 52 left over. Why do I make the bags, you ask? Because I want to know how many kids we get. I was just really surprised at how few trick-or-treaters there were. The weather was great, so I expected the doorbell to ring non-stop. Our trick-or-treat started at 5:30, and our doorbell didn't ring for the first time until 6:03. I don't get it. When the weather is cold and rainy, we get more kids than when it's 65 degrees and sunny? Makes no sense. Oh well. Anyone need some candy?