Stressful Halloween

The Duffin Cousins Halloween 2009
Austin: Buzz Lightyear, Ruth: Baby Ruth
Makayla: Purple Tinkerbell, Kalyana: Fairy Tyce: Army dude

This Halloween was easily the craziest one I've had. Tarl has been up in Idaho the entire month so we've had VERY minimal decorating (so not like us) and all of our costumes (esp mine) were thrown together with not much effort.

Plus I am in the YW presidency and we had an assignment to help at the ward party. I really wasn't going to even dress up (but where's the fun in not even trying) but last minute threw something together. I got the kids all in their costumes and somehow, by myself, took the back seat out of my van. (Holy cow that sucker is heavy!)

I wasn't planning on decorating the trunk because Tarl wasn't home as early as I thought he'd be (in fact when I called him he was on track to be home an hour after the party started). But last year we won and I figured I'd throw something together since we had to at least represent right? So it's pouring rain, I'm fishing through boxes of decorations, the kids are inside making a mess with no supervision, and I'm sad that Tarl isn't home. I got the van all finished, loaded up the kids and went to the party in not the happiest of moods.

The party was ok, but I was super stressed having the kids by myself and being in charge of an activity. Our president didnt show up and we had no direction from the party committee on when or how we were supposed to run our cake walk.

Tarl was able to make it after all, and he was kind enough to take the kids so I could focus on the activity with the primary kids. Then aftwards I ran out to the van, started up all the glow sticks and settled in for my favorite part of the night. The ooo's and aaaa's of people admiring my hard work. We won 1st place for best trunk again (believe me when I say it looked a lot cooler in the dark with things glowing). The night ended up not so bad after all.

Keeping up, Random Style

A few random captures from my life these days.


1) The YW are in charge of the cake walk at the ward halloween party. So I made these little pictures for them to stand on (I wrote #'s on them so they could be called out as the winner).

2) Tarl got to come home last weekend. Here are the beautiful flowers he brought me. I never really cared if I got flowers but I gotta be honest, this is the 3rd time he's surprised me with flowers and it just warms my heart! He's such a sweetie. It's been a rough while with him gone but I know he appreciates all we're doing at home, and I sure appreciate him working so hard for our family!

3) My mom stopped by to help watch the kids so I could have some time to study without distraction. I'm not sure what miss grumpy pants is about though. My mom and dad were real life savers, coming down to my house once or so a week to give me some alone time to hit the books!

4) Tyce and Makayla are so fun to watch together. They generally get along really well, since they have so much time to play together while Kalyana is at school. Today is just one of the many creative things they do like row row row your boat using the kitchen bench.

Cherubs Halloween

At our weekly music group, Cherubs, we had a Halloween party. I was in charge of Pin the nose on the Jack-o-lantern. We had other fun games like guess how many candies in the jar, cupcake walk, coloring, and pumpkin bowling.

I didnt make those cute little mummy dogs but I had to get a picture cause they were so fun. The kids have LOVED this fun little music class every week and it's been fun to have something to take them to and enjoy doing together.

Cake Creations

A while ago my friend Brie asked me if I wanted to take a cake decorating class with her. It's a four week class, once a week for two hours. We started in October, but you could probably already tell that.

I ended up purchasing a kit (since I knew now that I had the knowledge I'd like to make cakes for my kids parties) and I've really enjoyed practicing my new skills. Here are the cakes I made in order from the first week to the last (and one thrown in there from my neice's bday).

I am sadly disappointed with my flower cake but I threw it in there anyway just to show that I'm not all that great at everything. Haha. I realize now that I should have either a) drawn an outline of it before I started b) used cookie cutters as a template or c) done an image transfer. I was supposed to do a rose cake though and I just didnt want to so I slapped this on so I wouldn't leave class with an undecorated cake.

Overall I had a fabulous time in the class and can't wait to make more cakes and learn more tricks. (Although I'll tell ya, even something as simple as these ended up taking me a few hours--to make the cake, frost it and then actual decorate it.)

Makayla's Preschool

A few random pictures of Makayla and I. Makayla got to start Head Start preschool at the end of September. Because she's only 3 the program she was put into is once a week at school and once a week home visit. She has 9 kids in her class and other than it only being once (instead of 4 times) it's just the same as Kalyana's preschool. They have circle time, play time, lunch (brush teeth), playground, stations/crafts, snack. The teachers are really great and I've enjoyed getting to go to school with Makayla every week. And she REALLY loves having her own school to go to!

We also love doing crafts together. I think Makayla wishes Tyce would nap more because sometimes I only let her pull out the craft box when he's not around. It's been fun to see her interested and curious about the things she can do though!

Play Dough For Hours

Last week I started a cooking class with my friend Brie (who was awesome enough to invite me along after she found out about it!!). Along with the cooking class comes a list of supplies one needs to participate. I headed out to the store to buy a few gadgets and came back with a box of fun cookie cutters (that I knew we'd put to good use).

I had mentioned to Kalyana a few days ago that it was possible to make homemade play dough so today after church she asked me if we could find some recipes on my computer. This evening, after Tarl left for Idaho (that story to come later) we sat down, found the recipe and went to gather our supplies. We were trying to be sneaky since brother and sister were happily playing in the other room, but it only took about 1 minute for them to realize mom was missing from the room for them to come searching.

We gathered all the kids up on the counter and started pouring in the ingredients. I forgot however that if we wanted to make 3 colors we'd need 3 separate pans so halfway through the process we separated it and added our colors. Here's the recipe we used:

Play Dough Recipe

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 cups water
4 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup cream of tartar
Food coloring

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan. Add food coloring last. Cook and stir over low/medium heat until play dough is completely formed and no longer sticky. Allow to cool slightly before storing in an air tight container or zip lock bag.



Each kid got to pick their own color. They all had enough to play with so there was VERY minimal squabbles and we literally all played together for 2.5 hours!

The girls 'made cookies' and played 'cooking class' with each other. While Tyce squashed his dough, built a high tower, and buried and covered his Woody toy.

I love these little people and I'm sure grateful they like to play with me!

On the (blog) road again!

I'm so far behind at this point I figured it'd be best to start new and work my way back to July. I've never been this far behind in my blog and I feel awful that I'll have missed some cute stories I've wanted to keep. Unlike my sister, I do not have a great memory of what my kids said/did a few weeks ago so I really just want to dive in and get some fun memories down before I continue to loose some. Starting today I will post forward and a few things in the past (until I get some posts from July 20th-osh to Oct 10 completed. If you're intersted I post date our activities on the days they actually happen, not on the days I blog about them). Just in case you care. For all 2 of you who still look at my blog.

I'm back!

(I found this picture online, I did not take it myself.)

Just because he can

This little man is certainly a climber. He pulls out kitchen drawers to make stairs to get to the counter. His favorites are laundry baskets, the kitchen table bench, his huge tonka truck, and any box he can find.