It Snowed!

     Last Thursday night it finally snowed!  In the Seattle area it only snows one or two days a year, so it's kind-of a big deal.  The kids' school was cancelled on Friday because of the snow, so the kids were very excited and we got to stay home and play in the snow for a bit (and to recover from colds, too; Little One had a bad sore throat).  Mc had work he needed to do that morning, so he took the Friday pictures of us from inside.

Thursday night; front yard

Backyard

Front yard on Friday morning

Our snowy house

The kids and me in the backyard.

You can tell how much the fence back there is leaning; the snow collected on it.  ;)

The kids made snowballs to throw at each other and me, and I made snowballs to go on top of that wooden structure over the steps.

Snow angel

Making little snowmen on the cement slab left over from the porch stairs.

My two little snowmen on the top, Baby Girl's attempt at a snowman on the bottom.

Mc's snowman in the front yard

And three days later it's still here!

The days have gotten warmer (40's) and it's even rained a few times, but it hasn't been sunny or really warm, so the rest of the snow has melted but his snowman still stands! (sort-of)

     I'm sure in places where it snows all the time, the novelty wears off pretty quickly.  Like if we still lived in Minnesota, I'm pretty sure the kids wouldn't get as excited after a while about the snow.  But I dunno; kids can have fun with things and enjoy things long after adults have gotten tired of it or grown out of the wonder that nature has to offer.  Personally I still think the snow is fun, and having schools closed for a few inches of snow is amusing to me and it makes for a fun day in the snow.

Mc's No-Shave November

     According to no-shave.org, "The goal of No-Shave November is to grow awareness by embracing our hair, which many cancer patients lose, and letting it grow wild and free. Donate the money you typically spend on shaving and grooming to educate about cancer prevention, save lives, and aid those fighting the battle."  Mc grew out his beard the whole month, and tonight he shaved it and cut his hair.  Here are the before-and-after pictures.

Right out of the shower, so the hair is wet.

How old do you think the beard makes him look?  I think mid-40s.

tee hee!  I think he looks like a surfer dude in his early 20s.  I love it!  :D

And here he's a surfer dude who does accounting in his spare time
(the glasses make all the difference).

And now he looks like he's in his late 20s.  :D  I joked with him tonight that I feel like a cradle robber.  ;)

Without the beard and with a short haircut, he looks so much like our son. 

     Mc can grow an impressive beard, and he has hair that looks good long (and short).  It was fun seeing the transformations both directions.

Baby Girl's 6th Birthday

     Yesterday was Baby Girl's 6th birthday!  My mom was able to come out for the weekend to celebrate with us.

     Sunday afternoon we had a birthday party for Baby Girl.  I had everything I needed for the party, but I realized too late that I had prioritized things wrong, so I was doing some things while I should've been prepping other things.  I've written down a list for myself for next time so that I can see when certain thing should be done.  Lesson learned.

     Three of her friends were able to make it to the party.  All the kids played together while the adults chatted.  We had pizza for lunch and then Baby Girl opened her presents.  We got her a couple of games---a Zelda video game, a Peanuts matching game, and a fun maze game called The Magic Labyrinth.  From her friends she got lots of princess stuff, some cute stuffed animals, and something called Fuzzoodles.  I think both my kids will get a kick out of that thing.  ;)

     I asked Baby Girl what she wanted for her birthday (pumpkin pie, cake, etc.), and she said she wanted pumpkin bread.  So I had to think of a way to make that into something fun for the kids.  I decided to make mini pumpkin bread loaves, and I combined two cream cheese frosting recipes I found online into one that worked perfectly; not too sweet, not too cheesecake-like.  And my mom helped me prepare the fruit toppings.  The kids had fun with it.

Here's the recipe I made for the frosting:

1 8-oz. package of original cream cheese, cold
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract

In medium bowl: beat butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended.  Add cold cream cheese one spoonful at a time while mixing, until well blended.  Refrigerate leftovers.

If you want it to taste less sweet, add up to one extra package of cream cheese; if you want it to be more sweet, add up to one more cup of powdered sugar.  People who commented on those two internet recipes have said that in order to preserve the texture, make sure the cream cheese is cold, otherwise the frosting will be too runny (the heat and friction of the mixers warms up the frosting too much).  And the cream cheese should be full-fat (original) and the kind that is in a hard brick, not the soft spreadable stuff that comes in tubs.  A few other people suggested adding a bit of cinnamon when using the frosting to top pumpkin bread, and adding lemon extract when using on lemon cake.  Play around with spices and extract flavors. :)

     So that was Baby Girl's party with her friends.  For her actual birthday we took her out to dinner at, where else?: Red Robin.  :)  She reminded our waitress a couple of times that it was her birthday, and she was very happy when they came to sing to her and she got her ice cream.

     Baby Girl had a wonderful birthday.  She's loving school so far and she has made some friends.  She's sweet and caring, and I love her very much.  I tell her all the time that she's my favorite little girl in the whole wide world, and I mean it.  Happy birthday, sweet Girl.  ♡

Autumn Decorations

     I'm so late on posting about my Autumn decorations.  My grandfather died just over a week ago, so since then I've been dealing with the news of his death and then I was in California for most of this past week for his funeral and to spend time with my family.  But on Sept. 22 I did change around my dishes and shower curtain, and here are the pictures.  My final set of seasonal decorations.

 Dinner plate, salad plate, cereal/soup bowl, and cup.

The mini loaf pan.

The recipe I use for pumpkin bread to make into mini loaves.  You could probably switch out the olive oil for vegetable oil if you don't like that distinctive olive oil taste in the bread, and I usually put in a little less nutmeg and allspice and a little more cinnamon.  The kids love it.

Shower curtain.  This is the other one that I bought for our house back in Arizona and I kept it (the other one was the Spring shower curtain).

     Now that I'm back from California, I'll make some pumpkin bread and I'll take a picture of how those turned out.  Fall is an enjoyable season for me.  The sun is still warm but the air is getting cooler, and there's something about the harvest season that I love; I'm not exactly sure what that something is, but it makes this time of year special for me.

     I'm making slow progress on our backyard.  Our yard waste pick-up only happens every other week, so it's annoying that I get into the groove of yard work and then I have to stop for a long time because the barrel is too full.  I'll post pictures of the backyard again once I've taken out the rest of the plants I don't want.

     I hope you all have a wonderful Autumn season!

Our Kids Are In School

     Both of our kids are in school now!  Monday was Baby Girl's first day of kindergarten and yesterday was Little One's first day of preschool this year.  This is the first year that our district is offering free full-day kindergarten, so Baby Girl is in school for six hours every weekday, and this year Little One is in preschool four days a week instead of only two like last year.

Here they are on their first day of school:

     You might have noticed in the first picture that Baby Girl is missing a bottom tooth.  It came out a few weeks ago while she was eating her sandwich.  Losing a first tooth is a big deal for kids, but I didn't realize things like that are fun for grandparents to know about (sorry, Mom), so here is the picture I took of her that day:

Both kids are doing great.  They like school a lot so far and we're all excited that they're back in school.

Landscaping

     There are a few things around the house that we want done, and one of them is landscaping the backyard.  When I was house shopping last year, this house was one of the ones that kept popping up in my search, but I kept passing over it because of the backyard.  It looked small and too sloped and not very kid-friendly.  I'm glad I decided to come see the house for myself, though, because it's a great house for us.

     But the backyard still needs work.  Right now we have some large trees along the fence that will have to stay here for a while, but we also have some plants in the middle of the yard that cut the yard in half and make it look a lot smaller than it is.  Here's what our backyard looked like a couple of days ago before I tackled it:

I can't remember if I showed a picture of the deck here on my blog or not, but we had the deck torn down last year because it was in awful shape.

This was the state of the railing when we looked at the house (the boards hadn't been pulled up yet, I did that).  We bought the house with the understanding that this railing was a safety hazard and that we would have to address it right away.

 This is what one of the previous owners had done.  The under layer of the deck had begun to go bad, but rather than replacing it, they just slapped some new boards on top of it . . .

 . . . which led to fungus growing in between the layers and to both layers of wood rotting.

Gross, I know.  This wasn't even the worst one.

This is as much as I was able to get done by myself.  I pulled up most of the top layer of boards and I knocked down the biggest part of the weak railing.

We contacted a deck guy a few months later who came by and took down the rest for us.

(This is how it's looked since then)

     Our backyard looks a lot bigger now that the deck is gone, but we keep this sliding door from opening in a few different ways until we get a new deck.  The new deck and the landscaping are what we're going to spend our house budget on for now.

So far I've cut down most of two trees and taken out some of the flowers.  You saw the Before pictures, and here are some After pictures.

I've never seen a bush grow so crooked before!  The branches were growing at 90-degree angles and twisting and turning; leaves were sprouting out of what looked like almost-dead branches; it was crazy.  Mc says it looks like it was cursed.  ;)

And I've started on the overgrown flower bushes.  Some of those had deep and sprawling roots, especially up near the cursed bush; those were tough to get out.

These flower bushes were really pretty when they were in full bloom a couple of months ago,

but we have limited space in our yard and I want to use the space for gardening.

     My plans for this backyard---and what I've always wanted for a yard of our own---are to plant two or three fruit trees near the fence and then plant a vegetable garden elsewhere.  But planting on these slopes isn't practical and the plants would get unearthed from us walking up the hill and from the rain.  These sloping parts of our yard are awful; they're a waste of space and of good soil because the soil falls away from the plants, most notably from these tree roots:

And look at how much yard is wasted because of the slope of the yard!

     We're going to keep the flat tier we've already got in the middle of the yard and then work around it.  I want to have access to the whole yard via walkways and have that hill contained by retaining walls.  I've been looking online at pictures of tiered backyards for ideas, and we haven't yet decided if we're going to hire someone to do it for us or if we're going to do most of it ourselves.  Depends on the design we choose.  At the very least we'll do the prep work ourselves by removing what we don't want.  I'm looking forward to a backyard that's much more functional and more spacious for the kids to run around, and that will look more appealing to future potential buyers when we do end up selling this house.