Quick Post: Sad News

I second that that we are missing our bloggy family. Have not had time to craft of blog. But wanted to share some sad news and ask for prayers. A squad mate of my brother in law was killed in the line of duty last week. Please pray his family and his squadmates and the safety of the people that are protecting us. Here is one of the links to the story and about the funeral.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2010/05/27/20100527phoenix-police-officer-killed-mourned.html
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2010/06/01/20100601phoenix-officer-funeral.html

Just a Quick Hello & A Tip (Teri)

We have been so far out of the blogging loop lately that I almost forgot our password! We are missing all of you and wish we were better at keeping up. During May and through the summer we are reminded often of those brave men and women serving our country in the Armed Forces. I stumbled on this on one of my friends blogs, and thought I would share it. Did you know you can share your expired coupons with overseas military families? You can mail them to them and they can use them up to 6 months after they expire. How cool is that!?! Here's the post with more info. If anyone has any actual experience with this, please share, we'd love to hear about it.

Happy Mother's Day!

I have been feeling sorry for myself a lot lately because I haven't been able to make time to do the things that I want to (including blog). I ran acrossed this video on a friends blog and it really touched me, so I want to share it with you. My trials are nothing and yet my faith is so shakey. I hope this video touches you the way it did me. I am so grateful that I have been blessed to be a mother and I pray I can find the joy in it the way this courageous woman has. Teri

Birthday Prezzie

Hey remember me? If not, I’m Teri the older of the 2 sisters (hey those are a long 4 minutes). I just thought that I would throw that in there since it’s been not weeks, but months since I blogged. It’s been a little crazy around here, with a trip to visit Micki in March and a birthday in the family in March and 3 family birthdays in April. A layoff for my hubby last month and subsequently my return to full time work (I have been part time for the last almost 2 years). That’s my life in a nutshell. So, on to the fun stuff!!!

For our birthday Micki made me a very cute prezzie (not to mention the other gifts she showered me with). I promised her I would blog about it, because she forgot to take pictures of it before she mailed it to me. So here is the darling bag she made for me for our birthday!

Isn’t it darling?!? Plus unless your name is the same as me you won’t be able to steal it (or maybe she thought we were getting so old that I might need to remember what my name is).

See the inside is a cute as the outside and see how much it can hold (and yes those are graham crackers and there is frosting in the fridge to go with them).

And I won’t even lose my cell phone or keys!

Now don’t you all wish that Micki was your twin sister too?

The Shield (Micki)

My daughter had an end of the year project and she wanted to make a Roman shield. She wanted to make it out of wood even thought the ancient ones were made out of metal. Then my dad had the brilliant idea fo making it out of the sattelite dish he had just put in the garbage (thanks dad). Shhhhhh.....don't tell Direct TV or Dish Network or whoever. We thought it was a great idea. We googled images of shields and she picked the one she wanted to do. Her dad spray painted the blue part and then she hand painted the other colors. She did a really good job. I was so proud of her. Then I used some E6000 to glue the straps on the back. We loved it. She got an A on the project. However she got marked down for using metal.....WHATEVER. lol

Hair Flowers (Micki)

When Teri was here for craft day and her daughters birthday we wanted to make her daughter some flowers to go in her hair. My daughter wouldn't be caught dead with something as girly as that (she is a tom boy). I had learned how to make them at a church activty. They are super easy. Here is a tutorial I found since we forgot to take pictures of the steps. Instead of sewing ours together we just stuck a scrapbooking brad through the center and used hot glue to glue them on aligator clips. Here's our finished products. The green ones in the middle are the leaves off some of the flowers. Our mom came up with that idea. Thanks mom....they are supere cute!!

Cupcake fix (Micki)

So I had to make cupcakes for my daughter for a fundraiser at church. I am still recovering from a field trip yesterday and didn't want to go to the store to get anything. So I had most of the supplies and two yellow cake mixes. How boring. So I wanted to spice things up a bit so to speak and used peanut butter instead of the regular butter in the Golden Butter cake mix. They turned out yummy!! Kind of a weird after taste but good. I think I should have reduced cook time a bit because they are a little dry. But we topped them off with chocolate frosting and sprinkles.

Then on the second batch I beat the batter too much because my butter was a little hard (used regular butter this time so I could have 2 different flavors) and my cupcakes fell. :( I so didn't want to make another batch......
So I improvised with extra frosting in the center. lol Hope everyone likes frosting. My daughter loves basketball so thats why we made basketballs. Nothing better than a little (or a lot) of homemade buttercream frosting.....right Ter? (She hates frosting, how does anyone hate frosting?)

The best part is I made her clean up. :)