talk nerdy to me

My genious husband Rich is the smartest man I know, I'm not just saying that either, he really does rock. Over the past several years he has been making really cool mini-games that you can download for your pocket PC and enjoyed it so much I think he's up to like 19 games (download them here mooregames.com ) and has even been published in geek magazines. He's like a geek rock-star. You would think that because he writes games for a living and spends all day on his computer at work that it would be the last thing he would want to do when he comes home, but that is not the case. For the last year or so he's been branching out and writing non-mini game which was such a huge hit on both sides of our family that he decided to go big with this one. It's called Photo Mahjong and you can check it out at photomahjong.com to see how cool it really is, and believe me it is. You use your own family photos to make the mahjong tiles and it's especially fun with cousins and grandparents' faces added to the mix helping everyone get to know each other better. The possibilities are as countless as the hours Rich spent on this project, and he really does do a great job, so check it out! Have fun! PS I love the "motto" on the moore games website, "nothing fancy, just fun." Does anyone else think this could also be a caption in his personal ad?

up in the night

I wish I could somehow have a photograph taken of 4am every morning in Ethan's bedroom. If I could magically create this, you would see a sleepy mom sitting in the rocking chair snuggling a sleepy baby in warm footie pjs wrapped in the wonder bread blanket. I'm not sure what it is about 4am that makes this Ethan's preferred time of snuggling, but he's consistent about it. The funny thing is that Ethan has never been a great sleeper and this is so different from the other three kids who were great sleepers. I really appreciated this about the other kids because I was a young mom of three ridiculously close in age toddlers and definitely needly the rest. Now that I am older, I have to say that I have never minded the middle of the night nursing/rocking sessions because now I have perspective. I now know that before too long I am going to be wishing that I could scoop him up and rock him for a while because he will have out-grown the middle of the night snuggling sessions. For now I will just burry my face in his sweet little neck and enjoy the time, besides, I can sleep later right?

good job spencer!

You may not know that I am the Webelos leader in my ward and have been so for a little over a year now. It would not have been my first pick of a calling but I jumped in not knowing anything and finally feel like I have my feet underneath me. So far I have graduated out eleven boys who all earned their Webelos and Arrow of Light awards, no small task. Every time one graduates I take pictures and give them to the boy with a congratulations card I made in Photoshop because it is a very big deal. Well, Tuesday Spencer earned his Webelos and Arrow of Light Awards (along with three other boys) and would you guess that for the AofL ceremony closest to my heart I FORGOT my camera! DUH! So, I'm documenting now how proud I am of Spencer and his efforts to do this, it was not easy, but he did it and I'm so happy for him. Luckily, because he was not the only one receiving the award, cameras were flashing all over the place and several offered to share pics with me. I'll post later if that ever comes true, but for now....GO SPENCER! You rock buddy!

buh-bye ukuele man!

Ok, so I really do love the "over the rainbow" song that has been on my website since the beginning, but you have to know that after a year now, Rich and I both cringe every time it starts. So, my genious husband posted new music for me, FOUR songs now instead of one and oh my, what a nice change. Check it out for yourself and tell me what you think. (in an email because my blog has a bug and you can't post here - darnit!) wendemoorephotography.com p.s. i love jack johnson isn't he just the coolest?

freezing and lovin' it

Tonight Spencer and Isaac are passing off one of their last requirements for the Arrow of Light Award by sleeping in a tent that they helped pitch. It's pitched in Isaac's backyard and it's about 28 degrees outside right now. YIKES! We set them up with many layers of clothing, hand warmers at the bottom of their sleeping bags (Taylor said this worked really well during their Klondike campout last year) and an air matress to keep them off the ground. They were pretty psyched tonight when we were taking pictures, probably because neither of our families have sleep-overs and so this is a rare thing to hang out all night. I guess we'll see if they still have all their fingers and toes in the morning and whether or not they actually get any sleep. I have my doubts. I'm so grateful that Spencer has been able to make such good friends in this new neighborhood. It's something that we didn't really have before we moved and it's been such a blessing. Isaac's mom and I are both excited for them to grow up together, we hope they stay friends for a long time to come. If they survive the night that is...
***EDIT*** Spencer and Isaac survived their night of freezing temperatures. The next morning Spencer came home with a red nose and the first words out of his mouth were, "that was so fun, we need to do it again....(pause)....but next time we should do it in the summer because we froze our buns off last night!" He said that their hand warmer packets never heated up! Bummer! I guess they really do make a difference!

seemingly ugly apples contd.again

You may remember way back in October, Ann and Jenny and I began working on an apple project that I couldn't talk too much about because the recipient of the apples may have been lurking on my blog. Well, the project is finished and the secret is no longer, so here goes my apple project story...A few years ago Eileen, my mother-in-law had this beautiful picture in her head of a large family tree painted on her wall and apples with her family's pictures hanging all throughout the branches. She was nervous about this project, but I was so proud of her for actually doing it, it's kind of gutsy! After she commissioned the artist to paint the tree, she had a difficult time finding the right apples for the pictures and ended up using a die cut and no offense, but it looked a litte like kindergarten class, and the pictures were not so great either, all very different from each other. So, the girls thought it would be fun to put new apples on mom's tree to surprise her on her homecoming. Robert's had these great wooden apples and since decoupage is so in right now, we thought they would make great frames. So, we painted, and sanded and used modge podge for the various pattern papers we'd scouted and ended up with some really cute apples. We also had everyone send in pictures and I turned them all sepia in photoshop and printed them into wallets. The brown photograph looked great with the brown "rustic" look of the apples and it helped to make them all consistent and uniform looking. This was our end result, sorry about the glare, I'm going to have to go take another picture during the day when I don't need my flash. Eileen LOVED the apple tree, hopefully it was much closer to the beautiful family tree she originally invisioned.

spoiled rotten

My dear sweet friend Patsy is spoiling me rotten! Earlier this week when I was being a terrible blogger, I received this good mail package from Patsy that totally made my day! I especially loved the mints wrapped in cute paper, how fun is that?! And let me just plug those peppermint candy kisses right now, if you haven't tried them, you must. Of course the best part of any good mail is the great note telling you what a great friend you are and how much you are loved. And you believe it too because why would someone take the time to put together such a great good mail pkg if they didn't love you? Of couse they love you! I put the note up on my desk to remind me that I am loved and it was the big pick me up in the middle of an exhausting day that I totally needed. So, before I even have time to write out a thank you note, I get MORE good mail from Patsy today!I squealed when I opened the envelope because I have been coveting these good mail labels made by Jill and Patsy sent them to me in my favorite color!So great! The biggest blessing of all this blog stuff has been my friendship with Patsy, I just adore this girl! The point in blogging about this is to encourage some good mail from my readers, it just makes you and the person you send it to, feel so good, how can it not? Now I have TWO really nice notes from Patsy sitting on my desk reminding me that I am loved, and spoiled rotten.

black friday

Each Sunday, one of my favorite things is looking through all of the ads while I eat breakfast in my PJ's, man I love a good deal! So you can imagine my excitement every year on Thanksgiving when the GIANT pile of ads is sitting on the table just calling me name! I love black friday! I get up really early and dress really warm and wait in long cold lines for really good deals. I have to make a confession here, some times the crazy zealot people standing in line ready to tear each other's arms off are reason enough to go because they're so entertaining, I'm definetly NOT like them. I will not die if I don't get the thing I came for, I just love the rush of a good deal. Plus, it's just fun to get up before the sun and shop without any kids. Stand in a long line without someone begging me for M&M's? Hmm...yup that sounds like vacation to me. I was also thinking the other night in bed about how fun it would be this year to take a self-portait in a dark parking lot somewhere and blog about how much I love Black Friday, it made me feel a little giddy to tell the truth. So yesterday, I poured through the ads looking, searching, hoping for that great deal that makes it all worth it. I was so disappointed when I got to the bottom of the stack and realized that there were a few ok things, but nothing worth getting up early to fight the crowds for. BUMMER! What's with the stores this year? So, I slept in and today I cleaned my house top to bottom and it felt great, but not as great as the good deal rush.

gobble gobble

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I know I'm a day late to be posting this, but what the heck. I had this goal this year to take phenomenal food pictures. I wanted pictures of the process of cooking the food, the food sitting on the table, presentation, etc. I always say I'm going to take good food pictures and always forget. So this year, I did it, I took tons of great food pictures, except for making gravy, but that's another story. When I got home from Thanksgiving at Ann's house, I was so excited to upload my pictures and start blogging about the last two days of doing nothing but preparing food! I started to laugh out loud when I realized I had done such a good job taking pics of the food that I took NO pictures of any PEOPLE that I celebrated Thanksgiving with. Pretty much what I've learned from this experience, is that I can only think of one thing at a time, I'm just that lame. But since I did take food pictures, I might as well post them. Two views of our fantastic spread that shows mom's rolls, Lisa's killer cherry jello, creamy mashed potatoes and turkey gravy baby...Appetizer table...Allie's beautiful chicken salad logs... My yummy stuffed mushrooms...Mom's famous rolls (before they were baked)...My favorite of course is of this one of the turkey...The only reason there are people in the picture is because Wayne thought it would be fun to jump in on the turkey picture I was taking and Ann decided to take it a step further than that and be commical about it. It smelled so good and we were so hungry that Ann was only channeling what all of us felt! GIVE ME TURKEY! The brined turkey was good but not as juicy I thought it would be. I will give it another shot next year but I'm going to buy real brining bags and see if I can't get it ready earlier to soak longer. We'll see... Ok, so my personal accomplishment for the day was the gravy. This may not sem like a very big deal to you, but I've always been afraid of making real gravy, like making a rue, use the turkey drippings, not from a packet gravy. I meant to have someone take pictures of my journey but it was all so exciting that we forgot. I couldn't have done it without the moral support of Ann and Eileen who were cheering me on to victory, for real people, it was pretty exciting. It turned out slightly salty, but other than that, it was finger lickin' good. I made gravy ya'll!So, Thanksgiving was a great day, I really enjoyed hanging out with all Moore's the twins were just too cute and I especially loved the pie part of the evening which, I was so busy enjoying that I didn't photograph any of the pies. Too bad but they sure tasted good. Mmmmmm, Thanksgiving, we should do this more than once a year don't you think? It's like Sunday dinner only more fattening. Happy Turkey Day all!

prep day

I'm not talking about a missionary prep day here, I'm talking about the day before Thanksgiving, prep day. I was inspired by the Pioneer Woman and by Patsy who had Thanksgiving early this year for her missionary and decided to brine our turkey this year. Ann had never cooked a turkey before and since she was the hostess this year, she was open to my ideas. :) So, I spent most of Wednesday at Ann's house which Ethan loved and experimented with the brining technique which I have to say went very well. Except, it took for-stinkin'-ever for the brine to cool enough to soak the turkey in it. Also, I did not read PW's blog until the night before so I missed out on the William Sonoma spices and brining bags, they don't have that kind of thing at Dick's Market. So, I looked on line and found a recipe for brine that I used, by the way, I LOVE recipezaar.com, if you've never tried it, you should, so good. The brining bag ended up being one of those XL Ziploc bags that advertise being able to hold sleeping bags and more...coincidentally, they also hold an 18 pound turkey with 1.5 gallons of brine. Who knew? While I was at Ann's house helping with Bob (we named the turkey after having spent so much time with him), Allie was here at our house with Apey making the famous chicken salad log that we love so much. Apey brought this recipe with her into our family and it's so good it quickly became a tradition. Apey was travelling to CA later that night so she helped Allie make them ahead of time and then brought her up to Ann's on her way home. Then, a special treat, Grandma came over to make a few pies and Allie was thrilled to cook with Grandma, she is an excellent teacher, Sammy loved it too. At the end of the day, Ann fed us dinner, Rich came over after work and grandma and grandpa stayed to eat too, it was a fun little "stretch" dinner to get ready for the big turkey day. I told Ann that I hate to eat and run but now I had to go home and prepare the things that I was supposed to bring to dinner. My favorite Thanksgiving dish is sweet potato casserole, oh my praline goodness, mmmm. The prailine part isn't featured in this picture, but you add it to the top and bake it all up, so good! I also made stuffed mushrooms, mmmm. This is the yummy sausage filling...I'm hungry for this food all over again! I took many pictures of the process because I have been inspired by pioneer woman and think that I may start my own wende the mom cooks blog so my kids can look up recipes when they're grown and see the action in pictures. What do you think? Thanksgiving's comin'! Yee-ha!

i've been tagged!

I was tagged by my cutie sister-in-law Lisa and I've never done this before, but it sounds fun, so here we go! Here are the rules:

A. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
B. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags other people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. I love the written word, I love to read everything, books, magazines etc. I also have a book of great quotes that I keep close by for scrapbooking and card making. I also print them out and hang them all over the house. I really love having favorites printed in vinyl and hanging them around the house, my only dilema is to not have "over kill" and so I'm currently trying to select my favorite handful and this is a hard job. One of my favorite quotes ever is: Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same...Pearl S. Buck, who also just happens to be one of my favorite authors. I think I love this quote so much because it totally sums up my mothering, but I think I'm a little bit of both, kissing and scolding, and she's right, it's love either way.

2. I love having a clean house with everything put in it's spot but it takes a backseat on a regular basis to playing with Ethan, volunteering, homework, webelos, and life in general. I've tried over the last year, of people wanting to tour our new home, to let go of the feeling of dread when I see clutter. We live here after all, it's supposed to be a little cluttered right?

3. I began scrapbooking because I love photography and I thought it was a great way to showcase some of my favorite photographs. Ironically enough, I became a much better photographer from scrapbooking because I quickly learned that a page can only be as great as the photograph. I wish I had more time for scrapbooking, it's very theraputic for me, I think that's why I love to blog so much!

4. I love hearing my kids practicing their instraments, even if it is like pulling teeth to get them to practice in the first place! The other day I heard Taylor playing a Jack Johnson song and I thought someone left iTunes running! I was so excited when I realized it was him, all these years of $60 a month for guitar lessons are finally starting to pay off! Allie and Spencer are great pianists, I love listening to their progress and am always amazed and how great they are. Most of my spiritual experiences in life have been through music, it's a wonderful channel for the spirit to communicate to me.

5. I can mud! I didn't know this was a skill that I posessed until we bought this old house that has needed tons of work, including mudding in almost every room! Some rooms have needed it more than others but after about six rooms now, I am a highly skilled mudder! It's kind of fun too. Imagine that.

6. If it is not written down, then I can't remember it. I have been known to shout from the shower to the kids to write something on the grocery list, because I know that if I wait until after the shower, it will be gone from my memory. I have a great memory for memories though, I will tell a story about something I remember from when I was little and my mom will say, "wow, you were like two or three when that happened!" To be honest, I'll take the memories over the grocery list!

Ok, that's six, that was kind of hard! I'm going to tag Patsy, Kayleen and that's it, I don't really know anyone else who hasn't already been tagged recently!

homecoming

We have been counting down the days to something very special around here. Tonight we finally welcomed home Grandma and Grandpa from their mission in Africa. It has been a long 18 months, longer it seems than their other two missions and it was an exciting time for all of us. There was a long line at the door, grand kids came sworming, but only after Ann got her hugs in first out in the driveway! :) P.S. my pictures are terrible because I realized later I was in the wrong mode, but at least they're something.They look a little thinner but no worse for the wear and we are certainly glad to have them back! Thanksgiving will be especially fun this year, we are looking forward to spending the day with them. Welcome home mom and dad!

life plan

The other morning Spencer and I were talking about his upcoming opportunity to earn some money by taking care of Goldie while Phil and Lauri are out of town for Thanksgiving. We were discussing tithing and how much was required of him to put in the bank and how much he would have left over for spending money. He was thinking about things for a minute and then said to me, "I'm going to pay my tithing, and then put the rest in the bank. After I save enough money for my mission and for college and to live the rest of my life, I'm going to buy a wii". Rich and I started cracking up immediately, he was just so matter-of-fact about being able to save as much money as he would need for the rest of his life before he bought a wii. Rich told him that he was sure about $100 would cover it. :)

newest tradition

So starts the time of year for family traditions. Well, we have traditions all year long, but the next few months seem to be jam-packed with them. Last year Allie and I attended the Clytie Adams production of the Nutcracker at Weber State University. Chloe and Blair danced in it last year and so we went to cheer for them and ended up having a most wonderful time! The whole time I was thinking how fun it would be to start a girls tradition of going to the Nutcracker with Grammy and all the girls. I proposed the idea and all were in, so this year began the newest tradition. We also took the opportunity to take mother/daughter pictures which everyone loved except Makenna but we still got her to smile.We had a wonderful time, the dancing was phenomenal as usual and hearing a live orchestra is always a treat. It was so cute to see Allie sitting in the middle of the two littlest girls explaining what was happening as the different dancers took their turns on stage. Last year that was the role that I played with her, but this year she was all grown up and made it her job. After the ballet we were all starving, most of us ditched breakfast to get there on time and our tummies were rumbling. We ate at one of our favorite places, Mimi's Cafe, if you haven't tried it, you definitely should. Their corn chowder served in a cute croc with a doile and a honey bran muffin, mmmmm, so good. The girls were just so cute, except Allie who was done having her picture taken. What a great day!

the chocolate is in!

Yes, yes, I'm still alive! Blogging took a back seat to the chaos this week, luckily I have a few minutes this evening to try to get caught up. Thursday morning started with the some of the best bed head I have ever seen courtesy of Spencer! He and Taylor are obsessed lately with growing their hair out a little, ok, a lot, it's driving me crazy but I'm trying to pick my battles. Spencer went to bed with wet hair Wednesday night and woke up to this! Even wetting it didn't calm it down enough, I told him those are the breaks when you grow your hair too long! Unfortunately it didn't seem to detour him too much. Ethan was off to Ann's to play while Patsy and I sorted the Sally Foster order that came to school today...Luckily, we got some of our favorite sixth grade girls to help us out and Patsy and I were done with enough time to grab some Firehouse salads for lunch. We forgot to take a picture, we were in a huge hurry, next time. I really am blessed to have the opportunity to volunteer, it makes my life crazy some days, but it's worth it, I love being at my kids' schools and feeling like I contribute. Allie's school especially feels like home to me and I'm going to be sad to leave it at the end of this year.