Pinterest success

If you are a Pinterest user you probably understand what I am about to say.  There are a lot of great things on Pinterest.  A lot. Which means you can spend a lot of time going through them. I have spent my fair share, actually much more than my fair share of mornings with my cup of tea looking through more great ideas or recipes that I can pin. And pin I do. I have boards for recipes, clever home organizing, kid party ideas, crafty things, the list goes on. But where I tend to fail is in the execution of all these ideas. I guess you actually have to stop pinning for a while and start doing.
Well, I'll have you know I did just that this week.
Meyer lemon cranberry mini cake donuts. Inspired by Pinterest.

I made 48 of these little sweets and they were all devoured before the day was over.

Thank goodness for happy endings

There are many things I could write about since the last time I've posted. We surprised the kids with a new puppy, Christmas came and went, we rang in a new year, celebrated a few birthdays and sadly we said goodbye to my Mom after her battle with dementia and all that accompanies it finally ended on September 19th. Some of those things definitely deserve their own blog post and I hope to get to some of that. But for today I am going to share a story from this week.

Like I mentioned, we got a new puppy, which is definitely worth its own blog post. I really will try to do that, but no promises. On Thursday, she escaped! I'm not sure the details of who let her escape (me) are important so I won't bore you with those. She ran out the garage door, across the street and into the trails. The trails that go on forever and come out at various places around our neighborhood. I immediately ran after her, but she was gone into the forest. The size of her (about 6 lbs) and her color (exactly the same as all the leaves on the forest floor) made the task of finding her very overwhelming. After looking for a while, I called Tony in a panic. I thought he might be mad but his voice of calm really helped me. He told me to get people to help as soon as I could so we could cover more ground. I ran over to my neighbor's house and asked her to help. I called Cooper and Hudson out of school and they ran home to help. I called another friend and she drove right down. Once school was out, we had even more help. The kids' friends, more friends and neighbors of mine all came and we searched those woods. I was getting more and more worried that we wouldn't find her before we lost the daylight. I was really worried about how upset the kids would all be if we didn't get her back. I was pretty much a mess. And after being out in the trails for over 3 hours now, I was really feeling the cold and knew she must be feeling it too.
Then as I started walking up the trail for the hundredth time, I watched the reaction of my friend Jackie further down the path. Smiling, trying to call me, almost doing a little happy dance. She sees Lily!! I run down and there she is...in the arms of another friend of mine. Can't even explain how relieved I was. The adventure was over and the ending was a happy one. We all shared some tears, lots of hugs and for me, an overwhelming gratefulness for the kindness of friends. We had people just drop whatever they were doing to come help. Friends that stayed positive for my sake never giving up the hope that all would be well.
I went to bed that night exhausted from our adventure but feeling so blessed for the good people that I have in my life. And Lily was right where she belonged.

Our mini adventure

 
It all started with a call from Tony to say that he had forgotten his laptop and could I please bring it out to him at Cultus Lake where he was working today. Taggart and I had just arrived home from his early morning hockey practice and we were just about to start our Saturday chores. It was just Tag and I this morning. H and R were both at sleepovers and C was still sleeping.
So back in the car we went to deliver a laptop.
It's not a long drive - maybe 1/2 an hour. The sun was out and Tag and I didn't mind at all postponing our chores for a little road trip. "Especially if we get to see Dad even for a little bit", Tag said. We stopped for a Starbucks. Peppermint mocha for me and a gingerbread steamed milk for Tag. (He had really wanted to try one - turned out it wasn't his favorite).
We dropped off the laptop and headed back home. As we drove through Yarrow we spotted a little store all decked out for Christmas. I was curious so I asked Tag if he wanted to stop. "Sure". The store was cute and had lots of nice Christmas things. They were sampling hot apple cider so we had some of that, looked around a bit and were on our way. We were in the car for only a couple minutes before Tag spotted a park. Tag spots lots of parks and he always asks to stop. Most often the answer is no, as we are usually on our busy way. Today, I thought, we can stop. He poked around the little store with me so I can hang out at the park for him.
He happily played by himself and checked out all the equipment. Probably checking it all out to see if it was worth a return trip some day. Then he found a skate park. He was really wishing that he had his scooter for this one. But he didn't. It didn't really seem to damper his spirits at all.
Our stop at the park was probably only 20 minutes. Not long but long enough for him. "Thanks for stopping Mom", he said as we drove away.
Tag is the fourth child and because of that he gets left to his own devices a lot. I know that I don't spend as much time hanging out at the park with him as I did with Cooper and Hudson when they were his age. Today was a good reminder that a little goes a long way. And that Tag is never happier as when he is outside.
So glad we shared this mini adventure.
 

Here's looking at you

 Wanted to share these little eyeball cake pops I made for Halloween. Wanted to make them for Reagan and Taggart to take to school to share with their classes but so many didn't turn out that we didn't have enough. So we shared them with the neighbors instead. Cake pops are really such a pain to make...I'm not sure why I keep attempting them. But when they do turn out - they really are so darn cute. Don't you think?
 
 Pretty tasty too!
 

Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, celery.

 My rule is no ice cream during the week. It's a weekend thing. I broke my rule tonight and let them have ice cream for a bedtime snack.




Reagan chose to have celery instead. Her brothers were very confused by her choice. I really don't have anything else to say but somehow I thought this little event was blog worthy.

Halloween...come and gone.

This year Halloween did seem to come in a hurry and then was over just as quickly. I've said before its really not my favorite holiday but because of the kids I try and do my part. They always complain that I don't decorate the house. They're right...I don't. I'm saving up my decorating energy for Christmas...which I love.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 
We  ALL carved pumpkins.


Three dressed up but I only have a photo of two.

Three trick-or-treated.



One gave out candy because he is too old to go out anymore and that pretty much sucked but at least I bought a lot of candy so he got the leftovers. No photo of that either.

This is the first year that I don't have a photo of all 4 of the kids in costume. Something definitely sad about that but things don't stay the same do they. And to prove it I went out yesterday and bought some Halloween decorations for the front of the house at 75% off. Nothing too scary though...kids know I wouldn't go that far. They will just have to wait until next October to see what goes up. 

Fall and nesting

Even though I don't usually welcome the arrival of Fall (summer is always much to short for my liking) there are things about Fall that I definitely enjoy. The one feeling that recurs for me every year during this season is that of nesting. Staying home more while the kids are at school (even though I always seem to have somewhere to go), baking warm treats to fill the house with the scent of cinnamon, decorating the house for the seasons and starting to prepare for the Christmas season. And with all of that comes a real desire to get back into my blog. I know that I have tried before with little success but here we go again.
My camera is still out and with the arrival of my iPhone early this year I have no excuse not to take photos of our everyday life. I am still taking the photos but I realize that I am not enjoying looking at them anymore. So today as I scrolled through some recent photos of some things we have enjoyed this Fall I saw how many great photos I have. Not technically great, but memory great.

Thanksgiving weekend in Whistler:






 

Raking leaves: 
 
 
 
 
 Pumpkin patch: