Steven’s reaction to getting pictures taken makes him a stinker.
This is Steven’s favorite picture. He thinks it’s absolutely hilarious.
This princess is adorable
My cute kids :)
Hm…what can I do to make her cry??
Get me outta here!!
The ones that actually got photoshopped
Saturday we awoke to a lot of beautiful snow!! As soon as we all had breakfast, we all bundled up and headed out! It was definitely perfect packing snow, so we built some fun snowmen with the kids. Sadly, 24 hours later, the rain has helped melt EVERY last bit of snow. Including both our snowmen. Sniff. This may be the only “Christmas Snow” we’ll have this year, so I’m glad we got this much fun out of it!
Hooray for Friday night Date nights! :) A while back I decided to try and get tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert because one of my friends from high school (also a friend of ours from college) was going to be dancing. I was excited when I actually got the tickets in the mail! (It didn’t hurt that David Archuleta was going to be in it too, right?) We set the date, and invited Darrell’s mom and dad to come with us. One thing we learned: the entire world is in love with David Archuleta. We heard that we needed to be early to the concert, so we made great time getting downtown, but Darrell’s parents got stuck in miserable traffic for forever. We made it into the conference center about a half hour before the concert started only to find that there were no seats left!! Turns out that they always overbook these concerts to ensure that every seat will be filled. In other words, all the planned “no-shows” showed up!! So we headed across the street and got to watch the concert via broadcast in the Tabernacle. It was a wonderful concert. We even figured we had better seats there than we would have in the back row of the Conference Center balcony. We decided to get some pictures of the beauty of Temple Square, and ourselves, of course. :) And a big shout out “thank you!” to my sister for watching the kids!!
This has been a big, fun week for Lillie! On Sunday as we were going to church I told Darrell that what I wanted for Christmas was for Lillie to learn how to crawl. I know that once she learns how, I'll not want her to do it anymore, but as for now, the fact that she will just sit on the floor and cry when she wants me, or when Steven is bugging her is really starting to annoy me. Anyway, I guess she heard me, cause Sunday night she started scooting.
This first video was on Tuesday when she was really starting to get a hang of the scooting idea.
The second video is just Lillie laughing with her daddy. Darrell can get her to laugh better than anybody.
And the last video is from this morning. She's making great progress and since she doesn't turn 11 months until Monday - she made it before then!
My sis-in-law sent me a box of clothes that had been mine when i was a baby. I was especially excited to get this turquoise dress, as I actually have pictures of me in this dress. So, of course I had to take some pictures of Lillie wearing my dress today.
Steven felt left out because he didn’t get pictures, so we let him jump in some :)
And just for comparison sake, here is the only digitalized picture I have of me in the blue/turquoise dress. (I actually have some much better ones in my scrapbook). One big difference, I was six months old, and Lillie is now almost 11 months old :)
Yesterday, Darrell and I did something Darrell has wanted to do with me since pre-dating days. That is, go to a BYU game together! He invited me to go to one when we were at Snow, but I already had plans. Then with everything, I just haven’t gotten to one with him yet! So, I bought tickets, and we went! (Of course, 24 hours after I bought tickets, my brother texted me and told me he had 2 extra tickets.) We ended up sitting by him anyway, cause his seats were WAY better than ours :) It was fun, the Cougs won, and it was a night away from the kids. (THANKS Grandma and Grandpa Cropper!!)
(The view from our seats that I bought tickets for….)
I love that my nephew is all excited, and my brother’s face is saying “what are you doing?”
Just a picture of the field from our awesome seats :)
My cousin-in-law, Shelly, requested that I post fun, healthy recipes. I think this one falls under “somewhat healthy” (And it claims it is high in fiber) and it’s something that my boys both love. So , here it is…..
Sausage Broccoli and Noodles
3 packages ramen noodle soup, chicken flavor
1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 lb ground sausage (You could even make this healthier with turkey sausage; but use sausage. You need it’s flavor to make this dish work)
3 cups frozen baby broccoli flowerets, thawed
1) Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook noodles for 2 minutes, reserving seasoning packets for later; drain and set aside. In a small bowl, stir together sour cream and cornstarch; set aside
2)Cook sausage in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat, breaking up with a spoon, for 5 minutes or until cooked through
3) Add broccoli, 1 cup water and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the ramen chicken seasoning to skillet. Cover and simmer over medium heat for 3 minutes or until broccoli is cooked through.
4) Remove cover and stir sour cream mixture into skillet. Cook for 1 minute of until sauce has thickened. Add noodles to skillet and toss to coat with sauce. Serve immediately.
Per Serving*: 392 Calories; 11 g fat; 19 g protein; 55 g carbs; 6 g fiber
*Disclaimer- The per serving is based on a the recipe saying this recipe makes 4 servings. After making it twice, it clearly makes at least 6 good sized servings, so it probably is slightly less than that. Unless you heap it up and eat it up!
Also, this one is really inexpensive!
I got the sausage for $1.67
3 packages of Ramen for $0.39
Sour Cream $0.88
Broccoli $1.16 (which is actually a lot for me. I usually only pay 88 cents)
So the total is $4.10!
I also served this with a salad, which at this time of year is super cheap as I have carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes from the garden. So add about a dollar for lettuce
So you have a whole dinner for Roughly FIVE DOLLARS! :)
We had a fabulous Saturday celebrating this fun holiday, even with all the fabulous rain! We got to visit my grandparents in the morning, and helped watch my brother’s kids while he and his wife were at the temple! Then we came home for some holiday fun! We did pumpkins, and Steven had a blast trick-or-treating with his daddy! Lillie and I made it maybe two houses while trick-or-treating, but I decided carrying an 18 pound wiggly baby and an umbrella in the pouring rain was too difficult, so I stayed home and handed out candy to other brave souls. We finished the evening with a Jack’o’Latern Pizza and candy eating, of course :) 
