Made it To The Great Canadian North

Got here. Do you know what it's like to be delayed in Cincinnati Ohio? How about leaving at 8:00 pm when your flight was supposed to leave at 3 pm, and watching another plane for Toronto leave without you, that was scheduled for 5 hours AFTER our plane was supposed to take off....

Bitter much? I know. lol

But we got here. So no worries.

Love you all. Merry Christmas, and a happy new year.

~S

Sick and Scrapbooking

I hate this cold. I think it's one of the worst I've had in a while. I am really having trouble sleeping at night due to lack of oxygen, and every night I lose my voice to some degree. Today I worked from home, and finished my projects and just lay in bed for an hour before going to get Madeline. Then I came home and we had dinner ( I got her a happy meal to bring home, I just didn't have much energy) and I cleaned my room and scrapbooked a few of Shantelle and Brian's wedding pictures for Madeline.
I hope they look ok, I think they are kinda cool. Much as I tend to stray from the areas where pinks are concerned as a general rule.

I'm going to go sleep now. :) Night all.

Best Banana Bread EVER

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 4 ounces butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preparation:

Cream sugar and butter; beat in the mashed bananas, eggs, and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients and stir into the first mixture just until moistened Fold in chocolate chips until well incorporated. Pour batter into greased and floured 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. Cover loosely with a tent of aluminum foil. Bake at 325° for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for 3o to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted tests done. Cool for 10 minutes, remove from pan and cool banana bread completely before slicing.

(Mine needed an additional 15 minutes uncovered, most likely because I added a third banana)

I used dark and regular chocolate chips.

We had a slice of this bread with fresh apple crisp for dessert last night and it was VERY tasty.

Hope it turns out for you as well.

One more Boo for the Road

I can't help myself. I saw one of these cute pictures of Madeline, sighed and grabbed another piece of paper!




I really like the spider. No doubt Danielle cut it out at work one day, it's one of the cute things I purchased when we went in to her work. My kitchen is a mess of scrap-booking stuff.... I should deal with that. G'night all.

So Swell to Scrap-Book

If I said that I woke up this morning not feeling "Swell", I would be lying to you. Something caused my eyelid to swell shut on me last night, and this morning I could barely see out of it. Madeline and I made an appointment with our family doc, and went in at noon. She hmm'ed and huh'ed and then gave me some steroid and an antibiotic. The swelling is still there, but it has definitely improved since this morning.

I also have a really bad cold, and last night I almost had no voice. So I'm just not meant to do anything outside my house this weekend.

But, that acknowledged, here was my dilemma; What in the world do I do?? Since I can't focus on the words to read a book, and I can't focus on the TV to watch any shows, and I certainly was having issues doing anything work related as I'd need to focus on a computer screen to do so. What the heck do I do with my day?

So I Scrap-booked.



I really like the green one, I really like the Halloween 2008 one, although I need to find a sticker that says Halloween 2008 and replace the crummy hand made one, because as much as I hate to admit it, my printing sucks. There's something not quite right about the orange page. And the camera knew it, because it freaked out and refused to take the picture properly. But I do love my hand drawn, hand cut Bats. :)

Danielle has mentioned a sale going on tomorrow for scrap-booking stuff. I've already told Justin we need to go, I want at least one hour out of the house.

~S

Picture Perfect

Madeline's School pictures have arrived. And they are AWESOME. Our little girl is so big!

2008 Christmas Tree

Well the Christmas Tree is up and decorated, and today we went out and purchased a new camera to help document the holiday season. For some reason we just could not get the other camera to work with a memory card in it. I went over to Danielle's work and bought a whole slew of things to start my scrapbooking collection. ( With the purchase of the camera we got 50 free prints at Costco! Yay! ) We thought that we would send you these two pictures to tide you over for a while.

G'night!

Gingerbread Fun on Sunday

Madeline and Mommy spent the early afternoon creating this masterpiece together. Madeline had a lot of fun and only ended up eating two pieces of candy (That I saw) the whole time. We know it's a bit early for Christmas stuff what with American Thanksgiving being next week, but as we are on vacation soon and not going to be here to enjoy it, we decided that we should do something festive at home while we had some time.

OH I forgot this pic...

One can never have too many family pictures up on their blog, now can they? :P

Gotz Her Hair Didz

Madeline went to play with Aunt Shan on Friday as both Justin and myself worked up in SLC that day. That evening was a nice break, and the women folk went out for dinner in one direction, and the men folk took the little monster and went off in the other direction to find sustenance.

When we got back, Shantelle's friend Stephanie did Madeline's hair in a really cute braided heart.

Here's what it looked like when she was done:



She was happy as can be. Thanks Shan for the babysitting! Thanks Stephaine for doing her hair so well!

Gas Gas Gas

I took the above picture on July 4 2008, and it did get higher than I documented. I took the one below this morning as we gassed up the car before our commute to SLC.




If this keeps up we'll be back to filling the car on $20. I'm looking forward to that.

Sorry there are no new pics of Madeline. Hopefully we can do that this weekend.

Ciao.

Wootton Family Random Home Evening (LOTS of Pictures)

Tonight was an absolute hoot. Jeremy and Danielle brought their kids and met with Justin Madeline and I and Justin's parents and youngest brother Jared at a local restaurant called Wingers for some really good food, then we all went back to Justin's parent's house and played games all night. Above is the first picture. Calm. Serene. Misleading really.


Things were about to get silly. DUN DUN DUN!


While the adults played their game of cranium and acted like children, the children did a decent job of entertaining themselves. Kaden is off somewhere in the background, elusive as ever to my camera, while Madeline played with the modeling clay from the game.



Wee miss Brinnley sat snugly on Grandpa W's lap and wondered what the heck we were all doing.



This was the moment where these three had their minds in the gutter. I don't blame them though, they had to write three words that had to do with Las Vegas down on a paper and hope that the other two people on their team could match at least one of them. You can imagine where that went. (Special Mention of Jared's awesome hat!)




There's my hubby in his awesome hat. I think Jeremy is pretty animated about something in the background. I think it was probably his "Baby Boomer" enactment. He braced his feet against the table and proceeded to "Birth" a lot of babies and set them all down on the floor beside him. It was HILARIOUS.


Then Dad Wootton had to use Justin as a puppet and get someone to guess what the puppet was. Something is telling me that no one got it, because neither Justin nor I can remember what exactly he had his hands in the air for. lol




When the game was ended we all retired to the basement where we plugged the Wii in to the projector in the theater and played wii sports.



It was nice to just kick back and relax. I think everyone had fun. The kids were playing in the playroom downstairs with us and we were all comfy on the leather couches.





And then more insanity. Apparently this is a recurring thing that Jared and Jeremy do, See if you can figure out what is happening in this picture. :P




THEN Jared bowled a strike in Wii Bowling, FROM UNDER HIS BROTHER.


I think we played every game but Golf. The boys had fun playing Baseball.


It was a fun night, and when we arrived home at 11pm Madeline was already down for the count.
Her final words of the day were, "Daddy, it's ok if you don't read me a story tonight, I'm already sleepy."

Thanks for being awesome family!

All Things In Their Own Time

I was just out with the dog, and I was looking at all the things that are still green. Nothing white here yet really. Some on the mountains and the ski resorts are opening up, but no snow on the ground at home. I did find something white though, white and a bit yellow. Can you believe this is still happening in November??

Today Pre-School, Tomorrow the World

Classic Cute Little Girl

Her patented Strong Madeline pose.

Insight to her future job? My guess News Anchorwoman or Weather Girl.

Oh boy are we in trouble some day.

Picture day at Pre-School is tomorrow. We couldn't help but have a photo shoot now though, of Modeling Madeline in her snazzy new "pictures at school outfit"!

Oh yeah those pictures...

For anyone who was curious, here are a few pictures from our Halloween party on the 25th of October. Sorry they took so long, we did not have a camera of our own, and so had to wait till the other people had uploaded them for us.

Captain J.L.Wootton
Canadian Eskimo Me!

The Girl with the Red Dress On

Madeline had a day of pretty frilly things. This very well may be her Christmas Dress. *Shrug*

Thought I'd post them. Sooo full of food...Sooo sleepy... Night all.

..Ok so maybe the best thing in life cost me $56..lol

Right...So now that you have the WRONG impression, I will explain. :) Today Jen and Madeline and I went out for lunch at Cafe Rio. After we went to Petco and I bought Baron the Dachshund a new kennel. Needless to say, when you buy a cage big enough to fit..oh say, a small human in... they tend to climb in and make it a play area.

At one point Madeline and Baron were BOTH in the kennel with the door shut. And there was still a bit of room. He will be incredibly happy now. :)

Snow in SLC

Updated from Work.

Sunrise, Sunset

The sun set tonight in a blaze of red, gold and yellow, beating away the rain, sleet and in some cases snow with a power only a giant ball of flaming gas could achieve. Is this the last sunset John McCain's hopeful presidential campaign?

One minute from now ( 7:59) voting in Utah is over.

~S

This will Bee a Happy Halloween

Last night we all gathered at Grandma and Grandpa Wootton's house for some awesome pulled pork and a fun pumpkin carve. Everyone had a pumpkin and they were pretty cool when they were done. Madeline had Grandma's help carving hers, and I'm pretty sure daddy helped her get the "Guts" out.
This morning I was pounced on by a strangely LARGE Bumble Bee. It buzzed in my ear that it was ready for breakfast. But what do you feed a Bee that size?
So I made it do a little dance for my camera, and I captured the creature on film for you to see.

It was a very thrilling experience all around. Happy Halloween everyone!