Our Favorite Missionaries

We have loved our missionaries out here, they're all incredible! Great examples, furthering our Missionary efforts, and strengthening our testimonies. It's been fun to have so much time feeding them-in Utah we hardly ever saw them.

Emily Schlerf's Sugar Cookies

This is the ultimate, best recipe for sugar cookies, given to me by my sweet neighbor at Ricks College. Dorm 2 anyone? Try them, and let me know if you agree...or if you know her! It's the only one we use, it wins all taste tests hands down.

2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sour cream
6 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Mix sugar, butter eggs. Alternate adding sour cream with dry ingredients to the sugar mixture. Blend really well. Chill in refrigerator for about an hour. Roll out 1/4 inch thick, cut with cookie cutters. Bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes on ungreased cookie sheet. Don't overbake! Let cool on cookie sheet or wire rack. Frost with cream cheese frosting. (Mine is on the cinnamon roll recipe).

A favor:

Here's some pictures of Monte's favorite toys! They are all discontinued, but they are usually readily available at D.I.'s. And for so cheap! Ebay has a few occasionally, but they can't beat DI's prices. Or maybe you have some that your kis have outgrown. So, the game is on! We will reimburse all costs, shipping,toys, ect, and bribe you with all kinds of presents, ect! He so rarely falls in love with new toys, and these have been tried and true favorites. They've gotten him through so many ups and downs...but they're starting to break on us!

Since we don't have DI's or even thrift stores with them, we're relying on the sweetspirit of service and love. Can you help us? The toys are mostly Fisher price, there's two different pianos, a drum, a star stacker, a fishbowl, a cookie jar, a square shape sorter, a monkey flashlight, a tiger flashlight, a bert, ernie,or cookie monster (when you shake them their head open and closes). Bonus points for the ABC mirror toy, it's nearly impossible to find! (And I can't find any identifying labelson it). The Boyles gave him a Milestone alien looking fabric toy that somehow got lost during our move...and we miss it a lot!

Also, any Fisher Price musical toys, he loves, loves, loves them! Hmm, and Piper is very into Little People right now, and only has a few people/animals. Thank-you, and we love you!

Pumpkin Waffles

Ok, I keep getting requests for this recipe, so here it is, once and for all. Thanks to Patricia, the originator of the recipe, I hope it's ok if I post it!
Mix together:
2 cups flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

Separate 4 eggs. Beat yolk slightly, add 1 1/2 cups milk, 1 cup pumpkin, 1 tbsp vanilla, and 3/4 cup margarine (1 1/2 sticks). Add flour mixture.
Beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Add to above mixture.

Syrup
1 cube butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp karo syrup
Boil. Remove from heat. Stir in 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp vanilla. Best if served hot!

Piper and The Christmas Tree and House

We've decorated houses over and over and over! Piper has loved it, she's gotten more creative each time.

She actually let me do her hair, accessorize, and posed for the camera. It was wonderful! She's been decorating and undecorating the tree over and over...

Special Christmas Pictures

We found the cutest footed pj's for Monte. It's wonderful, and it keeps his little feet warm.

The family picture is at the Osmund show. We had so much fun dressing up and posing in the pretty building.

Christmas Fun Again! 3

Silver Dollar City Santa and fun, then Hollywood Wax Museum too!

Christmas Fun Again!

We had a blast making sugar cookies for our neighbors, of course wearing the matching Christmas aprons I made with my mom's help a few Christmas's ago. Unfortunately, Monte's now fits Piper, so we need to do some sewing!

Monte's traditional "Beard check." He always wants to make sure that Santa is real! He also loves to stroke his soft, furry coat. It's sweet...and so is Santa to allow the examination.

Christmas Fun!

Ok, so Branson is fun for Halloween, but even more fun for Christmas! Incidently, it began the day after Halloween, so we've had a lot of time to enjoy it. Here's one of our 3 meetings with Santa (so far). My kids think he has a lot of time during this season, we see him everywhere!

Piper was so cute! She started naming all of her favorite Winnie the Pooh characters, "Pooh, Rabbit, Roo, Tigger, Eyore..." Santa joined in and they both had a laugh together.

Mrs. Claus was also sweet, she searched and searched for the plug for Piper's sand tree after she lost it...then gave up and went across the park for another one. Very thoughtful!

I love this picture! We don't actually look terrible, (of course, we can never all look at the camera at once...but it's fun!) They are my Christmas presents.

Monte's Birthday

7 years old on October 11th! We are so thrilled to be Monte's parents, and so proud of all he's done in that 7 years. We had a monkey party...his favorite song since he was 2 has been the Monkey and the Alligator song-so this party was a long time coming! Too bad we didn't have Croc, Emilie and Cam's 7 foot gator that we babysat while they were in Australia, he would've been a perfect prop! As always, Doug had fun with this cake. Although we had a pretty tough day, and lots of things went wrong, including the ear of the monkey falling off and sliding down the wall before collapsing on the floor in a mess of frosting.
Our top 7 things of this year were:
7 Spending time with G&G Higley, Wellington, and Grandma Fogelquist (but it's been over a year and it's time to visit again!)
6 Getting a new "fort bed"
5 Staying (mostly) healthy and only having minor procedures. (Although he's having a small eye surgery on Nov 11, so please keep him in your prayers)
4 Teasing his sister, and laughing as she "helps" him with everything. She likes to put food in his mouth, share her drinks, bring him toys (and drop them on his head), and try to drag him across the room to play with her. I just noticed that she's feeding him Nerds as he lays on the floor, excuse me!!
3 Being properly diagnosed by an Epiliptologist and treated by wonderful physicians at St. Louis Children's Hospital. She re-did his EEG's and completely changed his seizure medications. He's been completely removed off of two of them, and we weaned onto a small dose of a new, better medication. Now we've been slowly weaning him off of the final (old) medication. He will be completely off in January, but with every incremental dose change, we see so much more of our "Monte" back! He's come out of the fog he's been in, he's signing sentences again, trying more vocalizations, walking and standing more, and he's just so much more alert and aware. Hooray!! It's hard to summarize our feelings on this subject properly, so moving on...
2 Continuing to make great friends at school and spending his time in a regular 1st grade class. (Hence the reason we moved out here in the first place!) He's the king of the school, everyone knows his name, and they make him feel so special.
1 Monte is now nearly running in his walker! He is purposefully lifting both feet, one after another, and carefully placing them up and down...and he's doing it so fast! We took him to the school playground Saturday and were in awe at his speed and endurance. This is a first for him and we are so, so, so, so, so thrilled.



The hair is my favorite part.!

Piper can't take her eyes off the cake, but Monte is just thrilled to be with Daddy!