Bread

I started making bread about the time I got my kitchen aide, about 2 years ago. I took a little break during my pregnancy with Joslyn, and with no air conditioner yet, it doesn't work during the summer either.  It started out pretty good, but red whole wheat flour just has a little different taste. My friend had introduced me to white whole wheat flour a while back. I was a little skeptical at first. It sounded like and oxymoron. I did some of my own research on it though and realized it really is just as good for you as red wheat. It just tastes better. The funniest thing about it is that I actually already had a 50 lb. bad of white wheat sitting with my food storage in the basement. So last year for mother's day I got a wheat grinder and made quick work of it. It is fabulous! My kids love it and it smells so great in my house for the whole baking day. The only problem was it was about 110 calories per slice and I had been buying bread that was 45 calories per slice, but tasted gross. I am still in a very long process of losing this baby weight, so that was a problem. I had adjusted the recipe all that I could to make it taste good, but be as healthy and low calorie as possible. The slices were just so big. I hadn't found a pan that would make those thin long loaves like I was used to buying at the store. Just 9x4 pans. Finally I was at Ross the other day and I found what I was looking for. It is just a little cheap $4 bread pan, but it does the job well and now my slices come in at closer to 65 calories per slice. Perfect! Now I get 65 slices of bread out of the same recipe instead of 48. Wahoo! Now I can have my bread and eat it too! If I could just bake enough of it to freeze for the summer now!

This is really sad that the last thing I posted on here was last year's grandchildren collage, but alas, here is the one from this year. We have had a fabulous year. We look forward to the next one to see what great things it will bring. We hope everyone is having a great Christmas season!

This year's collage

Here are all of the great-grandchildren for this year! I love to see how everyone changes every year. I am happy to say that the first and last child are both ours, for the last time. =) I love that there are even numbers of boys and girls even though Scott and Lois Jean's family has so many more girls than boys. I guess everyone else has all of the boy genes!

Joslyn is here!

Joslyn JoLea Spencer
10-27-10
10:50 a.m.
8 lbs. 13 oz.
20.5 inches long

Joslyn is a little angel of a baby. After her short stay in the NICU due to some blood sugar problems and surviving having a good sized knot in her cord, she has been so sweet. She has been waking up just once or twice at night (so far, I'm sure she'll give me trouble sometime), only cries when I'm changing her diaper, and is just so darn CUTE. We are all quite in love with our new little baby!

End of School Fun

We found a nest of 6 eggs behind our unused satellite dish a couple of days ago. Then the next day the kids saw it and there were two little birds hatched. They were so excited. It was fun to try to get a good picture, however due to the height and tight confines, this was the best I got.

Brynna graduated from Kindergarten to First Grade on Friday. I'm not quite sure why they have a ceremony for kindergartners instead of fifth and sixth graders that are moving on to Cimarron for next year. We had a grand time watching them perform their little songs and to see the slideshow the teacher put together. This picture is of Brynna and her good friend Maile.

For Memorial Day weekend we went to visit my family in Canon City and enjoy the farm life for a day. The kids all got to ride the little horses my grandma has. Then we got to hold the cute little goats my Aunt Carol has at her house. The kids loved it. We had a fun week and now we are looking forward to our two glorious months of hanging out at the pool, selling lemonade (Aaron's favorite), and best of all NO HOMEWORK!!!!!!

What have we been up to?

Yeah, I know it's been a while. I'm not the best blogger, but here goes with a quick update. Right after Christmas we tackled the project of painting the main level of our house. It was a lot of fun if you ask me, but I think I might have been the only one to enjoy the process. We love having this house feel like our own now though. It was quite the experience. We rented scaffolding from Home Depot to reach the 20' ceilings. The kids thought it was a new indoor jungle gym just for them and were disappointed when we didn't agree. It was sitting up in our house for about a week as we pushed it around to the different walls in our two big two story rooms. You might also notice all of the hearts in the kitchen windows. Those are all Brynna's handiwork. It set her to work with a pad of construction paper, a heart template, and a pair of scissors and she went to town!

We also got a new piano as Ashlyn has been taking lessons for about 5 months and we think she really will stick with it. She had a recital and a festival performance within the last two weeks and she is doing really well with it. She got a superior rating on her festival pieces and we were all tickled pink.
Aaron has recently gotten his Bear award at cubscouts and will be starting spring soccer again tomorrow.
Cyerra is amazing us all with her brilliance as she can now name 90% of her letters and is now working on their sounds. With two and a half more years before she starts school, I am sure I will run out of material to teach her well before she hits kindergarten.
Well, that was brief, but fun. I hope you are all doing well.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We have had a great year adjusting to life in Colorado. Ashlyn is now in 5th grade and looking forward to going to middle school next year. She will have opened 2 new schools in 2 years. Gold Rush Elementary was brand new for her 4th grade year and Cimaron Middle School will be brand new for her 6th grade year. She is enjoying participating in the school choir and taking piano lessons. Aaron loves having a great friend next door and tries to play with whichever friend he can find at any given moment. He is in 3rd grade this year and really is taking to math and science. You can often hear him through the house quizzing some unsuspecting victim on math facts. He is doing really well as a cub scout and I am pretty sure he enjoys having Griff as his Den leader. Brynna started Kindergarten this year and LOVES going to school. As soon as she comes home she is continually begging to play with friends who aren't as readily available as Aaron's. There are two girls on our street who both have school in the afternoon and she only has school in the morning. Life truly is not fair. However Brynna and Cyerra are getting to be better and better friends. It really is fun for me to have two girls in a row together to play together and entertain each other. Cyerra gets a bit lonely during the day with just Mommy to hang around with, however she is quite the comedian and entertains her and I quite well. She just turned three in November and is really growing up quickly. It is amazing how fast it happens.

Griff is quite enjoying his job here in Denver. He loves what he does and the people he works with. He completed his MBA in the summer of 2008 so at some point he may try to find a job to put it to work. I am quite enjoying the process of establishing my photography business, Tender Moments Photography. It has been fun to get to know so many more families as I help them create and capture moments they'll remember forever. I also love the freedom it gives me, most of the time that is, to stay home with my children and still have a creative outlet. As a family, we are happy and healthy and enjoying life. We hope you are doing the same as 2010 quickly approaches.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!