New Hair-do and Yummy Treats

the girls are starting to interact with eachother more and more. so cute!

 i french braided addison's hair for the first time, and i fell in love. it was tough for her to hold still, but i threatened and bribed her. i think it looks adorable. lots more of this look to come...

 ...and of course charly. always adorable, even with nothin' done to her hair.

 some yummy things we made lately:

homemade salsa

 kyle canned some of it and took it took his home teaching families. it was soooo good.

lately, i've been saving pictures of ideas (foods to crafts) from the internet onto my computer. yeah, i pretty much thought of the idea that it might be cool to collect and save ideas into groups. too bad someone else also had the same idea and came up with pinterest. i could be a CEO earning lots of  $$$. all well. these (found online) were still good.

Dinner at the Park

carson and jen recently moved and are now in our stake. we have visited them a couple of times since they moved, and the other day decided to have dinner at the park in their neighborhood. addison loved getting out of the house (when you only have one car, and it's hot outside during the day, you don't really leave the house.)

for dinner we decided to make hawaiian burgers. if you know me, you know i can't eat classic hamburgers - kyle says i'm unamerican with all the foods i don't like. so to get around this, we make hamburgers with a twist. tonight's twist includes: carmelized onion, bacon, mango, pineapple, and a mango-pineapple sauce. it's totally awesome!

our setup:

cute huh? well, so is this girl, who slept for quite a while...... and this awesome griller. super cute. and yummy.looks awesome right? they were loved by all.
cuddled with my girl while kyle and addison played on the playground. fun family time.

Los Reyes de la Tortas

a friend suggested los reyes de la tortas on her blog last month and since then i have been dying to go. it was featured in the show man vs. food and it's here in phoenix! kyle has been saying lately that we should go out to lunch, so we met up with michelle and jesse and my dad at the restaurant today. i ordered the sandwich featured on the show - del rey - and oh my gosh it was heaven. four different kinds of meat, an egg, tomato, their special sauce, and topped with cheese. it was huge, and as you can see, i couldn't even finish half! kyle and i also split a banana-mango drink. next time, kyle will order his own. yeah it was that good.

if you have any sense, you will drive yourself tonight to see how good it really is. i promise you won't be disappointed!

We Just Think You Look Good In White

name that movie. it's one of my favorites: the best two years. if you haven't seen it, do and you will laugh your head off. promise. and if you don't, well maybe there's something wrong. just sayin.

i can't believe we've had her in our family for two months already! today, at exactly two months old, charlene was blessed. it was beautiful and i'm thankful for all the family that came to support us. we were lucky that kyle's brother kirt was able to come too. he was suppose to be in town the week before but got delayed. so we were only missing kyle's oldest brother shawn.

so here we have some pics of our beautifully blessed charly. she's wearing the same dress addison was blessed in.


i love her sweet little pout and crop of hair. she's just so adorable.

after the block, we had a party to celebrate charlene's blessing day. and just like after addison's blessing, we had navajo tacos. it was so fun to have everyone over! below: kyle's mom julie, my mom camette, janell, and great grandma mccleve

addison was having too much fun to stop and go potty, so she peed her pants in thebackyard. this is kyle multitasking: watching her in the bath and eating. as you can tell, he takes his job very seriously.

below: all tuckered out. we sure do love our charly!

Thanksgiving Feast 2010

thanksgiving this year = perfect. i got to sleep in until 11:30. the house was already clean in anticipation of family coming over (well coming up stairs), and all the food i was in charge of was already cooked as well.

above: L-R: jalee, heidi, kerstyn, casey, elissa, darwin, chad, mcall and caden. opposite: mom, dad, kinsey, loren, logan, connor, connie, brookie, and jenell. below: grandma, kevin, and jenell gather around the food.

the mccleve's ate at 1:00 on our back porch. the weather was perfect - even getting a little chilly once the breeze started. of course the food was great - yams (look forward to those every year), turkey, green bean casserole, rolls, salads, mashed potatoes and gravy, ham, and cranberry relish. i just learned this thanksgiving, that cranberry relish was for your turkey! who knew? i always have eaten my relish with my rolls and i guess kyle's always done the same too. relish on your turkey? that sounds so weird!

kinsey - still toothless

of course addison wasn't much of an eater until dessert came. cookies, cupcakes, chocolate delight, and a pumpkin pie were among our choices. i assumed everyone would bring a pie, so i made chocolate delight because who doesn't need a little chocolate. turns out everyone thought like me and there was only one pumpkin pie from darwin - thank goodness my mom brought a second just in case and i made a sweet potato pie the day before.

above: michelle and jesse concentrated on their food. below: kinsey, my dad, and my mom finishing up. mom wasn't too happy getting her picture taken.

after everyone one was full on good food, we started digesting in the living room and soon there were three ipads being played with and passed around. about that time, kyle and i left for his parents' home.

as always, kyle's dad showed me all the food they had and told me to help myself, but i was already having trouble breathing from all the food i had already eaten. so kyle and i sat down in the living room and started talking with the family already full on turkey. kyle's cousin emily and husband spencer came down from utah. i loved talking to her about her pregnancy. she is due in early april with two twin boys dallin and monson - love those names! i'm so excited for them!

the mckay feast with kyle's dad and cousin robert looking over it.

everyone was impressed with addison who is completely potty trained now. she is doing great, i just hope she doesn't go back to diapers once baby mac comes - which i hear is not uncommon. addy's favorite person was probably uncle kirt, who she was so excited to see. she yelled "DTURT!" all day and mostly just wanted to be on his lap. i think kirt was secretly pleased with this."DTURT!" addison is getting so big!

dil, exhausted from eating the turkey. cousin leroy won the weight-gaining contest this thanksgiving by eating 7 lbs worth of food.

stephanie and bobby taking yummy leftovers home

when i went to bed i found a thankful note from kyle on my pillow. i love how thoughtful he is. not only is he handsome and has the cutest babies, but he also is so sweet and caring and i know that those things aren't always packaged together!

mckay family. november 25th, 2010

thanksgiving has been perfect. this year i gave thanks for:

• kyle: husband and father extordinaire


• addison: most adorable and quickest learner


• healthy pregnancy: can't wait to meet this baby soon


• healthy moms: both our moms have been told this year that they are in COMPLETE remission from wegner's disease and ovarian cancer, two miracles.


• country and freedoms: and all those that lead and protect us


• gospel: the one thing that never changes and makes me happy no matter what happens
  
  

hope you had a wonderful day of thanks with the ones you love!

Pumpkin Carving Dinner Party

i love surfing the internet and getting ideas for parties, crafts, food and all kinds of fun stuff. i always save the pictures i find and some info about the project. since kyle got my sewing machine fixed for my birthday, i have worked on a couple of my sewing crafts and i used my cousin chantell's bridal shower as an excuse to make another craft.

above: the key hanger i made for chantell last month. one of the first craft things i done since i started searching them out.

some of the most exciting ideas i have collected have been themed dinner dates. some are for friends and family and others are just for my hubby and i. i came across one of these themed dinner parties that centered around fall which i loved. because halloween was just a few days after my party, i decided as an activity, we would carve pumpkins.

i planned for a set number of people and made individual servings. the main course was white bean and sausage stew served in pumpkin bowls. there were many ingredients - some of which i had never heard of or used, but it was fun to try and it turned out so good. i thought using pumpkins as bowls made the dinner much more fun, but that's just my opinion.

see the pumpkin centerpiece in the above picture? i made that too. it was my second attempt - my first was way too ugly to use as decoration so it's a dry board eraser now.

above: L to R. chantell and chad page, nathan and aleece martinez, michelle and jesse woodbury, and of course kyle and i at the end.

two of our guests brought the sides - a yummy salad and rolls while the other helped me out making some of the pumpkin bowls. kyle set the table - kyle has an eye for decorating sometimes, funny huh - and bought IBC root beer and cream soda. after we ate, we started the pumpkin carving. we had lots of laughs while we carved and ate candy. addison even came out and helped kyle and i with our pumpkin carving. she's too cute. right before everyone went home i brought out individual pumpkin pies with homemade whip cream - so good. i forgot to take pictures of the pies, but it's okay because the decorations i made out of dough and put on top of them didn't turn out. when kyle asked me what the clump of dough on top of the pies was, i told him it was suppose to look like a witch's hat and he laughed. it was that pathetic. all well, it's the taste that counts and i think it got an A+. i had so much fun doing my first themed dinner party. i'll have to think what my next one will be about - after the baby comes of course.

Baby Steps

starting august 25th, i decided to quit addison on the bottle cold turkey. i was so fed up with how much milk we were going through and how she never seemed to be full. i thought that maybe she would also stop her once a night cry for a "baba" as well. because she still needs milk everyday, i started giving a smaller amount to her in a sippy cupright after i would feed her solid food. the first two days were the worst as i expected, crying for her bobbi, but she is much better now. addison still has a long way to go with solids - how did i get such a picky baby? it has been fun to see different ways to coax her to take bites of her food. at first we told her if she wanted down off the high chair then she needed to take a bite, but that only would work for two bites in a meal. then she was told if she didn't want a flick in the mouth she would eat. sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. i realized i needed to dangle a carrot. so we started telling addison that if she wanted to sing a song, she would need to start eating and that seemed to work until last week when i guess even that got old. lastly, we've also been able to distract addy by asking her questions about the room as we popped things in her mouth. now it looks like we will have to start the cycle over again. hopefully things will get better as time moves on.

for some reason, she liked mixed veggies a.k.a. - green goo. she ate this all by herself! woohoo! (living in a basement means it's hard to have enough light to take decent pictures of a moving baby, thus much blur. ugh.)

Celebrating Gratitude

thanksgiving this year at the brown's consisted of football, hammock swinging, catching up on eachother's lives and of course aunt jackie bragging that her food is THE BEST. it seems as the brown bunch gets older, the family gets smaller at each gathering. there still were a ton of people and it's always fun to see everyone and their new babies (there are always new babies). jacob, alli, isaac, and jayce - did i spell that right? this

picture looks like a holiday greeting card. they're adorable!

the food, not including all the pie, which there was WAY too much of.

funny note: courtney of course brought her own mashed potatoes because according to her no one else knows how to make them and they are always too mushy. those are her potatoes on the right.

breckyn, stacia, kinsey, hailey, austin, maddison, addison, and me.



after we ate at the brown's, we went to kyle's parent's house to celebrate with his family. we brought harley with us to play with sadie and cinder. i guess all the cousisns think alike because four other dogs also came to the party making a total of seven dogs roaming the mckay home. dogs get special treatment with the mckay family. addison was in heaven and loved all the dogs except harley, who because she's still a puppy, was very hyper.



someone i have yet to find out brought rolls that were DIVINE. i think i stuffed four down my throat, pretty amazing considering i already ate with my side.



we didn't go to the mccleve's but we heard chantell brought a date named chad (page) who ended up being pretty helpful in kickball. awesome.



hope you had a great thankgiving too!

ps. happy birthday to jalee today, she is sweet 16!