Halloween

We were watching our 2 nephews and niece for a week so we tried to do as many activities with them as possible (we found they get in much less trouble when busy doing something rather than just sitting at home). Lucky for us it was Halloween soon and we had a few parties to attend.

Our first outing was to the Air and Scare at the Udar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. Among all the planes, helicopters, space ship, and memorabilia, there were Storm Troopers, Darth Vader and other Star Wars characters walking around. It was pretty cool. Here are the pictures I took.

Later that night we had a Halloween party at a friend's house which was a lot of fun. We ate Halloween inspired food and played a green slime game. We also went to two more ward parties which were also a lot of fun. Then on Halloween night we went to another Halloween party! We were Halloweened out.

Since you're dying to see the little chick up closer here are some more pictures. I loved, loved this costume. Macy was so adorbably cute! Unfortunately she would get really hot in it so the outfit never lasted the whole night. But as you can imagine, everyone loved the costume!

Macy at the Mall

We were going to go for a walk with Macy's friend Grant, but it rained at the exact time of our walk! We were bummed, but we headed over to the mall to walk around there. We stopped at the "Kids Corner" for some final fun. Here is Macy and her friend.

Macy sitting on top the whale

Macy trying to climb up the slide. We haven't taught her playground rules yet.

We also haven't taught Macy to read yet. It says "Grant" Macy!

They were both getting tired so I stopped trying for a picture once they were both facing the camera.

Another Laura Sighting!

A friend emailed me saying she found my picture on a website for toddler activities. The funny thing is, my picture was on an ad for "Todays Military." How many preschoolers want to join the military?

Thanks for sharing Amber!

Macy loves Lily

Macy's cousin Lily was over to watch conference (well, she actually slept through the whole thing) and Macy couldn't get enough of her. She was constantly crawling up to Lily and either staring at her or grabing her feet. Luckily Lily had her feet pulled towards her body so Macy was only grabbing her pajama feet.

Macy watching General Conference before Lily came. She couldn't get enough.

I would take Macy away and try to get her to play with something else and she would crawl right over to Lily. It was very cute. When the camera was pulled out to take a picture Macy knew exactly what to do, smile!

Macy's cute squat to view Lily.

We also found out that Macy loves to be involved in the party. Greg, Caleb, Jeff, Tiffany, and Lily were over last night and we couldn't get Macy to go to sleep when they were here. She would cry and cry until I brought her out to the living room. Then she was happy again. As soon as everyone left she fell asleep. 

Homemade Chicken Stock

I enjoy watching Ina Garten on Barefoot Contessa. I don't get recipes from her necessarily, I just enjoy watching her cook. It seems so effortless and do delicious. Ina always uses homemade chicken stock in her recipes and makes comments about the taste and quality being superior to store bought. That got me thinking...

I could make my own chicken stock. Why not? I've started roasting whole chickens (which is a new favorite meal for us) so I can use the extra bones and parts to make the stock. It was really an experiment, and sure looked like some weird experiment. Here is the pot in the beginning.

Here it is after simmering for 4 hours.

As a bonus it smelled wonderful and made the whole house smell like Thanksgiving. I took a nap while it was cooking and dreamt that it was Thanksgiving day.

I also wanted to make my own stock so I could know for sure what the ingredients are. This is an ingredient list from a can of stock:

chicken broth (water, chicken, stock), hydrolyzed soy and corn protein, salt, monosodium glutamate, onion powder, chicken fat, vegetable juice concentrate (carrot, celery, onion) disodium insosinate, and disodium guanylate. 

Here's my ingredient list:

12 cups water, bones/parts from 2 chickens, onion halved, carrots, 3 garlic cloves, bay leaves, thyme, parsley, basil, salt, pepper. 

There's something to be said for homemade anything. I feel better putting things into my body when I know exactly what's in the food. 

Now, I don't know if I'll always make my own stock. I only got 5 1/2 cups of stock at the end. But maybe after tasting the dishes using this stock I'll change my mind. I can't wait to taste it.

Church is Exhausting

This is especially sweet because Macy normally does not cuddle.

I try and she arches her back and wiggles away. Even when I hold her on my hip she turns her body to face forward so she doesn't have to hold on to me. But, after church she is exhausted and will cuddle up to us on the way from the car to our apartment. We take turns getting her out of the car so we can have Macy cuddle time.

Macy is now 9 months old! We went to the doctor's this week and here are her stats:

15 lbs 9 oz. 

26 1/2 to 27 inches long (they measured her 3 times and got different numbers each time because she wouldn't hold still)

17 in head circumference

The doctor asked me if Macy could clap. I said that Macy did clap, but I wasn't sure if she knew she was doing it. Well, Macy proved me wrong by clapping on and off for the next five minutes. It was so cute.

Macy also decided that she was going to crawl on her 9 month birthday. She's having a great time being more independent and mobile. 

In case you're wondering what's new with me I just told you. It's Macy.

Harris Teeter

This is a grocery store that I don't normally shop in because it doesn't have the best prices. However, periodically it has double and triple coupon weeks. It will double or triple coupons up to $1.98. This week was a double coupon week. My strategy is to bring in all my coupons $1 and up and match them up with things that are on sale for close to the double amount so they will be free. My favorite coupons are the $1.75 off because then I get $3.50 off! I got a bunch of items for free today. I'm only writing my post because I was so happy with my savings. Here's the break down:

Total before coupons: $121.01

Total after coupons: $39.29

That's $81.72 savings!

Normally when the cashier says, "Thank you, you saved $30 today," I think, "Yeah that sounds right." But today, I actually said out loud, "Wow!" I can't wait until triple coupon week!

Macy and George Clooney?

That's right! She looks pretty excited to be sitting with the actor doesn't she?

We did see George Clooney, unfortunately, he wass made of wax. But it makes for a great picture. We went to Madame Tussaud's wax museum on Saturday. Normally it costs $20 a person, but with Groupon I got both of us in for only $9! It was a lot of fun. We had more fun that we expected. Here are more of our favorite pictures.

The figures look so real. Each hair, eyelash, eyebrow hair, and facial hair is individually placed in the head. The men looked like they had just shaved that morning. If I looked to long into their eyes I got a little weirded out. It felt like they were going to start talking and moving.

Later that night, we went to a birthday party for Macy's friend Grant. There were 7 babies there all close in age. The girl on Macy's left was born the same day as her, only 2 hours earlier. Isn't Macy such a cute baby? She's the only one looking and smiling at the camera. As soon as she saw there were 4 cameras pointing at her she started smiling. It was adorable. You can tell that the girl second from the right is about to push her neighbor, who then fell backwards on her back. Such a fun party.

Then it was onto our 2nd party of the night. We had home made root beer for Greg's birthday. Jeff had Macy and Mark mesmerized with his story telling.

One Step Closer

Macy has the kneeling down...

And the standing up down...

Now if she would get the crawling down.

Gifts From Macy

All my life I've had straight hair. 

No amount of hairspray could keep a curl. I was very envious of those girls who had naturally curly or wavy hair. Two things have happened lately because of Macy which have changed my hair life dramatically.

The first, I've grown my hair out to the longest it's been in over 7 years. I got it cut before Macy was born but haven't cut it since then because I had a baby to take care of and didn't really think about my hair. Ja is very happy about this. He's been wanting me to grow my hair out for the last 5 years. It's just past my shoulders, which may not be long for some people but it is to me.

The second, my hair now has natural curl! I don't know what all those hormones did, but I like it! I've been fighting the wave in my hair for the last 8 months by blow-drying and straightening it. Yesterday I decided I wasn't going to brush my hair out after my shower and what I got was nice natural curls. Today I put mousse in my hair and the curls are holding better. I'm so excited! No more fighting with my hair.

Even with the mousse in my hair is still frizzy on top. Any advice on how to get rid of the frizz?

A New Macy Movie!

For those of you who requested a longer Macy movie, here it is! Check out our Web Gallery here. It's the movie titled "Macy June-July 2010."

Happy Birthday Caleb! This one is for you! (Our nephew Caleb requests to watch the "Macy movie" on their family's movie night. So cute.)

Our August

Well, August flew by with days of family fun. I've published the pictures of our crazy activities on our Web Gallery. The pictures are at the end titled "Beach House August 2010*" and "DeVore Family Vacation." I also took cute pictures of Macy's first at home bath you can view as well. They are super cute, you don't want to miss them!

*view the second Beach House listed

Quick Update

Here is a quick run-down of our activities:

Macy loves reading/eating the newspaper with her dad.

My sister Stacie came to visit for a week. We had a great time and Macy especially loved having her here. I'll post more about her trip later.

We went to dinner at Pie-Tanza (which we love so much!) and this was my view from across the table. She is so cute and little. I couldn't help myself from laughing every time I looked at her.

Wednesday we went to the National's baseball game which was a huge adventure we aren't sure we'll ever do again with a baby. The only time Macy held still the whole night was for this picture. She looks like she's very concentrated on the game.

Fun in PA

Last Saturday we drove with Tiffany and Jeff to Pennsylvania to visit college friends, Bobby, Nicole and their four daughters. It's only a two hour drive and worth every minute to spend time with such great friends.

Even though there were 5 girls running around the house, it's so much more calming than having just 2 six year-old boys running around. Caroline, Johanna, twin girls Annabelle and Ainsleigh, are such cute happy girls. We had good food, great company, and an overall wonderful time. We hope we can visit again soon! Next time there will be 6 little girls once baby Baer is born!

Here's the gang. (Caroline isn't in the picture because she asked to go to bed at 7 p.m. Nicole thought it was very strange. Maybe we wore her out.)

Closed Captioning is brought to you by...

The closed captioning mysteriously started showing up for about a week now on certain channels we watch. We couldn't figure it out because not every channel had it but it was quite annoying on the channels that did. I read the captions even though I don't need to, I can't not read them! Sometimes they were very slow which makes everything more complicated.

At the end of every show a little ad for "Caption Max" would come on. We thought they had something to do with these newly acquired captions so I checked out their website. No help there. It would have been helpful if I had a project that needed captioning.

Next, we try Verizon to see if they have any explanations on these pesky captions. I eventually found a troubleshooting page and one of the FAQ's was "How to turn off closed captioning." Apparently this is a common problem. All we had to do was press the "star" button and it turned the captions off! All those times reading those dumb captions could have been so easily remedied!

Now, how did those bothersome captions get turned on? Hmmm, let's see, could this be the reason?!

When Macy has the remote and the TV is on we find some pretty interesting channels we didn't know we had. Has anyone ever heard of The Wealth Channel? One time she was pressing down on the volume button and the volume got pretty loud. She also likes to almost order some channels for us. She'll enter in random numbers and, surprisingly (not), we don't have that channel. The screen will say, "Press OK to subscribe to this channel." As far as we know we've caught Macy before anything expensive happens.

We thought it very comical that a little girl could cause so much frustration about closed captioning!