How to Bake an American Pie

We spent our afternoon baking an apple pie together. Tomorrow the post commander will be reading the book, "How to Bake an American Pie" by Karma Wilson to our kids at a story hour put on by The Military Child Education Coalition. There is also an American Pie bake-off at story hour, so we decided to enter and the kids did the majority of the work and I supervised.

Step 1: Peel those apples!
Step 2: Cut the apples (I did most of that, so no picture).
Step 3: Squeezing some fresh lemon juice and shredding the lemon for zest.

Step 4: Measuring the yummy stuff: sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.

Step 5: Rolling out our dough that we made the day before.

Step 6: Adding the top crust.

Step 7: Adding egg to the crust.

Step 8: Bake at 425 degrees for one hour and....TAH-DAH you have and AMERICAN APPLE PIE!!!!

Busy, busy, busy!

We have been ultra busy these last few weeks and I haven't quite figured out where the month of April has gone? Let's see... we got a puppy, our household goods were delivered, we've been unpacking and some more unpacking. And just when I thought we are almost done, another shipment comes tomorrow. All of the stuff that we put into storage before we moved to Germany over 2 years ago, is being delivered tomorrow. At 10:00pm tonight, I made Charlie help me carry the Army's washer and dryer into the garage, so that the movers can move mine right in.
We got our very own Harley. She is 6 months old and supposedly a lab, husky mix. Her name was Nikita and that just wasn't cutting for us. Seeing how Beckett is still calling ALL dogs Harley (after our friends' dog in Germany), it was the most fitting name. She has been pretty good so far, although I think she needs puppy school. Aside from a couple of incidents, she has been a decent dog. I still think a newborn baby is easier, or maybe because that is what I have the most experience with!
We did manage to make it down to Denali National Park this past weekend. It was too cloudy to see Mt. McKinley, but the kids enjoyed it and they still had about 3 feet of snow on the ground to play in. We went with some new friends and we managed to snap a family photo where every member is looking at the camera. And it only took 3 PICTURES!!!! It might have to be our Christmas picture this year.

Passing on Luke

Much to the disappointment of 4 happy children, we had to take a pass on Luke today. Luke just isn't going to fit in with our family. We borrowed him from his current owners yesterday and everything went wonderfully. He was the perfect pet.... yesterday.

We asked the current owners if we could pick him up for a few hours today. We picked him up and took him to a place called Creamer's Field. People skijorn (skiing with your dog attached), people run, people run with their dogs at this particular place. The same place we took him yesterday. Yesterday he was great. There were a few other dogs that passed by, he barked at them, and then went along as a happy BIG pup. Today, every dog that passed by he was not so calm. He ended up biting Charlie's leg when two other dogs went by. It didn't break skin... but Charlie said it stung. That was it... sorry Luke. We loved you yesterday, but not today. We are not willing to take any chances.

We were all very disappointed, but grateful that we borrowed him for a couple of days before we made a final decision. Luke's family has not socialized him with any other dogs except for the ones that were in his household and he doesn't seem to care for any others.. He is just too much of a risk for us to take on with our kids and living in a family neighborhood.

We will continue to search for the (almost) perfect dog and when we find him or her, we will borrow him or her for a couple of days before we make our decision. The jury is out on whether or not we want to take a puppy in or an adult. Any opinions???

Meet Luke

Beckett turns TWO!!!!

We celebrated Beckett's birthday this past week and I am happy to report that he was able to eat his birthday cake this year! It is hard for me to believe that our little Dunkel is already TWO. He brings quite a bit of laughter into our house and we all love him very much.
We tried to catch that sneaky leprechaun and had no success. He did manage to walk through Beckett's cake when no one was looking and left frosting tracks on the table. Better luck next year.

JUMPING right into things!

Just a quick update on the Bailey family happenings for our friends and family. We get the keys to our house on Monday (YAY!!!), our advanced shipment of household good arrives on Wednesday (another YAY!), and I start learning how to run an FRG next week. An FRG is the Family Readiness Group that each Army company runs to support and keep military families informed of everything that is going on around them. Army friends might be asking why I am running the FRG when Charlie already finished his command? For those of you who don't know much about the Army... usually the Commander's wife is the FRG leader. Guess what??? Big surprise??????

Charlie is taking command of another company. He was asked/told on Tuesday that they wanted him to take command of an Infantry company. He is the MI Guy, not (by army regulation) the Infantry guy. So here we go with another command. They are planning on having him in Command for about 9 months and then he will just do his MI job for a deployment that is scheduled for late, next Spring. In the meantime... he will do both. We are both really shocked by all of this, as this will mean more hours at work for him and less time at home. I was really enjoying having him home by 6 for these last 2 weeks and I am guessing that it will not last much longer. On Monday, he starts his inventories for his new company and his change of command will be on April 23rd. Tune in then for pictures of the change of command.

We've been living in the FAST lane this week and I am praying that we can all keep our sanity over the coming months. Did I mention that we are adding a new member to our family next week.... (yes, I know we are CrAzY!) before we found out that Charlie was going to be doing 2 jobs, we made the decision to take a dog in. We are picking up the dog for a trial run this weekend and I suppose there is still time to back out, but I am not sure if I can convince 4 kids of that right now. His name is Luke and he is a 3 year old bull mastiff with lots of love and energy to share with our family.

Birthday Boy and Ice Skating

Last week we celebrated Jordan's 8th birthday. It's hard to believe that he is already 8! We celebrated his birthday with a cake (courtesy of Wal-mart) and he was able to pick where we would eat for dinner, McDonalds. Of course we tried to sway him, but what could beat out a Shamrock Shake at McD's for a kid that loves mint icecream and doesn't get milk shakes very often.
Later in the week, we went ice skating again and this time I remembered the camera. Jordan was avoiding the camera and skating too fast, so no pictures of him. They are all progressing quickly on the ice and seem to love it. Hopefully we will have some hockey players soon. Even Beckett has been on skates twice, but the day I took pictures he was napping in the stroller.