Fun

FUN

Warm days and Cool nights

DOg Days of Summer with less of a schedule to keep!

Hearing the laughter of my Children

Planning a getaway to San Francisco with just my Sweetie

Those early morning walks

That hour after my kids go to bed

Weight Watchers Chocolate Fudge Bars

Finding a great bargain on something I've been wanting

Having Girlfriends to empathize with

I'm crazy about him

W H Y I

LOVE

this M A N

Laren

*He gets up in middle of the night, 3 nights in a row, to help me with sick kids, cleaning up vomit and diarrhea with our carpet cleaner.

*He's my best friend.

*Oh yeah, he's handsome too!

Tornado Damage

On Friday Laren had an appointment with a Dermatologist in Greeley. And so we all went with for a short little get-away and on our way home we swung North and went through Windsor to tour the destruction of last months tornado.

It was so interesting to see how one neighborhood was badly damaged and another next to it only seemed to have some missing shingles from the roofs of the houses.

Take a look at what we saw:

A Multifamily Housing Unit

We thought this message on the house was interesting, there were several houses painted with similar messages on them. One house was a message thanking volunteers. Kallie's stake and the Ft. Collins and Loveland Stakes (including Doug) went and helped clean up from the damage 2 weekends in a row.

On one Sunday they went to a chapel for just Sacrament Mtg. at 7am and then they worked a 12 hour shift until 7:30pm. The Relief Society came and fed 600 men lunch in a neighboring park. The number of volunteers was amazing!

You can see the kitchen in this house because all of the back walls are gone.

This was somewhat of a freak tornado, that it hit in the morning, that it went in a Northwesterly direction and it was somewhat early in the season to get one. And typically, the tornado's don't come this far West, but they obviously have the potential to. You can never be for sure, for sure anyway!

BBQ

BBQ RULES

We are about to enter the summer and BBQ season. Therefore it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity, as it's the only type of cooking a 'real' man will do, probably because there is an element of danger involved.

When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine...

(1) The woman buys the food.

(2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert.

(3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill.Here comes the important part:

(4) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.More routine....

(5) The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.

(6) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the situation.

Important again:

(7) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN. More routine....

(8) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.

(9) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes. And most important of all:

(10) Everyone PRAISES and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.

(11) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed 'her night off.' And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women....

Of course this wouldn't be my sweet honey, now would it Laren? Love you anyway Babe!!

Fun Giveaway

Want to go to Hawaii?

What you win!

But you can't afford it, airline tickets are too expensive?

Go here and enter this fun little contest to try your chance at winning!!

Our life in pictures

A picture diary of our recent happenings:

*Kayla and Alyssa had their Spring Piano Recital recently:

Alyssa Playing. The recital was held at a local nursing home, which I thought was a unique and good idea. The folks who lived there were able to come and listen to the kids for their "entertainment" that night.

Kayla Playing

*We've been trying to work on our food storage and so we had bought a bunch of flour, rice, pinto beans and a few other things at Costco. Then because the cannery had a better deal on Oatmeal, I bought some of that there and checked out a dry pack canner (they let us have it for a week, but it took a month of being on the waiting list). We spent the better part of one of our recent Saturdays canning. It was a family affair!

Kayla and Alyssa helping to fill the cans and put the labels on. Can you tell how messy the flour was?

We ended up canning 130 cans worth of stuff. The cannery mentioned they were raising their prices again at the end of this month. So if there is anything you want, buy it now before the prices go up!!

We opted to do the canning on our backporch, it was a good choice because of the quantity of product and the mess!

Even the little kids (Rilyn and Tyler) got in the action by helping to put the cans in boxes after they were filled, sealed and labeled.

*We've been going to the library once or twice a week lately and one of the books we checked out was a book on how to draw dinosaurs. On a recent rainy day the kids and I pulled out the book and we all had drawing lessons:

The kids drawing dinosaurs in the dining room. They got licorice while they drew too.

Kayla and her drawings.

Tyler and his drawings and some of his is a little help from Mom. ;)

Kyle and his drawings.

Rilyn and her drawings.

Alyssa, our 'like her Dad Lefty', and her dinosaur drawings.

*And King Soopers, a local grocery chain, has had raspberries on sale this week for 99 cents per 6 oz. container. So I took advantage of the sale and made some raspberry jam yesterday.

Raspberries is one of our families very favorite things!

The jam cooking.

The lids 'cooking'. I learned from my Mom that if you warm/boil the lids before placing them on the jars, they will seal themselves (when making jam) without having to put them in a water bath canner.

Some of our finished jam! Yum!! It is another family favorite way to eat Raspberries! But boy, does it use a lot of sugar! I even bought the Reduced Sugar Sure Jell Pectin (in the pink box).

*And finally, I'm getting ready to teach this little Fencepost Snowman for a midweek Enrichment Activity at the end of next Month. It will be Christmas in July at my house.

HaPpY BiRtHdAy RiLyN!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RILYN!
#6

This sweet girl has enough personality to go around, as illustrated in this picture!!

Rilyn adds so much spunk to our family! I still remember finding out I was pregnant with her at the Urgent Care when I went in to get antibiotics for a urinary tract infection.

Rilyn drawing dinosaurs last week.

I could not believe it when the doctor told me I was pregnant! He had just asked me a minute before that (in a few different ways) if I was and I told him no! I didn't see how I could have been with the craziness of the weeks before with Kyle having been in the hospital for croup and Laren being out of town at a job interview. But with my irregular cycles and the unpredictableness of life, it happened and this cute little girl is proof!

Rilyn was born right after we moved here to Colorado, and it doesn't seem like she's old enough to be 6 and going into First Grade next year. Nor does it seem like we've lived in Colorado for six years! I cannot get over how much faster time goes by the older I get.

Rilyn playing pretend with a veil.

Rilyn has a cute little face and a cute little voice to match. Many people have told us through the years that Rilyn's face looks just like a porcelain doll.

Rilyn is friendly, currently she is playing with the neighbor girl her age on the front porch. They are playing with her Pet Shop toys. She got a lot of Pet Shop at her birthday party that we did a few weeks ago right before school got out. Today was pretty much a family day.

We spent the morning (the kids and I) at a Primary Activity Day at the Park playing games, like 3 legged races and shoe kicks and wheelbarrow racing. We came home for lunch with Dad who was working on the waterfall (again) and then went to the Denver Library in downtown so the kids could collect their first prize for the Summer Reading Program. It was a Rockies Baseball Cinch Sack book bag - the perfect prize to start off with so they each have something to carry their books in!

Rilyn sitting on top of a lion reading at the library today. (I only had my cell phone camera with me, so pardon the fuzzy pictures.)

The kids watching the Puppet Show.

We stayed so the kids could see a class act puppet show with a ventriliquist. It was the most amazing puppet show I've seen. The guy did several different puppets (like 8 or so) and he told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk at the end. My kids were so amused by his different voices, though they couldn't tell that he was the one speaking them or singing them.

We came home and had Rilyn's favorite thing for dinner: Crepes. Crepes filled with raspberries and peaches and vanilla and chocolate pudding. We sang Happy Birthday over the crepes for her!

We have so much fun with this girl!
HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY RILYN!!! We love you so, so, so much!!

Blogs

Some of my favorite blog places to go:

Julie's Blog we are friends from BYU,
Krista's Blog We've been friends since right after I met Laren,
Dana's Jewelry Blog this is a great jewelry site,
Michelle's Blog she is so creative and fun and lives in AZ near where I used to live,
Mary's Blog a friend who I found blogging.

Denise's Blog she is funny,
Cristin's Blog oh SO creative,
Kristi's Blog lives in DC and has great info about everything!
Jannet's Blog she keeps it real,
Ana's Blog, what a great writer! And she rolls with the punches and persists despite the diffculties in life.

Kris's Blog she is a friend of at least 5 years and has many talents including photography
and jewelry and blogging templates.
Krista in TX Blog she is an LDS mom with brain cancer in remission,
Amber's Blog another great, funny writer. She hikes like no other Mom to young children I know!
Heidi's Blog she's just plain funny!,
Doodlebugs Paper some of the cutest paper products right on her site.

Lisa's Blog a friend and amazing Mom!,
Julianne's Blog this gal inspires me and is such a fun friend who lives in TX,
sometimes I go here (her hubby is a country doctor), or here (her hubby is a professional rancher).



This blog inspires me. She is my lovely neighbor. I like to chit chat with her
when we get the chance.

She was my VT companion, my dd's amazing PrimaryTeacher and our family photographer and friend.



I like this site, and this one too. I just found this friend again, we used to live in the same
neighborhood and served in Primary together. She now lives in Hawaii.

Just some of my many favorite places to go! I have many others that I will have to share sometime! I used to have a huge list on my sidebar until I switched my blog template one time and then they were all deleted!

Slow Cooker

On a recent trip to Costco I found this awesome new recipe book:

>

101 more things to do with a Slow Cooker

I flipped through it and it has some great recipes! I was amazed that you could actually bake bread in it - so I decided to give it a shot, and it worked! The bread was a little flat and concave but it tasted great.

I'm going to try a bunch of these recipes this summer - a way to cook without heating up the house!

The dough before I put it in the crockpot, aka slow cooker. Yeah, kind of ooey gooey looking.

The crockpot with the dough inside.

The finished product.

And here's the recipe if you'd like to try it yourself:

Honey Wheat Bread

2/3 c. powdered milk
2 c. warm water
2 T. canola or vegetable oil
1/4 c. honey
3/4 t. salt
2 1/4 t. active dry yeast
3 c. whole wheat flowr
1 c. flour

In a bowl, dissolve powdered milk in warm water, then combine with oi, honey, salt, yeast, and half of both flours. With an electric mixer beat on low spped 2 minutes. Add remaining flour and beat on low until combined. Place dough in greased 4 to 5 quart slow cooker. Cover and cook on high heat 2-3 hours.

Remove stoneware from slow cooker and let stand 5 minutes. Invert bread onto a serving platter while still hot. Serve with honey butter or your favorite jam.

**I used just warm water and no powdered milk. And I did 2 c. white flour and 2 c. whole wheat flour. And I used Olive oil instead of Canola or vegetable oil.

YUM!

And two more recipes from the same cookbook, just for fun!

All-Day Salsa Chicken
3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 jar (16 oz.) chunky salsa
1 can (10.5 oz.) cream of chicken soup, condensed.

Place chicken breast in greased slow cooker. In a bowl, combine salsa and soup. Pour misture over chicken. Cover and cook on low heat 6-8 hours. Makes 4-6 servings. Serve on a bed of rice and top with grated pepper jack cheese.


Walnut-Blackberry Delight

2 cans (21 oz. each) blackberry pie filling*
1 yellow cake mix
1/2 c. butter or margarine, melted.
2/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans, optional

Spread pie filling on bottom of greased slow cooker/crockpot. Combine cake mix and butter. Mixture will be crumbly. Pour over pie filling. Sprinkle top with nuts, if desired. Cover and cook on low heat 4 hours or on high heat 2 hours. Makes 7-9 servings.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream lightly sprinkled with cinnamon.
*Any flavor pie fillign can be substituted.

Who knew you could do all this stuff in the crockpot?

My Garden

I spent a lot of time this Spring out in my yard planting. Much of what I planted was bulbs and so they take a lot longer to come up. But we're starting to see some of the fruits of our labors.

Here's a sneak peek:

Daisies

Verbena

Creeping Phlox

Don Juan Climbing Rose

Mexican Feather Grass

A Canna Lilly I planted from a bulb

Tomato Plant

Zuchinni

Our seed-planted lawn

I call this my Dr. Seuss plant since these plants look like something right out of a Dr. Seuss book!

Laren is working on a waterfall for the corner of our backyard, slowly but surely. My latest project is doing a bunch of drypack canning. I checked out the canner from the cannery and I'm canning kidney beans, flour, rice, potato pearls and sugar. Most of the sugar will go in buckets, but I will can some of it too. I'm also going to can some spaghetti.

I cannot believe the price of everything lately, including food! And when I was at the cannery they said they are having a price increase at the end of this month. I'm wondering if the costs of everything will just keep going up and stay up and never come back down?

Summer Norm...

We are still trying to figure out our Summer "Norm"...

We are off to a somewhat disorganized start to summer. I'm hoping to somehow get more accomplished. My kids are already sleeping in and staying up late. We are still adjusting to the shocking news of Sidney's death. I'm exhausted during the week getting up at 5 to exercise from 5:30-6:30 with Laren doing the P90x workouts and walking with my friends for 45 minutes or so each day. It's the lack of sleep and physical exhaustion. But it feels great to discover muscles I didn't know I had, and to use them!!

Laren is working on a waterfall in our backyard. It is time consuming,but starting to take shape. Hopefully we'll get it done this week! Baseball is also taking over our lives, this week we have 2 practices and 2 games. We also have a dinner party this week, and Kayla and Alyssa's piano recital and we are having the missionaries to dinner. I also want to get my kids signed up for the Summer Reading Program at the Library this week.

I have several projects that I need to just get organized and do. It's hard when the house stays a perpetual mess(not disastrous, but just the clutter and sink full of dishes that drive me crazy!) It's hard to let the house be and focus on the projects because of the clutter by having all the kids home.

But I do love having the kids home! They sure are a delightful bunch to be with. Today we worked on Fasting, well really we started it last night. It was Kyle's first time of fasting (he was just baptized last month) and one of the things he fasted for was: not getting hit by the baseball at his games and practice (this is a realistic fear as it is the first year without the pitching machines and these young pitchers do not always have a good aim and he has already gotten hit a few times). His coach actually got hit by a bad pitch at practice on Friday and got a black eye and cut on his cheek, it was bad enough they were going to take him to the Urgent Care just to be checked out.

He got really hungry (he just fasted breakfast), and he wanted to sneak and eat his brother's cereal snack at Church but he was good and just held onto the Corn Chex without eating them. I kept telling him to pray for strength and then when we got home he could say a prayer to break his fast and then he could eat. I was so proud of him!! He did a good job.

And I was a little disappointed when my oldest daughter came in from her Young Women's class with a dinner roll. Apparently they gave it to the girls as a lesson handout. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea, but it was disappointing to see her eating it in Sacrament Meeting when she was supposed to be working on fasting. I asked her about it and she said she "broke her fast so she could eat it"!! Oh my! I encouraged her to quit eating it and save the rest until after Church. Reluctantly she did, but it was not an easy choice!