The Russians Are Coming - Part One

Back in August, wildfires burning outside of Moscow Russia were blanketing the city in smoke. Too bad for the Russians, not so bad for us. Because the US Embassy evacuated my sister and her kids right smack dab in the middle of my house for two weeks. Her husband Scott was able to help them get here, but he was only able to stay for a few days. We LOVED having them here. Our house feels so empty with them gone. I have about a bajillion pictures to post of all the fun we had with them. I am gonna have to break it up over a few different posts.

Here is Part One:

Scott and Owen

Zac and Steve playing with the sling shot and trying not to hit anyone upside the head with a rock.
Emily, Tia and Aubrey

Silly, stupid me. I thought it would be fun one night to build a fire in the back yard and cook hot dogs and s'mores for dinner. It wasn't until we were sitting by the fire and I couldn't get away from the smoke that I realized, HEY DUMMY! Smoke is probably the LAST thing they wanna be around right now. My gracious guests assured me that the smoke put off by my backyard fire was nothing compared to the smoke they had to endure back home.

The kids ate hot dogs. The adults patiently waited until the kids were snug in bed and then we ordered take out from Pei Wei. Our Russian house guests were trying to cram in as much yummy American food as possible. And we did our best to oblige. That day I had Cafe Rio Pork Salad for lunch and Pei Wei lettuce wraps for dinner. Mmmmm...that was a good day. Because we got to spend it with family, of course.

This is a picture of the kids NOT feeding a strangers horse carrots over the back yard fence. We NEVER do this. Just for the record...

Zac made a cake one night. Mmmm...feeding 7 kids cake. That was a fun mess to clean up.

I learned my lesson after the cake, and made them take the popcorn outside. OK, not really. I ALWAYS make my kids eat popcorn outside. Because I am mean like that.

INSERT DALLAS TRIP HERE

(click on the above words to be taken to the Dallas post)

The day after returning from Dallas I dropped my kids off for their first day of school and met everyone at IHOP to celebrate. Here is Baron, Sam and Teresah.

Lauren and Kay

Tia and Me

Addy, Kristy and Owen

That same night we had dinner at the park, as illustrated by the photo below.

Watch for "The Russians Are Coming - Part Two". Coming to a blog near you.

MOnday MOnring Musings - Why I CAn't CLose My Eyes Without Seeing Pears an dFeeling Worms

See that title, how I typed it. I decided to leave it and not correct it. That is pretty much how well my hands are working right now. They have been busily peeling pears ALL DAY LONG. I spent the day at my mom's house canning pears. OK, I should seriously just leave all my mistakes so you can see how bad I am typing now. I have to go back and correct every third word...Back to the pears. My mom's neighbor gave her a huge box of pears and we spent forever canning them. And now we have a whoppin' 14 jars to show for it. When I realized that, I wanted to cry. FOURTEEN FREAKIN' JARS FOR A WHOLE DAYS WORTH OF WORK! But they are quart jars, if that makes it any better. I figure it was a good learning experience for me. I have never canned fruit before. Now I have.


And I have peeled more fruit today than I have ever peeled in my life. I don't peel anything. Ever. I don't believe in it. Too much work. Besides, that's where all the vitamins are, right? I make mashed potatoes with the peels on. We eat all our fruit with the peel on. I don't even think my kids know that most people peel oranges to eat them. I just slice them. I do peel my bananas before I eat them though but only because they have a handy peeling mechanism built in.


While we were about the business of canning, I suddenly felt something wet on the back of my neck and asked my sister Lauren to see what it was. It was a WORM! I freaked out. For the rest of the time we were working, I kept feeling like I had worms on my neck and in my hair.


I took a little trip down to my mothers storage room in her basement today and guess what I came back up with. The mother load of pictures! Oh yeah. I have been posting a ton of old pictures on facebook lately. Just wait people, just wait. So many of you are in them. I wish I had time, I would post them all now.


I got home just in time to stop by the school and pick the kids up. When we pulled up to the house the outside door to my bedroom was wide open. I guess it had been that way all day. Nice. I'm just glad we had the chickens locked up in their yard. Otherwise I am sure they would have been in the house. That would have been fun to clean up. Nasty poopers.


As soon as we got home Aubrey started telling me about how stupid (her word, not mine) their substitute Librarian was today. She said the Librarian said that she was going to tell them a true story. Aubrey started telling me the story and then she got to this part and with total exasperation she said, "And she said their are ELVES that come to life at night." She just crinkled up her face and shook her head. I wish you could have seen it, it was cute. I have cute children. I also swear I have a worm crawling on my chin as I type.

Last week at the State Capitol they had all these activities going on for Constitution day. They had the most activities on Saturday. We planned to take the kids and go Saturday afternoon. From what we read online it sounded like something that would take up a good part of the day. Then they had a freedom concert with Lex de Azevedo that I really wanted to go to. I thought we would go do all the activities, then go downtown for dinner, then head back to the Capitol for the concert. Well, we got to the Capitol and it was pretty disappointing what they had going on. Like people loading up and carting the displays out at 2:30 when the event was supposed to go until 5:00. They did have a few activities that the kids could do, so we did that. When we were done, we still had 4 hours until the concert started. And that was after we had walked around the Capitol and wasted a bunch of time. So we decided to come home. Oh well, the kids had fun doing the activities. Here are some pictures. They had to try to build their own gum drop Capitol building.

They also had to go on a scavenger hunt and find different things in the building. Here's some pictures of Addy while on her hunt.

Flashback Friday - Myrle

These are pictures of Steve's mother, Myrle. This month marks the 20th year of her leaving this mortal life. I never met her in this life, but in a way I have. As I get to know her son and her other children, I also get a glimpse of her. And I know she was a wonderful mother. She leaves behind a great legacy. Her 6 children have grown up to be wonderful people and she has 14 beautiful grandchildren on this earth, and one special one in Heaven with her. I am grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for the knowledge I have that families are forever.

A Visit From An Old Friend

Back at the beginning of August, my college roommate, Tina, came to stay with us. She and her family were on their way from Missouri to Idaho and stayed overnight at our house. The next day we took the kids to see some of the sights downtown. It was fun seeing her again and getting to catch up. I also enjoyed meeting her family. It has been about 15 years since the last time we saw each other. The above picture was taken at our apartment circa 1992/93.

These first 2 pictures are at the Ellis Island Family History exhibit in the Joseph Smith Building.

Aubrey, admiring the chandelier in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building

Addy and Zac looking at the Temple

Chris, Tina and their kids

Steve was able to meet us downtown for awhile

Jenna, Aubrey and Addy

Steve and Addy on top of the Conference Center

All the kids waiting to ride light rail back home

We've Been Schooled

I am WAY behind in my posts. I'm trying to catch up. First I must say, my count was off on my last post, that was actually my 701st post. Not 700. I never was any good at math. Anyhoo. School is back in session and has been for a few weeks now. Summer seemed to fly by so fast. When I was waking the kids up for their first day of school, it seemed like just a few weeks had passed since that morning I woke them up and we sang a chorus of "School's Out For Summer" before blowing out the candles on our "First Day Of Summer Waffles". It went by so fast and so many things I had planned never came to pass. Oh well. There's always next summer.

So Z. He started his first year of Jr. High! Can't quite believe it. He is enjoying it so far. He is even in the band and learning to play the French Horn.

Emily started 5th grade, she will be in Jr. High before I know it. And Aubrey started 2nd. She is still in Spanish immersion where 1/2 her day is all in Spanish.

My sweet little Addy started her 1st year of Pre School last week. She is so excited. And she is not the only one!
Here she is with her teacher.

That's Fair

FYI: For those of you who care

(which should be just about all of you, but is probably only me and google)

This is my

700th Blog Post

*she curtsies, smiles, waves your admiring gestures away*

"Oh, it's nothing really..."


Now, back to the post and this cute little gal:

Growing up, I attended the LARGEST BESTEST State Fair ever in the whole entire world, just about every year of my life. So when I moved away from that place where everything is bigger and better, the thought of going to a lesser state fair, well...that just wasn't even a thought at all. Then last year, my kids and I watched an Oprah where she attended the above mentioned state fair and my kids wanted to go so bad. I realized that by being the state fair snob that I am, I was depriving my children of some fantastic experiences and memories. So yesterday after the kids got home from school, Steve and I loaded them into the swagger waggon and headed for the fair. We had a BLAST! I learned that I am way too old for really fast, spinning rides. Which unfortunately describe just about all the rides at the fair. Addy and I stuck mostly to the slower, less spinning rides. I was glad to have her as my ridding partner. Except for that one time, when we were on the spinning dragons, and she kept turning the wheel to make us go around faster and faster...

What's For Dinner - Vegetable Medley

I haven't done one of these posts in a long time. I made this for dinner tonight and it was SO DANG YUMMY I just had to share. Even my kids LOVED it. I participate in a food co-op every week. I love all the fresh fruits and veggies I get for only $15! If you are interested, you should check it out. They have locations all over UT and some in ID, AZ and TX. I love it because I get my fruits and veggies there, and we have tried so many things we never would have tried otherwise. I go to a bread outlet about once a month and stock up on bread that I freeze. I buy 8-10 gallons of milk at a time and put them in my extra fridge. That means I make a trip to Costco or Sam's about once a month and a trip to a regular grocery store about once a month. I LOVE not having to go to the store every week! And I save a ton because there are no impulse buys (except for that one trip a month).

Anyway, back to dinner. I had a lot of leftover veggies that I needed to use from the past few weeks. So I took a baking dish, threw some chicken tenders in, then cut up whatever vegetables I wanted to get rid of. They were: potatoes, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, and red and green bell peppers. I threw those on top of the chicken. I also added some minced garlic. Then I took a bottle of store brand "Olive Oil and Vinegar" salad dressing and dumped that on top of the whole thing and popped it into the oven. An hour and a half later we had the most fabulous dinner. I served it with Rhodes rolls. 'Cause I'm fancy like that. So seriously, it was the easiest dinner to make and it was delish. Next time you have a plethora of vegetables, you should give it try!

Remembering...

I woke up this morning remembering what it was like waking up 9 years ago on this day. I woke Zac up, took him to the kitchen so he could eat breakfast and get ready to go to Pre-School. I turned on the little TV that was sitting on my kitchen counter. The first plane had already hit the first tower. I went into my bedroom and turned on the TV and told Steve he needed to wake up and watch this. I went back in the kitchen with Zac. I watched with the rest of the world as the second plane hit the second tower. I remember what it felt like in our country that day. I remember what it felt like in the days that followed. I remember how we came together as Americans. I wish we could do that again. Without a tragedy this time.

We talked to the kids this morning and explained to them why this day is a special day in our country. We went to a nearby Botanical Center where we heard tale of a 9/11 Memorial that was built to honor the Utahan's who lost their lives on 9/11/01. We couldn't find the Memorial anywhere, but it was a beautiful place to be.

On a completely separate note, look how they trained this fruit tree to grow. We plan on planting a lot of fruit trees and I LOVE this.