Never A Dull Moment - They're Back!

So, almost a year ago today I did this post about this truck driving around with this experimental windmill strapped to the back. Well guess who's back and parked in front of my house right this very moment? See for yourself:

I was just returning to my part of the neighborhood and BAM! This was coming right at me. I fumbled around with my cell phone, trying to turn the camera on so I could take a picture before they passed me, but I just couldn't get it out in time. I was too busy trying to drive Steve's ridiculously large truck, maneuver between this truck and it's strange cargo, and all the construction from a new house that is always blocking the road on the way to my house. I thought it was more important not to crash Steve's truck than to take the picture, since on his way out the door he had to make some kind of smartalec remark about not knocking the mirrors off when backing out of the garage. Look, if your mirrors are gonna stick that far out from your vehicle, build a bigger garage. You know what I'm sayin'. FYI: those huge truck mirrors with their electronically movable parts are really expensive to replace....so I've heard....

Anyway, I was so distraught that I didn't get a picture, because things have been really boring here in my neighborhood, aside from the all out battle we are waging with the Utah Department of Transportation, but that's another story for another day. Just two days ago my neighbor April and I were talking about how boring this spring is gonna be now that we have a house built at the end of our long cul-de-sac, and so all the high school kids won't use that as a place to go get high. It's been so long since I've had to pull out my binoculars, text back and forth with the Momma Posse and call the police. It's been so long since I have had a big ol bull tromping through my yard or a little yellow plane buzzing my house. So I was so glad when the white truck with its strange cargo circled back around and parked in front of my house! YAY! I live in the strangest place ever!

And A Grand St. Paddy's Day Ta Ya Too!

Hawareya? Well, I'll be tellin' you how I fare. I'm tryin' ta be grand altogether. What with bein' all decked out in me fav-o-rite color right down ta the glitter shamrock body art I'm wearin'. Not ta mention the green crepes I'm makin' far an ahfterschool snack, and the fact that I'm speakin' in an Irish brogue (ah, don't ya wish you could hear dat?) And my dear husbandman that I've not hardly seen for nigh on a week now is on his way back inta town at this vary moment. But I'm afraid I'm ganna have to do somethin' about this laddie and lassies and their poor attitude they did be commin' home with. They're really startin' ta throw off my green groove I've got goin' on about here. I can't be thrown offa my green groove, ya know whaddimean?

Aubrey's 8th Birthday Party

My sweet little Double A. Aubrey Anna. She turned 8 on Thursday, March 3rd. We had a "little" party to celebrate. One of the bonuses of living in our neighborhood, 10 million children age 8 and under. Which makes for a fun party. I don't know how it happened, but we had 17 CRAZY girls here Thursday after school to celebrate Aubrey's special day with her.

We had a super fun time, what with the balloons and pinata, and hula hoops and all. If you look at this next picture and think, "Wow! That looks like a fun thing to do at a birthday party with 17 little girls!" Let me just give you a word of warning. DON'T DO IT! I'm tellin' you right now. It will turn into a playground nightmare of drama to the max. I had to make them turn in the jump ropes and go inside and play something else. Other than that it was a fun fun time!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY SWEET AUBREY!

Aubrey's Baptism

On Thursday our little sweet Aubrey Anna turned 8 years old. Yesterday she was Baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was a special day around here. In our church we believe that little children are without sin and therefore do not need Baptism. We believe that once you reach the age of accountability (8) and know and understand the difference between right and wrong, then you are Baptized by one with the proper Priesthood authority. Steve Baptized Aubrey yesterday. After her Baptism we had friends and family over to our house for lunch. Thank you to everyone who came out to show your love and support. To read more about what we believe about Baptism, click here.

Flashback/Flashforward Friday - Grandmother/Granddaughter

Flashback: Myrle 1955

Flashforward: Aubrey 2011

Last Sunday Aubrey and I took a little walk out back to take pictures to put on her Baptism invitation. I came inside, immediately put the pictures on the computer and then immediately went into the other room to get the scrapbook with Steve's mother's pictures in it. I've always thought Aubrey looks like Myrle, but then sometimes she looks so much like my side of the family. However, there was no denying it when I put their pictures side by side. She is the spitting image of her grandmother. Myrle passed away in 1990, three years before I met Steve. I am sad that I never met her, but so glad that a part of her lives on thorough her 14 living grandchildren.

If You Like Me (even just a little), You Will Read This Post

OK. So a few weeks ago, we all established that my knife situation really sucks big time. BIG TIME. If you are not aware of this sad situation, please click here to familiarize yourself with it. Well, I made a plea to all my dear friends out there to help remedy the situation. And a HUGE

THANK YOU

(this is as big as blogger will allow me to make it, otherwise it would be way, way bigger)

goes out to all of you who have already placed orders or have promised to attend my little shin dig tomorrow night. Really, THANK YOU!


If you find yourself needing to get out of the house for a break tomorrow night (Thursday), you are more than welcome to stop by my Pampered Chef Cooking Show. We will be making Delicious Mexican Lasagna, coupled with my mothers homemade salsa and a little chit chat. How can you even resist? Seriously? The party starts at 6:30 PM, but feel free to stop by anytime.


If you can't come but still want to help support me in my Knife Dream, you can place an order online by clicking here. Just enter my name as hostess. My party closes on Monday the 28th. The February special is any $60 order gets to choose one of these products for free. I thought I would take a minute to share with you some of my favorite Pampered Chef products:


The Mini Spatula. I LOVE this and I use it every single day. It is the perfect size for taking the middle extra gooey cookie off the cookie sheet (and shoving it in your mouth before anyone sees you) without disturbing the other cookies. It is also the perfect size for serving anything out of a casserole dish. It's only $5 and I think I'm gonna order another one because the one I have is always in use.

The Rectangular Stone. I have never before owned stoneware, but when we made the pizza below at my sisters New Years Eve party on one I said to meselfs: DUDE! You need one a those! The pizza requires it.

The Garlic Press. HELLO! I don't do garlic without it. You just stick the clove in, peel and all and press. The garlic comes out, the peel stays in. Then you use the handy dandy little cleaning tool to dispose of the peel. Fresh garlic without smelling like it for days after.

The Mega Scraper. I don't own one of these yet. But my mother does and she is in ♥ with it. I can't wait to get my hands on one for myself. Use it to stir and scrape and then just LEAVE IT IN the pot while you are cooking. I LOVE that. There is also a Micro version (which you can have for free with a $60 order).

And last but not least, the good old Batter Bowl. This is another thing that gets used on an almost daily basis at my house. It is an 8 cup measuring bowl, with a lid, that you can use in your oven to bake in, or your freezer. For the freezing of things.

So there ya have it. Just a sampling of some of my fav's. What are yours?

PS: Pamperd Chef makes a FABULOUS Mother's Day gift. Mother's Day is only 73 days away. Just think, you could have your shopping done now!

Monday Morning Musings - Dora, The Freakishly Hairy Explorer

Today might as well be Monday, right? Monday holidays nullify all the fun that goes along with Monday and push it all over to Tuesday. Poor Tuesday. When the whole Monday holiday thing happens, Tuesday gets pretty much overlooked. I don't think Monday is the same for me, as a stay at home mom, as it is for most people. Instead of dreading the Monday Morning Back to the Grindstone routine, I look forward to getting everyone and everything back on schedule.


Yesterday, for our holiday, we all went our separate ways around here. My brother Sam and his wife Teresa were in town over the weekend. Teresa and my sister Lauren took Emily and Aubrey to see Justin Bieber. In 3D, nonetheless. And may I say a sincere heartfelt thank you from both Steve and me, to Lauren and Teresa for sparing us from such an event. Sam and Zac headed for the slopes for a day of skiing and boarding. And Steve, Addy and I went to IKEA, along with the rest of the greater Salt Lake area. But now, everyone is doing their "Back to the Grindstone Thing" and I am the only one left in the house. Yay me!


On Sunday we had the opportunity to attend not one, but two Sacrament Meetings. The first one was our own. We were getting a new Bishopric and just could not miss out. When that meeting was over, we loaded up in the car and headed over to our friend Spencer's ward for his baby's blessing. It was really super fun trying to keep all the kids quiet and reverent for two back to back Sacrament Meetings. Half of the kids were just fine. The other half, my twins who are seven years apart, were having trouble getting along. Mostly because the older one kept doing things to try and get the younger one to scream. At one point the youngest actually did scream. Right out loud. In the middle of Sacrament Meeting #2. One of the many things her sister was doing to upset her that day? She had her Dora coloring book and was proceeding to color all the Doras so they would look like this:
(to make it even better, when we got home, she cut them out and taped them to her sisters bedroom door) Addy was pretty upset over hairy Dora, but what upset her the most and what she yelled out rather loudly in Sacrament Meeting #1 was this, "DORA DOESN'T HAVE GREEN EYES!" Really Addy? That's what you are upset the most about?


Speaking of the oldest twin of mine. Here is her post it note shrine she made in the kitchen. It had things on it like, "Mom, buy new cereal at the store", "Mom, I need money so I can shop online at Justice". I will say, I did buy new cereal at the store, but the Justice thing, yeah. I just threw that one in the trash. I love you Em!

This morning, as Aubrey was getting ready for school, she told me that queen ants really freak her out. The regular ones, not so much. But the queen ones, well, she went on for five minutes telling me why she found them so offensively freaky. I was just listening to her and when she was done I said, "Well, OK then." And she looked at me and said, "Uhh, this is the part where you say, 'yeah, the freak me out a little too', so that I don't feel so weird for being the only one freaked out by them." I said, "Sorry, Aubrey, you ARE the only one freaked out by them".

So, you know, Survivor started again last week. I remember the days when I was a lone viewer of Survivor in my home. Then just a few years ago, I got Steve hooked on it too. Now he is more excited than me when it come on. Last week, our power went out a few hours before the season premier came on. Steve called the power company to see when the power would be restored. They told him it would probably be around 9pm. Steve then said, "You do know the Season Premier of Survivor is tonight, don't you?" And the power company guy said, "Sorry to cause you any inconvenience Sir. We are working on it the best we can." Looks like I've created a monster. You will be glad to know that the power and DVR were up and running before Survivor came on. Whew! Disaster averted. And please, Survivor people, keep Boston Rob around a little longer than last time. I'm begging you.

Flashback Friday - Best Friends

Flashback: January 2005

Rylee, Emily & Kylee

Flashforward: February 2011

Kylee, Emily & Rylee

These girls have been friends pretty much since they left their mothers wombs. The first 8 years of their lives they spent living just around the corner from each other. Now they all live 30-60 minutes apart. They were so excited to see each other again when we went to Max's Birthday party a few weeks ago. It was hard to get them to say good bye to each other when it was time to leave.

Flashback Friday - Over The Hill

Flashback: April 5, 2007

Steve's 40th Birthday. We woke up that morning to find this gift from our friend Max on our front porch. That night we went out to dinner with friends to celebrate.

Allyson & Steve

Dianna, Michelle, Ken & Max
LaRee & Brent

Aron & Cammy

Ash, Scott & April

Flashforward: February 5, 2011

Brian, Steve, Zac, Aron, Max & Brent

That same friend Max, who left the gift for Steve on our front porch, finally turned 40. We went to his "Kid" Birthday party complete with pin the tail on the donkey, bingo and a pinata. It was a fun night.

Dianna, Cammy, Allyson, LaRee

Playing a serious game of Bingo

Max sharing his HUGE helium balloon with all the kids.

Knife Dreams

This is the sad, sad story of my knife drawer. It's pretty embarrassing really. I have never in my life owned a decent kitchen knife. It's true. Those two knives up there, those are a pretty accurate representation of my knife drawer. I've never had (but have always longed for) a nifty knife block with fancy pants knife handles sticking out of the top. This is the situation though. I am just about the cheapest person you will ever meet. Really. And to spend an exuberant amount of money on a knife has never really seemed rational to me. That top knife is a Pampered Chef bread knife I broke down and bought for $20 about 10 years ago when I had a functioning bread maker and was "making" homemade bread on a regular basis. It is the best knife I have. OK, it's pretty much the ONLY knife I have. Except for that bottom knife. I have about 10 of those I bought at Walmart for like $5.

It has never bothered me much before, except lately. I have found myself wanting a real grown up woman's knife to use for all my slicing and dicing needs. A few weeks ago I happened to find myself in my friend Carla's kitchen for a Pampered Chef Cooking Show. And I found myself longingly gazing at this little beauty:

I know, right. Guess how much it costs? This bamboo block with 9 luscious forged knives, the Pampered Chef shears which I have seen cut through chicken bones and a lid from a can of corn. And don't forget the honing tool that also comes with the set. Yeah....$415. BAHAHAHAHA! Yep. Like I would ever even consider paying that much for ANYTHING. But then I heard this...Anyone who holds a show in February and has $650 in sales can buy this puppy for what? Lemme hear ya? $166. SAY WHA? Oh yeah, you heard me. One hunered sixey six. Now that....I would consider. I mean, look what you're getting. So I somehow found myself booking a Pampered Chef Cooking Show for February. Who would have ever thunk it?

Anyhoo. I am not a shallow, stupid person. I know that my lack of a decent knife is not a big deal in the grand scheme of everything that is going on in the world today. But I look at it this way. I am a 37 year old woman who spends a vast majority of my life in the kitchen cooking and has never in my whole 37 years of life had a decent knife to call my own. And dang it. I would like to buy myself this set of knives.

So yeah. I'm havin' a PAR-TAY! And you're all invited. Really. You are. Here's the low down:

Thursday, February 24th

My House

6:30 PM

"Real Food, Real Fast"

And if you can't come but would still LOVE to help me get to $650 worth of orders while getting some fabulous products in return (for yourself or someone you know who is getting married or having a birthday or, you know, Mother's Day is coming up), you can order online and have your order shipped right straight to you! How awesome is that? Click here to go to the website, go to "Shop Online" in the top right corner, and enter my name as hostess. Click here for the February Special! And thanks in advance, for helping to make my knife dream my knife reality.

(If you order online your order will not ship until I close my party on Monday Feb. 28th)