Please Pass The Blogger Ketchup - February 2012

So way back when, I made an attempt to catch up on all my blogging I had missed last year. Well, I didn't do a very good job. So here is my new attempt to catch up. One Saturday Emily was at a Birthday party that lasted 26 hours. I'm not kidding. I had the opportunity to go to a Women's Conference and hear TC Christensen speak. It was fabulous. I came home to the above sight. I won't tell you what game they were playing because then you would judge me, and we can't have that now can we?

My Great Uncle Ronald passed away and my Grandmother came from Dallas for the funeral. She was here for about 10 days at the beginning of February. We enjoyed her visit. The day before she left we had her and my mom and Lauren over for dinner. Since Valentines day was only two days away we had a little valentine celebration too, as you can see by the cupcakes pictured above. Then we played a little game I like to call, "How many different pictures can we take with one person". This is demonstrated below:

I made that game up right after my father passed away. Less than a month before he passed away our whole family had been together for Christmas (minus Sam who was in Mexico on a mission) and we don't have one picture of him with his grandkids or all of us girls with him or anything. Pretty much sucks. So now I make it my mission to never let a photo op moment pass by without taking full advantage of it.

Aubrey had to make a Complex Machine for the 3rd Grade Complex Machine Fair. She made a balloon popping machine.

Emily helped with balloon characterization

Getting ready for the big bang

YAY! It worked!

At the fair

Addy and I were doing a little shopping one day and she got all dressed up in the store said "Here mom, take my picture!"

Addy dressed Steve up one day after church.

I swear the kids are never in school. We have so many days off it is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. On one of their many four day weekends that they have had so far this year, I let Aubrey have a party with some of her crazy friends.

You remember our big wind storm? It blew our fireplace cap off. So we got a new one. Finally! We had an ugly green tarp covering it for months. This cap won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Although I'm now afraid if we have an earthquake it is going to fall into the house and crush us all. It was a pretty major event to install it. I wanted to ask to ride in the cap while it was being hoisted up, but I was pretty sure they would say no.

Almost there

TA DA!

And that about does it for February folks! Stay tuned for January....

Allyson's Chinese Sweatshop That Cranked Out 200 Meals In One Day

On Thursday my mom and I drove to Brigham City to go to a class Chef Tess was teaching about her 52 week meal in a jar plan. She uses freeze dried food and puts it in canning jars and adds all the spices and ingredients you need to make a meal. When you are ready to eat it you just add water and cook for about 20 minutes and eat. We decided we wanted to do it so we gathered all the supplies Thursday and Friday. We enlisted our dear friend Carla to do it with us. And since Sam and Teresa came down from Idaho for a visit, well, we enlisted them too! We were like, oh yeah, it will just take a few hours on Saturday for all of us to put the meals together. HA! More like a few 12 hours.

I did get a little sweatshopish on them. My mom and I have two totally opposite ways of doing things and I had to put my foot down when she just wanted to jump in and start throwing stuff in the bags all willy-nilly like. (we decided to put our meals in mylar bags instead of jars) I insisted on some organization. My mom sent Emily to turn on some music and I nixed that idea. So yes, my mom did say something about my sweatshop overlord ways. A few times. Oh well, it got the job done. Eventually. We were all dead tired when we finally finished up the last of the clean up at 9 pm that night, after starting at 9 am. I can't tell you how excited we were when we realized we had to set the clocks up one hour.

We had an assembly line where we each had our ingredient for each recipe and we put the right amount in the bag and passed it down to the next person.

Here's a picture of my mom writing on the bags. This is what I know she is thinking:


-I can't believe Allyson is making me divide my meals in half instead of putting enough food to feed 6 people in a bag when it is just me and Lauren at home to eat it.... (FYI: She did call me today and tell me that she and Lauren ate one of their 1/2 meals last night and there was plenty left over and she was glad she only did half meals.)(mmmhhhmmmm....)

-I can't believe Allyson is making me put my meals in these practical mylar bags when the jars would be so much cuter on my shelves.

-This would be so much better if we could turn the music back on. Dang overlord. Who does she think she is?

About 6 hours into the whole long process Lauren had pretty much had it.

We borrowed the mylar bag sealer from our church dry pack cannery. Sam was in charge of sealing the bags. Addy was in charge of bag transport.

Our meals that we ended up with. I have 40 complete meals (just add water) to feed my family. Carla and my mom (since they have less people eating at their house and since my mom has a bossy daughter who thinks she is in charge of everything and everybody) went home with 80, yes EIGHT-EEE meals each! Each! My mom sent half of her meals home with Sam and Teresa so she has 40 and they have 40. Pretty good haul for a days work, I'd say. The meals packaged the way they are will last 4-5 years (Yes I know mother, they would last 5-7 in the jars. That can break in an earthquake. Or in a kitchen with 200 glass jars and kids running around. And that are hard to transport.) I plan on throwing a few in our 72 hour kits.

We did take a short break in the early evening. Emily went to a Birthday party. Sam and Teresa and Lauren took Zac, Aubrey and Addy to see The Lorax. I worked on stuff I had to do for church and my poor sweet dear mother finished the meals and started the clean up. Then we grilled hamburgers and did a little Kinect Zumba. I have a picture of Zac and me doing Zumba but that is a picture that I will not be posting. So you will have to make due with this one of Sam and Teresa.

Never A Dull Moment - Bread Interrupted

Oh the drama of living on a dead end street in the middle of nowhere. There truly never is a dull moment....

I had just put my apron on and was standing at my kitchen counter to start making the bread we are having with our soup for dinner. That's when I had to stop the bread making and call the police (for the second time in three days)(they are on my speed dial, thank you very much). Then I had to go find my binoculars. Then I had to go upstairs to get a better view. Then I had to sit for like 20 minutes looking out the window with my binoculars to see what was going to happen.

Nothing real exciting happened. Now the bread isn't going to have time to rise and be ready to have dinner at the time I wanted it. Dang dead end street...

I LOVE IT!

Here is a picture of me with some of my fellow hood mommas/gang members. Yes. We have our own gang. And gang sign. And initiation. That's how awesome we are. And we are besties with the cops in our town, because we talk to them on such a regular basis.

This was my first time in a police car and we were just driving down to the end of the street to show the police officer some "items" that we had found. We all three got in the back seat and it was pretty darn claustrophobic back there. I was handling it OK until the officer said, "Does it freak you out to know that now that you closed that door, you can't open it?" Ohhhhh yes. Yes it does. Thankfully Lori was next to me and offered me her hand to hold and had me look into her eyes and take deep breaths. That's why I got upgraded to the front seat. It was awesome.

Double A's Par-tAy

As you read in my last post, Aubrey (who has the most awesome birth date of 03/03/03), turned 9 years old on Saturday. Her friend Maddie had a birthday earlier in the week and had her party at a fun trampoline park on Saturday, so Aubrey was able to spend the day of her Birthday with her friend Maddie having fun. She came home that evening and we had a party for her with our family and my mom and sister Lauren and 3 of Aubrey's friends (I decided that Birthday's in our house this year are going to be low key).

The girls played Fruit Ninja on the Kinect
And they played Just Dance 3

And ate pizza and root beer floats

And opened presents

And sang Happy Birthday and ate cupcakes and tried in vain to blow out the trick candles

Happy Birthday Silly Girl

Flashback/Flashforward Friday - Double A

Flashback: Spring 2003

Aubrey's Blessing Day

03/03/03: Aubrey's Birth

It was a Monday. I had gone to the doctor on Friday and at that time I was only a few days overdue. Doctor Barton told me that if I hadn't gone into labor by Monday morning to call around 6 AM and come in for an induction. Well by golly, I was not about to be induced. So I made it my mission that weekend to go into labor on my own. My parents hadn't moved to Utah yet, so my mom was here from Dallas for a few weeks. I remember sitting in church with her on Sunday and she was timing my contractions. They kept getting closer and closer together. After church Steve and I went for a long walk and he took over the timing of my contractions which were still getting closer and closer together. Then I came home and the contractions stopped. I was so mad. But YAY! I woke up around 3 AM ready to go to the hospital. My neighbor came over to stay with Zac and Em and my mom and Steve and I left for the hospital.

They checked us in and gave me an epidural. Then Steve, my mom and I promptly fell asleep. We woke up around 7:30 - 8ish in time to push the baby out. And we were so excited to find out she was a girl (we didn't find out what any of our kids were before they were born). That was one of my easiest births. And my worst recovery. That was the only time in my life when I was in such excruciating pain I really wanted to die. Literally. Thankfully I didn't and life is all good now. I had an epidural headache because my spinal cord was punctured by the epidural needle. But that is a story for a different day.

Regardless of my problems, our little family was so glad to have our sweet little Aubrey Anna (Double A) with us at last!

Steve and Aubrey

Pretty-N-PinkAubrey and Me

One Year Old

She was playing one day and she was wearing my shoes and carrying her baby doll around. She fell asleep half leaning half standing by the fireplace.

Aubrey's 2nd Birthday

Flashforward: March 3, 2003

When I started this post it was still Friday. It is just now Midnight which means that Aubrey is officially 9 years old, and she's asleep so she doesn't even know it. My sweet little Aubrey Anna is 9! I can't believe it! Here is a picture of her in Missouri in November of 2011.

November 2011

September 2011
September 2011

August 2011

First Day of School August 2011

Aubrey, I can't believe how grown up you are. I remember when you were little and it was just you and me at home together everyday while the other kids were in school and before Addy was born. I used to tell you that you had to stay my little baby forever so I could just love and snuggle you. You didn't listen very well. I am glad. Because you have grown up to be such a sweet, beautiful girl. You are crazy and funny and I am so glad you are a part of our family. I love you!

Survivors

We have had a very mild winter around here. Hardly any snow in the valley. We really haven't worn coats at all, just hoodies. And we have had some beautiful short sleeve days that feel like spring. It's been great...except...all winter long I have know what was coming with a winter like that. A spring like we had last year. It snowed all spring long. We couldn't even go swimming the whole month of June without freezing our patooties off.

So today it got really windy. Thankfully not windy like Storm of the Century windy, but windy enough our power was out for a few hours today. Then all of the sudden these huge nasty clouds came screaming by. They were moving so fast. And now, well, it's a blizzard outside. Now that it's almost spring....

My kids got so excited when they saw the clouds moving in, that they went outside to play in it. When it started to snow they went around gathering all the junk they could find to build a shelter out in the corner of the yard. I went out to take a picture of them. They are all huddled in their "shelter" as you can see from the picture. Zac tells me that this is the first Apocalyptic snow storm and they are preparing to be able to survive the rest. Who knows, he could be right....