tuna fish

As I contemplated what to have for lunch today I couldn't bear the thought of another ham sandwich or leftovers or the remains of my kids lunch, I scoured the pantry and my eyes zeroed in on the tuna fish. Its has probably been a year since I've eaten it last, so I got out the mayo, pickles and bread and created a scrumptious lunch. As I took bite after bite I kept thinking of all the tuna sandwiches I could of eaten over the last year, why was I wasting my time on chicken nuggets and Totino's pizza when good ole tuna was there all along. I know it's stinky, and gives ya bad burps, and you feel the need to brush your teeth again, and my stomach always feels a little queasy afterward, but for those few minutes of delicious eating its all worth it. Give tuna a chance, that's all I'm asking people!!

p.s. for those of you who only like to look at the pictures on blogs(todd), here's one Courtney took of baby and me

Look at those arms-i promise her diet is mostly fruits and vegetables!!

Kids Pictures

Corney took pictures of my kids ( I was too cheap to pay for the school pictures-highway robbery) These turned out sooo good !! thank you thank you thank you Cort!!

A yummy dinner

I got this recipe from Celeste, she had gotten it from her friend. I finally decided to try it and I thought it was great and easy!!

Speedy Chicken Stir Fry

8 oz angel hair pasta (I used thin spaghetti)

2 c. broccoli

1lb chicken cut in strips

1/2 c. Asian Toasted Sesame Dressing (Kraft) (It's worth buying I'll start making this a ton-it would be a great marinade- more of a Thai flavor)

2 T. soy sauce

1/4 t. or to taste ground ginger ( I didn't use it)

garlic powder

crushed red peppers

1/3 c. chopped peanuts

Cook pasta. Add broccoli for the last 3 minutes of pasta cooking. Cook chicken. Stir in rest of stuff. Cook 1 minute. Drain pasta mixture. Add chicken mixture, add peanuts.

I served this with fried rice

heat oil in a pan add chopped onion and frozen veggies (peas or veggie mix) cook till tender. add and egg or 2 and scramble. dump rice in ( I love to use my leftover rice if I have any) add soy sauce to taste. You can add a little cooked ham or chicken, or garlic powder if you like.

I keep forgetting to take pictures of my food so I thought I 'd add a picture for your viewing delight.

Good Ole Boys

Todd, Roxy, and I were our in our front yard (he was working I was just watching him work), when I hear our little neighbor boy 2 houses down yelling, "Roxy, look at me, I'm peeing in the rocks!" I look over and sure enough his pants are down and he's peeing by his driveway with a hug grin on his face!! I'm going to keep my eye on that guy!!!!

chicken sale

For all you Utahans I thought I'd let you know that Maceys is having a sale on their boneless, skinless chicken breast, $1.39 /lb!! Today is the last day and its a great deal. Every time they have this sale I stalk up and buy as much as I can. The best way to preserve it, I've found, is to cut off the junk, cut it up into tenders or leave whole, place on a cookie sheet and freeze the individual pieces. Then I put them in freezer baggies. They aren't all stuck together and you just take out however many pieces you need and defrost. Sorry, kind of of boring post... here's a joke to liven it up-Knock Knock. Who's there? Chair. Chair who? Chair if I come in? I made that up.

the merry merrells

We had lots of family fun this weekend. Amber, Sean and the kids came down with my dad for a long weekend. Sean and Todd hunted leaving Amber and I home with 8 kids and 1 minivan-yes, that means we were stuck at home!! On Saturday Celeste, the kids, and my parents came up for the day to watch the BYU game; Cherie and Andy came later in the evening. My dad took Amber and I to Costco to get food for the day. Little did he know he brought the wrong people-we both have a crazy disease when it comes to spending money-even if we aren't paying for it, we still don't want to spend it. My dad said to not look at the prices and just get what we wanted, we told him we had suppressed that impulse for so long it was going to take a lot more than a trip to Costco to fix it. We got yummy food, a huge $17 chocolate cake(dad threatened to buy 2 desserts if we didn't make up our minds), and neither of us could bear to see the final price at the checkout stand. Thanks dad, we dined like royalty!!

The kids munching choc. cake and making "arm toots" Being hilarious, as usual ( I'm saying that sarcastically)the little ones in the tub-they had fun throwing dirt in Todd's freshly dug trenches.

every time Andy picks up Camilla she cries like a monsters got her.

Haiku

Car

Kids ready for school

Car will not start, Todd must come

Car is in the shop!!

Yard

To save precious time

Paid someone else to trench dirt

They aren't deep enough!!!

Movie

Rented Iron Man

Paid late fee to still watch it

It was a cartoon!!!

This will cheer me up!!

Peaches coming out my ears (and a few earwigs coming out of the peaches)

Prayers are answered!! I've been trying to do an overhaul on my food storage and really wanted to do lots of pears and peaches this year, so I've been praying that we'd find ways to increase our food storage. My bro-in-law mentioned that his parents have tons of peaches, so we've been bugging him to get them. Yesterday, my b-i-l called and said his parent's neighbor had peaches falling off of the trees and we could come get them. todd shows up later with 3 boxes of peaches!!! Our problem is, we don't have enough bottles!! Last night Todd and I bottled 38 jars, I have peach fruit leather drying, and trays of sliced peaches freezing. We still have 1 1/2 boxes left!!!!

Todd knows way more about canning than I do, I would never attempt this without him. When I had to lift the jars out of the pot (he had ran to the store for more lids) my arms were shaking, steam was melting my skin, and I just prayed that my overtired muscles (kickboxing that morning) would make it to the table.

We set up our camp stove on the deck so we could use more burners on our stove and not overheat the house-quite ingenious!

Here they are-thankfully, all the lids "popped"
I had heard rustling downstairs while we were canning and figured it was roxy (its always roxy) later we heard crying, we went downstairs and this is what we found-roxy had fallen asleep on the first step!!

tagged

3 Joys
cooking in my new kitchen
todd coming home from work
seeing the baby crawl around

3 Fears
kids getting hit by a car
walking in the dark alone
our house payment

3 Goals
get Cort's pictures hung on the wall
start online photo albums for kids
go out to dinner with old friends

3 Current Obsessions
blogging and blog stalking
BYU Cougar football 59-0 ya baby
picking the boogers out of baby's nose

3 Facts- I had Todd do this one for me
funny
friendly
FINE!!

Coldplay

I have been playing the new Coldplay throughout the house lately. The other day Meg came up to me and said, " is that Heavenly Father or Jesus?" I said, "what...... oh, no, this is coldplay singing." "Oh," she said, " it sounded like them." (H.F. & J) Chris Martin does sound heavenly!!

perfect for a rainy day

My friend Kim gave me a recipe for a chowder. Everything I have ever tried from her has been delicious so last night I made it, along with homemade bread bowls (yes, people I am that domestic). It was a hit with not only the husband, but also the Ethiopians (my kids, who have bloated bellies because they won't ever eat the food I cook for them.) Cooper declared it "his favorite" I decided to share it with all of you-hope that's all right with you Kim-I am giving you the credit for it!!

Chicken Chowder

1 small onion (saute in 1 Tbsp butter)

3 c. chicken broth

3 medium carrots, chopped

2 medium potatoes, cubed

2 c. cubed chicken

1 c. milk

1/4 c. flour

2 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

1 8oz. cream cheese ( I used half)

Saute onion in butter. Add chicken broth, carrots, potatoes, and cook till tender. Add chicken, parsley, salt and pepper. Stir flour into the milk and add to thicken. Boil till thick. Add cream cheese and stir till it's all melted. Sorry No cooking demo with this one!!!

Dragoon

All of his speaking life, Cooper has always said words wrong. he'd hear a word then say it, and you'd wonder what the heck the word was. Well, up until this year he pronounced Lagoon, "dragoon"- so this post is about our excursion to Lagoon. Todd's boss gives us tickets every year and ever year we forget or get too busy until they almost expire so yesterday we had a window of opportunity and went for a few hours in the morning.

This ride is the one that drops you-scary even for me. Meg kept screaming "my stomach hurts", every time she dropped
Baby loved the Carousel, unfortunately all she wanted to do is lick the pole. Her only other ride was the Puff the dragon "roller coaster" It's a tradition that our baby's get initiated into the amusement park world by sitting next to their dad on this coaster-he said she held her breath the whole first time around.
Their favorite part is the train. I'm no animal lover, but even I feel sorry for the animals on display living in tiny cement cages. SAD
roxy must have been having stomach problems because within the first 2 hours she had 4 major poopy diapers!! Thank heavens I brought that many diapers-I'm usually not that prepared.

It was a fun day-perfect weather-no long lines-sack lunches-BYU WINS!

Oops

Yesterday while I was making dinner Cooper came running in to me yelling, "mom, meg got an oops today at recess!" An Oops is like a "blue slip" back in my day or, the ticket that means you got in trouble and if you get another you get sent to the principal!! Meg had been home from school for hours and hadn't said a thing to me about it. I went out and asked her what happened-she said she was swinging something around at recess and the "guard" gave her one. When I asked her what she did with it she said she threw it away when she went inside! This morning I asked her why she didn't tell me yesterday and she told me the real story(we are having honesty issues with her), while they were suppose to be lining up she saw that the binoculars on the play toy were finally free so she got out of line, went to play toy and was looking out of the binoculars, teacher caught her and gave her an oops slip. Third day of school and already in trouble!! I need to tell her that she's not the only one- I'll have to tell her the story of her aunt amber getting a blue slip on the first day of school because she was playing "horses" to wild at recess. Todd and I kept laughing about it last night- I just keep picturing her throwing it away without a care in the world (I would have been bawling and probably would never have come back to school)

The Challenge

OK I am issuing a challenge to all the gals who read my blog. I want you all to read Sheri Dew's 2008 BYU Women's Conference address. I watched it on TV and was very inspired by it and then watched it again yesterday and wished everyone had the chance to hear/read it. The title is "Awake, Arise, and Come Unto Christ"
I couldn't figure out how to link it so just google it yourself. Let me know what ya think.

She's gone (well, for only part of the day)

meg had her first dad of school today. I've decided it's not a good idea to start after a holiday weekend because the kids got to bed at unseemly hours-therefore making them very irritable! I walked her and Coop to the bus stop and off she went-no fuss no crying-off without a hitch. With meg, nothing comes that easy. In the afternoon, after waiting at the bus stop for 30 min. a woman comes by and tells the group of us there that the buses haven't shown up at the school yet and the kindergardeners are sitting outside waiting . I decide to wait a few minutes more to see if they come but nothing. I ran home with the kids in the stroller (stopping 3 or 4 times to catch my breath, and then finally walking the last bit) got the kids in the car and drive to the school. She and a few others are still sitting there waiting. As I got out to get her I thought she was sad because she was left, but no she didn't want to go with me, she wanted to stay and go on the bus (still no bus had shown up) Her teacher tried talking to her, I threatened her (my usual tactic) and finally crying, she got in the van. This soured her mood because apparently school was boring, dumb, and she didn't get a long recess. All the girl wanted was a bus ride home -is that too much to ask for?

snaggletooth

So, Cooper has been walking around with a loose front tooth. On Saturday it was just hanging by a thread, and all of Todd's brothers were trying to pull it at the BYU game, making cooper very irritated! He promised Todd that he would let him pull it when they got home but, cooper was too tired. Sunday morning he was ready to go (especially for the money from the tooth fairy)