The 12 Things I Had to Do on Dec. 12th.

So my list of To Do's was long. I knew I just had today to get a lot of them done. Leslie is staying here in SLC and she and Whit stayed the night last night and so

1. I had to whip up a little breakfast. French Toast was on the menu, along with hot chocolate. It has been so cold up here lately that we have to have a little hot cocoa everyday.

2. I had to get the Explorer registered. I ran down to the local emissions and inspections garage that I have been going to for a few years. He was real quick about it and then came in and acted all normal and then said. I have some "bad news" I guess I knew what he was going to say. I am not proud to have walked in Dad's footsteps. I really thought the car would pass. I guess I did not realize how bad they were. I got a piece of paper with the word "REJECTED" on it. I was totally embarrassed. I am so glad no one else was in the shop. Which now added something to the list that I was not planning on doing today. Proof below of my tire negligence.

3. I had to go to Costco today to get some things for my family dinner tomorrow and also get some things for Christmas. We got in and fought the crowds and made it out alive. It was quite the feat.

4. I had to buy 3 boys coats. I signed up to help with a Sub-for-Santa for a family with 9 kids. The father is sick with cancer. The coats are really nice and will be snuggly warm from the looks of them. Whit and Les helped me pick them out.

5. Wanted to make my annual trip to Gardner Village. Decided to make it a girl's afternoon out. We went to lunch at Archibalds and then toured the shops. Fun! Fun! Fun! This is the mill wheel. It was all frozen over and I thought it looked very cool.

In the White Shop. It is always one of my favorites to go into. Hannah liked the looks of this bed.

I little picture of the girls on the bridge.

6. Get a new ornament at the Christmas Shoppe. Every time I go to Gardner Village I love to go to this shop and pick out a new ornament. When I saw these skates, I just had to have them. They looked so real.

Every shop we went into the girls wanted to try on the hats. Hats were everywhere, along with other cools things. I really could have bought something from each shop. I refrained, knowing I was going to have to fork out some bucks for 4 new tires.

7. Unexpectedly buying 4 new tires. Went to the local tire store where I went through a mini education course on contact points of tires, etc. Chose some Wild Cat tires. The girls had a laugh about that. We left the car there while we went to Gardner Village. Thank heavens I have 2 vehicles.

8. Go to Catholic Mass. Did not think this would ever be on any of my lists but it was today. Seth Bott plays the organ every Sat. at the Cathedral and invited Les and Whit to come and listen to him and so I tagged along. We were a little out of place and did not know the prayers or when to kneel so we just watched and took it all in. Everyone else got up for communion. We just stayed seated. We did however sing along because the words were printed in the program. It was different but the organ playing was excellent.

9. Got my first and probably only lesson on organ stops. After the mass we went upstairs to the organ and Seth showed us how it works and showed us some of the sounds the organ makes. It was fun and quite interesting. He certainly loves what he does. The boy has talent. I guess he's not really a boy. More like a man, the man from Castle Dale 1st Ward.
10. This was added to my list later on, but I had to do it nonetheless. I had to go eat at Cafe Rio with my girl crew. This time we added Madi and Mo. All of this eating out is going to do me in. It's going to be me and Jillian shredding it out together with the help of Comcast Workouts.

11. I had to take pictures of my Amaryllis that has 8 blooms on it. This is all from one bulb. It is now so top heavy that it needs to be propped up. I thought it was pretty amazing.


12. Then I needed to round the evening out at 10:00pm by starting Paint Your Wagon. I just had not fit enough all in this 1 day. I had to throw in a movie. Actually I needed to watch something while I was putting this blog up. It is a movie from the library and it has a lot of scratches on it. It has skipped so much that it might actually be done by the time that I finish this blog.

I think I will fit in the 13th task and go to bed.

This Weeks Recipe and Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I was in charge of the Turkey and doing some appetizers. I decided on a cheese ball and so I wanted to share the recipe with you all. It makes one small sized cheese ball. Double the recipe for a large one or 2 smaller ones.

1-8oz block of cream cheese softened
1 cup of grated cheddar, sharp is good
finely chopped green onions to taste
1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp lemon pepper

You can add a little blue cheese for a stronger taste.

Place waxed paper or plastic wrap in a bowl and then spoon in mixture. Round into a ball and set in fridge to chill for a few hours. Then roll in sliced almonds or chopped pecans. And then of course serve with crackers. Yum! Stay tuned for next weeks recipe. It's going to be a good one.

On Thanksgiving the girlies were in charge of cleaning up. Lets just say there was a gravy explosion. Tenny kept on having issues with the gravy. It was quite a mess. The floor was slippery and a little greasy for a while. At least I kept sliding around on it.

Essie chumming up to Jim so she could play with his phone. Notice the pick-pocket action.

The ceremonial digesting of the food.

I have never seen Banner so obsessed with reading. Everytime I turned around she was reading a book. I guess that is not such a bad thing, I just was not used to it, Leslie, yes, Banner, no.

The Clean Up Crew.

We had an excellent weekend together. My favorite things about the weekend.
Excellent Company
Not having to travel
Very moist turkey(I bought a fresh one)
Being with family
Not having to work a full week
Great food
Great games(missionary tag-Dennis, Alan and Josh with linked arms)
Getting my work outs in while having lots of fun at the church

Birthday and My Little Piece of History

Any ideas what this is? You will probably never guess.

So this past week when I was watching news about the 20 year anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down I remembered my little piece of history. I suddenly remembered and went ransacking through my closets until I found my chunk of the wall. When I was in England in '91-'92 I met a family that lived in Germany during the time the wall came down. He was in the British Army serving on a base there. They had made a trip to East Germany after the wall came down and got a large chunk of the wall. During one of our visits with them they got out their piece of the wall to show us and I asked if they would break me off some. They gave me this little piece. You can see the paint on it that was part of bigger graffiti.

Last Friday for my birthday and Stacy's we decided to go to The Roof restaurant. I had never been there and so I was excited to go. In fact only Josh had been there before. Shelley was down for a few days and so she went with us. We had lots of yummy food. There of course was lots to choose from and we were stuffed when finally got up to leave. The temple view was from the The Roof.

The famous creme brulee We all really enjoyed it. I remember when Lizzy got obsessed with it after her visit there.

More yummy desserts. It was hard to get pictures there with my camera because of the lighting.

Then on Saturday I made a cake for Stacy and myself so that we could have a little party that the kids could be a part of. Maren was very happy to help put the candles on. We had a fun weekend. I didn't get as many pics as I was hoping to, oh well. Oh by the way it feels just lovely to be 41. I think Stacy feels the same about 37. I think that's what age she is now.

Looking forward to next weekend down in C.D. to see Tenny's stage debut.

Annual Halloween Party

So we had another fantastic, fun-filled Halloween party. I was glad that Halloween was on Saturday so we had the day to prepare and then the extra hour to party because of the time change was of course great.

We decided to do a fondue party since the one for Leah's birthday was so fun last year. So we all got out our fondue pots and went to work. I did a cheese fondue which was very simple. So I thought that I would share the recipe.

2 c. ginger ale
1 clove of whole garlic
Simmer this in the fondue pot. I use and electric pot and so this is easy to do.

2c. shredded Swiss cheese
2c. shredded Cheddar cheese
2T. flour
Mix the flour into the cheese and then add a little at a time stirring into the ginger ale and garlic.
Salt and pepper to taste

We served it with cubed French bread and meatballs. It was very yummy.

Stacy did a chocolate fondue and Rebecca did a peanut butter fondue. And of course we had lots of yummy things to dip in them. It was a very nice spread as usual. Also as usual, we had tons of food and so Stacy invited the Hoffers and Deckers to come over after we went trick or treating.

We had to do some spooky vittles as well. Stacy made these from apples and almonds.

And of course we wanted to try the mummy dogs. Whitney made these and I thoughtthey turned out so cute. We forgot to do the eyes, but oh well.

I had promised sugar cookies. Leslie was in town for a few days and so she did the decorating and as Leslie usually does she wanted to make the cookies into works of art and that she did. I used these cookies as treats for the cake/cookie walk. The kids enjoyed it. Maren wanted the black bat cookie and her teeth looked like mossy rocks while she enjoyed it.

She always was a rocker at heart.

Jonas requested that Whitney be Princess Leia. Don't they make a dynamic duo.

All dressed up and getting ready to trick or treat. Maren had decided that she wanted to be a kitty a week ago and thought that last Sunday or Monday should be Halloween. She waited patiently and finally it was here. She was so determined to do her trick or treating. She had to hold my hand the whole way and carry her very heavy caldron full of candy. She would not let me carry it. And she also had to carry her black tail because she kept on stepping on it. I was a kitty as well, but I did not have a tail. I did however have some cool, hand drawn ears that Leslie did for me. Hopefully Stacy will have a picture of them on her blog

Essie Bug

The Kittycat, Obe, Cowboy Gabe, Princess Hannah and Little Bug

I don't know who invited the cling ons but someone did. Worf had to get her hair just right. That is Erica underneath the wig and Kelsie underneath that mask, if you couldn't tell.

Of course we had to do the donut eating contest. I think that Kyli won the kids contest and Kelsie barely won the older kids contest. Maren was very determined to eat her donut. Everything was so fun. It was such a perfect party between the food, company and good weather for being out it was a great night. We did some name gaming and then to top things off some Mafia. Wish you all could have been there. Hope you all had a great Halloween as well.

Better Late than Never

For the past week I have had some issues with getting this blog posted. Finally it is working and I can finally put it up. So as most of you were present, I don't have to put up too many details but we had a wonderful experience attending Jonas' baptism. He was very prepared and it went off without a hitch other than a few teenage girls not knowing the song they were asked to sing. Then of course we were able to go to Leslie's endowment session later on that evening. It was a very large session and she had many in attendance to support her and love her through her first of many temple experiences. It was too dark and so we were not able to get pictures of her. We then attended my Stake/Regional Conference on the next day. We were able to hear the prophet again giving us good advice on how to love and serve one another. Then we came back to my place and had a "light luncheon", which of course for Lizzy that means a batch of apple dumplings. We were enjoying a lovely Sunday afternoon and then the great "smoke out" occurred. The juices from the dumplings overflowed into bottom of the oven and the smoke was so strong that we had to run out into my front yard. So of course, that is when the fun really began.

The Culprits

In between all the excitement we were able to get a few cute photos of the kiddies. I love her blue eyes that seem so show up so well in the pictures I see of her.

Little Leah posing so well for me.

Brooks and Maren deep in conversation, probably about her favorite subject, the color pink.

Reunited and it feels so good.

Our little blondies.

Although she looks like she is in pain, this is a smile.

Essie May taking it all in.

She is so fun to cuddle with. And Lily isn't half bad either.

Becky and Lily

Lily is never lacking for arms to hold her.

So after the great smoke out of 2009 we thought we'd make the best of our time in the front yard and of course the games began. This was 500. It is something like Annie I Over in that you have to play it over something. We used Whitney's car. Josh and Noah in action.

My neighbors were probably wondering what in the heck was going on. If any of them was watching us pour out of the house it was quite comical and then all these games and things were even more entertaining to watch.

The game got so wild that the object we were throwing around, of course got hucked onto the roof. Hannah to the rescue.


One of the times Josh threw it from across the street and it actually made a basket as you can see. This was very good photography by someone with perfect timing. We all had a good laugh over that.

Of course, it landed on the roof several times. Hannah, only to happy to volunteer again. I think she likes heights.Then of course the human knot.

We never did become unraveled. We had to cheat a little bit.

A few others getting in on the roof action. I am pretty sure some of the neighbors were ready to call DCFS.

Since Les was on the roof she decided to get a few pictures from above. Notice Jonas and Gabes to the side. I guess they were not quite sure what the heck we were doing. We started off just making the letters and then we decided to time ourselves and get into postition as fast as we could. I wish I would have had a video of it. It was hilarious to see us throwing ourselves on the ground into certain positions. I had sore muscles the next day and figured it must of been because of these stunts.

Are we not the craziest, silliest, coolest, funniest, family you ever did see. And definately number 1 in my eyes.