Apples and Peaches!

While we were at the Promontory School dedication, DH's aunt asked someone at one of the fruit stands when the canning peaches would be ready.  She was told that they were about 10 days ahead of schedule so sometime in the next week to week and a half.  I have talked in the past about driving up to Perry to buy peaches for canning - they are some of the best around.  This year I was finally able to make it happen.  One morning I loaded Kay and MJ up in the car and headed north to Perry.  The first stand that I went to didn't have any at the time so I drove to another one down the road and bought 4 bushels of Early Elberta peaches - YUM!!  I unfortunately did not get a picture of them but when we were putting the peaches into boxes, MJ and Kay were helping me and every peach that MJ picked up she would smell and then she would say, "Mmmmm!!  Smells good!"

I then drove to my parents' house and we spent the next couple of days canning the peaches.  We had a few leftover that I made some peach ice cream and peach crisp from.  I also tried making a peach pound cake - which was alright.  We also had just some simple peaches and cream one night - sliced peaches with canned milk poured on them - surprisingly delicious!  (That's one treat that I had growing up.)

Before I canned any peaches though I spent several days at my parents' house canning applesauce made from apples off of our trees in the backyard.  One of our trees only produces apples about every 2nd or 3rd year for some reason and this year was one of the years.  The birds and squirrels were going crazy trying to eat the apples off of the tree so I picked all of them and then I had to do something with them.  (The funny thing is that we have another apple tree in our yard which is a Granny Smith tree and we get apples every year from it and the birds and squirrels don't touch the apples from it - they are too sour!)  The apples were not perfect.  Even though we tried spraying diligently for codling moth this year, we still got them on a lot of the apples.  Most of the apples were still mostly good though and we just cut out the bad parts.  The applesauce is delicious - nice and chunky and a little tart too!  One of the days that we made the applesauce, M&M was able to come too and help us out (this was before school started for her).

I week or so ago I picked the rest of the apples off of our Granny Smith tree.  I have about 8 plastic grocery bags full of apples waiting for me to do something with them.  It is amazing how many apples those trees can produce.  Hopefully next week I will be able to make more applesauce with them!  (And thankfully apples have a much longer shelf-life than peaches!)  I have tried drying some of the apples into apple chips.  They are really good but it takes a long time - a couple of hours in the oven and I can only do about 3-4 apples at a time.  Then once they are done we all snack on them and they are gone by the next morning!

Yummy half-eaten jar of applesauce!

Some of these apples are huge!

That's what fries are made from?

Monday, September 3

Labor Day - We wanted to take the family to the Brigham City Temple open house and about a week and a half before this day I was able to find some tickets for the open house online for Labor Day.  I thought that this would work perfectly for our family because with the kids in school and marching band practices and football games, not to mention the soccer practices and games that had started up already, we didn't have a lot of available time.

I got tickets for the earliest time available - early afternoon.  We ate an early lunch and got everyone dressed up for the event and drove up to Brigham City - a little bit more than an hour drive from our house.  My parents also got tickets to go through at the same time.  We arrived in Brigham City and parked where they directed us to and then got in line to wait for the shuttle bus to the temple.  The line was fairly long and it was a hot, sunny day.  We waited and waited and there were a few buses that came and dropped people off and then left empty to return to the temple to pick up more people.  One of the workers said that the wait at the temple was about 2 hours - just to get in the door.  At this point we had been waiting an hour already.  People ahead of us in line kept leaving.  Finally we made it onto a bus, took the ride to the temple, saw the huge line that was there and decided to go back to our cars and return home.  There was no way our kids were going to last waiting another 2 hours in the hot blazing sun.  My parents had a dinner engagement for early in the evening and weren't able to wait either.  We were very disappointed.  We found out later that most people that went that day didn't even bother to get tickets, parked in the neighborhood around the temple and walked straight there and got in line.  Those of us that followed the directions that were given and actually had tickets to attend the open house ended up getting hurt in the long run...

None of us were in very good moods when we finally made it back home.  Once again it was getting close to my favorite time of the day (not!) - dinner time!  I was in the mood for some french fries so I found a recipe online that I had all of the ingredients for and got some potatoes out and started cutting them into long strips.  Luke saw what I was doing and I asked him if he could guess what I was making.  He had no idea and when I told him they were french fries he said in disbelief, "That's what fries are made from?"  I informed him that yes they were made from potatoes, but I still don't think he believed me until I pulled them out of the oven once they were done and he finally thought that they looked (and tasted) like french fries!

I thought that they could have used a little more seasoning, but other than that they were really good.  If anyone would like the recipe, here it is:  Zesty Oven Baked Fries

Principal's Pride - Blondie

Thursday, August 30

Blondie received the Principal's Pride award for her straw art painting.  It was one of the first groups for the year and for some reason I had the time 8:30 in my head as the starting time.  So when we got there around 8:25 I thought we were doing good.  Then we walked into the school and saw the secretary already walking out of the library where they hold the ceremony.  She said that we had just missed the ceremony, but the principal was still in the library if we wanted to get Blondie's picture with her and the award.   I commented saying that I thought it started at 8:30 and she said, no, 8:20...  Apparently it was a really small group so it was over in just a few minutes.  I felt really bad!

M&M's first day of school

Tuesday, August 28

M&M is 9th grade this year!!  Where I went to school, that would be high school.  Here where we live it is still in the middle school, but she is allowed to participate in the high school sports and activities such as marching band.  In addition to the honors classes she is taking, she is also taking early morning seminary the first semester so that she can fit band and spanish 2 classes in for the year.  At first I was feeling really sorry for her for having to get up early for seminary and then doing marching band on top of that.  Then I remembered that I took early morning seminary for all 4 years of high school and also did marching band all 4 years and also took honors classes.  Plus, my early morning seminary started at 5:50 in the morning and hers starts at 6:50 - a whole hour later (and on Fridays seminary doesn't start until 9:05).  So now I don't feel so sorry for her anymore!  If I could do it, so can she!

The bus situation is the same as it was at the beginning of the year last year.  Even though there is room on the bus, the district has to wait about 30 days before they will allow more kids on the bus.  It's kind of frustrating because we are 3 houses away from the cut-off for riding the bus!  This year is even more crazy though with M&M doing the early morning seminary and then marching band twice a week immediately following school.  We are in a carpool group with 2 other kids that are taking the early morning seminary and then she is riding with the carpool home 2-3 days of the week - the other days being marching band rehearsals.

Band Camp

August 9-21

M&M is doing marching band at the high school this year.  It seems kind of weird because she will still be attending the middle school, but I will need to pick her up a couple times a week immediately following school to take her over to the high school for rehearsals.  They started with a band camp that was just at the high school.  Her first day was just for new people to the program and went from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.  The remainder of the days were 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.!!  Unfortunately the person writing their drill didn't finish the drill for the last song until a couple of weeks after school started so they are a little behind as far as the season goes.

Can I just say that watching M&M and the marching band has brought back so many memories for me!!  I remember the long, intense rehearsals, the hours in the sun (or cold), the super busy weeks and weekends with rehearsals, football games & competitions!  I really enjoy it when I am able to get to her rehearsals before they end so that I can watch them.  And she is really enjoying the whole experience, it's been nice!  I will periodically try and post pictures as the season goes along.

So now we are going to play a game called, "Where is M&M?"  See if you can find her in these pictures from band camp.  They had to bring a white shirt to camp so they could write their dot number on it to make it easier to form the sets and make sure that everyone is in the right spot.  They had to wear this shirt everyday to camp.

Standing in straight lines - pretty good...

This picture cracks me up because they do a crazy kind of a zig zag move their first few sets which is supposed to look like a snake swerving back and forth.  I think M&M says that they call this a "jazz run".

Standing in diagonal lines - could use a little work...

Weird sickness

I don't think I mentioned this when it happened but I wanted to blog about it before I forgot.  We had a really weird sickness hit our family around the time that Heath's brother and family came from overseas.  The Thursday before they came (June 14th) I was supposed to take M&M in to the orthodontist's office for a consultation about getting full braces on her.  When I woke up to get myself ready in the morning I went downstairs and found M&M who had apparently been up for several hours throwing up...  At first I thought that she might be okay to take in still (you know, one of those sickness where you throw up and then feel fine), but after a few minutes it was obvious that she should be staying home.  Later that evening Luke also felt sick and threw up once or twice.  Then both of them felt better the next day.

So fast forward to Sunday night/Monday morning.  On Monday morning (the day that DH's brother was supposed to arrive) we woke up to find that Kitty had thrown up in the middle of the night some time.  She was feeling just so-so the rest of the day and then was better by Tuesday.

The next person to get sick was me.  I woke up around 2 in the morning on Saturday and threw up a couple of times and had quite a bit of diahrrea as well.  It was not a pleasant night.  Once daylight came for the day I was feeling so-so and this was the day that we had planned on hiking around Mirror Lake.  I went ahead and went with the rest of the family and managed alright.

Our next sickness hit on Tuesday after we were in Island Park.  Blondie didn't feel so hot that evening and we had her and Kitty sleep in the room with us that night.  I think Blondie threw up once or twice before she went to sleep.  Other than that she seemed to feel alright the next day.  I know that earlier in the day on Tuesday MJ also had a little bit of diahrrea, but other than that and a little bit of fussiness she was alright.

I don't recall Kay or DH getting sick at all.  If either of them did it was mild and didn't affect them much at all.  MJ also wasn't affected too much - which was a good thing for all of us.

I also know that one of the cousins that was visiting us got sick a couple of days after we were together - I'm not sure if that sickness was related to the one that went through our family, but it is very possible that it was.  I'm just glad that it was a relatively quick sickness and it was kind of nice to have it spread out as much as it was.

M&M's first church dance

Saturday, August 11

Now that M&M is 14, she is old enough to go to the dances sponsored by our church.  Our stake has joined up with 3 other nearby stakes to hold multi-stake dances about once a month.  She has several friends in the ward that go to the dances as well and they called to ask if she wanted to go with them. Well, she also needed a dance card from the bishop which she hadn't received yet so I had her call the bishop's house and ask if she could pick one up before she went (one of her friends is the bishop's daughter).  He said that was fine so she got dressed and ready to go and picked up the dance card when they stopped to pick up the bishop's daughter.

As a side note - that is my skirt that she is wearing (with the waist cinched in a bit with safety pins)...

She said that it was fun and she ran into a bunch of her friends from school that are in another stake.  I just can't believe that she is getting old enough to go to these dances!  Before I know it she will be 16 and wanting to drive and date!  AHHH!!

Promontory School

Saturday, August 11

DH's grandfather's family is from Perry, UT.  They were some of the original settlers in that part of Utah (at the time it was called 3 Mile Creek instead of Perry).  The family owned quite a bit of property and DH's grandfather bought a portion of it from his father.  He later built a house on it and farmed the orchard land on it after he retired from the Air Force.  When DH's grandfather passed away several years ago the family sold the house and a portion of the land as well.  

So fast forward a few years and a charter school has now been built on that portion of land that was sold.  It is called Promontory School and we were invited to attend the grand opening/ribbon cutting ceremony for the school.  They put us up front with DH's two uncles and their wives and our family was recognized during the ceremony.  One of DH's uncles gave a really nice speech about his father and gave a brief synopsis of his life.  They presented the family with a plaque of the Colonel that will be displayed inside the school.  (I wish we had taken a picture of the plaque.)  After the ceremony we were able to tour the building and then they had a few refreshments afterwards - including some fresh peaches which were AWESOME and super juicy!!

They still have quite a bit of work to do before the school was to open a couple of weeks later.  It was very nice inside though.

Here is a picture of the new Brigham City temple from the school site.  After we were finished at the school we drove by the temple and DH took a couple of pictures of M&M and Luke in front of it.  The younger kids were pretty much done for the day - it was a very hot and sunny day.

The temple is very pretty and reminds me of the style of the Salt Lake temple with the side windows - just a much smaller temple though.

Kid talk

I heard Kay in her room saying her prayer and then she started crying in the middle of it for some reason.

Kitty was right there in the room with her and I heard her trying to ask what happened.

Kay: I hurt my bump.

Kitty asked what she meant and Kay responded, with some exasperation in her voice, "See that thing?!? It's called a bump and I just hit it."

Kitty: Kay, that's your heel.

Kid talk

These three stories all happened last week:

Story 1:
I was out running some errands with MJ and Kay.  We went to one store and then we drove over to Wal-Mart.  I am not a huge Wal-Mart fan (at least not the Super Wal-Marts) so it had been a while since I had been to this store with the girls.  When we pulled up into the parking lot, Kay piped up from the back of the car, "Ooo, can we buy some doughnuts?"  Then after a few words back and forth between Kay and MJ, MJ says, "Mmmm, I love doughnuts mama!  It's 'licious mama!!"

Story 2:
One morning I needed to go to the post office to drop off some letters and I wanted to buy some more stamps while I was there.  Lately Kay wants to know what we will be doing each day and if we are going somewhere, she likes to know where we will be going.  So on the way to the post office, Kay was asking me where we were going and I responded, "The post office."  Well, MJ tried repeating what I was saying, but for some reason she was having a hard time hearing the starting consonant sound of the word "post".  After repeating it for her a couple of times, MJ started calling it, "The toast office."  When we finally got there and I went up to the counter to buy some stamps I was having a hard time keeping a straight face because MJ was off to the side repeating "toast office" over and over again.

The other funny part about this experience is that I hadn't written down what MJ was calling the post office and I promptly forgot and couldn't remember it when I was trying to tell the story to M&M later in the day.  Well, I decided to try asking MJ to say post office and when I asked her to she responded with "toast office" again.

Story 3:
DH was late leaving for work one morning because he was waiting for some things to finish up on his computer.  After cleaning up a little from breakfast I took a shower, fully expecting DH to be gone by the time I got out.  So I showered and got dressed and made the bed and then I noticed that MJ was trying to grab DH's wallet off of the dresser.  My first thought was that DH had accidentally left it but then I noticed that there were a few other things that he had left as well.  So I asked Kay to go down to the garage and see if his car was still here.  She went down and opened the garage door and then called up to me, "I think he left his car.  I think he walked today."

We had some errands to do so I loaded the girls in the car and then when we came home DH was still there.  I made some comment out loud, wondering why he was still at home and hadn't left for work yet.  Then Kay responded with, "I know.  Daddy loves his daughters so much that he didn't go to work today."  I was having a hard time following that reasoning so I said, "What?"  Then Kay said, "Daddy loves me so much because I said such a good prayer yesterday, so he wanted to stay home with me and not go to work today...  Because he loves me."

Face painting

Thursday, August 9

The kids' orthodontist throws a client appreciation party about once a year.  This year they were having a dinner/picnic at Copperton Park (the cool old park that isn't too far from us).  We decided to go as soon as DH got home from work.

There was a lady there that was doing face painting and Blondie really wanted her face painted.  It was getting close to the end of the party and so I told her she would have to go over and ask if the lady had time to do one for her.  Well, she got up the nerve and went over and asked her and the lady told her that she had time.

After she got finished with Blondie, Kitty wanted to have her face painted too and then Kay even went over to have hers done.  The lady then talked M&M into having one done on her face too.  The girls (especially the younger ones) absolutely loved it.  The unfortunate part was that it was bedtime as soon as we got home so they didn't get to keep it on their faces for too long.  It was pretty neat watching the lady work.  I was very impressed.

We didn't have the lady put color right around Kitty's eye because she has really sensitive eyes.

YW Camp 2012

Our ward's YW camp this year was August 1-4.  They camped at Camp Timpooneke up American Fork Canyon.  It was run at the ward level this year and they were in tents.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the camp this year.  One day they drove up to Sundance ski resort and rode the ski lift up to the top of the mountain.  Another day they hiked up to the Mt. Timpanogos caves and toured the caves.  They were also able to go river rafting down the Provo river.  I'm jealous that Heath and/or I weren't asked to go and help out this year!!

New glasses

Just before the S Family reunion I took M&M and Luke in to the eye doctor to have their eyes tested again.  Both were complaining of not being able to see well even with their glasses on.  I took Luke first and sure enough he needed a new prescription.  So we looked through the selection at Sears Optical and found some that we liked and ordered them.  The next day I took M&M in for her eye exam.  She also needed a new prescription and we also talked a little about possibly doing contacts with her.  Then we went to look at and try on frames and we couldn't find a single pair that we liked for her there.  The sales assistant said that they were supposed to be getting a shipment of new styles in any day now and that we could wait and take a look at the new ones when they came in.  So we decided to do that.

Luke's glasses are pretty similar to his old ones.  The main difference is that they are blue on the sides which I think looks pretty cool.

A few days later we got a call saying that Luke's glasses were ready so when we went to pick them up I brought M&M along to look at the new frames.  Once again though we didn't find anything that she really liked.  We finally settled on a pair that we thought were the closet to what she was looking for and decided to just order them and she would get used to them.  They weren't a ton different from her current glasses (which were taped together because of a broken frame).

Well her glasses came in right after the S family reunion.  We went to pick them up and she tried them on and neither of us were terribly happy with how they looked.  I decided not to say much to her about them because I didn't want to affect her opinion at all.  She wore them a little bit, but I could tell that she just didn't like them.  They seemed to be much bigger than either of us remembered.  A part of me wonders if they really were the exact same as the ones she had tried on.  I just can't see both of us being so wrong in our choice...

After a few days I decided that we just needed to return them.  I could tell that she didn't like them and was choosing to wear her older, broken pair that she couldn't see as clearly out of.  Thankfully Sears has a 30 day (I think) money back, no questions asked policy.  So I went back to Sears once again and returned the glasses and then I asked for a copy of her prescription so that we could go somewhere else.

Trouble with a capital T

Here are some recent pictures of MJ up to no good...

Coloring with markers (and amazingly enough she only colored on her legs).

Laying all over and kicking Kay - until she screams and cries (see picture below).

Getting all dirty at the ward party.  I was in charge of the giant bubbles (like we did for the S Family reunion).  MJ came over where I was working and proceeded to play in some bubble solution that had been spilled on the parking lot and she got herself completely dirty, head to foot.  Then we came home and she wouldn't stay still for me to get a picture of her.  These were the best that I could come up with before I threw her into the tub.

M&M turns 14!!

Monday, July 30

That title makes me feel like I am getting old!  Yes, my oldest child has turned 14!!  I'm also excited to say that she is finally growing some more!  She is just a couple of inches shorter than me and her feet are getting close to my size as well.  (Although Luke's feet are bigger than M&M's...)  M&M was kind enough to let her younger sisters help her open her gifts and they totally enjoyed it!  M&M got some clothes, a graphing calculator for school (yippee) and a few other things.  I also finally found some pajamas for her (that are not tank-tops or super short shorts) and they actually fit her (and she likes them too)!!  Right now she is in-between fitting in the children's size clothing and the junior sizes.  She's kind of in a tough spot as far as clothing goes...

Since M&M just had her braces put on a few days before her birthday, unfortunately her teeth were still pretty sore when her birthday rolled around.  She is also not a big cake fan anyways so we decided to make her an ice cream cake this year.  I searched around on the internet and found the recipe for this cake and it turned out AWESOME!!  It also looked like we had bought it at the store and it was actually pretty easy to do.  I would totally recommend the recipe to anyone!!  Here it is if you're interested:  Layered ice cream cake.  It's just made from oreos, ice cream sandwiches, cool whip and 3 flavors of ice cream.  We used a really good chocolate ice cream, strawberry frozen yogurt and vanilla. Everyone loved it!

Next time I need to try and get the layers a little more even.  I'm not sure if I was using a bigger pan than called for in the recipe or I just measured it wrong, but I had to add quite a bit more vanilla ice cream to the top so that it filled the whole pan.

Trying out the new pajamas.  And sorry about the red-eye.  With her glasses being a reddish-brown color, my photo software has a hard time getting the red-eye out of her pictures...



We also had this sign on our front door from the MiaMaid class.  M&M is so excited to be moving up to that group.

First day of school - Elementary kids

Wednesday, July 25

After staying up late watching fireworks the night before, Luke, Blondie and Kitty had their first day of school the next day.  Thankfully their school doesn't start super early so I think they managed to get enough sleep for the day.  Luke is 6th grade this year, Blondie is 4th grade and Kitty is 2nd grade.  Blondie has the same teacher that M&M and Luke had for 4th grade.  One more year of Kay being at home and then a couple more years for MJ.

Then everyone had to get in on the action and have a picture taken together.  I love the differences in height in this picture and how we're all lined up.

I also had my next infusion that same day so I took MJ and Kay over to my parents' house and then I took M&M with me to the infusion.

Happy Pioneer Day!

Tuesday, July 24

We had a picnic dinner at our house for Pioneer Day, followed by a fireworks show.  My brother and his family, as well as my younger sister and her family, and my parents were able to come over.  I setup our pools and a new slip-n-slide that I had bought the previous year and the kids had fun playing with that while I got dinner ready.  I didn't get any pictures of the slip-n-slide, but it has two lanes for sliding and it came with some inflatable little rafts to slide on as well.  The older kids especially enjoyed it more than our older one.

The kids enjoyed the fireworks - well except for MJ and Kay once again...  My sister-in-law came across the idea to have the kids put their hand inside of a plastic cup while holding a sparkler to help prevent burns.