Snow Day!!

Monday, we woke to snow!! The earliest report we have is that 4:00 am is when it started, and it continued to snow until night time, but only in our west/north-west area of Las Vegas. Around 5:00 we went to Brady's concert with the Mormon Youth Choir, and it was still snowing in my neighborhood. Tuesday, it mostly melted. Wednesday it started again, but this time the snow was all over Las Vegas, and we made the national news. They closed down the airport, and call a "snow day" for the all of the schools. This is what it looked like in my back yard Wednesday night. By the way, my boys and several neighbor boys spent more hours outside this night, than at any other time.

The next day when school was cancelled, the snow stopped. It was a great free day from school. We decided to go find some hills to sled on, but at all of the parks with hills, the snow was melted or rolled away. We went back to the Stake center that has a large dip where there is a water grate for "flood" times. (anytime there is real rain).

Zach made a snow man.

Darian was really good at taking chances and falling

Calvin thought it would be great to use the sled as a snow board.

By the end of the day, more than one child had a turn to cry. As they throw snowballs at each other, they don't think that it might hurt when they get hit by one. Even with the tears, they all had a great day.

Sisters are great

Susan decided to come to visit and shop and play and get away for the weekend. We went shopping at the outlet mall, the regular mall, Target -- where we bought the most stuff, and we went to a spa for some fun much needed treatments.

Then she took our pictures at the State Park.

I think the pictures are awesome. Check them out.

Zach's Birthday Party

Zachary had a Pokemon Party for his 7th birthday. We made all the games, the food, and the invitations. We started by giving the kids modeling clay and let them each make a couple of pokemon. We played "Piplup bubble pop" game. These hanging pokemon are on card board "bubbles". We gave them marshmallow shooters made with pvc pipe and couplers. They were to shoot the pokemon and make it spin on this string. After the game they went into the backyard and had a marshmallow war, until the marshmallows were all "used up"... Melted, mashed, dog ate them, etc.

These are Zach's friends. Tyson, Luke, Jacob C., Zach, Jacob B., & Emily

The next game was "Pin the tail on Charmander" Brady drew the charmander on this poster board for me, then he colored it in. I think he did such a great job. It looks like a professional pokemon. We printed the tail off pictures from the internet and colored them in.


This was after they played.

I made a pokeball birthday cake.... Actually Brady did the decorating. He works at the bakery at Albertsons, so he took over the decorating. He did pretty good at that too.

We also made Pokeball Pizza. I gave them each a round of pizza dough and they "painted" on the pizza sauce. They got to pick their toppings and each made their own pizza. They seemed to really enjoy it.

I think it was a great party, and Zach and his friends all seemed to have fun.

Cafe Rio

We fed the Sister Missionaries on Saturday. I debated what to feed them, and realized that all women like salad. Well..... there was a man in our stake that prepared and served a great Cafe Rio style salad for our stake R.S. dinner preceding the "general R.S. broadcast" in September. Anyway he shared the recipes with us and I used them to make the dinner for the Sisters. They loved it, I loved it, my whole family loved it, and Calvin even had thirds.... of SALAD!! So just for you my friends I am going to share the recipes.

I served chopped romaine lettuce, chopped tomatoes, cheese, salsa, guacamole, red onions, olives, tortillas chips and the following recipes.

Pork Loin (Café Rio style)

2-3 lb Pork loin, wash and place in Crockpot pour baking sauce over

Baking Sauce mix the following ingredients:
6 oz. Coca Cola
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup catsup
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp onion powder
3/4 tsp garlic powder
Bake at 325° for 6 hour in crockpot or oven.


Cilantro Lime Salad dressing (Café Rio style)
Make a package of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
2-3 tomatillos pureed
3 Tbsp chopped of cilantro
1-2 clove of garlic
2-3T of lime juice
1/2 jalapeno (optional)*

*did not use for RS Dinner

Cilantro Rice:

¼ cup butter
2 ½ cups rice
4 ½ cups chicken stock
1 ½ tsp. salt
pepper
juice and zest of 4 small or 2 large limes
4 Tbls chopped cilantro
½ tsp. cumin

melt butter, stir in rice to coat. Add all the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and cook for 25 minutes.

writing relevance

I'm writing a book and was given the advice to use stories to illustrate a point, rather than just boring people with facts. In my attempt I wrote about my summer activities. Please leave a comment as to whether the story seems to be relevant to the point of the topic.... which is "Regular exercise gives you the strength to do all other important things in your life." and is there a better way to word that. Thank you to all my "pre editors". Here's the story.

There have been many vacations that I’ve taken with family, where the adults have been perfectly happy to sit by and watched the kids play. I remember one beautiful summer day, we were on vacation in Idaho. The kids got to spend time with their cousins, and we took them all to a local reservoir. There were trees surrounding most of the water, and it was big enough for different families to play, and still have some privacy. In a few places there were rope swings hanging from large trees. We stationed ourselves where it was nice and shallow, so the smaller childern could play in the water safely. The bigger kids swam across the pond to the rope swings. The children had so much fun, and as adults we sat in lawn chairs watching and visiting with one another. Something in me wanted to swim, but I didn’t do it. The next day the kids went off to play softball. They asked us adults to join, but we opted to just sit around again!! Later that night, as we watched the kids play on a playground, I saw another large family. They were all playing a game of football. This football game consisted of about 60% adults and 40% kids or teens. I watched them play and I smiled with just a twinge of envy. Oh how I wanted to play like that with my family. How I wished that I had played softball and gone swimming with the kids. Maybe if I had done it, then the other adults in my family would have joined in also.
A month later we found ourselves at the beach in California. I knew my kids would love it and that’s why I took them there. The walk to the water was a long walk across hot sand. It was hard to walk on, and got in your shoes and between your toes when you walked. I hadn’t put on my swim suit yet. I got everyone settled. They quickly decided that playing in the ocean was a lot better that sitting around by mom making sand castles. They made sand castles, but they prefered to be close to the water, risking the waves washing away the walls of their creations. I had a decision to make. I could sit on my towel and do nothing but watch again, or I could take the long hard walk back to the bathrooms to change into my swim suit so that I could get wet. Luckily I’d learned from my earlier summer experience. I made the long trek back to the restrooms. My legs were a bit sore, but I was in pretty good shape from exerciseing. When I got back with my swim suit, I found that the water was unusually warm. I jumped right in with the kids and showed them how to body surf. I held my youngest sons hand and helped him to brave the waves as they came. We learned together that it’s okay if you get knocked over in the waves, and your head is submerged. We stayed in the water for hours. I think in that one day I had more fun with my kids than at any other time I can remember. I thought for sure my body would be sore the next day for all I had put it through, but I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps the adrenalin was still pumping from all the fun we had, but I didn’t suffer and ill effects of our fun day at the beach.The lesson I’ve learned is that just because we’re adults doesn’t mean we can’t have just as much fun as the kids. It just helps to be in good physical shape so that you can really keep up and enjoy the time spent running, jumping, swimming or diving. Exercising on a regular basis can help ensure that you are strong enough to keep up with whatever comes your way.

Cha Cha

This is for Karen....

Any question you have in the whole entire world... you can text the question to cha cha... spelled out on the numeric key pad of your cel phone C-H-A-C-H-A. The people on the other end are at computers and will look up and send you an answer to any question you pose. My friends kids sent the question, "who is the better kid, Robby or Victoria?" The answer they got was "That depends, what did you do wrong that makes you ask the question." It's best if you have unlimited texts on your phone plan before you get used to using it though.

Summer Vacations

The problem with waiting so long to get back into blogging, is that there is now a lot of ground to cover.

Let's start with 4th of July.

We went up to Idaho to spend the holiday with Allen's parents and brothers and their families. My niece Jessie was in the parade. It was a hot day, but it was so much fun. We had a picnic and the cousins played baseball. Then when the evening came we went to a fun park with a big Tank for the kids to play on

before we watched the fireworks. We all had a good time.

When we got back I went with the YW in our ward to Girls Camp. They have girls camp up at a campground that is owned by the stake, at Mt. Charleston, (a 30 minute drive). Although it is that close to Las Vegas, it is a complete different climate. The evenings were so cold, I don't remember ever being that cold while camping before. Also it rained and hailed so much that alot of our things never dried out. Some of the wards had tents float away in the rain, and many girls sleeping bags had to be replaced after the first few days. Aside from the weather, it was great to be with the girls and get to know them better. Our stake president always says how great the youth are in our stake, and he is right, they're great.

A few weeks later, Calvin went to the Priest's "scout camp". Actually they called it a super activity, because there wasn't really any scout stuff to do anymore. There were 16 Priests that went, and most of them already have their eagles. At the super activity they went deep sea fishing, golfing, had surfing lessons, took a bike hike, played volleyball with the Laurels from a local ward (and a few mia maids that snuck in). They rode the train to Oceanside and the spent an evening at the San Diego Temple and had their testimony meeting there. All the boys agreed that the temple was the best part. Calvin came back with an awesome tan!!!

August 11th, we decided that we needed to take a family fun vacation with Brady before he leaves us for a mission. We went to Six Flags Magic Mountain in the Los Angeles mountains. The boys rode every scary roller coaster that they could.... except Zachary. He wasn't tall enough for some of the roller coasters, so first thing we went on 2 that he could go on... after that he decided that he didn't like roller coasters anymore. Zach and I rode some fun kids rides while the others rode the big coasters. After a few hours of kid stuff, Zach decided he liked roller coasters again, and made me ride them with him. Zach went on the "Revolution" at least 6 times.

By this time it was evening and getting dark, but the new ride X2 was opened (it had been closed in the morning when we first got there.) Well we decided that since Zach liked roller coasters again, and we still had plenty of time until the park closed, that we would go on this ride. This sign said that it was a 150 minute wait in line. I didn't believe it because thats what it said on the roaring rapids ride, but it wasn't anywhere near that long of a wait. So we stood in line, but couldn't see the actual ride. 1 hour later we were in another waiting section of the ride. At this point we could actually see the ride, and Zach was starting to get scared, (and I was talking myself out of being scared). But we'd waited too long to back out now.... another hour later and we were getting tired and anxious... And Zach was now terrified. I told him not to worry, he didn't have to go if he didn't want to, but I hoped he'd change his mind. When we got up to our turn to get on, I tried to get Zach to go, but he was clinging onto the bars dividing the lines, with all of his strength and practically crying. I didn't make him go. In fact Ethan didn't want to go either, so we took turns on the ride, while those not riding watched the little kids. Okay, so it was finally my turn to get on this ride. It started out nice, with us facing up toward the night sky with beautiful Harry Connick Jr. music playing in the speakers attached to each head rest. Then a sudden horrible sound of too many harsh songs combined in one with other horrible harsh crashing sounds, and we are turned individually face to the ground in a huge free-fall. I was scared to death. I choose to close my eyes. I felt nothing but normal mellow movement. I decided I shouldn't miss the ride and opened my eyes again to.... a backwards loop with real flames all around. According to Darian, my ride partner, I screamed my head off. That ride truly tramatized me, and I was soooooo glad that Zach and Ethan had skipped it. I guess I really am the Mom and no longer a fun teenager. Yikes!

Apparently the kids in California went back to school that day, so there were hardly any lines to the most of the rides, only 4-5 most popular rides. It was a perfect day at Magic Mountain. Oh, and Brady, Calvin, and I (mom) got soaked--completely-- on the roaring rapids ride.

The next day we went to the beach at Santa Monica. We were just up the beach from the roller coaster and ferris wheel. The water was nice and warm, and again there were very few people there. I reminded myself of how much fun it was to ride the surf in the ocean. I showed Ethan how to body surf, and even got Brady to get in and have a good time. Once Zach saw us having fun, he wanted to go in deeper, and insisted on holding my hand, as I showed him how to tackle the waves when they come your way. We had so much fun, I can't believe I didn't get in ocean with my kids sooner than this. We just never did this as a family until about 2 years ago. I think we'll make trips to the ocean alot more now. I may even learn to surf.

Next we really wanted Panda Express. I remembered that the Young Women taught us about "cha cha" at a technolgy night. We tried it. It worked. They told us where to find a Panda Express next to the Santa Monica beach, and with the help of the map from the hotel, it was no problem finding it. Then we were on our way home again. Brady said it was probably his most favorite vacation.

Do dogs have tooth fairy's?

This morning Zach yelled, "I found a tooth and it's not mine." I looked at it, and it was a tooth, a pointy triangle little dog tooth. I told Zach that Lucky lost a "puppy tooth". Zach got excited and said, "he's going to get a bone, tomorrow morning he's going to get a bone." It took me a minute to realize he was talking about the tooth fairy. It just made sense to him that the tooth fairy would bring him a bone, not money.

Seasonings

We had a quarterly enrichment night this week. It was called "My favorite, good things." Several people were asked to bring in something that they love or that makes life a little easier. I brought my "mom's planning calendar".

Anyway a friend at my table is from Louisiana, and she brought a can of "Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning." We asked her what she put it on, and she said everything, it makes everything better. Another friend at our table is Vietnamese and she said they put soy sauce on everything. When we were is France, the elders told us that "everything tastes better with some "herbs de provence" on it." It's interesting what different people from different backgrounds think that they can't eat without.

I gotta admit though, I put the herbs de provence on roasted potatoes and they were the best I'd ever had. Even my kids fought over who got the leftovers.

Use your bribbery's wisely

All the kids had a dentist appointment yesterday. They all needed some kind of work done. Some of my kids are jumpier than others, and Zach is just plain too scared to open his mouth. About while back he had to have a tooth pulled, and the dentist tried to give him demerol, he refused to take it and we had to go to an oral surgeon to have him put completely under.

Needless to say, I didn't want to go through that again, so I took Zach to Wal-mart, let him pick out his favorite toy, and told him that it had to stay in the bag until after he drinks his medicine. He was really anxious to get that toy, and even though he hated the taste, he pulled a face, and gulped down the medicine quick. Silly me thinking that the drinking of the medicine would solve all his anxiety problems!

They took him back, and also used nitrous oxide. Then they brought him back to me and said that they didn't do anything. He wouldn't let them. He wouldn't open his mouth, and he kicked and squirmed.

Then back in the waiting room he continued to happily play with the new toy!! What could I do? I told him he would get the toy if he would drink the medicine.

Next month he'll go a surgery center to be put under, to get the work done, and I won't be so free with the new toys.

By the way, everyone else got their dental work done, and they didn't even get a new toy.... not even from the dentist.

Summer Time!!

It's been a great start to a relaxing summer. It's nice not to have to run 3-4 times a day to a school, and nag kids to do homework at the end of each day.

We had the baseball team over to our house for the end of season party. The kids went swimming, but mostly they looked for ways to play baseball in the swimming pool. First they used the big plastic bubba ball bat, but after just a few hits with the splash balls, the bat broke. That didn't stop them, they kept at it until the bat was nothing but splinters and I took it away. Then they found a big plastic sword from halloween and played baseball with that. From then, I don't know what happened, I spent the rest of the party inside makeing sure there was enough food etc. I think they all had fun, they got their trophys and everyone was ready to go in under 2 hours. I hope the kids will come back and play in the pool with Ethan this summer.

Darian is at scout camp this week. This is his second year and he was so excited to go. Two nights ago Zachary was saying the evening family prayer. Now Zachary is the smartest 6 year old I've ever seen, but he won't say a prayer without help. He insists that he doesn't know how. I'm not sure what he's thinking? So Allen was helping him with the prayer. Allen said "bless Darian at camp, that he will get along with the boys." Zachary said "bless Darian at camp, that he will get along with the bullys."

Zach spent the first few weeks of summer break making books, and creating plans for things he wanted to make. He didn't know how he was going to make them, he just knew he wanted to. Then Zach was looking for something fun to play with when he found this big bucket of legos and kenex pieces. They used to be Calvin's, and we were going to sell them on e-bay, I just never quite got around to it. Zach quickly set to making his creations out of legos. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm lucky I didn't sell the legos. They may keep the summer from turning boring too quickly.Check out this pile of Legos.

A new calling!!

There are usually clues, when there is change in the wind. I had to teach the presidency message in Relief society June 1st. But I just couldn't get into preparing the lesson. I knew the topic, and did my research, but I felt like I was somehow out of place. So the night before I'm to give my lesson, I get a call to meet with the bishop 20 minutes before church (and my lesson). I was so nervous. I knew they were looking for a new cub scout committee chair!! Awww.

So when I met with the bishop, he told me that the whole R.S. pres. was being released. I can't explain how extatic I felt. YES!! It was like lifting a heavy bolder off of my back. Not that I didn't enjoy it. I love enrichment, and will always support it. It was just time!! Yeah!

Then he asked me to be the new Y.W. secretary. I was so relieved. I can do that. Take rolls, show up to activities. Get to know all of the Young Women, so I know who my boys are really talking about (or too).

So far so good. We made pajama bottoms last week, and went to play out at Lake Mead on boats today, and I am very quickly learning the girls names. This is more fun than work.

Of course we do have the best youth in the world right here in our ward!!

And I, the mother of 5 boys, finally get to go do girly things. What's better than that.

Baseball Season

Several months ago, the two youngest decided that if they couldn't do soccer (just try to get someone in the league to return a call) that they would like to play baseball. Yeah!! I loved baseball growing up. Especially going to live games! We haven't had a child in baseball since Darian was around 5.... he's now 13. Sooo, what a great opportunity.

Ethan played on a competitive team, with the absolutely best coach that ever coached baseball. Coach Robert took a total beginner, without a clue, and turned him into a real baseball player. Ethan hit balls, made runs and occasionally saved a play with a good throw to the in-field. I asked him what his favorite part of baseball is and he said "it's that moment when the ball hits the bat, and you feel the vibration of the bat in your hand." Yeah, I gotta agree. That's a pretty good feeling.

Coach Tad taught him to touch the bat to the top of the plate, to make sure your standing in the right position. Ethan learned a lot more than baseball this season. He learn how to listen and learn from other adults.

Zachary played on the beginner team "bubba ball". They played with plastic bats, and big rubber/plastic balls. It was hilarious. They were the cutest things out on the fields. Next year Zach will be ready to play some real ball. The second half of the season he became the permanent catcher. Not sure why, but thats the position he always played. It was great.

Kindergarten Graduation

Zachary Graduated from kindergarten. He had a great first year in school, and is so excited to be in first grade.

Project 52 - week 19

I got a new camera for mother's day!!!! I was able to help Ethan finish his science fair project by adding lots of pictures to show how his "invention" works. I'm so excited. I promised that I will help Zachary publish a books about all the animals we will see and take pictures of at the Wild Animal Park this summer. Hurray!!!

Project 52 - week 18

I'm grateful that it's still cool outside in the evenings for our baseball games. Soon enough it will be so hot, I won't be able to tolerate anything but swimming and places with good a/c. But for now, being outdoors, watching my boys learn new talents and have fun with friends is the best.

project 52 - week 17

I am grateful for Madeline Bailey and that she will be a part of our family.



Maddie was born, Monday April 21, and will be the proud daughter of Chris and MaryAnn Miller. ( my wonderful brother and sister-in-law)



They will be great parents, and they deserve this Divine blessing in their lives so much.

I think I share the gratitude of all the family for Bailey, the birth mother, for recognizing Chris and MaryAnn as the Family that Madeline is meant to be an eternal part of. Life is good!!