School!

Jannika started school about a month ago and is loving it. She's in 2nd grade and they have finally split her class so there are only 15 kids in her class instead of 30. She has lost a bunch of teeth lately and got a new haircut for school.

Kirsten also got a new haircut and new glasses for school. Actually, we had lost her other ones but we figured she was due for some new ones anyway. The day after we bought the new ones, we found the old ones on a fencepost at my sister's house! Of all the random places! She is doing a second year of preschool. She has informed me lately that she is going to be a paleontologist (did I even spell that right?) when she grows up so that she can "dig up dinosaur bones and put them together with glue." What a funny kid!

My little Claire-bear is my little shadow. She helps me with all my projects. She uses a lot of sign language in her communication and has started to say sentences with some verbal words and some signs like, "Daddy", then the sign for Grandma and the sign for house. Kyle and I have been doing tons of projects on my mom's house. More pics to come!

What's Cookin'?

Okay, so maybe it's a little unfair to use other people's food pics but let's face the facts, they just look better and let's face another fact, I wasn't about to make ALL of these recipes today to take pictures of them. Anyhoo, here's what's usually cookin' at my house:

Quesadillas

tortillas
black beans
corn
cooked, diced chicken
shredded cheese
cilantro, chopped

Butter one side of each tortilla. Put buttered side down in heated skillet. Put on other toppings and other tortilla. Cook for a few minutes and then flip carefully with a spatula. Serve with guacamole and sour cream.


Stir Fry

2 packages ramen noodles (I usually use oriental flavor but chicken is good too)
1 package frozen sugar snap pea stir fry mix (found at Walmart) or fresh chopped veggies
Soy sauce

Stir fry veggies in oil. Boil ramen noodles and drain but do NOT add the seasoning packet. Add noodles to veggies and add 1/2 of seasoning packet and soy sauce to taste. Continue to stir fry until noodles are a little crunchy. Serve.


Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 box Spice Cake mix
1 12 oz can pumpkin
1/2 bag chocolate chips

Mix ingredients and put out on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 8 minutes.




Ravioli Bake

Fresh or frozen ravioli (I buy frozen cheese ravioli)
Spaghetti sauce
Hamburger, cooked and drained
Mozarella cheese

Cook ravioli according to directions on package. (I love the frozen ravioli because it is cheaper and it only takes 3 min to cook in boiling water). Drain ravioli and add spaghetti sauce and hamburger. You can serve just like this or you can put it in an oven safe pan and top with cheese and cook until cheese is melted.

French Dip

1 loaf French bread

thin sliced roast beef

provolone cheese

1 Au Jus sauce mix

Slice French bread loaf lengthwise from the side (does that make sense?) Layer roast beef and cheese all along the loaf. Close the loaf and put on pan and warm in the oven. Mix Au Jus sauce (you can find the sauce mix packet by the gravy and other sauce mixes in the store). Slice the loaf and enjoy!

Garlic Chicken Farfalle

3-4 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless)

1 12 bottle Lawry's mesquite marinate with lime juice

16 oz Farfalle or other pasta

1/2 C butter

2 C heavy whipping cream

2 to 3 cloves garlic crushed (I just use about 1/2 tsp garlic powder)

1 C shredded Parmesan cheese

1 tsp pepper (the recipe calls for 1 Tbsp but I don't like pepper that much)

1 lb bacon crumpled

Crock pot chicken with marinade on low for 6 hours. Pull chicken out of the juices and shred with a fork. About a 1/2 hour before serving, boil pasta. In a small saucepan, melt butter, add garlic, whipping cream, pepper, cheese and crumpled bacon. Whisk together on low heat for 3-4 minutes. In a large bowl pour over cooked drained pasta, add chicken. Sprinkle more parmesan cheese on top.

This is a great dish for Sunday dinner since you can crock pot the chicken while you are at Church and whip up the rest when you get home. SOOOO good.

Tera's Fast Breadsticks

1 1/2 C warm water

2 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp yeast

3 C flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 C melted butter

garlic salt and parmesan cheese

Dissolve yeast and sugar in water. Add to flour and salt in mixer. Mix well. Let set for 10 minutes. Turn out on floured surface and knead in a little more flour. Roll out and cut dough into strips with a pizza cutter. Dip each strip in melted butter and put in 9x13 inch pan. Sprinkle with garlic and parmesan (I usually do 2 smaller pans and put parm and garlic on one and leave the other plain to dip in jam after they are done). Let raise 20 min. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.

So that's some of what's cookin' at my house. What's cookin' at yours?

Pageant Season and President Uchtdorf

We've had another great season of the Pageant. I wish we a better pic of our family and one that included Jannika. She was off playing with some other kids when we took this picture. She loved going to the pioneer village before the pageant begins. LeAnne made the homemade ice cream every night and we were all happy to help her with it:)

We had a special visitor to the Pageant this year. President Uchtdorf came one night a talked to the cast and the audience. It was so neat to see him up close and hear him talk and shake his hand. We've never had a member of the 1st Presidency come before so it was a special treat.

We went to Salt Lake this last week because Kyle had some training meetings. We got to stay with him in the hotel and on the last day we were there, we decided to walk the 4 blocks to Temple square. We went to the north visitor's center and saw the Cristus statue. I always love going there. We also saw a video about eternal families. In the video, the main character's dad dies and of course that brought tears to our eyes. Kyle invited a guy who isn't a member to attend the pageant this year. He had studied a lot about the Church and he and Kyle talk a lot about it at work. When Kyle asked him what he thought about the Pageant, he said that he hadn't known before what emphasis our Church places on eternal families. I'm glad that that was one of the messages that he received at the Pageant. We are so thankful for eternal families!

July

For the fourth of July, we went down to Kyle's sister, Trista's house and did our traditional picnic with our hobo sticks. We also went to the park to see the parade and have some cotton candy. Rusty and Trista also blessed their baby the next day.

Kyle's sister, Megan, was getting rid of some things and sold us some bikes and this bike trailer. We have loved them! It is so nice to just use the bike trailer when we go down the street to visit grandma.
This was our 24th of July primary activity where the kids dressed up and did a little parade around the block. I love my little pioneer girls!
I love this picture of Kyle and Claire at the 24th of July parade! We had tons of fun and TONS of candy. The kids also caught two goldfish during the games at the park (both of which have since met their demise:( )

My brother's kids were here for a while for Pageant practice and also my sister's daughter. I took all the kids swimming last week and they had a ball and they were all good! Yay!
Here's Claire, just loungin' by the pool!
I have loved having a garden this year. Here is some of our corn that is almost ready to pick and the bottom is a picture of one of our pumpkins. (Notice how I took some close ups so that you couldn't see my large weed patch too:) We planted several different varieties of pumpkins, peas, beans and crook neck squash. As Claire would say, MMM, Num Num:)

End of School

Kirsten absolutely loved preschool this year with Miss Amanda. Kirst has always been kind of a shy kid. She never wanted to sing with the primary in Sacrament Meeting and she always had a hard time going to Primary without me. I was afraid that she would get scared at her preschool program and not want to do her parts and sing with the other kids. She totally blew me away with how brave she was! They did the cutest song and dance and I had the biggest smile on my face through the whole thing! I was so proud of her! Now about singing in Sacrament meeting...


Then two weeks ago, I was asked to come and speak to my father-in-law's ward who were doing a youth conference at Dance Hall Rock (above) and the Hole in the rock. I had never done a fireside without my dad and my brother so I was a little nervous but Kyle spoke before me and it went really well.
Kirsten loved being on the desert for this trip and kept chasing lizards and naming them. We took this picture of her on a giant lizard at the visitor's center.

Jannika also had her end of the year program where the kids did a jungle play. She was a monkey and did really well with her part despite having broken her arm the day before! Yeah, she was running inside the school from recess and ran into a boy. She put her arms out in front of her and broke one of the bones in her left arm. She stayed at school and didn't have tons of pain but didn't want to play the piano that night and it swelled up really bad so we took her to the doctor and got a cast put on. She's a trooper!

Busy Busy

Last week was pretty busy for us! We started out with Jannika's 7th birthday. Her favorite gift was a butterfly garden (don't ya LOVE those commercials that make kids beg you for bumpits or a shoes-under? :) This was actually a very cool (and educational) gift!

She had a "J" birthday party where the girls had to wear things that started with J (jeans, jackets, etc), we had a jump-rope competition, learned to play jacks, guessed how many jelly beans were in a jar and had a J shaped cake! (This is one of those times when the horseshoe cake pan your family has had since 1972 comes in handy!)

Notice the girl second from the right wearing Jammies, a jumprope around her waist, a jacket, jacks and jack-o-lanterns for a necklace. She definitely won the prize!
The rest of the week included having about 15 young men crash our house for an activity on Tuesday, some friends over for dinner on Wednesday, crazy cleaning and baking for a baby shower at my house on Thursday and then making lunch for the faculty of the school on Friday. Whew. I know some of you are going "Is that all?" Well, that's kind of a busy week for me. Then on Friday afternoon, we packed up and headed for the desert for our first camping trip in our new camp trailer.
And what is this odd picture, you might ask? Well, it is a real live dinosaur dig. On our way to our camp spot, we stopped to see this dinosaur dig site. I think what you are looking at is a vertebre and a rib.

I just thought this picture was pretty funny of Claire drinking her 50th Capri Sun. She was absolutely in HEAVEN while we were camping. She loves being outside, getting dirty and riding her bike.

It was a great week!

Easter and a Birthday

4 dozen eggs colored+ 7 cousins that visited+ 6 Easter egg hunts+ lots of candy= tons of fun!


We had Easter egg hunts at Megan's house and out on the desert. Isn't it supposed to be hot out on the desert? It obviously was not this time. Oh well, the kids loved it anyway. It's a tradition in Kyle's family to do a hike with a bandana on a stick with your lunch in it so we carried on the tradition.

We watched a wonderful conference on Saturday and Sunday. I didn't know that the speakers are not assigned topics or themes and don't even coordinate with each other on their topics. That makes it even more interesting and inspired that they seem to talk a lot about the same things. This time I noticed a lot of talks about teaching our children and reading the scriptures with them. What a neat conference!
Claire's birthday is today so we celebrated yesterday with a bunny cake. She loved it and loved her new presents.
Here she is with two grandmas and below with mom and her new piggy bank toy.