Playin in the rain

It was pouring outside and I came downstairs and it sounded like water was flooding our house. Scared me a little because I was doing the wash and I have experienced water gushing out of a washer before! However, not this time, the door was just open and here sat my little man who loves the rain just like me. He just wanted to watch it. Then he wanted to "protect" his basketball from the rain. Then Andrew came out and they had fun playing in the rain. He is holding his "storm buddy" that my friend Diane got for the boys when we first moved here. My kids HATE thunder, and well it thunders here a lot. :) Which I LOVE.

Migraines suck

We had planned a weekend to go and visit my brother Mark in Houston. I was excited to get out of town and feel like we are going on vacation. I got up and started getting ready so there would be no forgetting anything important, and I was cleaning so we left a clean house to come home to, and then I sit down to relax. Actually, to read Eclipse (AGAIN I KNOW!) when I noticed that I couldn't read the first letter in each word. I knew what this meant, but I was in denial. I had no headache medicine either. We don't use it often enough and it had expired. So I layed (laid?) down to rest and see if it would go away and instead it turned into a migraine. : ( I couldn't hardly do a thing and had to admit after several hours that we just weren't going to make it to Houston. So sad, and look at how ready and organized I was! We still haven't made it there yet....

When its hot outside...

You know it's hot outside when the kids don't even want to go out and play. So we go to McDonald's. They have  a really cool play area and if there happens to be a train, we can see it! Zack LOVES to play "backetball" and refuses to get down, even for ice cream! He is actually pretty darn good at it too, considering he is 2 1/2.

I don't get many pictures of Ethan, so here are some of him showing his true colors. My little goof-ball!

Unplugged

I am a TV-aholic. I love tv. My kids watch too much and so do I. When I found out we were moving, I had this 'plan' to not order tv and just play with the kids. Who needs that trash anyway? Well, day 1 in Texas and I was craving my shows. It did NOT help that it was the season finale of Grey's Anatomy either. I jinxed the poor DirecTv guy by telling him he HAD to have my satellite up and running so that I could watch Grey's that night. 5 hours later and a supervisor coming to help, he FINALLY gets it set up. YAY! Well then the depression hits from moving half way across the country. I have no family and no friends (as of then), the boys are bored out of their minds because it is HOT and they have no one to play with. So I plant myself on my couch and sit. For hours a day, either cartoons or my shows were on. It didn't matter, that television never turned off. (I am so embarrassed admitting this right now). Today that is ending. (I hope) I got up this morning determined today was going to be different. So I ate breakfast and went into the front room and UNPLUGGED the television. The boys sat there looking at me like I had gone nuts. Remember that Berenstein Bears book that talked about Too Much TV? That is how they looked and responded to me. However, they have played marbles, we have worked on school papers to keep them ready for school this fall, they played outside building sand castles, they have read books and Zack learned how to use scissors. They have only asked 1 time to watch TV and when I said no, they moved along to the next adventure. I plan on allowing them short amounts of TV time everyday, but at 8:30 every morning that TV is getting UNPLUGGED. Wish me luck! And any ideas of keeping them busy would be appreciated!

You ask, I deliver..enjoy!

S'more Cups


ingredients:
7 whole graham crackers (1 cup finely crushed)
1/4 cup powdered sugar
6tbsp butter melted
4 bars milk chocolate candy divided
12 large marshmallows


Preheat oven to 350. Place graham crackers into a large resealable plastic bag. Finely crush into crumbs using Baker's Roller. Combine graham cracker crumbs, powdered sugar and butter in small batter bowl. Using small scoop, place a scant scoop of crumb mixture into each cup of deluxe mini muffin pan. Press crumbs to form shallow cups with mini tart shaper. Bake 4-5 minutes or until edges are bubbling. Meanwhile, break two of the candy bars into rectangles. Remove pan from oven; place one rectangle into each cup. 


Cut marshmallows in half crosswise using professional shears dipped in cold water (this keeps the stickiness to a minimum). Place one marshmallow half, cut-side down, into each cup. Return to oven 1-2 minutes or until marshmallows are just slightly softened. Remove pan from oven to Stackable cooling rack; cool 15 minutes. Carefully remove cups from pan. Cool completely


Break remaining candy bars and place in 1 cup prep bowl. Microwave on HIGH 1-1 1/2 minutes or until melted and smooth, stirring every 20 seconds. Dip the top of each marshmallow in melted chocolate. Turn top-side up and let stand 40 minutes to an hour or until set.


Enjoy these yummy little treats! Be careful, because they are small it is easy to eat until your  tummy hurts! Let me know if you liked them! 

S'mores-Pampered Chef style

So most of you know that I am now a Pampered Chef consultant. I love playing around with their products and recipes. My friend Shelly was coming over and I saw these and I just HAD to make them! I thought they turned out really yummy, and they LOOK pretty too! I hope Shelly liked them! They were really rich.

**I am having a catalog show right now and if you want to order anything go to www.CookingwithMemory.com
Thanks!

Thoughts on Father's Day

Yesterday was kind of a neat day. I was sitting in Sacrament meeting at the end of the bench by the wall watching my boys. A few months ago, you couldn't have pried Zack away from my side. He would not go to Jeff-ever and the older boys preferred me too. Now we have lived here a month, Jeff has days where sometimes he is just home working on the computer or we take time to go exploring. He is just around so much more! I noticed on Sunday that the boys were all over him! Zack was sitting on his lap, the big boys were fighting over sitting on his lap and I was a lone woman sitting at the end of the row. :) It made me so happy that Jeff is finally having the opportunity to spend time with the boys. No we don't have a lot of money, and no we can't put them in sports, but because of all that he can play with them and just BE there with them. It's a great blessing that I am only just now realizing. Maybe that is why we don't have the money to put them into the camp that would have them gone most of the time. Sure it would have been nice for ME, but for JEFF this is better. I wish I could have taken a picture. It was so cute and he was so bewildered as to what to do with all the attention.
As an example, Saturday we set up this little pool that we bought because it is SO STINKIN HOT HERE! I swear, Arizona has nothing on Texas heat! Anyway, I blow up the pool and leave Jeff to fill it up. I don't see Jeff for awhile and I go outside to see what's happening. And this is what I find....

They are all swimming around in circles with Zack riding on Jeff's back. (they stopped when I pulled out the camera-of COURSE! :))

It's moments like these when I forget for a moment that I miss my family and my friends like crazy and appreciate the time we have together, just the 5 of us.

Our new place!

Those of you reading this blog know me in some way. You obviously care about me because you are reading this. So please ignore the fact that my house is just not that clean. I try to keep it clean and sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. So enjoy the tour of our new home. :)




We can already park and workout in our garage! WOO HOO! There is also a picture of the street so that you can see how green it is around here. Most all the neighborhoods have huge trees and instead of dirt patches there are grass patches along the roads. I love how green it is.




This is our under the stairs storage. This is also where we will be hiding in case there is a tornado. :) This is also our dining room/office and kitchen. I do not like tile. It gets dirty all the time and is such a pain in the butt to clean. I think I need a Shark steam cleaner. :)




These are the living areas of the house. The room with all the bookshelves will be where my piano goes when I get it. (I can't wait!) Don't you love all the books?

This is the washer and dryer that we got for $100! It works great! I love craigs list!



This is Zack's room with all of Andrew's things in it. :) Zack will sleep anywhere.

This is Andrew and Ethan's room. It used to be Ethan and Zack's room, but Andrew didn't like sleeping by himself. So we switched last night.




This is our bedroom. I thought our apartment had a big master. I love how big this room is. It will be even nicer once I can get decorating. It also happens to be the hottest room in the house. :( I do NOT love that about it.


This is our backyard. The big sand patch was supposed to be sodded last week. It hasn't, and the boys love playing in it and dragging it into the house. I hope it disappears soon.

Splash time!

It gets hot out here. I am not going to lie. However it isn't as hot as Arizona (yet) and for that I can be grateful. :) Yesterday was a really hot day, and so we bought the boys this fun pool from Target. They loved it! In fact a fringe benefit of having a backyard and now a pool to play in is that Zack will take a nap! WOO HOO! He has been so tired lately from just playing and playing out back. Anyway, he passed out for like 3 hours after playing in the pool and now our garage is completely organized! I can park my van in there and exercise too. It is amazing what can get done when the 2 year old is safely gone. :) I plan to clean today and take pictures of our new place so you can see where we live now!

Fort Worth Stockyards

Ever since we moved here Jeff has been asking everyone, "what are the stockyards?" Well we went on Saturday and found out. They were so cool! Its a historic part of Ft. Worth, kept in the old western style. They had a petting zoo (the donkey was so sweet!), Candy store, a train(which we didn't see), a gun show and the drove these long horned cattle right through the middle of town! It was really a cool place to visit, even in the heat! The picture of Andrew and Jeff is them scratching each others backs. It was so funny to watch them walk around doing this! In case you think I favor Andrew and Zack in pictures, it is not the case. It is like pulling teeth sometimes to get Ethan to take a picture. Especially out in public. Another cool thing about these stockyards is how cheap everything is! It was only 25 cents to ride the merry go round and $1 to get into the petting zoo!