First Day of School

OK. The boys have been in school for TWO WEEKS now and I'm just now posting their first day pictures. It was a really dark and rainy morning so I had a hard time with the lighting - and Tyler and Ryan left before the sun even came up! All the boys were a little nervous but also excited. This is the first time each of them is on their own at different schools. I think they're each feeling a little more grown up and independent. So here they are...

The Awesome 9th Grader - Starting Seminary, All Honors Classes, Marching Band & Debate - TYLER!!!

The Amazing 7th Grader - Advanced Math, Basketball, and First Chair Trombone - RYAN!!!

And the Adorable 4th Grader - Solo Bus Rider, Class Banker, and Fourcaster - JUSTIN!!!

Cupcakes Anyone?

Last weekend, I baked & decorated a bunch of mini cupcakes for our friends' wedding open house. There was a ton of great food and lots of other treats, but the bride & groom both told us that these cupcakes were their favorite ever! I just used cake mixes and a big batch of frosting and changed it up with different sprinkles. I also reassembled my "make-it-do or do-without" homemade cupcake stand. I just love the pink & white! I could do this every week!

The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden...

...so that's what we'll do!

That song (from the Primary songbook) has been playing in my head for months now. The boys helped me build grow boxes and Todd helped me plant seeds. And "before you know, good things will grow, to feed our family" - we've got real produce! It amazes me that tall plants and real food come from tiny little seeds, lots of sun, & a little water. It's a miracle and I'm in awe.

We are not a big veggie-eating family, but I'm having a good time showing the kids what I've picked and then trying to add it to our meals. We've had battered & fried yellow squash, pasta salad with our cucumbers, tomato, & green bell pepper, a stirfry, a few salads, a garden vegetable skillet dish, and there's still lots of things out there still growing! We planted 2 (only TWO) tomato plants because we don't really like tomatoes, but I've picked about 5 and there are probably 75 more!!! I'm going to can them if they'll get together and ripen at the same time. I also have about 15 cucumbers (again, not something we like) so I'm going to make pickles. The rabbits destroyed my lettuce and zucchini, and I haven't learn how to string up the beans & peas right, but I'd say this garden has been a success.

"Oh, won't you plant a garden too, and share the many joys

A garden brings in health and love to happy girls and boys."

Dinner of the Week

I like to cook. I just do. And I like trying new recipes. Last week I made Southwest Chicken Eggrolls from the new Tasty Kitchen site. The original recipe was waayy too spicy for us but since these are my favorite at Chili's, I wanted to try again. I tweaked the recipe so there's not so much heat, but still lots of good flavor and it's doubled for a real family. I could not stop eating them. Had them cold for breakfast the next morning. Ate them for lunch and dinner. Told Todd sorry he didn't get any leftovers. They are that good.

Another favorite when we have company or a special occasion is Cheeseburger in Paradise. The burgers are really good, but our family loves the Chocolate Nachos for dessert. Sounds iffy, but they are soooo good. Since I was already making a mess with the frying, I made a bigger mess and experimented with chocolate tortilla chips. I found a bag of "tortilla mix" at Wal-mart that you just add water to, but I also added cocoa powder. It made a very stiff dough but we rolled it out and cooked the tortillas on the griddle, then cut them into chips, then fried them until they were crispy. Oh yeah. The boys liked theirs with powdered sugar and chocolate syrup on them. Todd & I had ours with ice-cream, strawberries, and chocolate syrup. It was quite a culinary night at our house! I put it on Facebook and some friends wanted the recipes, so here you go!

Southwest Chicken Eggrolls
4 whole Chicken Breast, Diced (I dice really small)
1/4 cups Lime Juice
¼ cups Cilantro, Chopped
1/4 cups Olive Oil
1 whole Chipotle Chili In Adobo Sauce, Chopped
1 teaspoon Chipotle Chili Adobo Sauce
2 tablespoons Honey
6 cloves Garlic, Minced
¼ cups Chopped Green Onions (the little ones)
1 teaspoon Cumin
1 can Black Beans, Drained And Rinsed
¼ cups Roasted Red Pepper, Sliced
1 cup Spinach, Chopped
1 whole Avocado
1/2 cup Sour Cream
24 whole Eggroll Wrappers
1 pinch(es) Salt And Pepper (to Taste)
Preparation Instructions
Whisk lime juice, cilantro, oil, chiles and 2 teaspoons of sauce, honey, garlic, cumin, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper together in small bowl.
Toss chicken with lime juice mixture. Season with salt and pepper. In a large hot skillet drizzle about 1 Tbs of olive oil, add chicken mixture. Toss and brown chicken, add black beans, red pepper and spinach. Toss and let simmer for about 10 minutes, remove from heat and let cool.
While the chicken cools you can make your dip. In a small food processor combine avocado, sour cream and 1/2 tsp of adobo sauce from the chilies, blend till smooth. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
Roll up the filling in the wrappers and then fry until crispy on the outside. (The original recipe says to bake, but we liked them fried better.)

UPDATE!!!

This is the much anticipated slideshow of our trip to California in June that I promised over a month ago. I've been busy, people!! Now I have to catch up on everything we've been doing for the last month - and this time, no promises about any pictures, slideshows, or video clips!! You'll just have to wait and see what shows up. It'll be good.

California Dreamin'

As soon as Tyler got back from NYLT, we took off for California. Our original plan of meeting Todd's family for a few days of Disneyland fun didn't work out but since we had the days off work and the trip was already scheduled, we visited MY family. We learned from my Garmin GPS, "the Great Garmini", that it's only a 23+ hour drive taking the route through CO, UT, & NV! In California, we saw some movies, explored the tidepools, played with cousins, visited with Grandma Denslow, made & raced pine-wood derby cars, roasted hot dogs & marshmallows, had a few airsoft battles, went swimming in Amy & Dodd's new pool, took the boys to Knott's Berry Farm, were introduced to the magnificent Cake Ball, went shopping "girl-style" with my sisters & mom & grandma, sewed 5 corn babies for the Youth Conference Trek, ate soo much delicious food, and only had 2 medical traumas! Check out my slideshow for lots of pictures of the fun stuff. (Slideshow coming soon!)

The first of our Urgent Care issues was when Ryan, running around outside, sliced his leg open on a cracked ceramic flower pot. The edge was like a sharp knife and the cut on his shin was 1/4 inch deep and 3 inches long. Fortunately, the men-folk had cleaned and bandaged him up before I saw it, but they thought he should see a doctor. Unfortunately, everyone else got to go to Farrell's for a Zoo (30 scoops of ice cream and tons of toppings and little animals in a huge bowl they bring to you on a stretcher with lots of noise and fanfare). Fortunately, we got Ryan in very quickly and he only needed 8 STAPLES!! Then the two of us had dinner and dessert at Marie Callendars. He was never in very much pain and by the next day was running around playing catch and airsoft again. The staples came out about 10 days later and Ryan is happy that he'll have a big scar to show off.

Our second crisis was already happening and I didn't even notice because I was wrapped up with Ryan's cut leg. Tyler had a little swelling under his right and a funny red sunburn on that side of his face. When he woke up the next morning, his right eye was nearly swollen shut and there was a rashy feel on his skin. It did not hurt or itch, he was just very swollen. He also had a severe flare up on the dry patches he always has on his arms, legs, and tummy. I took him to Ojai's ER and they said it was an allergic reaction to something and gave him a steroid shot, said to take Benadryl, and come back if it got worse. It did. I took him back that night and they still said it was an allergic reaction. I was not convinced since by then, his right side was not only swollen but starting to weep from the skin. ANYWAYS.... we decided to get him home faster, my mom came with us to help me drive (thanks, Mom!). We got Tyler in to his regular allergy doc and he was stumped. Not an allergy. A culture of the ooze came back a few days later and it was a STAPH INFECTION! I was stunned - people die from those! It took a few days for the scabbiness to sluff off and the redness to go away. Tyler is all better now, but since he is 14 he doesn't want any of the unflattering pictures I took during the whole process to be posted to the internet, but trust me, it was bad. (If you want to be grossed out, ask me to show you sometime when you're over.)

So that was our California 2009 trip. We really did have a great time with everyone. I wish we lived closer than 23 hours from you! But I am really excited for our gathering here next week!

One Loooong Post

Warning! I have neglected my blog for way too long so this one entry will have to cover several weeks of stuff! I'm just gonna go through my pictures and outline the craziness.

First, here are Justin and Ryan playing Spring Soccer. This was Ryan's last season playing on this league so THANKS to all the coaches who have taught him the game! He started when he was only 4 and now he's a good player and wants to play soccer for the High School in a couple years. Justin is in red, Ryan is the giant in purple.



So, for Mother's Day, since Todd was in China, I told the boys that I wanted them to help me build some grow boxes for a garden. They were surprisingly helpful (especially Tyler) and in just a couple of hours we took this spot in our yard behind the garage



and with just a little cutting (Tyler used the circular saw) and drilling (Ryan did all the drilling and screwing)


and postioning (Tyler is good with a level)


and stirring up all the soil mix, compost, vermiculite, and peat,


and lots of shoveling (Justin worked hard at this)


we ended up with... three square grow boxes!



Then we went to Steak N Shake for dinner. Happy Mother's Day to me. I love being a mom and I have the best three boys. I am so blessed.


The next Saturday, Todd was home so he helped me add more soil and the grids on top and plant the seeds and strawberry plants. It looked like this:



We've already had a few berries and lots of the little plants have sprouted. I hope I can keep them alive! We used the Square Foot Gardening book so each small square has it's own crop. We planted corn, beans, peas, carrots, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, radishes, hot peppers, bell peppers, and lettuce. Mmmmm.

And my lilac bush bloomed! The flowers smelled sooo nice. It's just a little bush right now, but it will grow to be huge someday and the scent will fill the whole yard. Isn't it goregous!


And last week, Ryan graduated from Elementary School (6th grade)!! I can't believe this tall 12-year-old is my baby boy Ryan. He is a great kid. We are proud of him and how he's growing up. He loves his brothers and his friends. He's nervous and excited about going to middle school next year. He's already bored with summer and wants to have friends over every day and doesn't think he should have to do jobs on his vacation. Hmm. It's going to be a long summer.


Last week was also Tyler's 8th Grade Band Banquet. There were many awards given to the kids, some serious and some just for fun. Tyler was nominated for a couple but he got a certificate for Most Improved Player. He really likes playing the trumpet in the band and has lots of good friends there too. Yay Tyler!


Then it was 8th Grade Promotion! I cannot believe that Tyler is done with Middle School and off to High School! How did that happen?! Tyler is on the front row somewhere.


Can you tell how proud we are? We love this boy.


Then on Friday, Tyler took his Driver's Permit test and he PASSED! He can drive! He is sooo happy. He's been out driving twice and he's pretty good. He's very careful and he pays attention.


Saturday, Tyler left for a Scouting camp - National Youth Leadership Training. It is a pretty big deal and we're glad that he went, but I miss him so much! I hate not seeing him and talking to him! He only has 2 days left and I can't wait. We've had a little rain so I'm worried about him being wet and cold, but I know he'll be OK. I'm just selfish - I want him back!

We also had piano recitals and scout activites and tons of other things going on so we are now enjoying the first week of summer vacation. Ryan and Justin are reading, playing the Wii, having air soft battles, and starting to bug each other. We have lots of plans for the summer so check back with us and we'll show you all our adventures!

Another Yellow Brick Road

Last week I whipped up a baby quilt for my friend's baby shower. I used the fabrics leftover from the Micah's quilt. It's a Yellow Brick Road pattern, random, fast & easy. I just love the blues and yellows and can't wait until this new baby comes I can snuggle him up! And I had to show the most adorable ceramic bunnies I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby. Love them.