Yumm-O

... and I'm not even Rachel Ray! This weekend it was too warm for Chris to go ice fishing, and too cold and muddy to do much else. So we broke out the new cast iron Dutch Oven... and the charcoal smoker... and bought some baby back ribs. Dutch oven fries, butterscotch cake and smoked sticky ribs... yum.

Oh my, can that man cook. He is a much better cook than I am. I say this a lot, and not just to get out of kitchen duty. It's really true. Honestly, his rib sauce causes me to salivate at the very thought. I wish I could have a tablespoon of the stuff everyday on chicken, pork, beef, breakfast cereal, on my toothbrush. It's not a dressed up catchup/ tomato base, but a really sticky delicious wonderful potion that is just heavenly. Dinner was great, but we burned the cake (my only job- test the cake for doneness). So we had to try again on Sunday.

This time we ventured on to a rustic chicken and tomato stew. (Rustic= big chunks so my dad and Alex can easily pick out the veggies they don't like.) Add some wild rice and mmmmmm. Here we go again. Yum, yum, yummy. And this time we didn't burn the pineapple upside-down cake!

Next event: merge the new photography hobby and the cooking skills. Maybe start a food blog? Nah...

Confessions of an A.I. addict

WooHoo!! Season 8 started tonight! I resisted, drug my feet, and lived in denial. Until Season 5. Now, I can't hide it any more... I must confess that I *puffy heart* love American Idol! As an 80s girl, of course I love Paula. I love to hate Simon. I can only hope they find someone as rockin' as Daughtry and David Cook.

Winter in WY

that's hir-AIL-ious

The main point of Blogging is to share all the funny, cute, interesting, amazing, day to day joys of raising my unique children. Jeffery is certainly funny at times. For about a year, he has been learning new vocabulary words at school. Not really a word a day, but a few a week- all big words. He is really into this, and actually uses his new words appropriately in context quite often. We hear a lot of "colossal", "perturbed", and "culprit". As in.. dad is the culprit when Jeff is perturbed and someone is in colossal trouble... Sometimes though, while his use of the word is correct, his pronunciation is a bit lacking. For example.... an extremely amusing event can be called "Hir-AIL-ious". I now actually hear the word that way in my head.

Yesterday I learned the opposite of hir-ail-ious... It's "more-iserable." As in "How was your Spanish skit today?" Sigh- "It was more-iserable." I thought about it a minute.... "What does that mean?" "It means 'not good'". Pause. "Jeff? Is more-iserable the opposite of hir-ailious?" Excitedly... "Yes! That's it!"

Alex analyzed more-iserable and decided it's a hybrid of "more" and "miserable". I'm sure he's right, and I just chuckle all the time about it. I'm with Jeff.... Why stick with the simple "Good" or "bad" when you can be "Hir-ailious"??

new camera

Chris got a new toy! It's a really nice toy from Nikon. So he's taking a lot of pictures, which means I get to play more on Blogger! These are pics from Sunday dinner at Grammy's house. As you can see, Madi likes making faces for Uncle Chris! And as you can imagine but can't see, Alex hides from the camera.

Sunday Dinner- New Camera

Resolute

I was thinking today about my New Year's Resolutions. I usually start off with "Lose weight"... along with most of the people I know. I'm not heading the list that way this year. I've been kinda blue for several weeks, which lead to a general re-prioritization (big word of the week) of life in general, and Resolutions specifically.

1) I will read the scriptures every day. I want to finish the Book of Mormon, Bible and Doctrine and Covenants all this year.
2) I will reduce my carbon footprint, reuse items as much as possible, and recycle every possible thing. We are ridiculously wasteful at times.
3) I will continue as I've been the last 6 months.... striving for health. Move more. Eat more good carbs. Eat less sugar and salt. Eat five veggies every day. (Didn't say it wasn't important, but it's not the Most Important Thing!)

I consider this blog to be the main way that I journal, and so I also resolve to add more here. With pictures. Which means I will take more pictures.