Cowboy Caviar

Someone at work asked for my wife's recipe for Cowboy Caviar. It is great as a salsa for corn chips or eaten straight.

Can of Corn, drained
Can of Black Eyed Peas, drained
Can of Black Beans, drained
2 Avacados cut up
Can of Diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 a Bell Pepper, diced
Italian Salad Dressing
Salt and Pepper to taste

The next day it will be even better as the flavors meld.

-Rich

Family Photo Shoot - The Outtakes

We this as close as we are going to get to looking like our Stick Family. I am a bit curvier than my Stick self. This is one of the fun outtakes from our family photo shoot. We took 74 shots and I don't think we even got one where everyone is looking at the camera and smiling; some everyone is looking and some everyone is smiling but never all together. That is just what happens when you have eight kids 2 to 13 years old all trying to time their smiles with getting the 7-month-old baby to look at the camera. It was hilarious trying to convince them to let Gram get Zanna's attention and not to do it themselves. Here are some of my favorite out takes.

In this one Laney is trying to help Zanna stop crying.

I just loved Daniel's roar, and Laney looking at the sky.

Richard and I are the only ones looking at the camera. I think Richard is just waking up though, or falling asleep.

Time goes too fast....

I was planning to post my Halloween photos, but I haven't gotten them from my mom yet. She came over and took a bunch of shots for me, but she has been swamped with a stake play and being sick the last few weeks. So, maybe I'll post them for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Here's our pumpkins. The kids did a good job designing this year.

Anyhow, life has been speeding by. I really feel like time is going faster. Things I used to be able to get done in a day seem to take longer. It isn't that I am slower, if anything I am working harder but it just seems that the day is over after it has barely begun.

Someone, the other day, mentioned hearing a quote from Joseph Smith about time literally speeding up in the last days. I cannot find such a quote. If any of you have heard it or can find it please comment on it.

I did find a quote from Spencer W. Kimball. "In my estimation, the Lord’s time table is directed a good deal by us. We speed up the clock or we slow the hands down and we turn them back by our activities or our procrastinations."

I guess because I am procrastinating less, time is going faster?? This must be good news, it just doesn't feel like it, right? I am working on being balanced, but I am not really doing anything extra. Laundry, bathrooms, grocery shopping, yard work, organizing the pantry to fit all the groceries,

homework, preparing Sunday School lessons, loving and playing with the fam, mopping, cleaning up thousands of dead bees from the beehive we had treated in our tree (Sam is deathly allergic),

nursing the baby (Boy, bottles are tempting!), making dinner for our small army, holding a sad baby girl...etc...

I love my job, I just wish sometimes that I could be finished with everything and feel free to do other good things. Or even just to stand back and look at the finished product of all my labors. I guess I won't be doing that until I die, which I am not planning to do for a long time (I want to see my gazillions of great-grand kids.).

Pretty much, my life is wonderful, just a little overwhelming at times. I am happy to have so much to do!? I am never bored!

Halloween Preview

This year we have a fairytale theme going with our kids costumes, totally their idea. As you see we have a Prince, a Princess and a Black Knight. We are also going to have a Wizard, a Dragon, a 2 Fairies, a Clown and something or other that Sam is creating.

Nate, Drew and Laney were having fun acting out their parts this afternoon. I was doing a fitting and they wanted to play for a bit. I still have a couple hems to do and some more bling to add to Laney's dress. I also still have a cloak for the Wizard and the entire Fairy costume for Sara to make. Good thing I have a whopping 3 more days until our ward Halloween party. I am also glad that I NEVER procrastinate.

Our Family Looks Good In Vinyl

I made the stick figure picture at the top of my blog, with my husband and kids input, for our family reunion t-shirts. My kids wear their shirts often, and love to show everyone their family. (I think they like to shock people.) Anyhow, yesterday evening, in between crazinesses and after a couple of days of HARD work at my parents, I received a package. It was a great surprise to find our family in vinyl stickers. My way too generous friend Kim had created them for us. The kids LOVE it. It is fun to see our family taking up half of the window. Josh said, "You know, Mom, if you have anymore your going to have to redo this." I told him not to stress about it.

Thanks, Kim, for the our totally cute window. We love it!

Photo Tag

My friend, Kim tagged me, with the following instructions: I was to open my pictures file, go to the 6th folder, the 6th sub-folder, the 6th picture, and post about it. We have two computers with photos. There is only one photo in the 6th folder downstairs, so I will also post the 6th 6th 6th from upstairs too.


Let me start by saying this photo does not do this situation justice. I was shopping at Wal-Mart with baby Daniel and the almost 3 year old twinners. I had them tied, sitting down in the basket of the cart with the long rainbow shoe laces that I ALWAYS kept in my purse to contain my little busy bodies. I used them like seat belts. I had Daniel buckled up in the part by the handle of the cart. The twins couldn't stand or reach out of the cart so I knew I was good to do my shopping. I needed to get blue paint for the pine wood derby. I let Daniel hold the paint since it was plastic wrapped and he was only 8 months old. I didn't figure he could get into trouble with it and I didn't want it in the basket with the twins. Well, of course Daniel dropped it in to the basket and I didn't notice. I was in the girls section looking at clothes when I noticed that the twins had opened the bottle of paint and had been putting it on like lotion. It was ALL over them and the cart. My clothes were ruined, having blue grid lines from leaning on the side of the basket to clean them up. I got paper towels from the lady at the dressing room area. She stared at the idiot mother trying to wipe up the quickly drying blue paint on her little cuties. I was so embarrassed. Lots of more stares came our way. The paint you see in the photo is what was too dry for me to wipe off. They were COVERED in paint before the wipe down. I didn't have a digital camera at the time so I stopped my buddy Jen's house and had her snap on for me. I knew I needed this moment documented.

This is the photo from upstairs. Sara and I were doing a photo shoot of her pretty Sunday curls. She was having fun modeling for me. She is a delight! Here are a few more shots.





Now I am tagging 6 friends: Dandi, Jessi, Nan, Jen, Leilani and Emily.

Our Mini Get Away

Richard's Grandma Blake passed away about a week and a half ago. She was the sweetest little lady. She was always happy to see our troops and genuinely loved all her grandkids and great-grandkids (over 100 great-grands). I am sure she was ready to rejoin Grandpa and was happy for a rest from her well used body.

We threw together a plan to make it to the funeral in a hurry. We have many people to thank for helping out with our kids, the Anways, the Klippels, the Jensens, the Wilsons, the Tanners, the Youngs, the Wrights and my parents the Ely's. We really appreciate all of you for taking such great care of our babies.


We drove up on Thursday. It was quite different to only have Susanna with us. The weather was beautiful and we had fun sing along with Cd's and talking without the usual interruptions. We stayed the night at the Red Lion Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. It was a fabulous hotel; loved the Bath and Body Works shampoo, conditioner, lotion and soaps.

Friday, we got up and played mostly at the Church History Museum (I love history!)and Welfare Square(We got to try the bread, cheese and chocolate milk the church produces. It was pretty darn good.). At the museum we were able to read all the labels and signs, unlike when we are trying to keep hold of our 9 sweeties. They have a new Gordon B. Hinckley display with a lot of his personal things on display. It is still hard to believe he is history now.



That evening we went to stay at my friend Kim's lovely home. She is an amazing lady, so inspiring and creative. We had a great time visiting, watching her hubby John get his hair trimmed with all of us in the bathroom, eating a delicious dinner at Zuppa's, meeting her parents and then chatting back at her place about pretty much everything until well after 2am. I am sure that we wore her out. She is just too much fun and such a dear friend I didn't want the fun to end.


We left Kim's and went to Grandma's funeral. It was a touching tribute to her. She was a spunky lady with many adventures and lots of faith. Richard wore one of his Grandpa Blake's ties that Grandma had given him. It was cute to see him being sentimental. We had lunch with his parents and siblings, nephews and niece, aunts and uncles, and heaps of cousins.

This is a picture of Rebecca on the left, Richard's twin cousin (they were born 1 day apart), Richard and another cousin JoAnn, I think. It was hard to keep so many names straight.

After lunch, Kim kindly brought me my pillow, which we left behind, on her way to the BYU game (Go Cougars!). The cousins then all hung out at a mansion his cousin rented for the night. It was a gorgeous 15,000 square feet, with beds for 50. Richard has a great family. I love to be a part of the family.

After pizza dinner we went to stay with my buddy from when I was a YW, Emily. She has a great home from the 60's. It has character, in a good way, and a beautiful view of Provo and the lake. I had a lot of fun catching up with her and her hubby Steve. We talked and Richard and Zanna slept on the floor for a couple of hours. At midnight, we headed for bed. I got Richard and Zanna downstairs to sleep, but Rich couldn't get back to sleep. He finally got back to sleep around 5am.

I let him sleep until 9, but we needed to get to church and on the road. We woke up to find a light dusting of snow. It was falling in little flurries. Such a treat for us desert dwellers. Emily fed us a yummy breakfast of puff oven pancakes, bacon, toast and grapefruit. So good! It was hard to leave, I love Emily.

Susanna was a happy traveler and kept us, as well as everyone else, smiling. She is such a sunshine.

The snow continued to fall lightly about a quarter of the drive home. We enjoyed listening, over and over, to a new CD "All About You" by Kenneth Cope that Kim so kindly gave us. It is filled with fabulous songs about the Savior. Richard and I both felt inspired. We read quite a bit from the first volume of "Hearts of the Children", a wonderful novel during the civil rights movement, the cold war etc. (We love to read together.) We also had plenty of yummy snacks thanks to our two sweet hostesses.

Thanks again to everyone who made our whirlwind of a trip so amazing!