An Autumn "BReeZe"

 Autumn has hit our yard like a bulldozer, wrecking havoc all over. We have several trees in our yard, ranging from fruit trees to a red maple. We also have a giant size cottonwood tree in our back yard, which I love in the summer for its sweet shade, but not so much in the Fall for it abundance of leaves. At this point in the year it has dropped most of its leaves on the back yard and they have been waiting patiently for someone to rake them up. I have been ignoring them for quite some time, but after having to clean them up off of the floors in my house (because they get tracked in by everyone), I decided that today I would venture out and put them in bags...how hard could it be? I do it every single year. BUT...this year was different~ as I left the comfort of my warm house and went to the shed for the leaf rake I felt a slight breeze..."its just a breeze" I told myself, "I can still rake with a little breeze in the air." That was my first mistake. I raked up a giant pile of leaves in not too many swipes with the rake. "This was going to move along quite quickly" I decided. I put the leaf sacks in the garbage can so I could load up the leaves AND...a large gust of wind came whipping around and blew the leaves all around the yard. Yep I was not very happy, but I raked them up and then along it came AGAIN! It seemed the more that I raked, the harder the wind blew, over and over this happened. I had to bag them almost as quickly as I raked them. It was so frustrating. I actually bagged about 15 sacks full (a very small amount for my yard) before I just gave up and let them blow. Needless to say, my job was left VERY UN-finished and I probably won't get back to raking until early next week. I guess that I will continue to clean up the rotten leaves on my floor until then. Hopefully when I can get back to raking, the wind will cooperate a little bit more. I hope you have better luck in your "leaf raking adventures". Happy Raking!!

It was an "OH DEAR" moment

Have you ever done something stupid and then afterwards wondered "What was I thinking"?

Last night was one of those moments for me. In the process of cooking noodles for dinner, I burned some onto the bottom of a pan. I heard that if you put some water in the pan and boil it for a few minutes it helps the noodles to become loose (and it really does work) so you can clean the pan. Well, I put the water in and put the pan on the stove. I had some others things that I needed to do and planned on coming back into the kitchen in 5 minutes to turn the pan off and clean it. I got busy doing my little things and in the process forgot about the water on the stove. (Bet you can't tell where this is going, huh?!!!) Pretty soon the smoke detector was going off, which it does randomly when the battery is going dead. Still, nothing clicked in my head. I let it buzz because I was in the middle of something downstairs. No one else moved or even flinched to go and see why it was going off, mainly because it just does that sometimes, so the smoke detector continued to screech. After a couple of minutes I decided to go upstairs and take out the battery because it was driving me crazy...as I reached the top of the stairs the kitchen was filled with smoke...yep- then it clicked in my head. I remembered that I had left a pan of water on the stove. The only problem was, the water had all boiled out and the pan was burning. I ran into the kitchen and the pan was on fire along with the top of my stove. I grabbed the pan off and threw it in the sink and turned on the water. We were all coughing and choking trying to get to the windows and doors to get them opened and get the smoke out. After the smoke cleared, we assessed to see if there was any damage and to my surprise there was none. The pan may not be able to be salvaged, but my stove was fine and we all seemed to survive. The house smells of something horrible and so Monday morning may consist of laundry galore as well as cleaning the smells from curtains, couches and such. But the important thing is, we are all okay...which may not have been the case if I would have waited much longer to go and check the smoke detector....

The moral of my story is...DON'T ever leave pans on the stove unattended, and make sure that you have smoke detectors! 

Trick or Treat..smell my feet

It's Halloween and the little ghosts and goblins are out haunting the town...and knocking at my door. This is our last year having a trick or treat-er go out. We have always told our children that after they are 12, they are too old to go. Teenagers have others things they should be doing, like answering the door for the little folks, or having parties...but not trick or treating. I made a special dinner with "Skeleton Fingers", "Monkey Brains" and "Stomach Inners" and to top it off we had "Witches Hats," that I created from bugles, a little frosting and a cookie, for dessert.It was great. Different because it was just Deron, Halle and I for dinner..but we take what we can get. This year Halle wanted to go trick-or- treating with her friends. She has been so excited all week. Its been a little different for Deron and I, we have never been home alone on Halloween and to top it off, we have never NOT gone trick-or-treating until this year. Its actually been kind of nice! Halle got all dressed up and answered the door most of the time, until her friends came and out they scampered to haunt the neighborhood with the rest of the little people. Todd and Dana threw a big Halloween party at their house for their friends and siblings (the older ones) and so Kim and Cameron went off to that. They bobbed for apples, ate doughnuts on a string, made pizza, played games and watched a scary movie. They had a fantastic time. Ahh....to be a kid again. Deron and I both had a quiet night, alone, at home. I stayed upstairs and watched "Hocus Pocus", my all time favorite Halloween show, while I answered the door for all the trick or treat-ers (after Halle left) and Deron spent his time downstairs watching TV while he put up his feet and enjoyed a relaxing Halloween night. Ahh...to be a man. (just kidding). Now that Halloween is over,  we can get on to the fun holiday's. 

Joy to the WoRLd

I was listening to the news a couple of days ago and was taken by surprise when they said that we only have 44 shopping days left until Christmas...AHHHHHH! A terrifying statement being made by someone who already had their shopping started, I am sure. I haven't even thought about Christmas shopping yet!!! Although, I love Christmas and if you know me very well you know that in 2 days time, Christmas carols will be heard playing from my house. I don't see any reason to wait until after Thanksgiving to start the Christmas hoopla, the stores have

 already started decorating and making us think about Christmas coming, so why shouldn't we? 

My trees and Christmas decorations go up about 2 weeks into November. I figure if I am going to go to all of the bother to transform my house into a Christmas paradise, why not enjoy it for longer than a couple of weeks. 

Christmas holds a lot of wonderful memories for me and for our family~

The Christmas lights on Temple 

Square. We have rented a Wilkins Bus and gone with my family a couple of times and have had so much fun. Its been bitter cold most of the time but its so beautiful and peaceful. My kids all love it and look forward to going. 

Christmas parties with lots of food and family around. We have had a family party with my family for so many years now, that I think its finally considered a tradition. Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without out it. 

Christmas breakfast. Deron and I cook a very large breakfast with all the fixing's on Christmas morning and invite all of his family over. We don't usually eat until 9:30-10:00 so it gives everyone time to open presents and do their things at their homes first. We love it. The kids get more excited about that I would have thought. Last year we were in Sedona Arizona, staying in a resort, on a family vacation for Christmas and the kids were so devastated that we weren't going to do Christmas breakfast. So Christmas Eve we went out and bought everything to fix it the next morning. Everyone got up and we ate to our hearts content. It's nice to have things like this that our family all looks forward to doing. 

Christmas Eve we have our big Christmas dinner, so that after breakfast on Christmas day, my cooking is done. We just pick in leftovers and then Christmas night we go to Deron's mom and dads and play games and eat dinner over there. We both have such wonderful families and are so close, both by miles and relationship, that we love spending time with them doing family things.

Christmas morning, as a child, brings back a flood of happy memories. Not that I even remember much of what I ever got from Santa or anyone else for that matter...it was just the feeling of being together as a family and the spirit that was always in our home. We all got along that day and had fun playing with each others toys and doing things as a family. Those, I think, are the memories that I hold on to and are so dear to me, its not the stuff that I got or receive now, but the feelings that are shared between children, parents and family members. The spirit of our Savior, who Christmas is all about, and the love that he wants us to have for our family and for people all over the world. 

So...get up your tree's, get shopping...and play that Christmas music...the big day is just around the corner!

They were a HiT

Years ago when my 3 older children were small (that's been a loooooong time ago) I made Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for them. They gobbled them right down and I lost the recipe and so I never made them again. Honestly, I never thought about it again until the other day when I was thinking of foods that my children liked when they were youngsters, and wanted to write the recipes down to add to my new cookbook (volume #2) that will be coming out in the next 10 years or so (that's about how long it took me to do the first one). I looked and looked and couldn't find the recipe anywhere. So what did I do? Of course, I went to the web to hunt it down...surely they would have it there. I looked and looked and they didn't have the one that I remember making. I promised Halle, Kim and Cameron that I would make them some so they could try them out, after the long search for the recipe I just decided to find one that I thought would work and call it good. So today, being Sunday, I thought that I would try out my cooking skills. I looked at the recipe and found that we were missing one of the main ingredient (should have planned ahead), so I thought that I would just have to wait until tomorrow and make them for Family Night Treats, BUT...Cameron came up with a substitution for what we needed, out of something that we had, and it worked awesome!!! So I guess you could say that Cameron made up this recipe, (which you'll just have to wait for the recipe book to get done to see what it is) and we made 100 "Peanut Butter Crunch Cups" from scratch. The kids said they were really yummy and tasted like the "real thing". And since I can't eat sugar...I will take their word for it. But they looked similar to the ones that I made before and I remember them being fabulous (not because I made them, but because they were my favorite candy...Reese's peanut butter cups). So now I guess that I've turned Cameron into a Martha Stewart wanna be too. (just kidding~ he is all boy). It was fun cooking with all of them and we had a great day and they had a wonderful time eating them up. We even pulled Erik in to be a taster of our creation too. Too bad you weren't all here and we would have shared...but alas you'll have to wait for the cookbook I guess. Happy baking!

It REaLLy is the "LiTTle ThInGS"...that matter the MoST!

For about 8-9 months now the freezer on my refrigerator has refused to stay shut. Oh~ you can take everything out and then it will shut, but as soon as you open the refrigerator door and shut it, the air that comes up from that causes the freezer to pop open, ever so slightly, just enough that if you didn't know there was a problem you wouldn't even notice, just enough to thaw all the food on the door and everything in the front of the freezer, by morning. We have cleaned the seal off, we have completely emptied the freezer (thinking it was just too full) and then we have finally resorted to putting duct tape on the door to keep it shut. I am sure that if you came into my house and saw our contraption that you would be convinced that we must be serious about keeping someone out of the food, but be assured thats not the case, its just to keep the freezer shut and keep our food from being destroyed by the hours of air seeping in through the broken seal. After coming to the conclusion that this was how it was going to be for the duration of my fridges life span... and hoping that the stupid thing just died before I lost my temper and killed it myself, Todd and Dana show up for dinner today with a new little contraption that they found at the DI yesterday for a mere .85 cent!!! Its a child latch to put on the refrigerator door to protect children from getting in it (I guess), and having things fall out on them...(my children never got such luxuries, they just had to deal with falling objects). But it was so sweet of them to think of me in my hour of need (seriously...I was so thrilled) I applied the lovely little gadget today and~ wallah...the door is shut and I can open the refrigerator over and over, and the freezer stays shut!!!!  It's the neatest thing. I am so grateful for Todd and Dana for being so wonderful and thoughtful, I just love them! Not just for buying me a gift, but it was the thought that was put into it!!! I absolutely appreciate them. So...Todd and Dana, hats off to you both for being my lifesavers and such wonderful people in my life. I love you both very much!

Many Thanks to You...my girl!!

I just wanted to give credit where credit was due, for my "Wonderful looking Blog Background, Blog Music (it will be working soon), and the side pictures of my family"...my dearest Dayna has come to my rescue once again! She did such a great job (don't you think?)! She gave me a change and added things that I am not savy enough or patient enough, to learn how to do. She is my computer tech and I love her for it (among countless other things to love her for). So "thanks a million" to her and her patients and willingness to help me out. Dayna you are awesome and I love you!