After many prayers and even fasting by my husband and older boys, I am feeling so much better.  I am cooking and even looking forward to the Thanksgiving feast.  Everything is so much better when mom isn't sick. Other news- Dave made a quick trip to Guatemala for work. Jacob spent a 5 days away at science camp. Thomas is blossoming this year in 3rd grade and actually likes recess now! Ari is making strides on reading and a great little 1st grader. Lily cut her own hair and loves to eat frozen things for lunch Matt is growing and starting to say lots of words. He is so much fun. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

So the last month has passed very slowly because I am in the middle of morning (wouldn't that be nice) full-day sickness.  I am very blessed to be have a 6th pregnancy.   At least I know what I am getting into because I have done it a time or two.  The worst part is my list of dislikes grows with every pregnancy because I have had so many bad experiences with different foods. Like last pregnancy when my husband made some farm not so fresh eggs and gave me this great lead in like "I don't know if these are any good but here you go."  Needless to say they didn't stay in me long and I haven't been able to tolerate the smell of eggs when prego since. Our kids were pretty shocked.  I guess it is hard to top a baby born in the van but I will do my best. So meanwhile as we prepare for delivery and beyond, I just have to survive the next 5 weeks until cross your fingers I will be cooking and feeling better again.  If any of you have great solutions to morning sick

I have a very strong love/hate relationship with fall.  My husband is working 12 hour+ days and the garden is rewarding us for all of our early work.  But this is the work that I enjoy most preserving the fruit and veggies from our garden and other sources.   This year I have canned peaches, pears, grape juice, pickles, salsa verde, and green beans.  I have more pears, sauerkraut, apple sauce, more grape juice and salsa to do. I have frozen grapes, cantaloupe, strawberries, boysenberries, jams, peaches, blueberries, zucchini, corn and cherries.  Luckily we scored on a freezer from craigslist and so now I have two and a half freezers to fill. I am looking for something to do with an over abundance of watermelon and zucchini.  Any ideas? There is one area of life that I find a lot of satisfaction-filling my pantry and freezer with yummies from my garden and other sources-to enjoy all winter.  This is one time where I can feel nothing but gratitude that I live in California where we c

So I guess that since my two food posts have been about sweets- You all know now that I like them. This recipe is because of my need to use up lots of zucchini.  We all know that zuch is a very adaptable veg.  You can use it in many ways but for my non-veg eating son it is nice to put it in a few things I know that he will eat. (And I don't sneak it-He knows that it is there) This recipe comes from Allrecipes.com  Don't be thrown off by the lack of eggs.  It turns out fabulous without them. 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 1/2 cups white sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups shredded zucchini 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/2 c dark chocolate chips Mix wet ingredients and zucchini together.  Add in sugar and then the dry ingredients.  Bake in preheated 350 oven in a greased casserole dish 9X13.  For about 25-35 minutes. Very Delicious and very chocolat

It has been crazy round here.  Since my last post we have had 3 birthdays Lily turned 4-had a rainbow cake and friends over for dinner Ari turned 6 -had a girly party with church and school friends and a butterfly cake Jacob turned 10- had his first friends sleepover party We hatched out 1 chick(long story) so I bought 21 more to keep it company but it only lived for a week.  Due to dogs and other unknown causes of death we now have 17 chicks. (I am hoping that they are not all roosters.) Our garden planting crew We planted a large garden and have been picking buckets of cucumbers, zucchini, green beans and corn. Jacob on stage! Jacob starred in the regional dance festival.  He did a solo dance in front of everyone. It only lasted about 20 seconds but it was awesome! We went to Washington to attend two funeral services. My sister's sweet baby-Angelica.  You can find her story here .  You must read it.  My sister is inspiring and amazing. Ari

Ending the deafening silence on my blog with a sweet post... Brown Sugar Graham Cracker Cake! I took one of my favorite quick recipes -Brown sugar cake and made a few changes.  Here is the original recipe: 3 c flour 1.5 c brown sugar 1/2 c white sugar 1 c butter 1/2 t salt Mix dry ingredients and then cut butter into the dry ingredients until no large butter chunks remain.  Measure out 1 cup of this mixture and set aside. 3/4 t baking soda 1 egg 1 c sour milk i.e. 15 T milk 1 T lemon juice Mix the baking with the dry ingredients and then add the egg and milk.  Stir enough to wet all ingredients but keep it a little lumpy.  Then put in a greased 9X13 casserole pan.  Sprinkle the dry reserved ingredients over the top.  Bake at 350 til lightly browned and done in the center. Here are the changes that I made 2 c flour 1 pkg or 1 c graham cracker crumbs (finely ground) 1 c brown sugar 1/2 c white sugar 1/2 t salt 3/4 c butter 1/4 c oil* Same method as above cut in b

Lily and Matt and the destruction of a whole box of kleenex Tom Ari in the tree Matt's birthday

I am starting to feel like I live on a farm. It is getting crazy here the animals out number us like 2 to 1. But it has been a fun adventure so if anyone else has some animals they are trying to get rid of for FREE let us know. So this last week we celebrated Matt's first birthday. It is hard to believe that it was one year ago that we were on our way to the hospital and this beautiful blue eyed boy was born. He has been a real blessing in our home and we are so grateful to have him. But just like last year -the day I went into labor with Matt-we had a goat go into labor on his birthday. Unfortunately, the baby goat only lived for 1 day. So we had to say goodbye. Then on Sunday when we came home from church our neighbor's dog had maimed the one goose that we had left to the point that it was blinded and probably not going to live very long. So we decided to butcher the goose. So last night for dinner we had roast goose. It was quite the experience. I tried a little

Yesterday, we took our family skiing. It was a fabulous day. We brought a friend along to help with the kids and Dave even got her up on skis. Thanks Melissa! The weather was perfect- most of the day I just wore a sweater. It was so sunny that Tom has a nice red ring around both eyes where we didn't rub the sun screen in fear of getting it in his eyes. Next time they will use sunglasses or goggles because at school the next day he was scaring the girls with his red eyes. Kids and Melissa Lily's favorite thing- when she walked outside she laid down on the snow on her belly and just started licking and eating the snow. She loved the open buffet. I just tried to direct her to a spot that everyone wasn't walking over. Ari on the Magic Carpet. She was riding up and skiing down all by herself. It was the best! We are definitely going back to this resort for our future family ski holidays. After 4 years of hiatus, I finally got back on skis and I actually enjoyed it. I

And it came to pass that after 2.5 years of trials, mummuring, and tribulation that our family completed the Book of Mormon. Yeah!!! So it was time for a party. Our family voted and we decided that the reward for all of our early morning reading would be a ski trip. But I also wanted a little more to celebrate this momentous occasion. My creativity was at a low but here was what I came up with. We had Mexican food take out because it was Native food.(Of course my husband had to point out that we really don't know where the Nephites lived but...) We had Lemuel and Lamanade Punch (Lemon and limeade) We made Nephite/Lamanite headbands and the kids each decorated their own. I made the Title of Liberty. I decorated with pictures from our Gospel art picture kit. And to make dessert easy on myself we had promised land sundaes where the Nephites(vanilla ice cream) and Lamanites (hot fudge) lived in harmony.(Kind of a lousy idea but I really didn't want to make a plates of gold cake

Less than 30 days to my 30th birthday. Any suggestions? Another decade of life is pretty special so I don't want this one to just pass me by.

Sunday evening we had the chance to celebrate the birthday of Lily's sunbeam teacher. Guess what she turned 89 ! Can you believe it? She is the best and Lily loves to pray for her every night. Lily used to just pray "bless everyone and everything". I told her she should pray for her teacher and she said "I already blessed EVERYONE" so we talked about the importance of naming individuals now she goes on loooong lists of people to bless to the point where I interject a "in the name of..." to get her to finish. We had a delicious cake too. Some wonderful strawberries I froze last year mixed with sugar and clear jel between to layers of homemade yellow cake and topped with whipping cream. Between that and the chocolate chip cookies I made with real butter instead of margarine-I haven't had a lot of control on the sweets this week.

Seeing this right outside your window.... Pretty Wow! But having this right inside your house... You can't tell from the photo and I don't get how to do videos but somebody wants to start walking. He can walk behind this little car now and is so proud of himself. Our house is only safe from destruction during nap time. But what a cutie!

Tom is now 8! We got to celebrate his birthday for whole month. He was baptized lost two teeth and had an egyptian party. He said that he wanted a "desert cake" so I decided to go with egyptian. I should have listened to my Mom who advised me that the pyramid would be hard to pull off(I guess I still haven't learned to listen) After a lot of frosting and piecing together-nothing like the recipe/instructions made it look so easy. I did take her advice on making cocoa powder to make the bricks. By the way, ground vanilla wafers make great sand. We had a hieroglyphic treasure hunt and pin the beard on the King Tut. We had about 6 boys over and then a few more including siblings andmoms. It reminded me why I have avoided parties for so long but also reminded me why they are a good experience. In other news... my husband is giving his very final attempt at finishing his dissertation. Go Dave! After 6 years it looks like it will finally happen. So that means our ev