Flashback Friday-Senior Portraits

I am flying to Utah this morning. I can't wait to get to my sister's house to check if you all have decided to participate in today's Flashback Friday. Vanessa and Mrs. Morty already posted theirs yesterday. They are pretty great!

I had a lot of Senior portraits taken. For some reason I had them done twice. I don't remember why. Do you remember, Mom?

I think I had the ones at Olan Mills done to hand out to friends and the others done for the yearbook.

I remember that I LOVED the charm necklace I was wearing in these pictures.
These pants with the suspender-like straps were pin striped. So cute! ;)

Gotta love the embroidered sweater!

I never ordered any of the ones from the yearbook shoot. But I had at least twice as many proofs as I posted here.

I think this last one is the one I used for the yearbook.

Some of my friends from student council and I had a group photo taken. I just thought I would throw that one in there for fun!

Dude, this is gonna be da bomb!

Okay, if that title didn't give away when I graduated from High School then my senior portrait sure will. I am so excited that so many of you are going to participate in the Flashback Friday - Senior Portraits Edition this Friday. So, I really want to see everyones pictures so I was thinking that if you all comment on my post on Friday and tell everyone you participated then we will all have a place to see who posted their portraits. If you have talked other people in to doing it too then let them know they need to let us know here so we can see them too!
Play along, it will be totally awesome!
See you Friday!

Come along for the ride!

Today Lizzy at My Ice Cream Diary posted her senior photos. I love this idea and I am planning on posting mine on Friday for my Flashback Friday. I would love to see all of your senior portraits too. Post them so we can all laugh WITH one another rather than you all laughing AT me. (Pretty Please?!)

Also, I would love for you to join me at Healthy Habits hosted by Relishing Motherhood. It is a free (and open to everyone) challenge that will help all of us support each other as we try to make it through this crazy time of year. Don't hesitate, run over there right now and join us!

Thankful Thursday

I read a post today called Thankful Thursday by Kat over at Seeking Sanity. I am so happy that she wrote it because today my heart is full and this is a great way for me to express it.

I am thankful for:

~A husband that really loves to be with his kids. This morning Ned wanted to ride his bike to school. Then Dusty wanted to tag along and of course so did Lucky. El Guapo could have told all of the boys that he didn't want to do it, but he wouldn't, he loves doing things like this. He got all of the boys ready in time so that they could all ride together to Ned's school.

I stayed behind to wait until it was time to get everyone (except Ned) and load the bikes and take Dusty to school. While I stood at the kitchen window I saw all of the boys come around the corner. Ned was far ahead of the rest so happy to be riding his bike somewhere other than our driveway on his big boy bike. Dusty was moving his legs so fast on his tricycle trying to keep up with his big brother. Lucky was running and pushing his ride-on car. It was so fun to see my boys having fun. The best part though was seeing El Guapo pretending to run really fast while turned backward toward Lucky, trying to get him to go faster. He was really having a good time playing with his boys. What a great way to start the day!

~A helpful husband. Don't worry, this post is not entirely about El Guapo. Come on, sometimes a girl has got to gush!

When El Guapo was called into the bishopric earlier this year several people asked me if I was nervous/unhappy about the fact that he would be spending even more time away from home. My response was and is no, El Guapo makes EVERY MINUTE count when he is home. Sure, he takes an occasional nap, but he is almost always moving.

He cleans my house. (I know, you ladies are totally jealous, aren't you?) He does not sit down when he comes home until he has spent a good amount of time cleaning.

His family always comes first. Like I said before he really loves to spend time with his boys and wants them to be happy. He gives me all the alone time I need or want. He is a great guy. I sure am glad he asked me to marry him!

~The fact that my dad is at home after a long surgery. He had a cancerous thyroid removed. My little sister has more details about that here, today I am focusing on the good.

He is getting stronger and the prognosis is pretty good. He is a great dad and I am glad that he will be sticking around a bit longer.

I am also grateful for a great surgeon that was able to spare my dad's vocal cords (a possible complication with thyroid surgery) even though it was the the most difficult time this surgeon has had removing a thyroid and tumor.

~I get to go to visit my sister in Utah next weekend. We are going to see Celine Dion (go ahead and roll your eyes) in concert. I am so excited! I grateful for friends that are willing to watch my boys while El Guapo goes to work.

~Big, fat, juicy kisses from these lips. Lately they are few and far between and tonight I got lots!

Lucky on his second birthday practicing the word 'two.' His kisses look exactly the same. :)

Bloggy Award - Thank Goodness for Nepotism!

My sweet sister gave me a blog award. I am honored and so very grateful for nepotism. It just so happens that my sister got hers from our cousin.

The challenge has been choosing someone to give the award to. Those of you that have not yet received it really do deserve one. Although I could give out at least a dozen I am going to only give one. I have seen that some people give out ten, some give five and some give two. I figure I can do what I want.

So, in the spirit of nepotism I am giving the award to a family member. Don't get me wrong, I would have given this award to her even if she weren't family.

The This Blog is Rated E for Excellent Award goes to Sarah over at The Silly English Kaniggit. I have only recently started faithfully reading this blog. For some reason it did not work on my Google Reader until lately (I am terrible at checking the blogs that are not on my reader) and I am now hooked. I love her style and the fun ideas she has. She is one busy lady and I am SO looking forward to her posts while she lives in France (seriously, don't you only wish?) to study at Sorbonne. This girl really knows how to have fun and her wonderful attitude really shows in her blog.

It has been so fun reading her blog and getting to know her a little better. It makes me wish I lived by her now (not that she would hang out with an old lady like me). You should run over there and get to know her too.

If you're still interested

Remember way back in August when we had our Family Olympics Party and some of you wanted to know how to make the fortune cookies? Well, we made the cookies and took the pictures a couple of weeks after the Olympics party, for Family Home Evening again. I am finally getting around to posting about it. So, if you still want to make them and you have not already found your own recipe, here you go:

My sister found the recipe at About.com. I tried to cook it the way it suggests and they all ran to the center of my pan. Plus it never really got hard enough to break even if I had been able to form them into fortune cookies. Then I remembered that I made some in high school to ask a guy to a dance and I had made them on a griddle. So, I thought I would try that, and it worked.

Note: DO NOT make these cookies unless you are comfortable with failure in the kitchen. I even had to make a couple of batches just to get enough good cookies to give away.

The first thing you want to do is write the fortunes. This time we made them to give to a family from church that had recently had a baby that was in the NICU. We wrote encouraging fortunes.

Preheat the griddle. I think I had my griddle on about 325 degrees but you will want to play with yours to see what is best. Lightly grease the griddle, if you grease it too much the cookie will not stick enough when you try to spread it.

Ingredients:
2 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 teaspoons water

In a medium bowl, lightly beat the egg white, vanilla extract, almond extract and vegetable oil until frothy, but not stiff.

Sift the flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar into a separate bowl. Stir the water into the flour mixture.

Add the flour into the egg white mixture and stir until you have a smooth batter. The batter should not be runny, but should drop easily off a wooden spoon. Note: if you want to dye the fortune cookies, add the food coloring at this point, stirring it into the batter.

Place level tablespoons of batter onto the griddle. I used the back of the measuring spoon to spread it very thin. If you do not spread it thin enough it will not cook through and it will not crack.

Cook until you can see through the cookie that the other side is browning well.

Flip to cook thoroughly. The second side will not get as brown. Don't make too many at a time because the next step takes some time and you don't want the other cookies to burn and you don't want to take them off of the griddle until they are ready because they will cool too fast.

Working quickly, remove the cookie with a spatula and flip it over in your hand. Place a fortune in the middle of a cookie.

To form the fortune cookie shape, fold the cookie in half, then gently pull the edges together.

Place the finished cookie in the cup of the muffin tin so that it keeps its shape.

We put ours in a cute little take-out box.

We dilivered them to our friends. We ding-dong-ditched them and the boys learned that you can be nice and give service to others and you don't always have to tell people about it (yes, I am telling you now, but the Amigo's don't know that). As we were driving away Ned asked, "When are we going to tell them it was us?" I think they understood what we were trying to teach them by the end of the night though.

Weather I like it or not!

My sister called me on Wednesday morning and said, "I was just calling to tell you not to die today."

"Huh?"

"There are supposed to be tornadoes there today and I wanted to tell you not to die."

"Oh, okay. I won't"


I had no idea. I don't worry about that kind of thing like I did when I first moved here almost four years ago. The weather here has been beautiful. This week has been in the high 70's. In November. I love it! But Wednesday this is what happened:





No, that is not snow (not a tornado either). That is very loud hail mixed with lots of loud rain. So loud that you could not even hear Lucky crying in the background. It was pretty scary for him.

Yeah, it is starting to actually feel like winter is near. Whether I like it or not, and I don't. I am just not ready for the ice storms. We have some great days in the winter here, but every once in a while we have to deal with those nasty ice storms. Luckily those happen a lot less than the nice days do.

Today and yesterday have been lovely days, but on Wednesday this is what our yard looked like.
Lucky's poor little pumpkin was drowning.

The hail had embedded in the dirt.

There was lots of standing water.

Our trampoline collected a lot of the hail.

The only hail damage was our music and lights Sit 'n' Spin. We have not really used it for a while so the boys didn't mind. They were actually really fascinated by it.

I was surprised that something was broken this time when the hail was big...

but not nearly as big as it was in our storm this spring when nothing (nothing at our house anyway) was broken.

We lost power that night for about an hour. My cell phone was dead and our flashlight is not working very well. I guess it was a good reminder that I need to be prepared for the coming winter.