Happy Halloween!

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Poor, Poor Justin!

He's got H1N1...

There Has Never Before Been a Greater Need to Teach Prayer

“Perhaps there has never been a time when we had greater need to pray and to teach our family members to pray. Prayer is a defense against temptation. It is through earnest and heartfelt prayer that we can receive the needed blessings and the support required to make our way in this sometimes difficult and challenging journey we call mortality.”

-Thomas S. Monson,
“Three Goals to Guide You,” Liahona, Nov. 2007, 119–20

There Has Never Before Been a Greater Need to Teach Prayer Posted:

“Perhaps there has never been a time when we had greater need to pray and to teach our family members to pray. Prayer is a defense against temptation. It is through earnest and heartfelt prayer that we can receive the needed blessings and the support required to make our way in this sometimes difficult and challenging journey we call mortality.”

-Thomas S. Monson,
“Three Goals to Guide You,” Liahona, Nov. 2007, 119–20

October Squares

The Farmer's Daughter:

Caitlin's:
Will's:

I'm not sure if i'm loving Will's quilt yet... we'll see.

oh, i almost forgot...

I make 1 cup of Jasmine Rice to go with the below recipe... and serve it in bowls with the lettuce and rice, sauce and chicken, cucumber too... that's optional. or you could skip chopping the lettuce and add chicken, rice and sauce in a 'lettuce wrap'...

Mmm. either way, you will not be disappointed with this simple and easy, FULL OF FLAVOR recipe!!

Enjoy!

Mmm, you've got to try this!!!

Thai Chicken Satay

2 large limes
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup chunky peanut butter
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, minced
1 Tb fresh ginger, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 Tb soy sauce
3 Tb brown sugar firmly packed
1 Tb Asian sesame oil (I used plain sesame oil)
4 chicken breasts cut into thick strips
1 small head romaine lettuce
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced

Place 8 bamboo skewers in cold water to soak until ready to use. Grate 1 tsp zest from limes and squeeze 1/4 cup juice. In a glass bowl, whisk together the lime zest and juice, vinegar, and peanut butter until smooth. Stir in cilantro, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, and sesame oil. Reserve about 1/2 cup of mixture in a separate bowl for use as sauce. Add the chicken to the marinade and turn to coat. Let stand at room temperature for at least 10 minutes, or cover and refrigerate for up to 2 hours.

Preheat broiler. When ready to cook, remove the chicken from the marinade, discarding the marinade. Divide the strips among 8 skewers, threading the strips on lengthwise. Place the skewers on baking sheet and place under the broiler. Cook, turning once, until seared on the outside and opaque throughout, about 6 minutes total. Divide the lettuce, cucumber slices, and chicken skewers onto plates. Drizzle with some of the reserved sauce and serve, passing around additional sauce at the table

Go to The Good Apple to find this and more great tasting recipes!!
picture from thegoodapple.blogspot.com

Conference Tradition...

Years ago Justin and a few good college buddies started a fun tradition: Breakfast and an early game of golf before the Saturday morning session of General Conference. Here they are this past weekend... Trav, Trent, David and Justin!!

Quilting with Me Girlies...

What can I say... other than "I'm addicted and happy to be!!"

I LOVE to quilt... LOVE IT! and I've found some Soul Sisters to help me celebrate this new found love...

Justin's Aunts: Shauni, Pat and Kathy. Love them!

Once a month we gather for the Free Block Club! 12 classes yields 12 blocks (or this year they are doing 4 6 inch blocks per month,) and that equals one super cute quilt in one year! The most exciting part about the class is that first month you buy your square pattern, THEN if you complete it by the next class (a whole month) you get the next pattern for FREE! SO if you do your homework, you could very well make a whole quilt top for $5.50!! (That is serious LOVE, folks!)

Another exciting feature is THE theme. This years theme is Oregon Trail Stitches! They take us along this virtual trail starting in MO and ending in OR... stopping along 12 points and then we learn history AND learn a new block pattern! SUPER FUN!

First Stop along the Oregon Trail was in Kansas:

this block pattern is called the Kansas Dug-Out! (I'm making this quilt for Caitlin, using the reproduction 1930's Gracie's fabrics!!)

...And i got so excited, so i decided to also make a few more squares for my little William:

Here is the pattern and fabrics for this month, and i still need to pick out the fabrics for Will's Quilt, but I'll post pictures when I'm through.

I Heart Quilting!

Kool-Aide Play Dough

2 1/2 C. Flour
1/2 C. Salt
1 Tbsp. Alum
2 Tbsp. Cooking oil
1 1/2 - 2 C. Hot Water
2 Pkg. un-sweetened Kool-aide

Mix ingredients together and knead until smooth. Put in large Ziploc bag for storage.

Panda Notes:
-Alum is found in alphabetical order on the spice isle!
-Maybe I'm just slow... but ALL the little Kool-aide packets found at the grocery store are Un-sweetened... you got to read the fine print.... haha. yeah, I'm a dork. It's Kool, because it makes the play dough smell good and gives it color!
-I followed directions, using only 1 1/2 cups hot water, and ended up adding about 1 cup flour extra (while kneading)... to make it 'play dough' consistency.

gur...

Last week:

Will got sick
Caitlin got sick

This week:

Brinley got sick

and then...

Mommy got sick.

Our computer also got 'sick' (aka... weirdo virus). Good news, I'm getting a lot done around the house not spending so much time with email, blogger, etc... AND we live next door to a computer wiz!! Thanks David for your help! But we may have to employ you again because the Bad news is that it's still giving us trouble, it's s o s l o w and pop up city... if my pictures and journal were not on that computer I'd totally take a hammer to it... (I'm just grateful Justin still has his laptop! it's just unsafe to bring out when the kids are awake...)

SOOO.....

the only one who's hasn't gotten sick yet is Justin... that's probably because he's been spending all his time on the ROOF.

yup, still roofing.

Shingles were delivered Monday... it's been pretty slow go past few days... but it's coming together... one piece at a time. We'll take pictures.

"Mom, Look We're Zack and Weesey!

... and In case you didn't know who Zack and Weesey are... they are a two headed dragon from Dragon Tales!

Identical!

Random Photos:

These pics were taken over the past few weeks... enjoy.

First Day of Preschool...

(...was actually last Tuesday!) but we've got a lot going on over here... So, ya know. Here they are all ready to go! Will was esp excited to go to school this year!

Drop off: Complete! Now it's just Me, Pepper and Brinners! Hm, What to do first?

Pick up: Two very happy kids!! They even look smarter!

2nd day of school: Will was done with the pictures before we even got started...

"back to school, back to school..."

Roof Update...

It's been a CRAZY week!

Last Thursday we started our Roof Demolition and it's been interesting.

Thought I'd bring ya'll up to speed on what's happened and where we are at...

Thursday and Friday: 3 layers of shingles came off our roof! It was a sight to behold... (O, my poor little garden!)

Justin and his 'cat-like' reflexes... he said that after three days being on a roof he felt like he was a cat... (or I like to think of him as Spider-Man. Mmm. I'm married to Spider-Man! Go Spidie Go!)

The lovely Orange Dumpster. Wow, this picture was taken on Friday morning. It's totally full now!

Saturday: This is the back of the house, with no shingles!! Time for some PLY WOOD baby! Justin also ripped out that mettle box thing on top there... that was for the old swamp cooler... Thank goodness for Central Air!

OK, so this next picture is the "Hole" reason behind the re-roofing project! YEA! The boards literally crumbled into dust as they were taking off the shingles!! No wonder we had some leaking this winter and SOOOO Glad we are fixing it too!

Hole almost fixed!!

Monday: Well our 'Rain Dance' over the weekend worked... (You know, when you wash your car, it always rains... Well, we ripped off our roof and that suddenly brought on these crazy freakish thunder storms...)

Justin was at work Monday afternoon... and looks out the window... HUGE DARK CLOUDS rolling in... He and his dad went to HomeDePot and got like a million tarps to save our house!! Pheww! Love the blue roof? (This is what it must be like roofing in Washington State!)

2 hours later, it stopped raining, and Justin could finally breath again! I love this picture, it just says it all.

Tuesday: it rained... HARD. I was grateful for the Tarps on top of the house... but during the demolition over the weekend we took off the rain gutters... (because we'll be getting new ones!!) Suddenly... I'm realizing the GREAT importance of Rain Gutters...

This was my sad attempt at saving our house from 'the great flood'... i had to dump these all a few times... that's how much rain we got!

Caitlin and Will saw the pool and were like "Yippee, lets get our suits on!!" I was like, "NOOO, we are NOT going out in that wacky storm."

This window well was completely filled with water!

and Today, Wednesday, was SO BEAUTIFUL... no rain, and tomorrow is going to be even better. Roofing Project back on... Can't wait till it's D O N E!