Kanab Narrows

Saturday morning we took a family vote to decide where our adventures would take us, and the majority (boys) decided we would go to a place near Kanab that Ryan, Devon, and Dallin had gone for scout camp. It was SOO much fun! They were my first "narrows." Tess spotted a baby diamondback rattlesnake next to the trail, so that was a little freaky, but otherwise it was so, so cool! Having Grandpa Henrie along made it 100 times better. He is such a good sport!!

Goodbye, Hello

Sooo, Saturday morning I discovered that the two female bunnies we got the girls for Easter happen to be a male and a female!  I knew when the guy at the CAL Ranch store told me it was a female because he waved a weight attached to a string above the bunny and it moved in a circle instead of back and forth that I was in trouble!  Oh, the joys.  We may have baby bunnies in a month?!  To eliminate the chance of any more batches in the future, I told Tori it was goodbye Thumper and time to make a trade at the pet store....so we got what they are pretty sure is a female bunny. 

Goodbye Big Boy Thumper

Hello "Better Be Female Flicka"

Birthdays

We made it through our "six birthdays in three months."  Dallin's is always the kicker at the end.  For birthdays around our house, we take the birthday child out to dinner and let them choose the destination.  The older they get, the more they enjoy digging the $ out of our pockets!  Devon chose a nice steak dinner this year and this week Dallin chose "ninja", a Japanese hibachi restaurant.  It was a ton of fun, though.  Dad Henrie was over, and there was lots of entertainment and laughter.  We loved watching the chefs cook in front of us! 

We love you Dallin!! 

Started the birthday morning out with a special lizard pancake of his own making.

little fire

BIG FIRE!  (the famous onion volcano)

We were stuffed!  Yummers!!

Tantalizing Tuesday Treat

I got this recipe from my brother, David.  His best friend growing up was German and spent half the year in Germany and the other half of the year in Canada.  Dave discovered crepes from them.  This recipe is so delicious and whips up really fast!  We love having them for family breakfasts.  This past Saturday I had my piano students over for an end-of-school breakfast and we made them.

Dave's Delectable Crepes

1-1/2 c. flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. oil

Mix dry ingredients, then add milk.  Mix well and add other wet ingredients.  Pour 1/4  to 1/2 cup into nonstick or cast iron frying pan sprayed with Pam.  Rotate pan back and forth after you dump the batter in so it spreads evenly in a thin film all over the bottom.  Cook on medium to high heat.  Flip and cook the other side.  They cook fast, so watch closely.  You will need to respray your pan about every 3 crepes...

Spread yogurt and any fruit you want in a line down the middle and then roll up and consume!  You can sprinkle with a little bit of powdered sugar.  Our favorite thing, that adds a few delicious calories, is to spread Nutella along it before you roll it up.   If you haven't heard of it, it is the amazing hazelnut/chocolate spread.  ~Heavenly!!~ My favorite filling Saturday was vanilla yogurt with blackberries, bananas, strawberries, mandarin oranges, and Nutella....I'm drooling.

Insane

Devon slept out on the tramp last night.  They said it was going to be 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  I don't know if it got that low, but he definitely had frost on his sleeping bag when I went to go wake him up.  He earns the badge of valor/insanity for the day.  Dallin had big plans but fell asleep on the couch and never made it outside! 

Lash not

It's snowing again.  I hope our flowers survive....

I spoke in sacrament meeting today.  Did plenty of stressing beforehand, shed some annoying tears during, and breathed many huge sighs of relief once it was over.  I have decided I much prefer teaching Relief Society over speaking in church, even though they both intimidate the heck out of me.  I would much rather ask the questions and let other people share their answers than try to give answers....It was a great topic to research though: Strengthening families.  The more I researched, the more I realized I have to work on.  One thing that stood out to me especially that I really want and need to work on as far as parenting goes is "dealing with problems privately".  Too often when one of my children misbehaves, I correct them or lash out verbally immediately no matter who happens to be in the room.  I really hope I can learn from this story from Elder F. Enzio Busche from a general conference address about how to make sure you do any correcting one-on-one and with love,

"One day when circumstances made it necessary for me to be at home at an unusual time, I witnessed from another room how our eleven-year-old son, just returning from school, was directing ugly words towards his younger sister. They were words that offended me—words that I had never thought our son would use. My first natural reaction in my anger was to get up and go after him. Fortunately, I had to walk across the room and open a door before I could reach him, and I remember in those few seconds I fervently prayed to my Heavenly Father to help me to handle the situation. Peace came over me. I was no longer angry.

"Our son, being shocked to see me home, was filled with fear when I approached him. To my surprise I heard myself saying, 'Welcome home, son!' and I extended my hand as a greeting. And then in a formal style I invited him to sit close to me in the living room for a personal talk. I heard myself expressing my love for him. I talked with him about the battle that every one of us has to fight each day within ourselves.

"As I expressed my confidence in him, he broke into tears, confessing his unworthiness and condemning himself beyond measure. Now it was my role to put his transgression in the proper perspective and to comfort him. A wonderful spirit came over us, and we ended up crying together, hugging each other in love and finally in joy. What could have been a disastrous confrontation between father and son became, through the help from the powers above, one of the most beautiful experiences of our relationship that we both have never forgotten."

Sorry, I know that is a long quote, but I want to learn from it....

Devon loves to draw, and this is his latest horse

And Tori's self-portrait will end the night.  That's how we all feel about the snow tonight.

Baby steps but a start!

The goal of the day was to get our garden plot ready to plant.  It proved to be a much bigger job than we anticipated.  Plan B is to rent something with some sort of MOTOR to help us out on Monday!  Our mounds of dirt that need to be leveled and spread are hard and large.

But...it was a start :)

We encountered some NASTY Jerusalem Crickets (now I know what you're talking about Mari!) EWWWW!

And then as a reward to the kids for their hard work, Ryan took us to Ladybug Nursery and let the kids pick out some flowers to plant:

Nothing spectacular yet, but at least we are getting a little color around!  I LOVE SPRING!!

Steering Wheel Confessions

I totally spaced Tess' end-of-school program!  Totally skipped it!  I felt like such a loser - bad mom, bad mom!!!  Poor sweety.  I took her out to Dairy Queen tonight to apologize.  She was full of questions, "How do babies grow inside your tummy?  How does money come out of the ATM?  How do you learn how to drive?"  That led me to a confession that I haven't told many people in my life...I told her most normal humans take a course called driver's ed.  I grew up on a farm.  I didn't take driver's ed.  It took me four times for me to pass my driver's license exam.  FOUR!!  I failed three times!  Phew, what a relief to get that out.  It was unbelievably humiliating for me when I was 16, but today it felt freeing to tell my daughter and be able to laugh about it!  Now the world knows I'm a bad mom and a lousy driver!!  :)

Devon On The Unicycle

one-wheel wonder

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Dancin' Dev

Tonight Dev is at his first dance!  Here is the GQ man :).

Tuesday Treat

Hi, ever since I got gestational diabetes, my body hasn't been able to handle sugar very well.  I get these nasty headaches when I eat sweets.  Well, I LOVE to bake and eat sweets, so I have been on a quest to try to bake a little healthier and with a little less sugar. From now on, I'm going to post a Tuesday treat - Each Tuesday I'll try a new and healthy and hopefully delicious recipe.  This week I tried this divine coconut-glazed banana cake recipe of my Mom's with 100% whole wheat flour.  I didn't get a picture taken before it was all ingested, but from now on I'll add pictures.  I have to say, the original recipe is fabulous too (that uses white flour), so if you don't have wheat flour or a wheat grinder, just use your white flour.  It is definitely worth trying!  The 100% whole wheat version was really yummy.  I ground my own white wheat.  I haven't tried it with 100% whole red wheat.  Here you go:

Coconut-Glazed Banana Cake

3-4 large mashed bananas

1 tsp. baking soda

*Mix those together and set aside.

1 c. sugar

1/2 c. butter

1 egg

1tsp. baking powder

*Cream these ingredients and then add to banana mixture

Add

2 c. whole wheat flour

pinch salt

Bake at 350 degrees for 27-30 minutes.

--------------------------------------------

Broiled Coconut Glaze

6 Tbsp. brown sugar

4 T. butter

3 T. cream or milk

1 c. coconut

Spread on hot cake and put under broiler until bubbly.

Mmmm Mmmm Good!!

talent and torture

Tori had her "South Elementary Singers" choir concert last night.  It was way cute-

I was exhausted by the time the hour was over.  Dallin found it absolutely impossible to sit still and be quiet for that long, not to mention Derek!  Oh well...he still keeps me laughing. 

Hopalong Tessidy

Tess wants to be a teacher when she grows up, and today she got to give a presentation on rabbits to her class.  Her teacher let her use her around-the-neck microphone to speak into, and Tess was in heaven. 

We took her bunny to show them and then we snuck over to Tori's PE class to give them a little bunny break.