Lunch!

Today I was looking on the Weight Watchers website for a good recipe that would use up the rest of our arugula. I found this exciting little recipe. I picked the tomatoes out of our garden and we even made bread this weekend, so I happened to have fresh french bread. I ate the tomato arugula mixture with a spoon and about ate it up before the toast part was ready. After I put the tomato mixture on the toast it was even more amazing. Yumm!! It was so yummy, I even blogged about it. Amazing, I know.

Just in case you're interested, here is the recipe.

4 med plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped (I did not seed them)
2 C fresh arugula, chopped
1/2 C grated Parmesan
1T extra virgin olive oil
2t balsamic vinegar, white variety (I did not use the white variety)
1/4t kosher salt
1/4t black pepper
4 slices of Italian Bread (about 3/4 inch thick)
1 clove of garlic, halved (I used the chopped garlic stuff from the bottle in my fridge)

Combine the first 7 ingredients. Let stand 20 min.

Preheat broiler or prepare grill.

Rub bread with cut side of garlic and toast 2-3 min.

Top with tomato mixture.

Enjoy!

Teton Vacation! (Part 2)

Saturday, we failed to take pictures again. Nate, Henry, and I went to Jackson Hole and walked around. After walking around for about 5.2 seconds, we decided that it was Park City, a mall, and a town square with antlers, combined into one. We kept walking around (why not?) , but didn't for long. We then decided to ask a local where the best bbq place was. She directed us to the old Village Inn building (where we had eaten before). It was pretty yummy! Henry got corn on the cob and was in heaven!

Later, we met up with Mama, Daddy, Chelsie and Caleb, and went on a picnic on the Idaho side of the Tetons. It was a pretty camp site. I wouldn't mind camping there some day, but given the bear warning signs, I'll be taking some bear mace with me.

Sunday, we went to church.

We also went on a ride up the tram in Teton Village. Mama, Daddy, Chelsie, Caleb, Nate, Henry and I all went to the Wyoming side of the mountains. It was worth the view and the opportunity to take a short hike on top of one of the summits of the Tetons.

Daddy and Henry riding up to the top together and checking out the view! This is a closed in tram. There was no risk of falling out.


View from the top.


L-R: Daddy, Mama, Chelsie, Henry, Me, Random guy in pink shirt
You can see the little hike we went on. We walked down a big-ish hill, wrapped around, then walked back up a smaller hill.


We went up a lot higher than I thought we were going to. It was a fun little adventure!

Monday it was time to go home. We packed up and cleaned out the condo "cabin" we rented, had lunch at a park in Rexburg, said bye to everyone and headed home. It was sad that Emily couldn't join us for a lot of the fun stuff and that Ian couldn't join us for any of it, but we're glad he's home from the hospital and getting better. I'm sure we'll do fun stuff again!

Driving Home

Teton Vacation!

Emily graduated from BYU-Idaho this month! So, to celebrate, we all met in Idaho for her graduation and a little family vacation. It is a little tradition that started when my whole family went to Hawaii for my graduation. We got a little "cabin" in Driggs, which was the perfect amount of in between from the Tetons and Rexburg.

Before we went up to Idaho, Mama, Daddy, and Caleb came down to our house to deliver our piano! We have a piano now! They had neighbors that were giving it away and they couldn't find anyone in Eugene that wanted it, so my parents gladly took it off their hands, stored it in their living room for at least a year, and then delivered it to us! We are very grateful to have this piano! It is a good piano and is even relatively in tune, even after it's nearly 1000 mile drive from Oregon.

Henry found this chair and dragged it most of the way to the piano. He loves playing it!

Oh! I forgot again. They came on my birthday. We all kept forgetting it was my birthday, but I got one heck of a present!

The morning after they came, we all left for Idaho. It was good to go up and see Chelsie, Emily, and Ian. Unfortunately, Ian was in the hospital the whole time and missed out on all of the action. Fortunately, he is out now! That's what really matters.

Thursday was not very eventful and we got zero pictures.

Friday, there was college student moving going on, so Nate, Henry, and I went to Bear World, near Rexburg. It is absolutely a cheesy tourist trap type of experience, but it was fun. I'll admit it.

You get to drive right by bears!


Our zoom doesn't work. He was right outside our car. Got even closer after we took the picture.


I wanted to step out and pet the sleeping bear. Probably a bad idea.


Baby bears! I want to pet one! You can actually bottle feed them for $35/person. It didn't happen this trip, but some day, I WILL hug a baby bear. It is on my bucket list.


There was also a petting zoo included in the admission price. This looks like Goatie!


We got to pet deer!


I got to feed AND pet a baby deer! This is, no, WAS on my bucket list. Check!

After Bear World, we went back to Rexburg for a pre-graduation pic nic with everyone (minus Ian). We then all went to change and head to graduation. I got no pictures of this on our camera because we were in charge of Emilys point and shoot and totally forgot ours. Oops. Emilys departments part was the coolest graduation thing I've ever been to. Instead of boring speaches about how "we made it!", we got performances and visual presentations. The dance part was weird, but it was still entertaining! Congratulations to Emily! I'm glad we got to be there for your graduation!

(The rest of the vacation will be continued in Teton Vacation! Part 2).

July Minus Vacation

I love summer! July is always full of stuff and so busy that it just flies by. I love that there is so much to do, but I do not love how quickly it disappears. August comes, kids go back to school, and before you know it, it's Christmas. (We're not thinking about though. I'm still bitter about snow and the length of this past winter.)

So, back to the sun, warmth, thunderstorms, holidays, vacations, movies coming out, yard work, and just completely enjoying everything about this summer.

I did not get many pictures of the 4th of July. That is because we didn't really do much. We did, however, make a birthday cake and enjoy the fireworks of family and several neighbors.


I got the idea for the cake off of Pinterest (check out my pins if you'd like to see the site I got the idea from). I'm not super happy with my decorating work, but I was pretty done with baking by the time I got to decorating. Also, next time I'm going to mix raspberries into the icing for the filing.

With Harry Potter 7.2 coming out in July, we decided to re-watch all of the previous movies. One Friday evening, we decided to have a Harry Potter Picnic Night. We went and got Subway sandwiches (bought one for $5 the had enough points to get one free!!), bought a bag of chips from the grocery store, went home and setup a picnic on the floor. It was a lot of fun. Henry especially enjoyed being able to eat on the family room floor. It took a couple of days to get him to go to the table when we said it was supper time.

Henry hadn't paid the least bit of attention to any of the previous movies, so we were a little worried about nightmares when he decided to pay attention to this one (#5, I think). He didn't seem to have any nightmares. Hopefully we didn't scar him for life.

We did have to do it again a different night. Monkey had to join this time.

Another "fun" July activity has been vacuuming. Almost every day, Henry will pull out the vacuum and want us to vacuum the whole house. Honestly, I do not vacuum every day. Nope. Not even. If Henry had his way though, we would!

So helpful!

A Lunchtime Conversation

I just needed to write this down. It is too funny to get lost in the memory mush that happens over time.

Henry had a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch yesterday. Henry LOVES peanut butter, so this is one of his favorite lunches. He had his sandwich, his cup of water and a spoon. Who doesn’t need a spoon when eating a sandwich? He’s still not big on talking, so he pointed to his mostly devoured half of a sandwich, did his “eh, eh” almost grunting sound (meaning he wants something), then pointed to the counter where the sandwich making supplies still sat and said “eh, eh”. The rest of our “conversation” went like this:

Mama: Do you need more peanut butter?
Henry: (Shakes his head no style.)
Mama: No… Do you need more honey?
Henry: (Shakes his head no again.)
Mama: No… What do you need Henry?
Henry: Raaarrrrrrr!
Mama: Do you need more of this? (Pointing to the honey bear)
Henry: Jeah!!


He may not be big into talking, but the boy does communicate!

No Soliciting!

I usually do not do these little letters, but it seems appropriate.




Dear sales guy that just rang my doorbell,

I have a sleeping baby and a noisy dog. I only answered the door because I thought you would be someone else. I'm sorry if I was a little rude. I was trying to get dumb dog to stop barking and I was on the phone taking care of an unexpected charge on my Verizon bill. I know you are just doing your job and I am sorry it involves walking from door to door, but I do not love that you just did that. We're not in the clear yet, but I REALLY hope you didn't just wake up that really tired and grumpy kid. Please no! I still have a lot to get done before he wakes up.

A little annoyed but still apologetic,
The lady behind the door of the next to the last house on the street.

P.S. If you were selling No Soliciting signs, PLEASE COME BACK!! I would probably buy one from you. Just quietly knock this time.

Booooo!

I love spending time with this little guy! He's been pretty cute lately. Here are some of my favorite things that he does right now.


He loves to help. He's an ambitious cleaner. Overly ambitious at times. I think it's genetic. I have a funny husband that loves to put dishes away. It's nice! It is sometimes funny though because he will practically take a glass out of my hand and put it in the sink or dishwasher. So, I constantly pull them out of the cupboard and he puts them in the sink/dishwasher. (I can't take a glass out of the "dirty" dishwasher/sink even if I know it was JUST put there. Once it's there, it's dirty.) Henry likes to throw his diapers away, help rotate laundry, unload/load the dishwasher, etc. Well, he will occasionally try to put dishes away while I am loading the dishwasher. I will put silverware in the dishwasher, he will it in the drawer. See! It has to be genetic. (Don't worry, people who visit us. I manage to catch him before he actually puts things in with clean dishes.)

Ooo! Wow!! I think these are his favorite words right now. Those and "Mmmm!", if that's a word. A lot of things deserve an "Ooo! Wow!". He doesn't say much (at all), but he says that a lot. It's fun when everything in the world is new and amazing. It kind of puts things into perspective. Things like trees, flowers, bugs, dirt, rocks, etc can be pretty amazing.

Kisses. He loves to give kisses! He just figured it out a couple of weeks ago. Now I get them all day long. I LOVE it! He also gives really good hugs. Nice and tight, then usually followed by a kiss.



Booooo! He thinks cows say "Booooo!". I think it's hilarious! I'm torn between letting him think that for a few years and teaching him that it's actually "Moo". Right now I'm going with "Boo". He also makes random sounds for other things. For example, trucks, cars, and trains all usually say "toot toot". There are others, but I can't remember at this late hour. Other animals and things make the correct sounds. Some he even says more realistically than I do. He barks better than any person I've ever met. He does a pretty good horse and he "tweet"s pretty well.


There are other things, but it is getting late. As I am going through my pictures looking for some good ones for this post, I am realizing that I have neglected to blog about some fun stuff, but that will have to wait for another day.

I just thought this was funny.

P.S. Why isn't it Thursday. It feels like Thursday. I am in denial that I have to wake up early.