Family Pics

Anona took our family photos a couple weekends ago!


Here are a few preview!
 I am really hoping we got one of our little family with everyone smiling… or at least looking :S

Brother was horrible… seriously. Thank you 16 month temperament. I have NO idea where you get your stubborn streak.

Scentsy Buddies

Hey All Y'all
I thought this was hilarious, only because I TOTALLY say this! 
The family mocks me, but see other peoples say it!

My Peep Ameila is big into Scentsy and she wanted me to post this amazing deal they have on right now!

LINK

I may have ordered a couple for Christmas!! How could you not!?!?!

2 for the price of 1!! 
Hello smart Mommy Shopping!

If I do this can I call my self a couponer?

Snapshots

Salsa

Please. Someone.

Am I the only one who make massive mistakes in the kitchen sometimes?

Like big ol' fat ones??

2 mistakes

first mistake- recipe called for 6 jalapenos- I thought hey, I remeber this recipe, from growing up. It needs more jalapenos then that. So I opted for 18 instead.

It was…. uneatable hot.

Like milk and bread hot.

Shoot you in the mouth hot.

PS if you don't know me that well… I LOVE hot. I eat the canned jalapenos whole… 

second mistake- burned the salsa. 

I used this massive pot that  my parents had, and had it going at super low temp. 

It burned the snot out of it. I had to run and pick up K from 

the bus stop, asked brother Mark to stir it….

It was so burnt… i could taste it through the whole thing :( 

First batch was garbage. 

I was so annoyed.

Hours of peeling tomatoes.

Money down the drain.

The second batch was super yummy… I went with 9 jalapenos, it was much better.

I got a pot from the church, it cooked it beautifully. 

My Mom's recipe- with my tweaking.

10 quarts tomatoes chopped and skinned.

8 green peppers and 8 red peppers

9 jalapenos 

4 cups of onion

Cook the above until tender

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup lime juice

1/2 cup vinegar

1/3 cup salt

1/2 tsp cumin

2 1/2 tbsp garlic powder

2 tbsp paprika

Add tomato paste to thicken- takes about 12 medium sized cans

Cook for 1/2 hour then pour in jars, place lids on. 

The salsa is so hot it should just seal its self.

Wa La!

18 cans of home made salsa!! 

Temple Trip

High River ward has a amazing Primary!

We are so lucky to have a Primary presidency and ward family who works so hard and prays hard for our children.

Months ago the Primary President read a article with a profound statement by President Monson.

"As we touch the temple, the temple will touch us"

It was decided this was exactly what the Primary Children needed. So the Primary had each child save $7.00 to visit the temple. The ward was also told, and lots of ward members helped out by leaving money in the Primary room for the temple trip.

The trip was to take place at the end of August, but unfortunately the temple grounds were not even close to being finished. The date got pushed back to September 22, the grounds still were not done, but the primary president had been in close contact with the Bishop and Stake President and they decided to go ahead and bring the children.

Justin got to go with our girls because they needed a mom or dad helper- all the children aged 5 and under brought a parent.

The bus met the Primary in High River at 9:15- and they arrived at the temple 2 hours later. Lets just say they didn't take the most direct route…..

As I am sure, every last one of us can understand, the children were very excited, and kept asking if they could see it yet. The adults reassured the children they will let them know when they get closer.
A child spotted it and yelled "there it is!!" Of course, every single little face was then pressed up against the bus windows, the bus got very quite as the children all watched…  a little one up near the front started to sing I Love to See the Temple, with the other children joining in. It was special moment to start the viewing off.

Once at the temple they were met with massive construction. The temple still had chain link fence all around it, heavy machinery driving around and workers everywhere. So the primary was making the best of it, they walked all around the fence where they could and walked down to the south and west of temple to see it from a different angle.

The Stake President approached the contractor and asked if there was any way the children could get close to the temple, at first there was just no way. But after a brief conversation the contractor had all the workers park the heavy machinery on the other side of the temple and gave the workers something else to do for about 30 minutes.

He (the contractor) then opened the gates and let the little children walk closer to the temple, they got within about 10 yards and had to stop, they looked around for a bit, the contractor who had been there since the first back hoe, gave them some fascinating information about the temple. They also took a few pictures with the kids and the temple and again the Primary asked again if there was any way the children could touch the temple- but there was just no way. He said "I know you want to have your temple done, so we need to get back to work."

After a few minutes the contractor walked them back out and then walked off with the bus driver. As the children were getting ready to leave the contractor came over to the bus carrying a couple of large cardboard boxes. Inside were pieces of the temple. Pieces of granite, the same that the temple was made out of.

The children each got to touch the temple and take a piece home.

This trip was full of small simple mercies from the Lord.
The power of revelation and prayer apparent at every corner.

Family Party

We usually always do a family get together on our kidos Birthdays. It seems like a good reason to have the cousins play together and for the adults to chat!

This year we started the party rather early, at 3:00- everything we do now is early on Sundays, cause Daddy has to leave by 5:30-6:00 ish to back to SL just before midnight.

Colored Popcorns

K was so excited to be turning 5 in the school year, and to be able to celebrate with her Kindergarten Class- she many great ideas:
Cupcakes
Cake
Muffins
Candies
Stuffies
and so on and so forth

I managed to swing her around. We decided to go with Colored Popcorn!!

We started out with a cute message---

I may have made a spelling error with the first one, but luckily we caught the
"and POPING with Joy"
before we gave them out.

K was rather upset with me

Luckily we got all that sorted out

We went with Best Bites Recipe!

Fruity Candy Popcorn {AKA Jello Popcorn}recipe by ourbestbites.com

8 cups popped popcorn
1/4 C butter (that’s half a stick)
3 T light corn syrup (honey is a good substitute)
1/2 C sugar
1 3.5oz box jello, any flavor (not the sugar free kind)

Preheat oven to 300°F. Line a jelly roll pan with foil or parchment. If using foil, spray lightly with non-stick spray and set aside. Place popcorn in an extra large mixing bowl.

Place butter and syrup in a sauce pan on medium heat. Stir until butter is melted. Add sugar and Jello and stir to combine.

Increase heat and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat so it just simmers. Continue simmering for 5 minutes.

After the sugar mixture simmers for 5 minutes, immediately pour over popcorn in bowl. Be careful, it’s super hot!! Mix right away and keep stirring so everything gets well coated. Spread mixture onto prepared pan and spread out evenly.

Pop in the oven and bake for about 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and let cool to room temp. Then break into pieces and enjoy! You can certainly eat this un-baked as well and it’s just soft and gooey, but definitely bake it if you’re going to pack it up for giving, or serve it as party food so it will be light and crunchy.

I did manage to burn the first batch--- this is gonna make me sound retarded but I still cant figure out if I burt the popcorn in the oven or the sugar coating on the stove. Its that rusty color popcorn in the back… we decided not to give that away.  The garbage can ate that bit.

It was all about burning things last week :(

K was so excited to take them to her class!! I am glad a simple act still means the world to my little sweetheart.

Happy Birthday 5th Birthday K!!

She did it!!
She made to 5 years old- for the last six months whenever anyone would ask how old she was she would say "almost 5"

Happy Birthday Beautiful K!!!

You are super-de-duper-de special and bring the greatest spirit into our family.

Snapshots

*some of these are old!*

Thats our new neighbour… his name is Harry. He's HUGE.

These 2 love to shuck

They all love to eat it!

A wanted me to were he helmet.

This poor little guffer- we were at Ikea, I was loading the cart with stuff- one minute she was standing by little brother, so I move to put a LOOOONG shelf on the cart, and she WALKED right into the end of it as I moved it!! Bruise on check, he tooth through her lip!  AND THEN- after holding her for a while, calming her down--- we are walking, and I kept telling her to walk by the stroller, cause those carts are hard to steer, and I go to turn the corner, and I drove over her toes!! MY GOOD GRAVEY!!
It was quite the tear filled trip.

Fruit Leather

So after our awsome-sauce picking experience, it was on to crab apple fruit leather.

PS I did not get enough apples from that 1 session of picking, but I saw a lady on facebook giving away her all ready picked crab apples… I was all over that like white on rice. I cleaned her out. No need to repeat our picking experience.

Now this fabulous idea and recipe is from my Mother in Law.
The Moxley children were raised on this stuff.

Its really simple, but extremely time consuming.

You need crab apples, sugar and cinnamon.

If your smart or lucky, not sure which is better, borrow or get your hands on one of these.

I bought one this year…. why?
Why spend all that money on something you use once a year??

I did 150 lb. of crab apples.

Last year I used this…..

With my fancy new apple sauce maker (aka BFF), I did this in 1.5 hours

Last year, just to fill the red bowl took me ALL DAY.
Serious.

You do the math

So after 3 mornings of doing crab apple sauce, I ended up with 18 large freezer bags of sauce ready to be dried.

Ok. If your a die hard, need to have a recipe here's my best shot!

Boil your crab apples in your Mom's big old-school Juicer boiler on the stove.
Make your sauce, either by hand or with my new BFF apple sauce maker.
Once you have a large bowl full, dump in like 3 cups of sugar to 1/2 cup cinnamon.
(I am totally guessing on the measurments… just add and taste until it tastes ok.)

If you are making it into fruit leather it doesn't need to be super sweet.

Then dehydrate on your fruit leather trays and WALA

FYI It takes my dehydrator 16 hours to do 12 sheets of fruit leather, then I cut each sheet into 3….

See what I mean, super inexpensive, but ridiculously time consuming.

Homemade fruit roll ups!

PS From my SIL who is super wise

 It's the Hardy's said...

Just so you know, apple leather is hard on little kids teeth. Learned from experience! Make sure they brush after eating..