I'm feeling so proud...

of my sister!

Just Beachy!!!

We just had a great family reunion at Cannon Beach. We all had a great time. Some of you will remember similar jumping photos of Ben and his brothers when they were younger. It's become a family tradition. I especially like the photo of Truman playing in the sand. I think it really captures his emotion.

Did I mention...

You should all take a look at my own personal blog for an update on my adventures in Hollywood. Updated daily. Thanks.

Egypt & the Holy Land

So my sister-in-law, Aubery, Brett's wife, her Father is a religion professor at BYU-Idaho. He puts together tours of Egypt & the Holy Land. This year they're going over the Christmas break for 2 weeks. They leave December 22. It sounds like a great tour. It's $4,500 per person and that includes EVERYTHING for the 2 weeks. Just thought I'd pass it along. Maybe you could tell some of your friends parents that might be interested. I thought Mom and Dad might be interested since they don't have any little ones at home anymore. If they get enough people to go then Brett and Aubrey will be able to go along and help with the tour. Aubrey lived in the Jerusalem center when she was 8-10 years old. She knows Hebrew even. Marilyn and Todd are thinking of going and so are some of the aunts and uncles. Sounds like a good time. Go to the website and watch a video and get more of the details.

Pine on the Spur

Becky informed me that her mother-in-law would be out of town for a whole week, and that put their cabin in Pine up for grabs. So we jumped at the chance to take the kids for a last-minute/before school starts trip to the mountains. We had so much fun, and the weather was the perfect retreat from the heat! Mostly the kids played outside and roasted marshmallows on the never-ending fire (Elaine's sister was up there clearing the mountain behind the cabin, and burned the debris the whole time we were there).

Becky and I enjoyed ourselves relaxing, I with my book, and Becky worked on a very cute quilt. We had a good time reading, relaxing, sewing and eating. Becky had dubbed it the "sew and slim" retreat, I called it the "read and eat" week, I'm pretty sure there was no slimming going on. Although we did get some good mountain exercise in on our walks to the creek. We were so excited to find wild black berries growing near the creek, and had fun picking and eating them. That's as close to "living off the land" as I get.

It did rain quite a bit, but that only added to the good weather and ambiance. We took the kids one day in search of crystal treasure. Supposedly there is a place called diamond mountain (that sounds good, I'm really not sure what it was called) where there are lots of crystals in the dirt, but after a good rain they come to the surface easily. Well pretty much it was mostly desert, and rocks with a few dead animals here and there, but the kids had a great time, Jacob even found a few treasures. On Friday night Travis and Richard joined us, and I'll post more about that fun adventure on my own blog. So tune in to that, and thanks to Becky, and as Dallas said, "it was almost as much fun as Disneyland!"

Mmmm....Delicious!

This is for all you food lovers in the family (you know who you are!). I found this recipe on a blog I read regularly. She basically posts a recipe every day. This one called for jalapeno, and we just happened to have one we had grown in our garden, so I thought I'd try it out. Very tasty and easy! The marinade reminded me of that cilantro pesto Becky gets at Trader Joe's. We used chicken tenders instead of thighs, and that seemed to work just fine. When I read the recipe I thought it sounded kind of Thai, but it tasted very Indian once we made it. Enjoy!

P.S. I only used one jalapeno, and I de-seeded it, but if you prefer spicier, then go for it!

The Mona Rope Swing

Angela, Brian and I had some fun at Mona a couple weeks ago. I thought the video wasn't working right, but Angela informed me it was. Enjoy.