Where's the Beef?

Any of you who grew up in the early 80s remember that slogan for Wendy's. I have inserted a clip if you would like to refresh your memory!
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At any rate, Daniel and Sammy didn't find it funny when I kept saying it as I unloaded about 620 lbs of beef that I just picked up. They kept pointing and saying, 'RIGHT THERE!' I gave up as they got more frustrated! We purchased the beef from some friends this spring. It's been processed and you'll see the WONDERFUL spread in our freezer!


62 one lb pkgs ground beef
13 pkgs beef stew (YUMMY veggie beef & barley stew)
8 soup bones
7 pkgs of short ribs
2 briskets (gotta figure out what it is and how to cook it!)
and last but not least, my husband's favorite:
46 roast......6 of them being his prime rib

We have our 1 year supply of beef! (Hopefully) So thanks Craig & Loralea! We can't wait to dig in! OH! And did I mention all or $2.30 a pound? PRIME RIB $2.30 a pound? YAY!

Lookie what I did today.....(again!)

So I finished painting my bathroom! I just loved the color so much I decided to paint the other walls, too, instead of just having an accent wall. So here are some before and after pictures:




I had a few people as me if the caulking on the ceiling created smooth lines. For those not familiar with this, I had a friend tell me that if you take the clear caulk and run a bead on along the ceiling and then smooth it with your finger, then wait 24 hours for it to dry. Then when you tape the room off the tape will be on a smooth surface. (Very nice for those of us with textured walls.) Anyhow, makes sure you push the take down to seal it. Then once you paint and dry and peel it off you will have a straight line. Every once in a while I didn't push the tape down all the way, but here is a picture of my ceiling line:

Pretty good, huh? I am glad I learned that! Thanks Shelly! Next week I am going to tackle the laundry room! Orchid and yellow.....I can't pick a right word for the yellow. It's not pale, but it's not bright either. Stay tune to pictures next week!

New Favorite Drug

So yesterday morning I woke up with a UTI. It actually goes right into my kidneys. If anyone reading this has never experienced a UTI first you are VERY lucky! But let me explain how mine feel. First and MOST annoyingly you feel like you have to pee literally every 5 minutes! So to wander from the bathroom too far isn't a good idea! (How do I get the kids to school?) If you just try to ignore the feeling, if just gets worse and worse. So you finally cave in and go to the bathroom and you pee 1/2 tablepoon of urine and it BURNS! My eyes teared up and overflowed with tears. (Again, how was I going to get my kids to school? AND last until our pharmacy opened at 10 am?) So I call my friend to see if she would meet me at the older kid's school and take Nathan to his school with her son. She told me about this AMAZING drug called Azo. It's in the pain medicine section. It's strictly for uriniary pain. I popped 3 pills and in 20 minutes NO PAIN! It still hurt when I peed, but the constantly feeling of having to pee was gone! ALLELUJAH! It made the morning tolerable until the antibiotic kicked in! Thanks Denise! Once again, you are my life saver! There is also one for yeast infections if you happen to be prone to those. (OH! The going right into the kidney thing means there is blood in the urine and your kidneys are sore. So it feels like you have a sore back! NOT a fun day!)

Today I am painting the rest of my bathroom and I am VERY excited about that! Sale at Ace Hardware is still going on this month on paint, so I am thinking I should just get the paint for the other rooms, too! LOVE COLOR!

Catchin' up for a few weeks...

So Friday I painted our bathrooom. I was just going to do 2 walls, but I LOVE the color so much I am going to go get another gallon and do the rest of the bathroom! It's a nice deep nutmeg brown! It's a little darker than the picture shows. I also forgot to take a picture before I taped! Anyhow, so far my favorite color! I have a candle that was in there before that is a mint color...BEAUTIFUL together! So I want to accent in that color.


This is how I caught the twins one day. They were given a Book of Mormon to take to church each week (so they can put a chocolate chip in the jar). Anyhow, we had pizza the day before....put those 2 together, add a colored pencil and you have chairs and some good reading! I thought it was cute!

I was making some bread....Kevin probably made some smart alec comment....you can guess the rest. :-) Maybe I just loved the fact that he was doing dishes! He is good at those!


Planted our garden last weekend. See if I remember everything: Zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkins, marigolds (mixed in to get rid of squash bugs!), tomato plants in all different sizes and varieties, carrots, green onions, beets, broccoli (thought we'd try something new!), swiss chard, corn and rhubarb. I'll plant more corn in a few weeks in my left over space! Can't wait for the goods in a few months!

Daniel had a doctor's appointment in CA. Suprisingly Sammy wanted to come, too. He is such a grandma's boy he kept changing his mind. He even changed it while on the road and shed a few tears when I wouldn't take him back! Anyhow, just our 6 month check up. Everything went good. We found out about a new drug that Stanford is going to be the first in the world to try on pediatric patients. I didn't get the right spelling but it's something like Blastacept? Anyhow, they have been using it in adult patients for quite some time now. They are venturing down into younger ages! Daniel wouldnt' qualify at first, because he is TOO young, but after a year or so on ages 10-18 (or so) if things go well, they will allow Daniel to take it. What is does is replace Prograf. Prograf is his immunosuppresent that is toxic to the kidney and actually aids in it's eventual failure (so the doc said). He has to be NPO from 7-9 am & pm (nothing to eat or drink) and takes the med at 8 pm. Any how, this new to peds drug is an injection given once a month! SO, no more NPO, no more worrying about what the Prograf is doing slowly to the kidney! We are very excited and hope to be on it in 2-3 years. So that was great news! Quick trip over and back. And once again, thanks to g-pa and g-ma for watching the kids. Glad no ducks were hurt this time and we hope the kids behaved better. (I don't think it could have been much worse!)

And now onto an analogy I'd like to share. There will be a moral to the story at the end.

One day, someone decided to get a porcupine as a pet. They tried to love this pet for 23 years. There was lots of blood and pain associated with this pet. Everyone around them suffered from this pet. FINALLY, they got rid of the porcupine. 15 years later, after all the pain and blood has been forgotten, this person decides to get a porcupine, AGAIN! The outcome is going to be the same, blood and pain!

MORAL: My parents should not marry each other again!

YEP! May 29th they are getting married, again. This is the 3rd marriage for each of them. Their 2nd didn't last either. Oh well! I hope they have tweezers this time to get the quills out! Maybe 3rd time will be a charm!

Lookie what I did today......

So I decided to paint my hallway yesterday, so I started taping and cleaning dust and fingerprints off things. Not too much, just the stuff that wasn't getting painted. Notice I enlisted my young ones.....they still think it's fun! (BOY! Do they have a lot to learn!) So this is before:

And this is after!

It is a gray, but with the slate blue carpet it looks more slate blue, but I still like it a lot!
During one of my many trips up and down the ladder (14" ceilings require it!) I found Daniel and Nathan snuggled in the chair watching a movie. Thought it was pretty cute!

Here are the teacher's appreciation gifts for this year. There is a brown grosgrain ribbon around it and tied on the side. They were simple and easy. That is what I was going for this year! Gotta love a Cricut!

Trying a few new things in our house......

So we had a few new things happen here this past week. Sammy (for about a month) has been doing word searches. He's 4! Can't read what he's finding, but still loving them. I found these easy ones at the dollar store that have the first letter in the word bold in the puzzle. That made it easier for him. He picked it up from Nathan who actually has been doing word searches for about a year. He can't read any of the words, either. Keeps them quiet during church, when the do them!

Daniel is pretty proud of his new talet.....blowing bubbles. He goes thru about 4 pieces of gum a day!

Then the other night at dinner I steamed a few artichokes and introduced the kids to them. We dipped them in Ranch. Next time we are doing garlic butter. Nathan and Smmmy didn't want to even try them! Maybe next time. But they were a hit!

Bryc'es first day of fasting

So Bryce turned 8 a few weeks ago. So today is his first day to fast. We only have our kids fast 1 meal from age 8-12. Then when they turn 12 they fast 2. At any rate, anyone who knows Bryce, knows that food is EVERYTHING to him! Also, you should know that Bryce hates hot cereal. So this morning as we were opening his fast with prayer, we were talking. He said to me, "Mom, if you cook cream of wheat for my brothers, I won't have such a hard time fasting." Which is true! Many a mornings he has gone to school on an empty stomach because he won't breakfast. Every 20 minutes or so he has been coming up to me and saying, "Mom, I feel great!" Oh the faith of a child! We'll see how it goes in about 3 hours!