Aloha Friday

Aloha Friday is a fun way to make new bloggy friends.  Ask a simple question on your blog then go to An Island Life to leave your link, then make sure to visit other participants and answer their questions.

My question:

Were you in any clubs as a kid?

I was in Girl Scouts and 4-H.  I was also in the Children's Choir at church. 

Tomorrow we are going up to the forest to meet with a local Cub Scout Troop who asked my husband to teach a lesson about soils so they can earn their merit badge.  Afterwards we are going to grab lunch at one of the resorts up there.

Prayer request

I start the day with such a heavy and sad heart as the first update on my Facebook was that little baby Lane passed away yesterday.  He made it to about 7 weeks, but his poor little body just wasn't developed enough and he returned back to heaven.  I am asking for prayers for him and for his family.  They have a lot of family who will be traveling to Colorado for a memorial so they need prayers for that too.  Thank you to anyone who can help out!

Food Preservation 101

Ahh, it's that time of year when the garden is brimming with fresh produce and time to plan out how to preserve the most of my bounty for those long winter months. 

Wednesday morning I roasted a big batch of Anaheim chiles and seeded and chopped them and put the pieces into an ice cube tray, filled it with water and froze them.  When I want to cook up chili with it this winter I can pop a cube or two right into the recipe.  I may get one more batch before the frost, but it of course depends on when the frost happens.

I ordered my new food dehydrator and it got here today.  I had an old one that I picked up at a yard sale a few years back and last summer I worked really hard at prepping garden tomatoes and had it totally full.  Overnight it wasn't hot enough and half the tomatoes molded.  I took the whole dehrator out and threw it away with the rotten tomatoes still in it.  Now I have a nice new one so I can dry a bunch of the tomatoes that are ready to go.

Tomorrow I will also pick up my latest bountiful basket.  Bountiful baskets is a food co-op in AZ, UT, WY, CO, ID, NV, OR, TX, and WA where you pay $15 for a basket that is 50% fruits and 50% veggies, 6 different types of each.  I have participated for about 4 baskets now and have enjoyed feeding my family all that fresh produce at such a great price.  The first basket I did I tried to comparison shop at the grocery store, and using very conservative estimates figured that at the least the basket would have been $26 pre tax at the store.  Bountiful baskets also has special "extras" for each pick up.  Tomorrow I will be getting a 20lb case of peaches for $10 so I will be preserving a lot of peaches this weekend.  I plan to can peach slices and peach jam.  Since I have the dehydrator I may also make some fruit leather, and my husband would like a peach pie!

Adventures in babysitting

So it was a big deal for me, but I'm sure many of you would laugh that I was nervous today because I babysat a second little boy for the first time since having Austin.  I have babysat multiple kids before, but they were siblings, so with bigger age gaps, or my older nieces and nephews.  The boy is about 4-5 months younger than Austin, so I was afraid that it would be really challenging since they are virtually the same age, especially because Austin can be rambunctious.  It went really well though and the boys played together nicely.  I am trading babysitting favors so his Mom will watch Austin on October 2 so Dustin and I can go out to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.

Garden Update

Don't mind the crab grass, I have not been able to keep up with it this summer.  Other than pulling it I don't know how to get rid of it without using herbicide, and I'm not going there.  We have now harvested tomatoes, chiles, jalepenos, swiss chard, cilantro, coriander, dill, green beans, yellow squash, cucumbers, green peppers, banana peppers, yellow onions, green onions, radishes, carrots, and beets. 

I can't wait to eat the watermelon!

Pretty Swiss chard

Yellow cherry tomatoes, they are so good and pretty on a salad!

Yolo wonder green peppers

Latest cake

Amidst the craziness last weekend I decorated this 3-D cake.  It was my first 3-D cake and the first time I used rice crispy treats for the base.  The whole cab of the truck are crispy treats covered in frosting as well as the blue sprinkle slab under the trailer.  The trailer was vanilla cake.

#100

So this is my 100th post, and I was trying to think of something fun to do for it, but life has been just plain weird lately and I'm in kind of a funk, so this will just be what I am feeling in hopes that it will help me move on.   So I wrote a post about the whole jury duty thing last week and I have been following the trial online and I am SO HAPPY that I do not have to be on that jury.  This kid is a train wreck and I can't imagine that the jury will find him anything but GUILTY!  The defendant is Benjamin Hamilton in Flagstaff is you are interested in the story you can google it to find the articles in the AZ Daily Sun.

Then Thursday my co-worker who I share an office with gets a call from his significant other who works at the local hospital and says there has been a shoot out in my town.  Ok, I live in a tiny little town that you could say is sleepy at best.  We don't ever lock our cars and didn't even worry about locking the doors to the house until we had Austin, and only do it because it seems like we should.  Everybody knows everybody and most besides us are related somehow.  And the vast majority of town are conservative Mormons, so good God fearing good human beings.

So it turns out this local guy has been breaking into the school to steel random stuff for a couple of months now, including a box of burritos.  I also remember hearing that the clinic got broken into a couple of months ago, so it makes me wonder if he was connected there too, but that is just my thought.  Anyhow, he pointed a gun at the school janitor on Wednesday night so the cops started pursuing him.  On Thursday afternoon he shoots a Deputy who was pursuing him in the head with an assault rifle, who later dies from his injuries, so now there is a full scale manhunt for this crazy 23 year old who is hiding out in the rough desert terrain east of town.  It is on the national news, so you may have seen it.  The shooter is a Navajo man named Scott Curley.  It seems like from what we have heard he had this whole mess planned out for a long time and has stocked supplies out in caves in the desert and is prepared to survive out there for a while.  There are like 300+ cops here in town and about 5-6 news satellite vans, CRAZY!

Thursday night I was of course worried and could not sleep.  When I would fall asleep I would wake up from a dream that I had heard something and was in a total panic.  Then last night I was a little more secure about this guy since it seems like his beef is against the cops, and I doubt he would come into town since he knows that the people here are conservative red blooded Americans who love to hunt and therefor have guns and would not hesitate to pop a cap in a cop killer.  But then dear Austin wakes up at about 5 minutes to 1:00am and decides he is uninterested in sleep.  I am up with him until about 2:30am.  At which point I decide that this seems like a night we had right before Christmas where he would not sleep and did not go down until some Ibuprofen.  It turned  out then he was teething his first molar, so I'm wondering if this is the first 2 year molar.  I think it's that it hurts enough to keep him awake, but not enough to cry out in pain.  At any rate I am a tired wreck today, and I did take a two hour nap this afternoon. 

On a happier note, this morning I decorated the most elaborate cake that I have done yet for a friend in town.  Her Dad's 70th birthday party was tonight and she wanted a special cake for him.  He was a lifetime truck driver so I made a whole 3-D semi-truck cake.  I was so exhausted, and Dustin had to work this morning so it was quite a challenge to decorate the cake and entertain a toddler, but I got it done.  I haven't downloaded the pictures, but I will make another post when I get to it. 

So that is where I am at.  I have never been around murderous type people, so I am not sure why God has put two in my immediate sights within the last month.  I do have to say that my momentarily involvement with the jury really opened my eyes to the whole judicial system and how wasteful these trials can be.  I used to think the system was good, and that everyone should get a fair trial, but quite honestly I now think in this case the guy is so obviously guilty of shooting the deputy, so while I still think that it is wrong of me, deep down I hope that they just take this guy out and save the tax payers the trouble and expense of trial and imprisonment.  Ugh, I hate that I have become so cynical.

Back to school...

I was tagged by Brandi @  The Life of a New Mommy!

Back to School Tag


Answer these 5 questions below.

Then tag 5 blogging friends to play along.

Be sure to let everyone know who tagged you.


What was your favorite back to school item to buy?
It was always fun to pick out the notebook, when I was in elementary the "in" thing was to get a Trapper Keeper.  It was always fun to pick out the cool cover design and get one with all the neat pockets and places to put things.

What was your favorite subject in school?
I'm a total science nerd!


Did you ride the bus or get a ride from Mom/Carpool?
I rode the bus until middle school when I got into extracurricular activities that were before and after school.  At 16 I drove myself.

Do you have a sack lunch or cafeteria food?
I know I started with sack lunch because I remember the day Mom let me buy school lunch and it was pizza day!  I think once I started cafeteria food I stayed with it until middle school.  Then we had the choice to go out and buy lunch at the burrito wagon, they a converted camper into a mini store where they sold burritos, pop, chips and candy.  In high school they openned campus my sophomore year so we ate at A&W pretty much every day.

What is your favorite memory from your school days?
Probably related to extracurricular activities, but nothing specific comes to mind.


You are supposed to tag 5 friends....so I am going to tag my friends:

Roni @ Crazy Little Man Tyler Jackson
Colton's Mommy @ The Colton Chronicles
Kelly @ Surprised by Hope
MontanaMama @ Daisy Head Mamas and Bell Bottomed Babies
Twincerely,Olga @ Twinspirational Runner

Baby Lane update

I have been following the journal for Baby Lane and they finally let the Mom hold him.  She is doing kangaroo care with him where they basically put the baby in the mothers shirt for skin to skin contact/stimulation.  He will be three weeks old on Sunday, and he is doing pretty well considering.  He had one major set back last week where he had internal bleeding.  They did surgery though and seems to have taken care of the problem.  The Dad got really sick, I guess that is why they think the Mom went in to labor early, she got some sort of virus.  He is recovering, but staying away until he is back to perfect health.  Thanks to everyone who is praying for them, God is good!

A huge weight

A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  I found out back in June that I was on call for jury duty from July-September.  In the beginning of July I got a sumons for the 22nd.  I live in one of the largest counties in the country and the county seat is 200 miles away so I was dreading having to drive down there.  I reported that morning to find out that I was in a juror pool for a homicide trial that was actually scheduled to begin August 17th that would last 5-6 weeks, and all they wanted that day was for us to fill out an in depth personal survey.  I was hoping from the survey that they would call and excuse me because I am the primary care giver for my son.  No such luck.  So for all that month I was worried sick about having to serve on this jury. 

We had not been instructed to not look up anything related to the case so I actually googled the defendant and found out that he was 18 years old at the time of the crime in 2008 and was accused of shooting a 16 year old in the back of the head from a botched drug deal. 

So last Tuesday I once again drive the 3.5 hours to Flagstaff.  I was there all day long for the voir dire process.  The defendant was in the court room the whole time which totally creeped me out.  I don't think I've ever seen or met someone who has taken another persons life and it was quite terrifying for me.  We only made it through a few of the questions in the process so I was dreading that I was going to have to return to Flagstaff today, but at 4:45pm the judge said he was going to stop the process because there were some jurors with extenuating circumstances that would qualify them to be excused so he was going to ask about their situations before adjourning for the day.  He said the two things that he would consider were a medical condition, or a pre-planned vacation that could not be rescheduled, so again I thought I was out of luck, but he actually called my name.  I was able to tell him about not having 5-6 weeks of childcare, and that I lived 200+ miles away so he excused me! 

Don't get me wrong, I am proud to be an American and understand the importance of jury duty.  I look forward to serving on a jury in the future.  I just couldn't stand the thought of being away from my boys for 5-6 weeks, plus the financial burden of paying for all that child care that I normally provide.  I have a great deal of respect for the men and women who will serve on this jury and pray that it goes quickly for them. 

Aloha Friday

Friday is the day they take it easy over at An Island Life so head over and play along with Aloha Friday.  All you have to do is answer their question and then post your own and link it.

Here is my question:

What is your favorite flower?

I am sitting here looking at the beautiful bouquet my boys got for me last Friday.  My husband Dustin stays home with Austin on Fridays so I can work a full day.  Last week they were out playing in the yard and Austin went and picked all the dandelions then went to the back door.  Dustin let him in the house and he came in and put the flowers on my chair.  So Dustin thought that was so sweet and when they went to town bought me a beautiful vase full of orange/yellow roses and these other big pretty almost chrysanthemum like yellow flowers and little babys breath all around them. 

My favorite flowers are roses and daisies, I had both in my wedding bouquet.

Aloha Friday

In Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that they take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So I thought that on Fridays I would take it easy on posting, too. Therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response. To participate go here.



Here is my question:

How many states and/or countries have you been to?

I have been to 35 states and 4 different countries.

Thanks for stopping by, happy Friday!