{Seriously Yummy}

Many of you may have heard of The Pioneer Woman.  She is a blogger/photographer (I have learned a lot from her) and she is also a pretty darn good cook.  I knew she was a good cook when she posted sometime ago her recipe for the best chocolate sheet cake.  It was the very same recipe I grew up with my mom making, although we called it Texas Sheet Cake.  I knew it then, this lady knew how to cook.  I have followed her blog for quite some now and also recently ordered her two cookbooks full of deliciousness!!  She also has a Food Network show that my children and I would watch without fail on Saturday mornings.  My kids loved that the show was filmed on her ranch in Oklahoma (Meysa and Horses) and I loved the good recipes.  One of the recipes that I saw on her show was her Petite Vanilla Scones.  I knew I had to try them.  I mean they used a cup of butter, three vanilla beans and oodles of powdered sugar.  How could they not be good?!!  Well they lived up to my every expectation and then some.  They were flaky and moist plus with the glaze they were perfectly sweet.  They are so good I am having to give some away to friends or I would eat them all, which would defeat the purpose of working out this morning!!  If you like scones you will love these.  You must make them!!  Go ahead, hop on over to her blog.  Peruse the many wonderful recipes she has and get a kick out of her blogging!!  She is a hoot!!

(note:  It called for three vanilla beans and unless you enjoy handing over anywhere from $7-$11 per bean at the grocery store, do what I did.  I ordered a pack of 25 beans off Amazon for about $14 +shipping.  Now I won't choke on the cost as I enjoy my scones)

{Memorial Day}

 We had a wonderful Memorial Day, we hope you did too!!  We spent our day with wonderful friends.  To start the day off we headed a little north of where we live to go ride some ponies.  Our good friends have relatives that own a nice piece of property out in the country.  Our friends go there often to ride the ponies and invited us to go along this time.  To say our kids were excited would be an understatement!!  They were over the moon about getting to ride the ponies, especially our Meysa (aka the horse lover)!!  The ponies were the perfect size, not to small and not too big.  Even Ayden who is usually the one a little spooked by animals was having a great time.  His comment to me was "I had no idea today was going to be the best day"!!  That sums up how much fun they had.  We were there for a while and everyone got a few turns getting to go for a ride.  After we thoroughly wore out the poor ponies we put up all the tack and headed over to the pond that was plumb full of tadpoles and baby frogs.  The kids loved trying to catch some tadpoles and checking out the baby frogs!!  It was a really good morning, hot but good.  Later in the afternoon we headed over to our friends house (different friends) to wish a dear family goodbye as they are getting ready to move to California in three weeks.  It was such a nice evening with the kids enjoying other kids and Ryan and I enjoying visiting with good friends.  Everyone was beat by the time we got home, which is usually an indicator for how good of a day has been had by all.  We truly are blessed to be living where we are, to have the friends we do and to get to experience all the wonderful things we do.  Hope your Memorial Day was just as blessed!!

{Spring Concert}

Ayden decided this last fall that he wanted to play in band.  As a newbie he got to decide what instrument he wanted to play and it didn't take long for him to choose the trumpet.  So we got a trumpet and book and off he went.  As you can imagine, we had some long days of listening to him practice.  Along with the nagging to get him to practice in the first place.  He stuck with it and not long after band started he got bumped up to advanced band and was pretty excited to get to play some cool songs.  He has a natural affinity to music, which is probably why he got put in advanced band.  He can hear a song and plunk it out on the piano without much work.  I wish I had his talent!!  After almost a year of working it was finally time for the Spring Concert for the Strings and the Band.  Ayden had to wait until after the beginner band and the beginner/advanced strings performed and then it was his turn.  They played three songs, the coolest of which was Star Wars!!  I am so proud of him and how hard he has worked all year.  He has signed up to play trumpet next year as well so he will only get better.  Way to go Ayden!!

{Happy Birthday}

Someone very important is having a birthday today.  Since I had ample ammunition sitting on my computer I thought why not do a little flashback of the birthday boy to add up all the goodness he brings to the world!!

This not so little man entered this world much smaller than this picture would have you to believe.  He was  born 7 weeks premature and weighed in at a whopping 4lbs 11oz.  I think the double chin is obviously a sign that he liked to eat!!!

We are constantly asked how our girls go their blonde hair!!  Like it was the milk man or something!!  But here is good hard evidence that it in fact came from their father (the one listed on the birth certificate!!!)!!

Anyone who knows Ryan well, knows that baseball is THE game to play, and watch and analyze and, and...Really it is THE game.  It started early for him too, I think we once added up how many years he spent being on a baseball field and it came to almost 20 years.  Yeah that long!!

What a charmer!!

He did play other sports besides baseball.  He played basketball in junior high and High school.  One of the things that I have always found very unfair is that Ryan is so athletic.  It doesn't matter what sport he can play it and play it well.  Me?  Not so much.  On one of our very first dates we went bowling.  He told me he wasn't too good and I thought great because neither am I (I once threw a bowling ball BACKWARDS while trying to bowl.  Yeah it surprised me and the Japanese people beside us)!!  But wouldn't ya know it he bowled like over 200!!  I made some comment about how "terrible" he was and unfortunately for him the guy from the couple we were doubling with ratted him out.  Come to find out Ryan used to play on a bowling league when he was younger.  Of course he did!!  I don't even remember what I bowled but I can guarantee you it wasn't over 100!!

We started dating the winter of our Senior year.  Ryan asked me to a dance and the rest is history!!

We look soooo young!!!

Oh, the 90's!!!  Crazy how young and naive we look!!  

 Ryan played baseball in college to pay for school and enjoyed it immensely!!  Especially playing on two World Series winning teams!!  I have permanent bleacher bum from all the games that I sat and watched.  Good times, Good times!! 

 Then the kids came and life got busy and crazy, but oh so good!!!  He is such a good daddy!!  The kids are so in love with him.  Just the way it should be!!

I love him more today than I did almost 15 years ago.  

 

 I am so happy that Ryan came into my life.  I love  that he is my partner in crime, the daddy to my babies and the leader of our family.  Happy Birthday love!!  I hope you know how important you are in my life, in the lives of our kids and in the lives of all you know and love you!!

{Sunday Dessert}

It was always kind of an unspoken tradition in my family growing up that Sunday was the day for dessert.  We would come home after church, have lunch or dinner depending on what time slot we had for church meetings.  After dinner was over and the kitchen cleaned up it was inevitable that one (or more) of the kids would head into the kitchen to bake up a treat.  We would scour Mom's cookbooks, of which our favorite was an old ward cookbook that had seen better days.  It didn't even have the binding on it anymore, being held together by a rubber band or two.  As we searched for a recipe we would notice that we were related to more than half of the recipe submitters, which for me somehow made the cookbook all that more special. Once we had a recipe picked out we would make an utter mess in the kitchen but oh the utterly delicious goodness that came out that kitchen is what mattered most to us.  And it wasn't just the girls in the kitchen, some of my brothers are some of the best cooks.  Which I am sure came from my mom's patient teaching and her resigning her kitchen over to her kids often.  

It may be genetic, this needing to bake on Sunday afternoons.  Without prompting from me at all my two oldest kids have decided that we are going to have dessert on Sundays and they are going to be the ones to bake it.  This has been going on for some time now and it finally hit me last week that it had kind of become a tradition.  Maybe it was because last Sunday we had to decide that one too many bakers in the kitchen is never a good thing.  It was decided that Ayden would get to decide and make a dessert one week and then Meysa would get to do it the next week (and Lauryn wants to get in there too).  So last Sunday Ayden made Texas Sheet Cake (a favorite recipe from that beloved cookbook), it was great as usual. Ayden is becoming quite the cook, he also made us buttermilk pancakes from scratch yesterday.  He is able to read the recipe and know pretty much what he needs to do.  He does need some assistance with techniques and such but pretty soon I will be able to let him free in the kitchen.  Yesterday it was Meysa's turn.  She chose BYU Mint Brownies.   Meysa, for her age, does a great job.  She loves being in the kitchen and getting to make yummy things.  Repeatedly yesterday she said she was having so much fun!!  She also knows how to make a Mom feel good.  She said I was the expert in the kitchen in our family!!  At least I get to be the expert in one thing!!!

I do love spending time in the kitchen with my kids.  I love teaching them the value of good, homemade food and that my job as a Mom is an important one.     

 The best part of being the cook is you get to lick the beaters!!

 Love this girl!!!

It was a success!!  There is a big section that is missing from that pan of goodness.  The kids loved it and Daddy did too!!  Here is too Sunday desserts and family time in the kitchen!!!