Snakes and Snails

We have a little family of garden snakes that live in the flowerbed by our front door. This fall when we were cleaning up for the winter, I caught one to show to the kids. They weren’t scared at all!

I love that we get to experience this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for us. There is so much variety – it never gets boring! And there is so much to see and experience. I hope my kids get to experience more than I did – and I got to experience a lot.

(PS – see Doc’s nose there at the bottom of the picture?
He was scared to death of the snake. Ha ha)

Adding Pictures

So I got distracted while I was blogging the other day and instead of blogging current pictures I kind of went on an “add pictures to old blog posts” kick.

You see, when I first started blogging, I didn’t know you could add pictures to your blog. So I had to go back and add pictures.

You should go back and check them out. (seriously – there is a video of Vince learning to walk)

You’ll really like this post, too.

the quest for a tall loaf

After one miserably failed attempt at whole wheat bread today (I forgot to put all the flour in – so it was… less than desirable), I am trying again, but I think I miscounted and still put not-quite-enough flour in the dough. I think that I am overly cautious trying not to use too much flour that I use too little. And I am certain I don’t knead the bread enough.

If tomorrow weren’t Sunday (and if I had more milk) I would try again. Perhaps I will a try a recipe that just uses water – just to see if I can ever get the dang thing to be tall enough.

One of my concerns is that perhaps there isn’t enough dough to fill the pans (i.e., my pans are too big) But I use the same size pans my sister used, and she got hers to rise tall…

I also read that letting the bread rest between mixing it up and kneading it (autolyse?) can help it rise tall, so next time I am going to try that.

I’m feeling a little bit like a failure today… two ruined batches of bread (when I am making the bread in the first place to stretch our grocery budget this month), I lost my patience with the kiddos, it’s 7:36pm and they still aren’t in bed, I lost my patience with my sweet husband, I haven’t prepared my Relief Society lesson for tomorrow, and I didn’t get a load of laundry started this morning. In order to accomplish everything I would like to accomplish tonight, it will require me staying up too late (which I hate doing on Saturday night – I like to be well rested on Sunday! Plus, the choir is singing tomorrow, so that means choir practice before church…)

On a brighter note, we took back our cable box today (no more TV! Yay!) and set up our internet and home phone service with Qwest to start in a few weeks (saving us a LOT of money). So that’s good, right?

I also wanted to blog more, but my blogging marathon will have to wait until tomorrow (unless I decide to sleep tomorrow because I stay up too late tonight…)

 

Some days are just bad days. Today is a bad day.

Blogging Marathon

Okay – Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner, and I am still a blogging slacker. But in a desperate attempt to get at least somewhat caught up before the holidays, I am going to spend the next 30 minutes while my bread is rising doing some intense blogging. Hopefully I’ll be able to type out some descriptions to go with my pictures, but I’m not promising any great spelling or punctuation, just to give you a heads up.
By the way, in an effort to keep our events in some kind of chronological order, I am back-dating the posts. However the front page will have links to the posts, so if you follow the front page you shouldn’t miss anything. So head on over there to get the links to the posts I will be posting today.
My goals for today (these will be links if I am successfull!)
-Puerto Rico
-Denver
-Ward Campout
-Park City
-a few random pictures here and here
-liberty park with the Wilde child and his mama
-a new restaurant we found
And I think that will be it for today. Then tomorrow I hope to get the rest of my pictures organized and then published.
Wish me luck!

Just Keep Swimming

One of our favorite things about living in Salt Lake County is the recreation facilities. Our local Rec center here in West Jordan has an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, an indoor track, basketball court, weight room, and a daycare (the kids absolute favorite). With our pass we can get into any county facility – ice skating rinks included, which is another favorite pastime.

The indoor pool is nice, especially in the winter when we’ve got a hankering for splashing around and the snow is falling outside.

The last time we went, however, was right after the outdoor pool closed (and it was still super warm outside, but oh well).

We went with our friends Gabe and Noah and their mama who were staying with us for a while. It was loads of fun, and we miss those cuties! 

And going to the pool is always more fun when Papai comes along!