Dinner Database

I have been in a dinner menu slump. If I don't have it all planned out well in advance I have a hard time coming up with something that actually sounds good to me. I once solved this dinner dilemma by having a 2 week menu at all times. . .but in that last year or so I've gotten to where coming up with a menu is getting harder and harder. It's all the same ole' stuff, you know? For me it is a lot easier to prepare everything if I don' t have to come up with the idea first. Anyway, for my upcoming birthday Adam created a dinner database and it is pretty much the coolest thing ever! He put in everything we have ever had for dinner (which can be updated at any time) and created a program that will allow me to just select items for the menu from a list and can be based on prep time, etc. It keeps track of when we had each meal so that we don't repeat something too often. It also creates a shopping list for me based on the meals I have selected. This morning he handed me a 2 week menu. It is so nice to not have to come up with the ideas myself! I'm not sure why, it just is. Anyway, I love practical birthday gifts! It's just perfect and didn't cost a dime!


He overshot on his time estimates, but I'm flattered that he thinks I actually spend that much time preparing meals. :-)

Bad hair day?

This, my friends, is what you call a serious case of bedhead! It happened about 6 months ago and I was so impressed that a pillow and a little sleep could result in such a hairstyle I took pictures before I attempted to comb it through. I try and keep it combed even when she won't let me do anything cute with it. The longer it gets the harder it is to keep on top of it.


Exactly 1 year ago yesterday before Adam and I went to bed we went and checked on all of the kids as usual. When Adam got to Jenna's room this is what he found.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this style of hair it is called a mullet!! When we put her to bed a few hours earlier her hair was long like in her 3 1/2 yr pictures taken only weeks before.

Apparently she didn't fall asleep right away on that fateful night and in her boredom got some craft scissors out of the kitchen cupboard and cut both sides of her hair off. We found hair all over the bathroom floor. Then she went back into her room and fell asleep.

My only request to the hair stylist the next morning was to make her look like a girl if possible. She made a great snow white for Halloween.

It's taken a full year, but she is almost back to where it was before, not quite, but we are getting there. What's funny is that even with being such a girly girl Jenna loved her short hair! She was so proud of it and never once regretted cutting it. She used to say things like this to her cousin, "Anna, your hair is TOO long, you need to cut it short like mine." Only days after the incident one of her little friends DID cut her own hair short after Jenna had spent a little time with her. I can only imagine the conversation that took place between the 3 yr olds. (It's a good thing her mother had a sense of humor.) She's excited to be growing it out now, but knows that only certain people can cut her hair and she isn't one of them!!

Where there's a will, there's a way!

I walked in the kitchen yesterday to find Korinne on strategically placed chairs allowing her to easily reach previously unreachable food items. Where there is a will, there is a way! She can't get up on the stool by herself yet, so she found a helper chair and worked it out. When I got out the camera she gave me her cheesiest smile. That girl makes me laugh.

I wish she would let me do her hair more often. This bow stayed in for about 10 min. I am constantly trying new things to try and get her to leave it properly groomed. Mostly she just runs around with wild hair like in the above pantry picture.

The K-1 Crew

During the 1995-1996 school year at USU I lived in Old Farm apt. K-1 with Malinda, Kaylynn, my sister Heather, and my friend from High School Cyd. We became the K-1 Crew and officially adopted in Ker-dog, Katie, and Sandi who lived with us for the last quarter. We are all happily married and have 26 kids between the 8 of us!! (The K-1 Crewbies) Ever since our time together at USU we have stayed close through daily e-mails and every fall we let the husbands hold down the fort for one night and have a girls night slumber party at my parents' cabin. Its a tradition we cherish and won't be giving it up any time soon! My kids love spending time with Adam and really don't miss me much so it works out well for everyone.

Chinchiladas

The Chinchilla is a rabbit-sized rodent native to the Andes Mountains in South America which is often talked about in the popular children's cartoon "Go, Diego, Go."

Chicken Enchiladas can often be found on our dinner table and are made from chicken, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, diced green chilis, olives, cheese and tortillas.

What do you get when you have chicken enchiladas after the children have scene an episode of "Go, Diego, Go" ? Chinchiladas. My kids have been calling them chinchiladas for months now. I'm not sure they will ever be called by their correct name again. What is so funny is that they aren't trying to be funny. They really think that is what they are called! They also have no idea how they came up with it. . . it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, just a Mom who is paying attention.

Britton's "hillbilly" tooth finally came out. Having one surviving front tooth sticking out in the middle had me calling him Billy Bob. Britton laughed every time I said it. My favorite feature was that it seemed to be pointing in a different direction every day as the permanent tooth was moving it around a bit. Well, it came out and the permanent tooth can already be seen coming in to take its place. No time wasted there! The tooth fairies failed to properly communicate with each other last night and they both visited only to find out they both had visited when Britton came in the next morning with twice as much money. Oops. Some day we will get it right.

Britton was practicing his reading tonight and had me laughing whenever he tried to sound out the word "shut". Let me just say it didn't always come out as the word "shut", but I'm sure you can imagine how it came out! My kids aren't acquainted with the swear words yet so he had absolutely no idea that what he was saying was considered a very bad word. I just quickly corrected him and he went on. Sure made for an interesting reading session.

P.S. No, we don't actually have a chinchilla. I got the picture off of Wikipedia. The chicken enchiladas are real, however. We had them for dinner tonight. Yummy.

Primary Program

I have enjoyed many primary sacrament meeting programs over the years, but I've never been in charge of one before which, by the way, changes everything! Fortunately the program today went better than I could have imagined. I wasn't really worried about it at all until our practice with all of the kids yesterday. It was absolutely crazy and the little sunbeams were completely out of control. Today I could hardly believe my eyes when they sat with their little arms folded for a good portion of the program. The only real catastrophe was when I looked down at my feet part way through the program and realized that I had put the wrong shoes on. They totally didn't match what I was wearing! The silver lining was that they at least they matched each other. One time in college I went to work at the Copy Center on campus and had been there for 4 hours before my boss looked at me with a smirk on her face and said, "Hilary, do you have another pair of shoes like that at home?" I looked down and saw that I had one brown shoe and one black shoe on. They weren't even close to being the same shoe!! I had dressed in the dark that morning as to not wake up my roommate. It was pretty embarrassing.

Suddenly Korinne has developed a pretty strong opinion about her clothes. I'm sure it has something to do with a certain older sister who is trying her best to convert Korinne to all things girly. I helped out in the nursery today and I can tell you that Korinne was the only child there wearing a fake pearl necklace with her dress. Jenna picked it out and put it on her before church and Korinne didn't take it off again until she got in her pajamas.

Trip down Memory Lane

This week I've been working on a project for Britton for Christmas. (Feel free to be impressed if you should so desire.) The only reason I'm starting this early is that I would like to do one for each of the kids and I know it is going to take a long time to get it done. I'm putting a DVD together with pictures and video from their birth until now. A little movie, if you will, of their life thus far. (Although at this point Korinne's won't be very long) I went through all of Britton's pictures this week and thought I would post some of my favorites.

On a side note, after I took this picture of Britton I let him look at himself in the mirror. He was so upset with how he looked he wanted me to clean it off immediately and has never so much as touched my makeup since. Jenna and Korinne, on the other hand, have both been guilty of getting into my makeup but they were actually quite pleased with the results. Here is Jenna a few years ago after one such incident.

One night Britton wanted his shoes on even after we put him in his pajamas. If I remember correctly he kept them on until the next morning.

Anyway, it has been kind of fun to take a look back at the last 6 years of our lives. Its amazing to me how much traveling we did during our time with Delta when the kids were small. Every picture was in a different state; Texas, California, Tennessee, Idaho, Georgia (of course), Utah, Illinois. We sure enjoyed the flight benefits while we had them, but they are long gone and now our trips to Nephi and Rexburg will have to do. (Both are swell locations I must say) We did make it to Florida during the last year so I guess that could be considered adventurous! Anyway, it is amazing how life changes from year to year without you really noticing it.