Monday, December 1, 2008

A Time of Giving Thanks

Things I am thankful for.....
Having a family I love spending special times with.
A husband who leads our home with spiritual guidance,
love and laughter.
A mother who teaches by example.
Sons who bring so much happiness into my life.
The radiant smile of this beautiful daughter of mine.
The excitement and life of these four young children.
I can't imagine living a life without children.
True, you would certainly avoid the heartaches
and disappointments; but you would never be able
to experience the true feelings of unconditional love
either. There is nothing more fulfilling than being
hugged by a child.
I am thankful I have been blessed with children.
Our Thanksgiving Day
MMMmmm......this is my favorite way of cooking the turkey.
Have you all tried deep frying?
Wednesday night I melted butter, added all of my spices and seasonings and then injected them and rubbed it into the turkey really well and let
it set in the refrigerator over night.
Thursday, I made sure the skin was cut away well
around the neck so the hot oil could rotate around
and through that bird as it cooked. I halved an onion
and placed it in the basket with the turkey to give it
a little more flavor and then I just waited for that turkey to be done.
HAVE ANY OF YOU SEEN THE MOVIE CHRISTMAS VACATION?
Do you know the part where they bring the turkey to the table and
Chevy Chase cuts into it and it just explodes and lies there all
dried up? And then there's the scene where Chevy Chase is trying
to chew it?
That's what MY TURKEY turned out to be!
Thankfully everything else turned out beautifully
so we were able to enjoy the rest of the food.
It even turned out if you put enough of mother's
delicious cream gravy on the turkey you
could swallow a few bites of it as long as
you didn't get the ones that were so crispy they
scratched your throat all the way down.
Here's Kyle and Amy enjoying their dinner.
After dinner we enjoyed all of the delicious desserts Natalie brought.
Fudge, banana cream pie, cheese cake & chocolate cream pie.
Sabrina and Amy brought pumpkin pies so we had plenty to choose from
While some people ate dessert, others of us were busy building
graham cracker houses and decorating them.
Here's Natalie's complicated masterpiece.
Sabrina, Mother and I were busy helping with the
construction of Kayley, Katelyn, Cameron and Hannah's houses.
Kacey and JJ were creative and made a cute camera.
This picture doesn't show it off but it had the lens, the
wrist strap, the button on top and other cute and clever
little creations.
This is Elder Urbanik from Price, Utah - can you guess what he made?
It's a missionary. White shirt, tie, missionary tag and scriptures.
The bottom part looks like a skirt in this picture but it
was actually pants.
I thought his was very creative as well.
Here are Cameron's, Kayley's, Katelyn's and Hannah's finished products.
I think we all really enjoyed using our creative talents on
something as important as graham cracker houses but boy
did we make a mess.
Sarah's not the only one that has a Cinderella.
We have our very own Cinder-fella!
Check it out....

After he finished everybody packed up and headed for home.

At the end of the day Mike and I both commented on

what an enjoyable day it had been;

It really was.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Young Womens Evening of Excellence

I was sitting here admiring the beautiful colors Becky
has posted on her site and it hit me that I had my very
own burst of color photo's.
Tuesday night our Y/W had their Evening of Excellence.
Amanda - the one on the right planned the program
titled: You Are Unique.
As you will see it was based on different types of shoes
and the use of each shoe.
She put the use of the individual shoe with a unique tie-in
of a gospel standard.
Example: Red glitter platform shoes represented -
"Just as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz wanted
to go home, we are all striving to return home to
our Heavenly Father".
She collected tennis shoes, ballet shoes, work boots, etc. and
they all had a unique tie-in. A lot of work on her part, but
it turned out to be very effective. She is very talented.
Kathy, the one on the left designed and placed each Y/W value
on the tiles you see on each table; as well as the little flags
with the Y/W symbol that the miniture shoes are sitting on.
She is extremely talented.
Alynne, the one between me and Amanda made the tablecloths
that represented each value in color. She is extremely talented as well.
Are you wondering what I did and where my talent lies in all this?
I'll tell you when you reach it in the pictues.
Here it is!
This is my contribution to the evening and the many talents that were
put to use.
It's the 'shoe' cake server!
Oh, and the shoe boxes that were wrapped. I did those too.
Alynne must have thought I had a lot to offer when she
chose me to be her counselor. I feel very inadequate when I am
around all of these talented women. They sure are a lot of fun
to work with though. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something from
them before it all comes to an end.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

S'Mores Anyone????

Saturday, November 15th began as a beautiful
morning with blue skies, but warm temperatures.
I headed down to the ward building for a
Super Saturday of crafts and food.
BUT as I headed down the hill I saw the smoke
I had smelt as I left the house.
The following pictues are the account
of how bad things got as the day wore on.
Around 12:00 p.m. - my street.
3:00 p.m. - driving S/E on Nohl Ranch Rd. 3:00 -4:00 p.m. - my street
5:00 p.m.
Helicopters dipping water from the resevoir
Looking west as the sun begins to set
By this time I had a basket full of clothes,
important papers and my portable safe
out and ready to grab if we had to evacuate.
I walked out the front door around 8:00 p.m
and was able to see this red glow from across
the freeway. Out of all the fires we've been
through, this was the first one that
really put me on edge.
After a sleepless night, we arose to beautiful
blue skies, but still a lot of smoke to the north.
After spending all Saturday afternoon and night in
the house Mike and I had to get out and find out
what had happened in our neighborhood. So we
jumped in the car a drove east and then south
to check things out.
The picture below was taken toward the east end of
Santa Ana Canyon Road looking west.
That's the 91 freeway on the right.
This is looking northwest toward Brea/La Habra Heights.
This picture was taken around 9:00 a.m.
We were at the point above Hannah's school looking
north. I believe this was when Diamond Bar
began burning.
This vulture may have been looking for a crispy morsel.
And here's the view looking down toward our house.
At the bottom of the picture you can see the big, light
orange house in the center - ours is the little grey one
to the left. Looks like pretty clean air at our house!
And here's a view of Catalina. You definately would
not have wanted to be on the water. The smoke
was covering it like a blanket.
And that's my photo journal of the Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills fire.
The bishop of Yorba Linda 4th ward lost his home.
The Mia Maid advisor in our Young Women program lost her home.
There may be others that I don't know about but all in all I
feel we were extremely blessed considering how fierce these fires
were and how thinly stretched the fire fighters were.
But what a valiant battle they fought. I cannot express
the appreciation I have for these men/women who put
themselves in harms way to protect the properties and lives
of our communities.
To me they truely are HEROES and I thank them.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Birthdays

To those of you whom occasionally view my blog you are now in for a treat! Or maybe you will view it as 'just more pictures of the same ol' people'. I titled this post "Birthdays" becuase we have had
three birthdays in the family since my last post and
I have been too busy being a politcal activist to think
about blogging. By the time 9:00 p.m. rolled around
I was ready for my head to hit the pillow and couldn't think about doing anything else but what had to be done for my family before I was able to think about going to bed.
September 29 was Bryce's birthday. We all went to the
Orange County Mining Company and enjoyed our dinner and
the beautiful view that overlooks the city of Orange.
Katelyn's birthday was October 23. We went to Bryce and Sabrina's house and enjoyed her
birthday with family and friends from school and church.
I thought she was the cutest Tinkerbell I have ever seen.
This cake was so beautifully decorated that the kids couldn't resist coming up and sneaking a pinch of frosting.
Cameron got into trouble (not a big surprise) so when
he was finished sitting in the corner I gave him my camera
so he could snap a few pictures, and this is what he came up with.
Now we're to Hannah's birthday party -
Hannah's Hollywood Night.
This is a picture of the star Hannah had
on the "Red Carpet". The pictures below
are of the various "Hollywood Celebrities"
standing on their stars.
Give a girl a micraphone and she tends to lose
all of her inhabitions.
This was the part where the different groups
of "stars" came up and gave their acceptance
speeches for the awards they received in making
their group movies.
Here they are holding up their little (very little) Oscar statues.
This is the end of my birthday post. You can probably be thankful
it didn't go on any longer. It could have, but I got halfway through
the party before I discovered I hadn't replaced the USB card
in my camera; so most of these pictures are from Mother's camera.
Thankfully she was here taking pictures or I would have had nothing!