No pictures for now

Today is Sunday and I am supposed to update at least once a week but I don't have a camera right now. Darren gave it to Jon while he was fishing and then forgot and now it's in Jackson with Jon. So I can probably use Darren's big one but I don't have access to that right now. I was going to take a picture of our clematis. All summer it has grown really big and bushy but has produced no flowers. Now that it's already frozen once or twice and everthing else in the yard is dying, the clematis has tons of buds on it and some are opening up to small white flowers. I hope it holds up until more bloom. Maybe next year we'll get more.

My silly kid

While I was posting my last entry Jake started crying. I looked up and he was stuck under this little chair and crawling around trying to get it off him. It was pretty funny. He looked like a little hermit crab trying to get his shell off. So of course I wanted to take a picture but by the time I got the camera ready he had freed himself. So I put the chair back on him so I could take the picture. He didn't like that very much. He was much happier when I took it off.
















Then when I was putting the previous picture on this blog he climbed into this plastic container. Ethan tried to climb in afterwards but he didn't quite fit.

Puppets!

The other day at the library Ethan got a backpack about puppets. It had some toy puppets in it and some books about puppets. A couple of those books told you how to make puppets. Ethan wasn't too interested in making them but I knew as soon as Kevin saw the books he would want to make a puppet. So that's what we did for a Sunday afternoon activity. Ethan wanted a spider, Kevin a dragon, and I made a girl puppet. Kevin likes to make his dragon eat my girl. Sounds just like a boy.

A couple of random things

Today for Sunday dinner we had meatballs with BBQ sauce. Jake loved them as you can tell and I just had to take this picture because he is so messy. He looked even oranger in real life.















The heating element in our oven has been out for about a month now. My friend, Kristi, knew this and she also knew I usually make a treat on Sundays (which almost always requires an oven). I mentioned yesterday that I missed homemade cookies. Today she showed up on our doorstep with a big ziploc bag full of snickerdoodles for us, still warm from the oven. So we got our Sunday treat, thanks to her. And they are delicious, too. Isn't she great?!

Eastern Idaho State Fair

After the potty party was over we put Ethan back in a diaper and headed for the Eastern Idaho State Fair. I thought it was interesting when I first moved to Idaho that they didn't just have one Idaho state fair but fairs for different sides of the state. Anyway we walked around, ate a little fair food, petted some animals. Tracie walked around with us for a little while before she met up with some friends to watch "Idaho Idol". Darren and I decided that the fair would have been more fun with more cash and less kids. Next time we go will be in about three years when kids are a little older and you don't have to worry about them wandering off and getting lost in a big crowd of people. I also found it very interesting how the fair brings out many odd sort of people that I never see anyway else in these parts. But it was a fun time together and I'm glad we went.

Potty Party

Today we had a potty party. What's a potty party, you say? Well it's just what it sounds like. You wear underwear and go potty all morning. It was Ethan's introduction to wearing underwear from now on. It took some coaxing to get them on him. He is very comfortable in his diapers and has not been open to change. But I feel we had a successful day today and we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Canning salsa

I canned salsa this weekend. I found a recipe on a website called the National Center forHome Food Preservation. They had very good information on what types of ingredients have to be in a canned salsa versus a fresh salsa to make it safe for no microorganisms. Anyway, it turned out pretty well. It's more like a taco sauce than a salsa but it will be good on our foods this year. Here's the recipe and website if anyone is interested. And a few pictures, too. Blog posts aren't very fun without those. I wanted to take a picture of what my stove looked like after I was done but Darren had the camera with him hoping to photograph the big fish he caught so no
messy picture.














My beautiful bottles of salsa!





















Tracie came and got all of our huge zucchinis so her classes could make zucchini bread.




















Ethan helping Tracie. He has to be my most photogenic child.

Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa

• 3 quarts peeled, cored, chopped slicing tomatoes
• 3 cups chopped onions
• 6 jalapeño peppers, seeded, finely chopped
• 4 long green chiles, seeded, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 12-ounce cans tomato paste
• 2 cups bottled lemon or lime juice
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin (optional)
• 2 tablespoons oregano leaves (optional)
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Yield: About 7 to 9 pints

Procedure:

Caution: Wear plastic or rubber gloves and do not touch your face while handling or cutting hot peppers. If you do not wear gloves, wash hands thoroughly with soap and water before touching your face or eyes.

Preparing Peppers: The jalapeño peppers do not need to be peeled. The skin of long green chiles may be tough and can be removed by heating the peppers. Usually when peppers are finely chopped, they do not need to be peeled. If you choose to peel chiles, slit each pepper along the side to allow steam to escape. Peel using one of these two methods:

• Oven or broiler method to blister skins - Place chiles in a hot oven (400°F) or broiler for 6 to 8 minutes until skins blister.
• Range-top method to blister skins - Cover hot burner (either gas or electric) with heavy wire mesh. Place peppers on burner for several minutes until skins blister.
• To peel, after blistering skins, place peppers in a pan and cover with a damp cloth. (This will make peeling the peppers easier.) Cool several minutes; slip off skins. Discard seeds and chop.

Hot Pack: Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and heat, stirring frequently, until mixture boils. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot into clean, hot pint jars, leaving ½-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if needed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened, clean paper towel; apply two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a boiling water canner according to the recommendations in Table 1.

Table 1. Recommended process time for Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa in a boiling-water canner.
		Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack	Jar Size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
Hot	Pints	15 min	20	25

IMPORTANT:
The only change you can safely make in this salsa recipe is to change the amount of spices and herbs. Do not alter the proportions of vegetables to acid and tomatoes because it might make the salsa unsafe. Do not substitute vinegar for the lemon juice.

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_salsa/tomato_tomato_paste_salsa.html

Old Madison Memorial Hospital

This is a picture of the first Madison Memorial Hospital built in the 1950's. In the 1970's Rexburg and the surrounding areas had outgrown this building and a new hospital was built next to it. This old building then served as an annex building and housed offices for hospital employees. Well, now the Rexburg area has outgrown the 1970's hospital and a new one is in the works. (Or to be added on the 1970's one.) In order to do that the original building must be torn down. That is going to happen in a few more weeks. This building has been my second home for four years. I have spent 14 hours a week working in my office in this building. I moved to a new office this past week. Following is a picture of my old office all packed up and ready to go. I do not have a picture of my new office yet because it is a huge mess right now. But that may come later. Now my office is in the back part of Key Bank. I will stay there for two years until the new hospital is finished and then will move into that. I am not very sentimental about the loss of this building because I have only lived in Rexburg for 6 years. But there are many old timers that have many memories of it and are sad to see it go.

Rigby Lake

The camera is found so I was able to take it with us to Rigby Lake today. One of Kevin's friends invited him to come for his birthday and so Ethan, Jake, and I went along for the fun. (We were invited, too.) I had never been to Rigby Lake but I plan on going again. It has a fun sandy beach and of course water to play in. They also have picnic tables and a playground. The kids spent most of their time wading in the water, catching minnows and playing in the wet sand. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Los Angeles

Last week I went to the American Association of Diabetes Educators Conference in LA. It was a good conference. We spent the days in lectures and visiting vendors' booths. In the evening some of the drug companies sponsored events for us. The first night was a wine and cheese networking event. That wasn't too exciting for me since I don't drink wine and cheese doesn't excite me too much. But the second night we had two events. The first one was appetizers and the Biltmore Hotel (where the first academy awards were held). Then later that night we had desserts and Irish coffee. Don't worry, I just had dessert and water. But we did get some cool cups. Later on in the night Patti Labelle was going to talk about diabetes and perform. But it was so loud in there you couldn't even talk to the person next to you and we were tired do we gave up waiting for her. Friday night we had a nice dinner and the a musical called "Songs of the Cinema". They sang many songs from movies and it was wonderful. That's just my kind of thing. Oh, and before the musical Josh something or other talked to us for a few minutes. He is an actor on the show "Las Vegas" and was also Tadd Hamilton in "Win a Date With Tadd Hamilton". I recognized him but he is not an actor I really know. Also at one of the booths on Thurday Kevin Covais from American Idol was signing pictures. I was not really a fan of his but Tracie really liked him so I had him sign one for her. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera or I could have gotten a picture with him. Which brings me to why there are no pictures on this entry. We can't find our camera. Even though I didn't take my camera to LA, I could have been creative and taken a picture of Tracie's picture of Kevin or something. But no pictures until the camera returns. Our flight home was uneventful. All of that terrorist stuff happened while we were there so I was a little concerned about flying home, especially from a major airport like LAX. The security was tighter but we got through pretty fast and made it home okay. Hopefully there will be pictures on the next entry.

Things growing in our yard

I knew I needed to have a blog post for today and I didn't know what to put on it so I took pictures from our yard. Not the most exciting thing. Our yard still needs some work. There are some big projects that need to be done this fall but we have a lot of things that look good. Here are a few of them.















A big green pepper















Apricots (I've already made one batch of apricot jam from the ones that fell on the ground)




















A bushy clematis that has yet to flower















Our beautiful green tomatoes. There are a lot of them. Anyone have a good recipe for salsa?
















Day Lilly















We'll have a lot of apples this fall.

Kevin's summer

Well Kevin's summer vacation is coming to an end. So I decided to show you what he has been doing this summer.















Played X-Box















Played T-Ball




















Played X-Box





















Played soccer















Played X-Box

So you can tell what he would do most of his summer if we didn't make him do other things. We also attempted starting piano lessons and he has to read and do jobs. But I will be glad when school starts again in a couple of weeks. He has been on the waiting list for swimming lessons and his name came up this week. So the last two weeks of summer vacation will be swimming lessons. Swimming pools and swimming lessons in Rexburg are a whole other blog entry sometime.

Light Fixtures

We haven't had a hall light for a couple of weeks because the light bulb broke off in the fixture and we couldn't get it out. It has been hard to change the light bulb in that fixture for a long time so we decided it was time to get a new one. Neither Darren nor I knew how to change a light fixture but, once again, Jon came to the rescue. He helped us change the fixture in the hall, the dining room and the two porch lights. (The light bulb broke off in the porch light, too, so we had to change that one. And it would look dumb to have mismatched light fixtures for both porch lights so we changed both of them.) The good thing about all this is that Darren learned a new skill and I kind of did just from watching. Our next project will be fixing the oven because the bottom heating element has gone out. Oh the problems of home ownership. Here are some pictures of the light fixture changes. I don't have any before pictures, though.

Wedensday

We had a family reunion planned with Darren's parents and siblings for this week. We were going to spend two nights in West Yellowstone, Montana and tour Yellowstone, then go to Utah and spend more time together. But Darren's Grandma Bell passed away and so our plans changed. Mike, Kim, Camilla, and Courtney flew in from Indiana on Tuesday and then all of us drove to Spokane, Washington on Wedensday. Once we got to Spokane it took us an hour to find the hotel. When we finally got there we were all tired and hungry but the rest of the drive was pretty uneventful.














Carrie riding in the car. Ethan took this picture. She probably didn't know it was even taken because she was trying to get a nap in. It might not look like it but she can actually sleep that way in the car. That's something new I learned about her this weekend.



















The kids climbing a hill at one of the many rest stops we made. It was a good way to get rid on their stored up energy even if they were pretty dusty when they finished. Courtney and Camilla made it all the way to the top. Way to go girls!
















Ethan riding in the car




















Kevin and Ethan posing at a gas station

Thursday

Today was Grandma Bell's funeral in Quincy, Washington. I don't have any pictures of the funeral but Darren has some nice ones so hopefully he will post them. We left about 6:30 am and drove from Spokane to Quincy. I had never been to Quincy. It looks like a small farming community. The funeral was very nice. I learned a lot about Grandma Bell. We were also able to see family that we don't see very often and meet a few that I had never met.

When the funeral was over we drove to Seattle. We stopped at Snoqualmie Falls (not sure if I spelled that right) on the way. Then we checked into our hotel and went to Uncle Richard and Aunt Sharon's for a yummy barbeque. They fed us Wedensday night and Saturday night and both were excellent meals and very much appreciated.
















Ethan at the falls















Kevin at the falls















All the kids at the falls















The kids posing on some rocks
















Shandy's ankle after two days of traveling and dealing with the heat. What a trooper she was the whole time! For those of you who don't know, she is 6 weeks away from having a baby.



















Kevin holding his new cousin, Cannon. (Not sure I spelled that one right either.)





















Ethan with Cannon

Friday

Today we slept in. It was nice. In our room we got up about 8:30 am. Darren went to Fred Meyer's and got some food for breakfast. Then I went and checked out the work out room and Darren took the boys swimming. We finally all met up about noon. One of Carl's favorite places is the Locks. I'm sure they have an official name but that's all I know. These locks take boats between Lake Washington and Puget Sound. We watched the boats come in from Puget Sound, tie their boats to the side of the lock and raise up with the water. Then they moved into Lake Washington. They also have a mini aquarium like structure that lets you see all the salmon in the water. The kids spent a long time looking at that. The locks were pretty cool.

After the locks we went to Archie MacPhees. It's a novelty toy store with very inexpensive toys. We all had fun looking at the fun things they had and bought a few things.

Lunch was at "Dicks". We got burgers and took them to the Arboretum to eat. Then we went back to the hotel and got ready for the Mariner's baseball game. Pat stayed with all of the kids and watched them swim and swim and swim. She is such a good sport and we really appreciate her. The rest of us went to the Mariners game. They played the Red Sox and got beat. But it was still fun. When we got back to the hotel all 5 kids were sound asleep in Pat and Carl's room.





















The kids looking at the salmon (Darren took this picture)






















Us at the locks. What a cute family!
















Courtney got some fake mustaches from the toy store and she shared with her cousins. Thanks Courtney!
















What do you think? Should he keep it or shave it?