Our first set of stitches...

Ahhh. We've never had to get stitches before. Today was our first experience with stitches and it wasn't Jack. Nope, not Maxine either. Juliet? Nope, not her either. It wasn't even me. It was the biggest and silliest of the family: Merril. He went to California with Ryan Rosenberg to go surfing today and the board came back and smacked him right above the eyebrow. To say the least, his surfing was cut short and they headed in. A doctor, who was about to go out surfing, looked at his cut and said he'd better go get some stitches. The doctor taped his cut and sent them on their way. They drove to a clinic and Merril got 5 stitches, a Tetnus shot and oral antibiotics. The goof is still going to stop at Dumont Sand dunes on the way home and ride his dirt bike. What a loon! Below is a picture of Merril's shiner and I have to warn those with a queezy stomach to change blogs now and not scroll any further.

Remember eating Grape-Nuts cereal hot? Anyone??

Maybe it was just my family growing up but I remember eating and liking Grape-Nuts as a hot cereal. Never heard of it? I don't think they even put the recipe on the box anymore. The only reason I thought to start eating it again was because I was sick of oatmeal. Take 1/3 cup of Grape-Nuts cereal. Cover with 1/2 cup milk, or in my case, almond milk. Add 1 tsp. butter or margerine and 2 tsp. brown sugar or honey. Microwave for 1-2 minutes, depending if you want it crunchy or not, and eat up. I ate it for breakfast yesterday and Maxine asked if I'd make it for her today because it smelled good. She ate the whole bowl. I haven't eaten it in years because let's face it, who still buys Grape-Nuts? Grape-Nuts are on the nutty side so it's easy to disguise the almond milk flavor. I've made Cream of Wheat more in the past 6 months than in my entire life for the same reason. Thank goodness for eggs! "You got love 'em! The incredible, edible egg!" -Paid for by the ad council for the American Egg Board.

We love cookie dough, how 'bout you?

If none of the cookies make it to the oven, that's okay around our house because we love cookie dough! Did you know that if you go to a pizza joint in town, where they make their own cookies, they'll sell you a scoop of cookie dough for $1?? Sheer genius!!

I lack patience when it comes to my kids helping me in the kitchen but if we're making cookies, I just have to make it to the cookie dough stage. Once there, they just want to eat dough and pretty much lose interest in helping me. My cookie making has gone up considerably since the dairy free thing because I can make most of my cookie recipes by substituting margarine for butter. And I feel like I deserve to eat a lot of cookies since I can't have anything in the way of ice creams, puddings, chocolates, etc. So I end up sneaking about 5 cookies a day until they're gone. It's not great for the waistline but they taste so yummy!! Besides, that's what exercise is for, right?

FINALLY!!!

Okay...I have been trying for the last month to get a nice picture of my 3 kids! (Anyone with multiple kids knows this challenge well) Jacky was my stinker because he's 2 and doesn't want to sit still. Tried one photo shoot at Sears and Jules was not gonna smile for the photographer, no matter what. So then I decided I'd just take a picture myself because I can get Jules to smile better than anyone. The first 2 photo shoots were right before dinner. (Yeah, hungry kids + the end of the day = no happy smiles from anyone) I tried the end of the day bit because I employed the help of Merril to try and control Jack. So today I thought I'd just try to get it done in the middle of the day even though Merril was going to be at work. So I fed Juliet right before her nap, gave the other 2 kids a mid-morning snack and got them dressed. When Juliet woke up, rested and still full, we drove into town. I sat the kids down and tried like crazy to keep Jack in one spot. Even now in the picture, he looks like he's about to spring into action. When this shot came out, I just about jumped for joy! All 3 kids, smiles, happy faces, nice postures, looking at the camera, hallelujah!
















I also caught this one of Maxine telling a story about a magic blimp. I guess Juliet was buying it because she's looking up at the sky too.


Oh, and one more victory!! I read a whole book. (I'm meaning a Mommy book, not Green Eggs and Ham.) It was one of my new year resolutions because I read to my kids a ton and read magazines but my book reading has gone way down since I had kids. It was called 'I Am a Mother' by Jane Clayson Johnson. The author talks about how hard it is to be a Mom but how it's totally worth it. Furthermore, Mothers should get a lot more credit for this huge service that they do but for which they rarely get acknowledged. So every time I picked it up, I felt encouraged and uplifted to keep going and being the best Mom I could be. Who doesn't need that at least 10 times a day?

It's my birthday...

Okay, I turned 28 today. I'm feeling pretty good about it. I've been exercising for a couple of months to tone flabby areas that got all stretched out from being pregnant. I feel stronger than I've felt in a long time. So in honor of feeling young, I attached the one of oldest pictures I had of me on the computer. It's from 2004 and I was at our ward campout and rodeo and I caught a chicken in the chicken chase. (I love Vegas wards!!) We only had Maxine back then and she was 1 1/2 years old.

I just walked out and found Merril asleep on the couch like this. Jack must've thought the car would help him sleep better.

Oh, and this is the coconut cake I made for my birthday. I'm still off chocolate and I was bored of yellow cake and coconut sounded good. I made it with coconut milk and that stuff is yummy!! I was eating the leftover coconut cream and looking at the can. It's pretty fattening. Pretty much it was like I was standing there eating butter. Tasty butter.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love Valentine's Day! I know there are people out there that loathe this holiday and to them, I'm sorry. I do have to say that I hate roses, especially red ones, so Valentine's Day may be a little daunting for Merril. Seriously, red roses are so boring and cliche. The world is full of beautiful calla lillies, hydrangeas, tulips, gerber daisies, etc. This morning I was greeted with Stargazer lillies. Merril has always been extra creative for the Valentine's Day bouquets. Good job, babe!

I'm baking heart-shaped brownies for Merril's dessert and I can smell the chocolatey goodness waft in from the kitchen. I will be having strawberries dipped in marshmallow cream. We'll be putting the kids to bed and Merril and I are going to spend the evening at home and I'm making him a fancy dinner. We went out last year to a super fancy party and I just wanted to stay home and be super relaxed this year. I love to cook and tonight's going to be yummy. I can't do my special 3-cheese fondue this year, that'll have to wait 'till next year.

By the way, I made burned my first movie to a DVD today. I was making a Valentine's movie for my sister. It was her present to her husband. It was a lot of fun, a little frustrating but in the end turned out really nice. Thanks to Amy for being the resident movie expert and allowing me to pick her brain.

View out my window

I took this picture the other day with a feature on my new camera called Photostich. It's actually 9 pictures stiched together. I have software that came with the camera that analyzes the photos and overlaps them for ya. The ending result is a panoramic shot. I think it's fun! Since the photo is so long, it got squished quite a bit for the blog.

Wahoo! Look at it snow!!

I have to have one good snow storm a year and it's here!! On Sunday evening, it snowed and left a good 4-5 inches at our house. The kids were in and out of snow gear all day yesterday and we built a snowman! I even had icicles on my house! I can't remember ever seeing icicles in St. George!! I don't know how people who live up north do this ever day! There was snow gear everywhere, the floors were wet by the garage door and my Tahoe is filthy.

Merril and I had fun driving home in the snow after the SuperBowl. We'd taken two cars so we hit the parking lot by our house and had fun doing donuts and making the back end drift. Merril's new tires grip the road too well so the Tahoe was better for getting the back end to slip. It's good practice for snowy road conditions.

Okay, so the icicles are pretty tiny but they're there!! Yeah! We had fun and sipped hot chocolate and then it was back outside for more!! Storms like these make me grateful. We can have a little taste of the snow but most of it's gone by the next day.