Spongebob Squarepants

Science is fun

Today we decided to make a volcano. Zack has been wanting to do this for a while, so I finally gave in. Actually, I didn't tell them what we were doing, they had to figure it out for themselves.
They first guessed cookies, then bread, and even pretzels(all that salt!). Once we stated molding it I thought for sure they would get it. It wasn't until we added the red food coloring and the dish soap that they realized it wasn't edible! Kelsey finally figured it out and Zack was SOOO excited!
It is such an easy recipe to follow and really only takes a few minutes. They great thing is, all of the ingredients are things you already have in the pantry.

You will need an empty plastic bottle. I just used a water bottle.
6 cups of flour
2 cups salt
4 TBLS cooking oil
2 1/2 cups water (more if needed.)
Mix together until smooth and firm. (I sprayed my kids hands with PAM and let them knead it with their hands)

Put the water bottle in the center of a cake pan and mold the dough around it, shaping it like a volcano. Be sure not to get any dough in the center (Hole) of the bottle.
Fill the bottle about 3/4 full of WARM water and add a few drops of red food coloring.
Then add 6 drops of liquid dish detergent and 2 TBLS baking soda.
Slowly pour in vinegar and watch it ERUPT!

My kids kept adding the baking soda and vinegar with different colors of food coloring. The blue was really cool looking.

When you are finished, pour out the liquid and let the volcano dry. You can use it again later!
FUN, FUN, FUN. And not too messy either!

I've been workin' on the railroad....

We took Zack to this fun little museum down in Ogden. Sis was at a birthday party and we needed to get out of the house!
The Historic Union Pacific Museum is actually 4 museums in one. There is of course the railroad museum, but they also house an art museum, the Browning gun museum and a vintage car museum. They are all small museums, it only took us about an hour and a half to get through everything, but it was a lot of fun. You can actually go inside some of the old train cars. They have an open exhibit of the postal car and we even saw where the mail goes to Sandy, Utah! We were also able to go inside the medical car. That one gave me the heebie-geebies! Ewww...
Dad, Mike isn't very familiar with my camera and he forgot to use the flash, but he got some okay pictures of the vintage cars just for you! Check out the picture of Zack standing by the gas pumps. He wanted to take a picture there for you to hang in your garage!

Union Pacific Museum

My baby turned 12

I can't believe it! She is 12 years old.
Wow. Where did time go? I keep telling myself not to blink or she will be married with children of her own. Okay, I don't even want to think about that! But really, I can't believe she is 12 years old already! She is such a beautiful, kind-hearted girl with a heart of gold and gorgeous eyes.
We celebrated with family on both Friday and Saturday. Friday we had a little gathering at my mom's house with extended family because my uncle was here from Washington. That was a lot of fun to see cousins we rarely see, aunts and uncles and both of my grandma's. This is the party I made the Hello Kitty cake for. Yes, I am still proud of that goofy cake!
Saturday we had most of Mike's family over. We had a lot of fun again, getting to see cousins and aunts and uncles that we don't get to see too much anymore.
The big friend party will be this weekend. Why do I do this to myself? 3 parties in one week? Am I crazy? Yes, I am. I am crazy about this girl who brings so much love and joy to my life! I LOVE YOU BABY GIRL!!!

The Kener kids annual pictures at the park

Every year for as long as I can remember, my mother-in-law has taken group pictures of her grandkids at Bicentennial park in July. It started with just 6 grandkids. Mekenzie, Shelbie, Kelsie Noel, Kelsey Alixx, Jake and Preston. A few years later we added Hannah, then Zack, McKell and Kole. And a few more years later we add to the list Kaden, Tanner, Chloe, Ryker and just a few weeks ago, Emry. That's 15 grandkids and growing!

Hello Kitty

Kelsey's birthday isn't until Saturday, but we are having a little get together tomorrow at my mom's. My uncle is coming down from Seattle and we thought it would be fun to have all the family over for a BBQ. Kelsey is obsessed with Hello Kitty so I decided to try my hand at making her a HK birthday cake to take down with us tomorrow! I think it turned out pretty cute!

It's the little things that excite me

Okay, so this wasn't so little.
Thanks to my wonderful, favorite dad, oh yeah, he's my only dad! We got free topsoil!
YAY!!! Thanks daddy!
My dad works for Granite, and he had 2 loads of soil delived to us today. Zack had to take pictures to post. He's such a great photographer!
We had our boulders delivered last week and the plans are being drawn up for the sprinkler system today. Were moving right along.
I can't wait to have grass. My poor dogs can't wait to have grass. They sneak out every chance they get and go to the neighbors house to roll on the grass, among other things! Eek. I don't think they like us much! Oh, well. They are the ones in charge of putting up the fence. Maybe that will make them get it up faster! Hehe!
Well, I'm off to find the shovel.

Check out my Slide Show!

Friends and Family

Today we had the honor of attending a farewell for our dear friend Reece.
Reece is one of those guys you hope your daughter grows up to marry! Reece comes from an amazing family that we just love dearly. Afterall, they are the Mower family-but no relation to us. He will be serving a LDS mission in Boston, MA.
How cool is that? All the history in MA. I think it would be so cool to visit there some day!

It was so great to attend church in our old ward again. It felt like home. What am I talking about? It still is home! Our Sandy Ward is so great I will always think of them as family.

I realized today that I never blogged about our going away party that our wonderful ward family threw us before we left.
Our friends had a BBQ for us a few days before we left. Nearly the entire ward came, which was so great. We were able to spend time with everyone we love. And realized just how many great people we know and love. We also realized just how far we have come. Many of those people I have known my entire life! And because of so many of them, I, we, are where we are today.
So be sure to check out the pictures I am slide showing of our wonderful friends on that special day.

I also have to mention that we got to spend some time with another great young man today that we are equally proud of. His name is Colton Hill, and he leaves tonight for the Marines! AWESOME! I have known Colt since he was first born. I babysat him for many, many years and it is so wonderful for me to see him become the great man that he is-proud to serve our country!
What great young men we know. Serving God, serving our Country. I love these men!

Snakes are scary and gross and they ruin everything

I hate snakes. Not only do I hate them , I am terrified of them. Petrified to be exact.

Today we decided to go hiking. Fun right?....WRONG! Well, mostly wrong anyway. Let me explain.

Okay, it goes like this: We are trying to figure out how to get up on the mountain(Ogden Canyon). We see a guy coming down to his car and decide to ask him. So he tells us there is a beautiful waterfall if you go south about 30-35 minutes. Okay great. So we head up the mountain, going south and find ourselves in a dead-end area. Great. And now I am tired.
So we mosey on down, find another trail, start heading up and find ourselves hiking on the most desert like trail I have ever seen. I'm not kidding. Rather than dirt, pretty flowers and great smelling pine trees, we are surrounded by sand, sagebrush, rocks and hot, hot sun. There is zero shade on this trail. Okay, this is different. Different is good. I can handle this. WRONG. Suddenly Mike and Zack spy a snake. I don't think they knew exactly how terrified, er, I mean petrified I am of snakes. So I immediatly freeze up, scream, cry and demand to go home. They laugh, keep going upwards and onward, leaving me behind bawling. Funny they think. However I do not agree. Anyway, it took me at least 10 minutes to gather enough courage to run past the spot where the snake was seen. BUT, right as I was about to make a run for it, another snake slithered past. I know it was a different snake because the first was was green and this one was brown. EWWWWW. The ONLY reason I was able to get past it(screaming and crying of course) was because up ahead I spied a very large rock that seemed like a safety zone. As I was on the rock I was wondering just how was I ever going to get home? Surely I was not about to step foot back down on that ground again. Well, as my VERY RUDE husband and son laughed and teased me as they took a snack break, I decided I could go on, and I would do so alone. I believe Zack's last words before I took off were "I wouldn't go alone mom, there are snakes out there". Ha. Ha. Ha. So anyway, off I went. I figured I would get to the top, enjoy some alone time and rest by the falls. Nice thought. Not too far ahead, under a rock I was about to step up on was another snake. This particualar snake was backing up into the rock and actually made eye contact with me. Now remember, I am ALONE. Heaven help me, what do I do? Scream of course! I screamed so loud Mike and Zack came running. I ran back down the mountain and safely up onto another rock. This time I cried so much that I hyperventilated (sp?). Now I really want to go home- Via helicopter. Many other people were heading up the trail at this time too. Now picture this. Me standing on a rock-hyperventilating, Mike and Zack checking the foilage for more snakes, and a very large, super long snake slithering along as slow as it could possibly go. Of course everyone wondered what the problem was, and Zack was happy to point it out. I don't know why I allowed Mike to take a picture of it, but I will post it and then delete it from my camera. I never want to see it again. Mike swears that it was a garder snake, but he said it was the longest garder he had ever seen. One of the other hikers said it was a baby rattler, as there are tons of them up that canyon. Either way, it was a disgusting, super scary monster to me and it ruined my day.
We finally made it to the waterfall. It was very pretty, but I couldn't relax and enjoy it the way I had hoped. I got some great pictures though. And by the way, I prayed the whole way down that I wouldn't see anymore snakes. I had faith, and ran, and didn't see a one! whew. Never again.
And in case you didn't catch on-I HATE SNAKES!

Orange French Toast, by Chef Zack

Zack loves to cook.
He has a cookbook that my mom gave him and he looks through it all the time asking to make something. Last night he decided to make his dad Orange flavored french toast. It actually turned out really good and it's much less fattening than the original version.

ORANGE FRENCH TOAST

2 eggs
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon brown sugar
5-6 slices french bread
cooking oil or spray

In a small bowl combine eggs, Orange juice and brown sugar
Beat with a fork until well combined. Dip bread in mixture, letting it soak for about 30 seconds. Be sure to coat both sides.
In a skillet on a griddle cook bread on both sides over medium heat for about 2-3 minutes per side or until golden brown. Serve topped with powdered sugar or butter and syrup.

A scare in the garage

So earlier today Mike and I were out talking to our neighbor Jim. I'm not sure how or why the subject came up, but I asked Jim if there were any fruit bats around here. Good question I thought, due to the fact that we are in farm country here. Afterall, we had them out in Sandy. Well, thankfully Jim said that he has never seen them out here. Then we got on the bug and spider subject. Yuck. Needless to say, I walked back into the house feeling like I had creepy crawlies all over me!

So a few hours go by and I walk outside to take pictures of my hubby's dirt bike we are selling (that's a whole other story!) and Mike says "Whoa cool, there's a bat in the garage." As I look up to see some flying object fluttering along the celing I run screaming frantically into the house to see my children laughing their heads off. As I look back out into the garage, I realize that it is actually a cute little hummingbird that can't figure it's way out. Not the big, hairy, scary bat I had imagined-thankfully! It's not easy getting a picture of a hummingbird, but these pictures didn't turn out too bad.

Putting in the yard

And the fun begins!

So we just began our weekend adventure of putting in a yard. Whoa.
I knew it was going to be a lot of hard work, and dirty, hard work at that. But I really had NO idea what we were getting into. We decided to start by renting a bobcat. First of all, they DO NOT come with operating instructions. Thankfully Mike is pretty handy when it come to construction and not to mention that he's had a little training from my dad who operates heavy machinery for a living.
He will probably spend the majority of the weekend trying his best to level out the ground and clear the 6 foot wheat grass from our property. Yikes!
I ordered 3 foot boulders for the front yard. That certainly wasn't cheap. But, they can be here Tuesday morning and set them for me. Yippie!!!
Now I am just hoping to get someone over to help with the sprinkler system so I can get my sod ordered. Speaking of sod-anyone up for a sod laying party?! hehe. Seriously.