Airing out my dirty laundry

Yesterday was laundry day. I have 3 laundry days a week. I just wanted to share with you the amount of laundry a family of 6 goes through in 3 days. Yes, this is 3 days worth. Oh, and did I mention that there is a load in the washer and dryer too? Well, there's always a load in the dryer, I can't quite get on top of that one. These piles (and what's in the washer) made up 7 loads of laundry. While I was sorting these piles yesterday my mind was wandering to the previous lessons I had on Sunday. One of them was a lesson my husband taught to the Priesthood brethen and RS sisters. It was on finances. My mind then wandered to paying interest and I started thinking about the following quote (I got this from a talk Pres. Monson gave-I don't know if he was the original writer of this or not):

“Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours. … Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.”

I have heard this quote many times, and while I was standing there, feeling like I was never going to see the bottom of the laundry basket a thought occurred to me. Laundry is like interest.

And, in the interest of interest-I mean laundry, I revised the above quote to fit my analogy.

Hope you like it:

Laundry never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it piles up on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it takes away your leisure time; it never stops accumulating. From the moment you put on your first article of clothing, or use a towel to dry off with, laundry is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it, you cannot dismiss it-unless you don't mind wearing dirty underwear. And whenever you miss a laundry day, and fail to keep on top of it-It crushes you!!

Proof

I just wanted to prove to you all that my cake decorating class was not taken in vain (after seeing Soph's plain jane cake in the post below)! Really, I am somewhat capable of doing a bit fancier of a cake. I guess that's what happens when Mommy goes out of town for the weekend, then has to come home and cram for her 4 tests. Here are some of my previous cakes. I've done many more, but that was back before my digital camera.
This first one is Sophee's 4th birthday cake:

This was Audree's 3rd birthday cake:

Then this one is Audree's 6th birthday cake:

Okay, I suppose that's enough of me 'tooting my own horn'. Love you guys!!

Sophee turns 5!

Sophee turned 5 yesterday. This year I decided that we would scale back on our b-day parties and just have them at home with family. The minute Sophee woke up she wanted to open her presents. Here she is, sitting on the table, with one of her gifts:

I got this little market at Sam's club on an after Christmas clearance deal, the kids have been having a lot of fun with it-all 4 of them enjoy playing with it. See the little Snow white doll she is holding? That was another one of her gifts. It was originally for one of her little friends who had a b-day party last month but the minute she saw it she freaked out that we were giving it away and begged, pleaded, and cried for it. Normally I would've just given it to the friend, then gone and bought another one, but this one was the last one, on clearance. So I gave in and told her she could have it, but would have to wait for her b-day. Note to self: Always wrap b-day presents for friends before your kids see it.

Here she is, looking a little more put together.

What a cute little 5 year old!

Since Kory's sister came into town from Seattle we had a BBQ over at Grandma's and celebrated Sophee's birthday there. Here's Grandma lighting the candles:

And here's the cake. She wanted a tinkerbell cake, and I had every intention of making her one, something way more adorable than this one, but I had a very busy weekend. So I decided I'd just buy her one. Well, Wal-mart had a cake, the same size as this one, with cheap-o tinkerbell rings on it for $20. So I figured I'd just do a very simple cake and buy her the figurines that go along with the little tinkerbell house that she got. I saved myself $8 doing it this way, and now she gets to keep the figurines-plus, she thought the cake was great! I'm so thrifty like that. (Good thing 5 year olds are fairly easy to please).

Blowing out the candles:

And there you have it. Our simple birthday party. I just recently found the pics of her 4th birthday party. I should post of few of those because the cake that I did for that was really cute.

A little cross-eyed fun

Okay, I admit it. I can't cross my eyes. I thought I was the only one, but apparently Josh can't either. A couple of months ago Sophee came up to me and said, "Mom, watch my trick!" And proceeded to follow her finger down her nose like this:

I just think it's so funny when she does it, and since she knows I will always laugh, she does this little trick for me quite often. As I was trying to get the girls to get ready for bed tonight, she decides to distract me with her cute little trick. Then Audree jumped on the bandwagon:

I asked Kory if he could do it too, and here's the result. Didn't quite get the timing on this picture right.

I love this picture. What a bunch of goof balls. (Soph can't do it without following her finger down her nose, thus everyone has their finger on their nose).

Josh was feeling a little left out. Here's his attempt, yep, that's my boy.

Since Kaylee is the step child, there are no pics of her. J/K. Actually, she couldn't manage to actually cross her eyes until after I uploaded all these photos. Maybe we'll do some pics of her for her blog.

We have a new reader in the house

Audree's our little Kindergartener. She has really jumped into reading with her feet first! She loooooves to read and sound words out. She is now reading a bunch of Dr. Seuss' beginner books, and has taken over my job as the 'bedtime story reader'.
This is Audree reading 'Bears on wheels' to Sophee. Please excuse Soph's half nakedness, that's just the norm-she runs around in her panties at home all day long. Must be nice.

I tried to get Sophee to put her hands down for the picture to which she replied, "I'm just showing you how old you have to be when you get baptized!" Well, at least I know she was paying attention in class today (I was her substitute teacher).

A yummy meal, and some randomness

Whew! Am I ever glad last week is over with. Not only were both Kaylee and Kory sick with the flu, I had a RS b-day dinner program to practise and attend (which turned out totally awesome thanks to Jamie and Katie), and I also had 6 tests! Yes, I said 6. One in Math, 3 in Nutrition, and 2 in Psychology. So, now you know why I haven't blogged in awhile.

I suppose I'll start out with my 'Meals for Mom's like Me Monday' since it is Monday, and I've totally been slacking in this category. Here we go with ' BBQ Teriyaki Chicken'.

You will need about 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into strips about 1 inch wide and 6 inches long.
Also, you will need wooden skewers that have been soaked in water for at least a few hours-this will keep them from burning up too quickly.

Mix together:
1/2 C. soy sauce
1 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. sesame seeds
1 tsp. ginger
1 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. oil

Place meat in a large glass or plastic container. Cover with above marinade. It will look like this:

Place in the fridge for several hours (I would say at least 6) and turn meat strips a few times so that they are well marinaded. Before BBQ'ing run wet skewer in and out of chicken strip until it looks 'lightly gathered'. BBQ over medium heat until done. I would have to say it probably only takes 10-15 minutes total, if not less. Here is what the finished product looks like:

Yum Yum. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't love this recipe, even Audree-who only eats 3 different things-will eat this. The hardest part about the recipe is cutting up the chicken-which I use kitchen shears for-and putting it on the skewers. Anyone can do it.

Okay, onto other random things. Last month I decided to get crafty and do something fun for my VT ladies. I broke out the 'ole stamps and went to town. I haven't stamped in ages. Here's the cards I made:

Then I bought some little heart shaped dishes and made some oreo truffles. Don't they look professional? They are very rich and unbelievably good if I do say so myself!

Then I filled the rest of the dish with some misc. chocolate candy:

I wrapped them all in cellophane and attached the card. Boy, I was feeling crafty last month!

Okay, the next bit of randomness includes the 'Cat in the Hat', and here she is:

Complete with a tail.

Audree's kindergarten teacher is super crafty and does all sorts of fun stuff with them. They dressed up like this for Dr. Suesses B-day.

And the last bit of randomness is that yesterday I was called to be the new Activity Day's leader. Wahoo! This will be my 3rd time as AD leader. We have a fun group of girls-Kaylee being one of them, she's pretty excited that I'm going to be her leader. When she asked what we were going to do for our first activity I said, "Well, it needs to be church-related, so I think we will all sit down and read the scriptures for an hour". Of course her reply was, "Moooooooooom!"

On that note, I was looking up some fun ideas for activities to do with the girls and I came across one on service. A lady suggested teaching the girls how to use a lawnmower (check the oil, the gas, show them how to start it, etc) then have them each take turns mowing part of your lawn.

Seriously? I love that idea! Kory was totally on board with it too. Then, after they learned how to mow a lawn, you could take them to someone in the ward's house that may need their lawn mowed (like an elderly person, or someone who can't get around real well) and mow their lawn.

Not a bad idea. What is your guys' opinion? Can you imagine the girls showing up at my house, all ready to do some fun craft, and I say, "Alright girls! Let's go outside, we're going to mow my lawn!" I can just see their faces now :-)

Kaylee's Curls

This post written by Kaylee.

So the other day I asked my mom if I could go get my hair cut in layers to make it look nicer, so we did. While we were waiting there looking through the hairstyle books, I came across a girl who had her hair layered and it was wavy like mine and I liked it.
The lady cutting my hair was cutting off chunks of my hair (which made me a bit sad) but in the end it turned out really good. Here is how it looks:

Heres the back.....you may notice it is curly in the back and strait in the front, I am getting my mom's wavy hair!!!

The front.

Well there you have it, my new haircut that I love!

Chicken pesto pasta

Today's easy recipe comes from the genious ladies over at the 'All is safely gathered in' blog. Go here to get the recipe. There's also a great picture of it.
It's called Chicken pesto pasta and the only ingredients are canned chicken, a little bit of olive oil, bow tie noodles, pesto sauce, and almonds. It's super delicious and my whole family loves it.
My only suggestion, unless you have a garden full of basil, is to just buy the pesto sauce. If your not sure what that is it's just basil, pine nuts, some garlic, maybe a few other things, I don't know, I'm not a chef-it's pretty good stuff. Looks disgusting in the jar, but don't let that fool you. Here's the kind I bought:

You can find it in the spagetti aisle, with all the sauces there. This little jar was about $2.50, but I will get at least 3 meals out of it. A closer look:

You gotta' try it! Plus, the bonus to this meal is that all the ingredients can be stored in your pantry. It makes for a great food storage meal. Happy cooking ladies!