I'm Proud to Be An AMERICAN!

The Pledge of Allegiance...

...plus some delicious pancakes...
...makes for a great start to our Independence Celebration.

We met at the church early this morning for a nice Flag Ceremony by the Boys Scouts and buttermilk pancake breakfast prepared by the Craig's and enjoyed the company of many before we headed off to another celebration in the park at Cinco Ranch.

We took Isaac & Daniel with us and met the Brunson's & the Allen's there for all sorts of fun activities. It started off with some yummy fudgesicles, which you can see on Lauren's face and a nice train ride through the park. Okay, maybe more than one nice train ride through the park.

Here are most of us getting our patriotic face paintings.







Then just enjoying all the action. I love these festive pictures.

Matthew and Ethan adopted a buddy and headed off to participate in every 4th of July activity there was to enjoy. Matthew and Daniel were sure to get every prize available and Ethan and Isaac had fun being entertained.




After the celebrations at the park, we all headed on over to the Turner's to continue the party in their pool and to gobble up some yummy "American" fajitas. We were joined by the Carey family and the Jones family.

Rachel was able to spend a little bit of time with Amber and family in between and helped her make a delicious bean salsa, which Rachel asks for all the time now. I thought it was ironic that I got a picture of her sitting by the bowl of salsa. It was also in this pool that Lauren started swimming all by herself, which deserves its own post later.

We were having so much fun in the pool we almost missed all of the firework show at La Centerra. Well, we were able to see about 5 minutes of it. But we sure had fun hanging out in the LifeTime Fitness parking lot afterwards.





Curtis & Cathy Turner, Mark & Audralyn Allen, Steffan & Emily Jones, Steve & Melissa Spendlove
And all the kids.
Happy 4th of July Everyone!!!

Produce

These pictures of what our garden has produced were taken a while ago. But they go perfect with this picture that Rachel drew of our garden.

Squash Bread

A lady in our ward had an overabundance of squash and thought of us. She knew we weren't real big squash eaters but she brought us some anyways along with this fabulous SQUASH BREAD recipe that my kids LOVE. I have made it 3 or 4 times now. The recipe says to cook it in a 9x13 pan. We also tried it muffin style, but prefer the 9x13. I don't know why....just do. And I just wanted to share this recipe with you.7/5/2009

Squash bread
INGREDIENTS
3 eggs, beaten
2 cups white sugar (you can cut this in half)
1 cup vegetable oil (you can use olive oil or applesauce)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg (I use 1 teaspoon)
2 cups shredded summer squash
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the eggs until fluffy. Beat in the sugar, oil, and vanilla. Gradually mix in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Fold in the squash. Transfer to the prepared baking dish.
Bake 45 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Babysitters

Van & Seph stayed with us for an evening while Amber & Mike went on a date and FIVE babysitters came alive. Steve, Ethan, Matthew, Rachel & Lauren were all great babysitters.

I didn't have to do a thing.

OOOPS!!!

How can something so sweet and beautiful as this...

...cause so much destruction?








Lauren bought this...


...with her birthday money.

And like any little girl would do, she filled it with water in the bathroom sink; however, she got distracted with a movie and left the water running. Ethan later found her in the bathroom trying to scoop up the 3 or 4 inches of water that had accumulated in the bathroom floor all by herself. She was trying so hard to clean up her mess before anyone would notice. But it was too late. Anywhere you walked within about 15 feet of the bathroom, you were standing the flood zone.

I immediately got the wetvac and sucked up the water in the bathroom and we had every towel in the house laid out all over the carpet trying to soak up some of the water. Steve, Ethan and our friend Steffen, who came to our rescue with his wetvac too, continued to suck up as much water as they could. It was never ending....so up came the carpet and out went the soaked padding. The carpet dried nicely and we had someone come and replace the padding and lay the carpet back nicely (3 days later). This happened Friday evening and was all cleaned up Monday afternoon.
It was only after a few hundred dollars and a few hundred more grey hairs that our house was back to normal.

We love you Lauren!!!

And yes, we still think she is sweet and beautiful.

2009 Swim Meet #4 & #5

Swim Meet #4 I was timing and so didn't get any pictures. But Ethan did however manage to get a picture of me at work.

Swim Meet #5 we were lucky to have family come to cheer us on at this meet. The kids were all excited that Van and his family were coming. It meant a lot to each of them. Thank you so much Amber & Mike. I didn't get many pictures at this meet either because I was having too much fun talking to Amber and would almost miss my kids swimming.

But I did hijack these from Amber's blog.

I took this picture of Lauren and Seph and good thing, because now we have proof that Amber was there also. You can see her arm in this picture. {wink}

I got a picture of Lauren and her friend Sophia, who was in her preschool class, hanging out with me as I worked the concessions. These two girls are adorable together. They always run up and give each other a great big hug whenever they see each other.
I caught Rachel S. hanging out with Rachel T.

AND Matthew hanging out with the boys playing with their Pokemon cards. Something I will probably never understand.
So swim team season is coming to an end.

The Pin Oak Piranhas are the Division III undefeated team.

&

Ethan, Matthew & Rachel are all going to the Meet of Champs.

THE door!

Over the years, Matthew's door has taken the brunt of his frustrations. But the time has come for Matthew to buy himself a new door and help Steve install it.

You can't see very well in this picture but there is a hole in the middle of the door and one down at the bottom.

This is the new door Matthew bought.

And since he paid for it, we let him do whatever he wanted to do to the old one.