Chapter 53: Vampires oozing Religion!

Have you ever wanted to go on vacation and just leave your cares behind, be able to sleep in, have your food cooked and served to you, not care if you match or even dare I say - run around in your underwear, well just come to my house and watch Lainee for a while she will transport you to a world unlike any you have ever heard of. I just think being 4 must be great!!!! Right now Lainee is all about her Vampire Teeth, she thinks that since her eye teeth are so pointy that she must be a vampire and she is always telling us that she "LOVES" blood but not her families, goofball!!! This morning as I was getting the kids out the door for school, Lainee came into the frontroom and as she was standing by the piano she had this look about her that made me stop and watch her, she finally said (while waving her hand around) Mom, this is what it looks like when Jesus comes..........I can tell that she is looking at the sun rays as they were shining through the blinds and I just had to smile at her. There are certain things in my kids' life that I know I will forget, and I know that because I have already forgotten some of that which I said "I will not forget this", so today I wanted to ooze this post as a way to remember a little of my 4 year old and her quirkiness. Oh and yes I love the fact that she says "ooze" for "use" and no I will not be correcting her anytime soon, for she is the last, and she is the link to my kids still being little, so again if you want to be transported to a world unlike any you have ever seen, come visit my little Lainee where no day is ever the same or sane!!!!

trying to show off her pointy teeth!!!


I tried to capture the sunlight filtering through (psst, you have to look really close)!


what I hear most days now "Mom, can I ooze your touch!"

Chapter 52: Family Game Night

Can I just say that I LOVE my family!!! So we had Taron spend the night one friday and the next day Kari called and said let's have a BBQ and game night, mind you this was like at 3:00 pm on Sat. so I texted Justin, Galen, Logan and Cassie and invited them all to Tooele for an impromptu family night. We had a winter BBQ grilling up some Hamburgers and Hot Dogs and then made some yummy "strasberry" homemade ice cream. 10 cousins, 5 Merks, 3 in-laws and 1 fun-filled family night!!! (sorry to all those who live to far away for get-togethers this last minute) Thanks Guys!!!





Winner 1 (believe it or not)
Winner 2

Chapter 51: This comes from....

This yummy dish came from The Worldwide Ward Cookbook, actually just the lemon chicken recipe did and I just have to say WOW, I think I must have bought the juiciest lemons ever, you have to grate the rind and use the juice from 4 lrg. lemons, I used 2 of 4 rinds and all 4 lemons :x pucker, pucker, pucker!!!!! Good thing this was paired also with a new recipe of herbed new potatoes which I steamed in my new steamer/rice cooker. All my kids love lemons and so they all liked the idea of lemon chicken but we couldn't eat to much of it since it was lemon-POWERED, but they all devoured the potatoes so in the end good recipes one which can be improved upon. 5 down!

Chapter 50: 1,4,5,6,7,8,21,83......

Sometimes it's all about the numbers!

Your 1st Pinewood Derby, being 8 and old enough to make and race your car, getting your kit for a cost of $4.00, having your Dad help you design, cut, paint, and sand your car so that when the product is finished it not only looks awesome, but it weighs in at exactly 5 oz. Saving the date of Jan. 21 as the day of the race, deciding on number 83 for your derby car, racing your car in 6 heats, taking an average of 2.9820 seconds to reach the bottom of the track going 222.6 mph. Coming in 7th place overall and being just as excited as if he won it all. Giving us 1 night to remember!!!!!

Chapter 49: You know your kids are grown when:

This morning after sleeping in a little bit, I awoke with a bit of a stomach bug. Now Moms can sympathize with me when you say that when Mom is sick "nothing" gets done. Well today was one of those exceptions. The kids realized that I wasn't feeling very well and they pitched in to help out, they cleaned the upstairs (with the exception of Kennadee's room, because afterall who would want to tackle that) and they did it without fighting!!!! Bradley wanted to go to his friends house and when I asked if he wouldn't mind making soup for lunch for us girls (Zachary was gone already) he not only fixed us lunch but made sure we had drinks and crackers, it really was soooo sweet of him. My kids have been so good even about keeping the noise level down, sometimes though I think they don't want to be noticed just in case I will ask them to do something like unload the dishwasher or in Kennadee's case clean her room, hahaha. But I guess there is something to be said for kids growing up, I may not feel this way everyday but for today I am very grateful that I can be sick and actually get a little rest, and still be the Mom. Thank you kids, I love you the most!!!

Chapter 48: 3 down 49 to go

So this week being very busy, it brought about the age old questions "What's for dinner?" and as I began searching for my next recipe I decided that time was what I needed more of and time is what there is never enough of, so I decided to choose a recipe for the time crunched families. This recipe was a prep work done sort of recipe, and I must admit I love those the best. All I did was take a frozen dough ball out in the morning for it to thaw and then you use meatballs (thawed in micro) mozz. cheese and any sort of sauce you want, in my case I choose Ragu', and then sprinkle a little parm. cheese on top, bake, and voila' Italian Meatball Sub. This recipe is sure to be a keeper in my house, not only for the convience but everyone approved (well, maybe not so much Lainee, but I really am not counting her because she only had one bite) I made 9 subs and we did not have any left over, I call that success!!!!! Happy Cooking everyone!

Chapter 47: 52 Recipes - 52 Weeks

So one thing you may or may not know about me is that I LOVE cookbooks, I love magazines about cooking and I especially love it when there is a picture of the food that goes with the recipe. Having said that, I don't neccessarily love to cook all the time, so I have acquired all these wonderful books and magazines and print offs from the computer that have all these yummy recipes and yet there they sit on the shelf only to be read and looked at and not used for the purpose they were written for. Over the Christmas Break this year, while I was at my Mother-in-Laws house they gave me for Christmas the movie Julie and Julia and it just made me want to appreciate the art of cooking a little more, so for one of my New Year's Resolutions I decided that I was going to crack open my cookbooks and start cooking and using the recipes that I have been looking at and drooling over and also try to improve my cooking skills a little bit.

So here is my first (well really since it is the 2nd week of Jan. I did a dinner and dessert) picture to share with you all.

For Dinner:
Red Wine Beef with Mushrooms
(yes, I did use cooking wine for the first time and yes I did actually include the mushrooms even though I have not acquired a taste for them.)














For Dessert:
Gingerbread Cake with an Orange Glaze

Chapter 46: ReSoLutiOns????

2010 - So this year I have made some resolutions, I know, I know, why does anyone make resolutions, because usually they are not kept and I have been guilty of not following through before, but hey, my thoughts today are that if I don't put write them down I will have nothing to be accountable to. So now I will be accountable to all who read this, and hopefully I will find my new year filled with accomplishments!!!! So here are my Resolutions for 2010:

- be more healthy (aka lose weight)
- Up my Temple Attendance.
- have Family Home Evening EVERY week, even if we can't do it on Mon.
- try one new recipe a week, and blog about it (yes I did watch Julie and Julia)
- work on improving my piano and guitar playing
- be more service oriented

Well I think this list is a pretty good start for the year, so here's to making Resolutions and making them count!!!!

Chapter 45: Kennadee turns *10*

I find it very sad that my kids are growing so much, I think they are doing this on purpose, they know how much I hate getting "older" so they are all conspiring against me by being excited about birthday's. Kennadee sadly is now in double digits maybe others don't look at numbers the same way I do but I am a number freak, I will have to save my freakism for another post. After Christmas and since the kids didn't have to go back to school until Jan. 4th, I decided that we would go play out in Roosevelt. And since Kennadee's birthday falls inbetween Christmas and New Years we celebrated it out there. On her actual birthday since Scott was working we decided that having a cookie with ice cream was satisfactory, after all she got to be special for 2 days that week and not just one!!!!! But we did celebrate her birthday on the 31st since Scott was back out, Kari and her kids were there along with Morgan and Wyatt and also Grandpa and Grandma Merkley were back from Maryland.

Kennadee is becoming more and more a young woman every day, she is very sweet and sensitive (when she wants to be) and she is also very kind and helpful to others. She works really hard at school, especially on her math since that seems to be a struggle for her. She loves music and musicals and ever since Christmas when she got a CD player, there has been a constant hum of music coming from her room. She always has a hug for Mom and really wants to learn more about cooking, and although she drives me CrAZy with never, ever having a clean room, I still think I will keep her. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE GIRLFRIEND!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!

Chapter 44: It's the most wonderful time of the year!!!

There has been so much to blog about lately that I feel I will not catch up, but first and foremost I wanted to write about our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I really do not know if I could convey in words how special Christmas Eve was for me, it has been my favorite day for many, many years now but this years was just as wonderful as could be. I called my Grandma Harvey that morning to ask if we could come for a little visit and sure enough Grandma told us to come on up (Scott had to work 1/2 day so I just wanted to get out of the house), so we made our way to Sunset and met Kari and her kids up at our Grandparents house. We had such a wonderful visit and I thoroughly enjoyed the time we got to spend up there, it was really neat to see the kids get excited about the same things that we used to get excited about when we were younger, like the growth chart, the birthday calendar and the basement, just to name a few. And then of course you never leave Grandma's house without something yummy, and just as I had prayed she would, she had made her yummy cranberry-orange cookies, Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for making us feel loved!!!!

As we came home from our visit, we didn't have to wait long for Scott to get home and then we all dug in to help with the making of our dinner, We do a candle light dinner and it was night filled with laughter, excitement and a warmth of love. The kids were too excited about Santa coming and didn't even want dessert they just wanted to go straight to bed. But alas we all gathered round and grabbed our scriptures for the reading of the Christmas story, as each kid was taking a turn reading, Bradley leaned over and said to me "Mom, I think I feel the spirit." I told him he absolutely is because it was so strong at that moment. Of course after we read the story Lainee piped up that she wanted to read the story again and that she wanted to read all the baby Jesus parts and all the fairy Godmother parts (okay so we have a little work to do with her :) we sang some songs and then had dessert which was heavenly, then the kids set to work on getting the cookies, milk and carrots ready for Santa, after they were satisfied with that, they all got their pj's on and were off to bed (mind you it was only about 8 pm), so with giggles and whispers, Scott and I left them to dream of sugarplums and we enjoyed a relaxing evening with a movie and yummy treats.

Christmas Day dawned to the sound of footsteps trying to hurry past the frontroom, so as not to peek as they hurriedly came into our bedroom. I love the sound of my kids on Christmas morning as they all jump into our bed and try to wake us up, and as we try to pretend that we don't know that it is Christmas Day, or that we are just simply not going to get out of bed, and that little spark of panic that comes into their voices, and then the huge relief when they realize that we are only teasing them. The kids are growing up so fast and so this morning I just tried to soak up as much of them as I could. For those who have been worried or wondering, yes Santa found his way here and no, he didn't even hide their presents this year, but he left a very nice letter to the kids and some very wonderful memories for us to share.