The Nasty Metal Spool

You might be wondering what this is. Well, this is what we ran over with our car last night on the way to Idaho. We are guessing that someone was taking a bunch of metal scraps and stuff to the metal recycling place and most of that stuff didn't make it there because it got dumped on the road. Our Subaru was tall enough to clear this metal spool but it ripped up a bunch of stuff under our car. Devin pulled off into the center of the freeway and turned off the car. When he went to see if we could pull the car further off the road, the car was dead. All the stuff that got ripped up under our car was enough to kill our car. There were quite a few cars that were all over the road, one lady's car even flipped because of all the stuff that was in the road. In no time there were firetrucks and police cars and all over. It was a mess!!! We were very grateful that this happened right before Honeyville which is close to Logan where my brother's family lives. We called them up and about an hour later Emily came and got us. Anna was a trooper and slept for the first while. But I think all the flashing lights and firemen knocking on the window woke her up. We loaded all our junk into Emily's car and left our car to be towed to Brigham City. Devin has spent the morning on the phone trying to figure out how to get our car to Orem and all the other stuff to get things fixed.
For whatever it is worth, we are all fine. We are so grateful that it was a warm night so we didn't get cold as we were waiting. We are especially grateful that Peter and Emily live close enough that they could come get us.
Life is never dull that is for sure!

For All You Blog Stalkers

This blog is for all of you who, like me, spend time reading blogs but never comment on them.
Next week is Devin's aunt Pam's birthday. She is having a big party with games. This is the first time we are going to be able to go to one of Pam's parties. We are very competitive and REALLY REALLY REALLY want to win. This is where all of you blog stalkers come in.

Number 8 on her list of how to earn extra points is...

Send someone to one of my three blogs. They must comment in order for you to get credit. 10 points per new visitor. http://www.aapixaday.blogspot.com/
http://www.gardeninglifestyle.blogspot.com/
http://www.recipeaweekfoodforalifetime.blogspot.com/

So could you please visit the three blogs and comment. You could even copy and paste the following message if you can't think of anything to say.

Happy Birthday Pam! You are so cool! (Devin and Julie aren't half bad either.)

Thanks! Just think if all of you can make three little comments that equals a lot of points for Devin and I.

So if you have never commented, now is the time!

Seize the day!!!!

Our Little Cowgirl

Last week we went to the fair as a family. Pam was able to get us free tickets and parking so we couldn't resist. More than it being free, we couldn't pass up spending the evening with Pam, she is so much fun.
It was the perfect night. I was worried because Monday and Tuesday had been so rainy, but we didn't even wear our light jackets it was so nice. The first time Devin and I went to the fair together it was freezing. It was fun to go to the fair and have it be warm outside.
We enjoyed all the exhibits again. We even got to see a few that we missed when Anna and I came last week. The floral displays were amazing and you never have enough time to look at all the photography.
Most importantly, with this trip Anna got her pony ride. She loved it!

Devin walked with her to make sure she didn't fall off.

It didn't take her long to figure out how to hold on. She even got her little wave down and would wave to everyone as she went around and around.

We think she makes a pretty cute little cowgirl.

A Great Book List

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ()
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (X)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ()
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ( X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ()
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald ()
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (X)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ()
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X) Most not all
34 Emma - Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ()
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( )
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ()
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( )
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (X)  One of the best book EVER!!!!
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ()
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ()
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (X)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

Wow!!!  I've only read 26.  I have a lot of work to do.  This is a great list.  I better get started now.

Anna's Reminder

Anna wanted me to remind everyone that Halloween is coming. I've been working on her costume. She makes a really cute Red Riding Hood. I was excited to finish her cape this week. That way even if I don't get the dress done, she still looks like Red Riding Hood.

Utah State Fair

I can't help but think of Tempelton when I think of the fair. Thursday was opening day at the Utah State Fair. The best part was that it only cost $2 for everyone 5 years old and up. My sister Marie and her four boys, Megan and Phebe, and Anna and I all took advantage of this great deal. We had lots of fun looking at the animals.

Anna really liked looking at the pigs. Maybe it was because they were down on her level?

They had a cool Lego display set up where the kids could build stuff and go to different stations. Anna loved the free lanyard that they gave us. She loved handing it to the people so they could stick the sticker on for each station we went to, and she chewed on it the rest of the day.

Phebe just loved watching everything with her beautiful big eyes.

All the kids love the little farm play area.

We were delighted that it wasn't busy at all! The kids had a great time. There is always so much too see and do at the fair. We just love it!

You Say Tomato

My dad use to say that if you ate the tomato seeds you would grow tomato plants out your ears. I've decided that if you plant lots of tomatoes....you'll have tomatoes coming out your ears.
We have been eating lots tomatoes but there is no possible way that we could eat all the tomatoes that are coming out of my mom's garden. This week we have been busy doing tomato things.
Monday was Labor Day and we decided to labor and make salsa. I was so glad that Devin didn't have to work because all the cutting and chopping and cutting and chopping that is involved with salsa it was a little tricky with a little girl who wanted to be part of things.
Anna had fun helping with what she could.

Devin grew up in a family that not only had a huge garden, but they canned tons of stuff. That's what you do with a garden. You grow stuff and then can and freeze it so you can eat it all year. I did not grow up in a canning family, but I've always wanted to do it. I asked my mom for "canning toys" when we got married, and it was fun to break them out and use them. I have really enjoyed being domestic this week. Devin said that I have reach a domestic level 7. Sweet!!!

We ended up with 10 pints of salsa and as you can see we still had several buckets of tomatoes left.
So the next day I decided to make spaghetti sauce. It was super easy to make. After chopping and chopping to make salsa, throwing stuff in the blender was right up my alley.

12 pints of super yummy spaghetti sauce later and....we still have more tomatoes!
Any suggestions of what to do with tomatoes?

Top of Utah Fun

We went to Logan a few weeks ago so I could run the Top of Utah 1/2 Marathon and just to spend some time with my brother Peter and his family.
It was fun to have so many people cheering me on at the finish line.

I cross the finish line at 2:01:52, which isn't bad considering I had to take my first bathroom break ever during a race. I was kind of ticked, I've never EVER had to stop before. But my time wasn't too bad. It was a beautiful run. I'd do this race again in a heartbeat.

After the race we went to lunch and then to the Logan Zoo. It is a little tinny zoo but the kids loved it.

Zach and Anna decided it was fun to hold hands as they walked.

Anna loves being outside. She had lots of fun looking at the animals. I can't wait to take her to a really big zoo with lots and lots of animals.
Anna must have gotten hungry because she decided that she should try and eat her toes.

The zoo was just the right size. By the time we were almost done the kids were getting pretty tired. Zach's head made a nice foot rest for Anna.

Thanks to Peter and Emily and their cute kids for a fun weekend. We keep hoping that come December when Peter is done with school that they can move back down to Orem....FOREVER!!

More Jam. Enough Jam.

Last night I got a phone call from my friend Megan. She had called to let us know that they were leaving peaches for us at my mom's house. We made sure to get the peaches today. I have been just itching to make strawberry peach jam. So tonight Devin and I made jam.

We ended up making 4 batches of jam. Two batches of strawberry-peach and two batches of strawberry-raspberry-peach. We hope that 18 pints of jam will be enough to last until next year.

What?

If you ask Anna where something is,
or where something went,
her reply will be....

You should try it.
Ask her next time you see her.
She is SO cute!