Only been 8 months!!

I knew it had been awhile since I took Carissa to get her haircut, but I had no idea it's been since January! I guess next time we'll wait a whole year and then be able to donate to locks for love. This time they cut off at least 6 inches! I just wish my hair would grow that fast! I've avoided taking her because the last 2 times I've taken her, she was horrible and wouldn't sit still! But this time, she was very cooperative! She chose to watch a Dora movie, and she was glued to it the whole time! And the highlight of it all, was that she finally chose to sit in the pink car!! Maybe there's hope for her being "girly" yet!! I originally thought that all the stylists were the same that work at Cookie Cutters, but I've had Melanie twice, and both times she was SO FAST, and she is so good with Carissa (which means she can handle ANY child!!). The other time, I won't even go into any detail, cause it was just a HORRIBLE experience! So if you decide to try out the Cookie Cutters in South Jordan, make sure you schedule with Melanie!!!

And this is the finished product! Isn't she adorable??

We've been gearing up for school to get started around here. Donavan has been working on getting his license. He's taking an on-line course, but still has to go and drive with an instructor. Hopefully he will be able to pass the course very soon, so we don't have to drive them to school for very long. But they will be in the new building which will be located just east of the District. Next week they get a sneak peek at the school, as they are helping to move furniture over and get everything set up. It's going to be fun to have a "real school" instead of office buildings converted to a school.

And here is the sum-up of the summer...."why does it have to end????" I'm really not ready for

the season's to change just yet! And she would be happy to just run around in a swim suit everyday!! And the thought of wearing socks again makes me cringe! Oh if I could wear flip flops all year 'round!

Yummy recipe

I've decided that I would start posting some of my most favorite recipes for you all to try.

This one is called:

Tomatillo Shrimp Fajitas

Ingredients:

cooking spray (olive or canola oil preferred)

1 1/2 cups red bell pepper strips

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1 small red onion, vertically sliced (I like to slice them in half too.)

1/2 cup green salsa (store bought, I like the La Victoria Salsa Verde medium )

1 teaspoon ground coriander

salt to taste

1 1/2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined

8 (6inch) corn tortillas ( like to use wheat flour tortillas or even wheat pitas!)

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions:

1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add bell pepper, garlic, and onion; saute 4 minutes. Stir in salsa, coriander, salt, and shrimp; saute 2 minutes or until shrim are done.

2. Arrange about 1/2 cup shrimp mixture down the center of each tortilla, sprinkle each tortilla with cilantro to taste.

Sometimes I will put in some chicken, mostly cause Nikelle doesn't care that much for shrimp, but I LOVE it, so I have to have some in there. And you can tell by the picture that I added the green pepper this time. I know this looks like a hard thing to make, but I swear it only takes about 15 minutes of cooking time! REALLy fast!! The chopping is what takes a while, but I find that I can thaw the shrimp in some cold water while I'm chopping and then everything is ready to go about the same time. Then I sliced up a mango on the side and I felt like I was in the tropics!! Hey, whatever it takes to get a little "vacation"!

Let me know if you try this one! And I'll be sharing some more very soon, so stay tuned!!

Good Fun & Good Read!

Well it seems that nothing ever happens here, and then WHAM.....everything happens! We started the mnnth of August with a BANG! First off we had Andrew's brother and family and their mom in town. So we decided to head out to Lagoon, yes we knew it was going to be HOT, but it was for the kids, right? We got there right when the park opened and Carissa found her favorite spot on the carousel! Her favorite animal was the kitty, but unfortunately it was every girls "favorite" too! Then we ventured over to the "kiddieland" and she had a good time, not great. She didn't really enjoy the rides that went up and down in circles....which is pretty much AlL of them! She did like the boats and the little cars too!

Then when it was just too hot in the shade (thanks to whoever planted all the HUGE trees all over the park!) we went into the water park. I thought this was a funny sight......9 tubes for the crowd of 17 people! Carissa loved the lazy river, but I was a bit dissapointed to see that there really wasn't anyplace for the littlest kids to play. Yes they have the big shooting water fountain, but it's not in the water park area. So we made LOTS of laps around the lazy river while the big kids went down all the slides! I still prefer Disney Land or Universal Studios, but for a close place, it really is fun!

Check out all the people!!!!

Then the fun continued that night when NIkelle and I went to get our copy of Breaking Dawn, the fourth in the Twilight Series (and if I have to explain that....well....you've been living under a rock!). Barnes & Noble decided to distribute wrist bands for the books, even though months ago I pre-orded it. (which tell me why is that if I placed my book on order back in May did I get wristband #451????) Really angers me that it wasn't a "guaranteed copy", and they didn't tell you that back in May. Anyway.....back to the saga.......I get down to B&N along with about 1500 other people for the "party". About the time they started lining everyone up in their groups, my friend Teresa is on the phone talking to a friend who is in line over at Wal-mart (no wristband required) and she is only about 30 people back. We finally decide to head over to the good 'ol WM, joined them in line, and had the book in our hot little hands by 12:04!!! There was no way we would have been leaving B&N before 1:30am with that many people, so we all got to go home and start reading!!! (Dont'cha just love the pic of the stack of books.....so lovely....ahhh...sigh!) I know that there are only a handful of people that know nothing about this book series (my husband was one of them....but after seeing the line for the wristbands, he now understands I why I couldn't just "put it on hold at the library"!!) but this last one doesn't dissapoint at all! And it just makes me more anxious for the movie in December! I really can't wait for all the movies now! (hopefully they will do them)

Remember....I get to read it first Nikelle......"I know Mom"!

Share quickly....

Then I'm heading to bed! It was WAY too early this morning, and I am seriously dragging! I found this wonderful kit over the weekend and I've had tons of fun doing some layouts. I love it when a kit can go the distance and you still love it!

Then these few are ones that I've done since the fourth of July, but never got around to posting them.

I hear my bed calling my name.....AND Andrew brought home Battlestar Galactica from the library and he's been watching it with the kids.......my clue to check out....before I start going off on how LAME that show is!!

Little Vent

I just had to jot this down, cause I KNOW that I will forget when I can enjoy walking to church! We've been dealing with lots of construction noise and MESS for over a year now getting this church finished, and are at the final stages, and everyone is excited and very anxious to get into the new building! HOWEVER......the disadvantage of living across from the church is that the trucks arrived this morning at 5:30AM to dump loads of rock for the landscaping!!! Yes, you read that right....5:30! I probably would have slept right through it, but my loving husband had fallen alseep watching Seinfeld (again) and the noise from the trucks woke him up, so up he came to bed. That would have been fine, but he decided that at 5:50 was the perfect opportunity to converse about this. Well, NOW I'm awake and the trucks are just idling in front of our house! I come downstairs to see what they are doing, and the drivers are just talking!!!!! So I decide to go out and tell them to leave..........and they tell me that "we're just trying to do our JOB"!!! Like the 7am noise rule doesn't apply to any worker that has been told to "get the job done"! I mean REALLY!!! I probably wouldn't be SO grumpy, but I was up until 1:30 scrappin (which really is past my limit....but hey I was on a roll!) and now Carissa is starting to wake up.......Yup at 6:15AM!! Two grumpies in this house is NOT cool....and let's not even talk about the teenage grumpies!!! So everyone that will be jealous because I can walk to church, please understand there was a price to pay for this luxury, and it wasn't cheap!! (I'll post pages later...gonna try and rest my eyes! We'll see how long that lasts)

290 pictures in 4 days!!

It's not that I have my camera out ALL the time, but when we have a busy, busy 4th, it's easy to take that many pictures! We had a great 4th of July weekend. On Friday we made it down to the parade. We got there pretty late (well relatively late for getting front spots) and managed to find a spot on some grass and under a tree. We were kinda in the back, but as the parade started the family in front of us moved up and opened up some space so we moved up too. We were pretty much in the shade the entire time, which was awesome.....cause it was HOT!! Reminds me of years past when I use to march in the parades when I was in band!! Yikes, that was a LONG time ago!! When Carissa got tired of the parade, Andrew took her to McDonald's and got her some lunch, and she had a great time playing while Nikelle and I watched the rest of the parade.

The funniest thing happened later that day. I had taken Nikelle down to Wal-mart to pick up some last minute things for her camping trip next week during Carissa's nap. As we were checking out, (I guess we'd been there awhile!) Nikelle tells me that she hears a kid that sounds JUST like Carissa. I just thought it was funny and laughed it off! Then she tells me she hears it AGAIN...so this time I look.....and there is Andrew and Carissa picking up fireworks!! Funny to me that I didn't even hear her...yet Nikelle did! Just goes to show you that I really do tune her out!! So we lit off some fireworks later that night. This year there were no fires in the neighborhood, which was REALLY good! Carissa wasn't too fond of the loud ones, and pretty soon she was very tired! But that didn't stop the boys from lighting off as many as they could. Check out Donavan lighting one while the other one is still going!!! I could have shot him myself....crazy pyro boy!!

Then on Saturday morning Carissa slept until 10am!! So we knew she would never take a nap, so we decided to try out the new Splash Pad in Herriman. When we got there, there weren't very many people there and she was quite hesitant to get wet. She just wanted to play on the slides (which were hot!) then eventually as more kids got there, she sort of caught on with splashing in the puddles, but she REALLY didn't like it when the bigger boys splashed her. But she didn't freak out too much......just mostly had a good time! We will definitely be going back there again!

And the very best news of all.......they announced today that we will be in our new church building in 3 weeks!! (of course it has to pass all the inspections, but we are all very excited to have our very own building!!) And the best part will be when they clean the street!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More!!

Guess I was on a roll, and just didn't know when to stop!

Things are still quiet around here (at least until tomorrow!) So I may as well get as much done as I can right??