Arizona Winter

Edited on Feb 5th - My friend Linda sent me this picture of her backyard. I thought I would add it so you can see why I was rubbing it in to my friends about our winter weather. Linda lives in Logan Utah and Noreen lives close by in Willard.

I know, wierd! a picture of our lawnmower. (I didn't want in the picture). Reason for the picture - This post is dedicated to my Utah friends Linda and Noreen who decided to leave Arizona and move to the snow. :) And of course anyone else living where it is cold right now and have snow on their lawns instead of green grass.
This picture was taken yesterday - I actually needed to mow the lawn in JANUARY. Hey it beats shoveling snow. Does the picture make since now?
You might think this picture of Laci and Nellie was taken in the summer, but no, it was taken about a week ago. They found Laci's swimsuits. I guess it's a girly dress up thing but these girls love to wear swimsuits. Good ole Arizona weather - being able to wear swimsuits in January when others are wearing snowsuits.

Favorite Foods Friday

 
I thought it would be fun to share with you my Favorite Foods recipes every Friday. This is the first post - hope you enjoy it. I got this recipe from my sister Sherry years ago and it is my favorite chicken enchilada recipe. All of my kids love it and most of the items can be bought ahead of time so I use this recipe as part of my 90 day meal plan. *For those who don't know, our church encourages us to have at least 3 months of food on hand if possible so I try to think of meals like the enchiladas or spaghetti or food that has a longer shelf life. If you decide to try them let me know what you think. By the way, all of my recipes will be pretty easy because I don't have hours to spend in the kitchen and I am not what you call a gourmet cook :).
Chicken Enchiladas
Mix Together:
1 can (10.5 oz) cream of chicken
1 can (10 oz) green enchilada sauce
1 pint sour cream
1 can (4 oz) of green chili
¼ cup onions (optional of course- Herrell's don't eat onions)

corn tortillas (I use 18 for this recipe)
2-3 cups of cooked shredded chicken (can use the canned)
2 cups of grated cheese (I never measure, just put on how much I want per layer).

Put a layer of tortilla on bottom of casserole dish (I use 6 per layer). Add layer of sour cream mixture followed by chicken and cheese. Repeat 3 times. For the top layer just add the sour cream mixture & cheese. Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes (I cook it for 45).
Funny story about this recipe - Years ago Brandi (who is my very pickiest eater by far) had some of Sherry's enchiladas and later wanted her to make that food with the potatoes in it that she loved so much. As you can see by the recipe their are no potatoes in it. I don't think I told her different, I was just happy for her to like something new.

This is canned pork sirlion and potroast that I pressure cooked. I have also done chicken, ground beef, sausage, steak, and other meats. This is the chicken that I use for this recipe. The canned meat has a shelf life of 5-7 years and is very moist and yummy. It is ready to eat out of the jar like the meats in the cans. It really does taste better then it looks. If you would like the instructions on how to do it I will email them to you - just leave me a comment.

Days gone by - Brandi School Pics

This was Brandi's 1st grade class. The aid in the picture (the blonde - Ms. Mulldune) is Nellie's bus aid now and the teacher Mrs. Toth is still teaching and is at the same school Nellie is going to now (Riggs elementary). Brandi Hall the third one in the front row is still Brandi's friend. She lives in Yuma and they are Pen Pals. We were in the same ward together. There were 3 adorable little girls in the sunbeams class named Brandi (Herrell, Hall and Evert). My Brandi, is the 6th one over in the front row wearing the white shirt. Sometimes when I look back at my kids old pictures I wish that I could have them back for just one day at that age. Especially their baby and toddler pictures.
Brandi's bus ride. June of 1992 - almost 5 years old. She loved the bus.

Nellies Happy Bus Ride

 
 


Yeah! Nellie was happy to get on the bus today. It was a great day for me. She told me "Happy, bus, Ya" when she came home. Her saying "Yes" at the end of everything she says has turned into a "ya" or "yep" sometimes.
Crazy thing is Nellie's bus driver used to be an aid on the bus for Brandi and the bus aid now used to be Brandi's teachers aid back when she was in kindergarten.

Friends

 Me, Brookie McCleve, Jennifer McCleve, Noreen Mortensen & Marissa Hunt.
Noreen's husband Todd bought her a flight ticket for Christmas to come visit us. She was in our bunko group for years before she moved to Utah - so she got to play bunko with us while she was here. It was great to have Marissa and Noreen in town at the same time. We had fun going to the movies (we saw Bride Wars) and getting ice cream Friday Night. Noreen told us that Todd was Nacho Libre for Halloween and had him email us the pictures - too funny. He did add a shirt to the costume. They have never seen the movie so Brookie and I watched it with Noreen on Saturday night and stayed up talking and laughing way into the night. We always have so much fun together.

Haley Running Club

Haley had her first running club race on Thursday. I was handing out the numbers to the girls who crossed the finish line so I wasn't able to get a picture of Haley coming in. She isn't real competitive about it which is good because I think my kids inherited their running ability from me - let's just say I was never the fastest kid on the block. It's great excercise and I'm happy she is having fun doing it.

Nellie Rides the Bus

Because Nellie is in Priority Preschool a bus (short bus) comes and picks her up right at our front door. Brandi always loved the bus ride and I was hoping Nellie would too. As you can see by the picture she didn't so much. She was excited at first because we had been talking about it and how Brandi gets to ride the bus.... but when it pulled up in front her it was loud and then those big doors opened and she took a few steps back and decided she didn't want on it.

Nellie wanted off the bus - Save me Mom!


By the time they got her buckled in she was getting used to the idea.
Hopefully I can get a happy picture of her getting on the bus soon.

Nellie's Haircut

 
It was hard to do, but I cut Nellie's long hair off last night. She hated to get it brushed and it would get tangled easy being so long. Since she started school and will be using scissors, glue and things like that I decided to just cut it. She actually had 10 inches to cut off so we will donate it to Locks of Love. That gave her a pretty short haircut but we all think it is cute. The girls and Scott say she looks like Dora now. :)

San Tan Frybread

 
 
 
 
We usually only do the Arizona state fair with our SanTan Frybread business - but decided to try a few other places with it this year. Hopefully if we do enough other events during the year we can make the money we earned during the fair - this would be great because it would be spread out during the year and not a month long - and be able to quit doing the fair. We'll see. We did a grand opening event in Queen Creek yesterday at the Horseshoe Park Equestrian Center. It was really busy and alot of people were there. We thought we would start selling our frybread around noon but people were coming at 9:00 wanting some frybread. By the time we were ready so serve about 10:00 we had quite a few people waiting. It was fun and we did good. We didn't have to wait until October to get our frybread fix. :) They had a bull riding even there that night that Scott & I went too. Our next scheduled event will be Country Thunder. We should do good there.

Gearing up for the Trek

 
Not too bad for an old Pioneer couple huh? Scott & I were called to be a Ma & Pa for the Youth Trek coming up in March. We are WAY excited. We had our "Enthusiasm" meeting last night to get the kids excited about it. Different groups of Ma & Pa's made up skits for it. I thought ours was one of the best. :) Our skit was the "Homestead shopping show" Scott & I were selling a shirt that you could wear that had arms so you could look like you were pushing the handcart, but you were really just "checking out the ladies" as Scott put it and not having to push at all. I took a shirt and stuffed the sleeves with plastic bags, safety pinned the gloves on and put velcro on the gloves so they would stay on the stick. I'm not really one who enjoys being in front of large groups of people - but I was pretty proud of myself for not getting super nervous about it. Courtney is the Laurel class president so she is on the youth council. A few of the kids on the council came over to our house and Courtney video taped each skit. She has been in the TV productions class for a few years now (she loves it) and her teacher is cool about her using the equipment.

We are Fans!

Tonight is the first show of the season for American Idol. We are so excited! It starts out a little silly but gets better each week. My girls love to watch it with me. It's one of the few shows besides Dora (thanks to Nellie) that I do watch on T.V.

Friends

 After dropping Nellie off for her first day of preschool I headed to Paradise Bakery. Marissa is in town (actually the country, she is living in Peru right now) and we met for lunch. It was fun to catch up on each other. I love getting together with my friends - they are awesome. I love Paradise Bakery. Their food is delicious, their cookies are yummy and their cheesecake brownies are to die for!
The picture is a little blurry - the lady who took it didn't speak english that much and didn't understand what button to push to take the picture.

Nellie's First Day of School

Nellie had her first day of Priority Preschool today. It has taken months to get her in. She was a little nervous when we first walked in, but her teacher said she did great. Her teacher is Mrs. Elissa Cooper but the kids call her Miss Elissa. I have only met her a couple of times - but she seems like a great teacher. I'm excited for Nellie. I'm sure she will love school.

This Little Piggy Went to the Market!

 Cute little girl's feet. Lucy, Nellie, Haley, Sydney, Kristen, Courtney and Brandi.

Buck

Our horse, Buck hasn't been doing so good lately - he was getting old. Scott went out to feed him this morning and found him dead in the pasture. He was an awesome horse and we will miss him.

Happy New Year!

 Courtney had a New Years Eve Party at our house. We thought it would be fun to watch a movie so Scott hung up a tarp and we watched Horton Hears a Who. It was a little chilly so I covered the kids in blankets. We also had space heaters, hot chocolate and a fire going. We had fun lighting fireworks and sparklers (forgetting that we have a police substation right by us now) blowing horns and popping poppers. Most of the kids headed right out after midnight. I also invited my sisters and my mom and dad over. We put some music on and had fun singing and dancing for awhile. Happy New Year!

Christmas with Scott's family

 

We had Scott's family over for Christmas on the 27th. We were sad that CarolAnn and Angelo weren't able to make it. The picture with Scott is with his sisters Debbie from Mesa and Sandy from San Manuel. Sandy is with her husband David in the other picture. Tyson and Lucy were able to come too. I guess that was our final Christmas celebration until next year.