Potatoes

What to do with a box of potatoes???

Our Home Teachers brought us a box full of potatoes. Does anyone know how long they will last, or how I should store them?? Or do you have any great ideas on what to make with them? I would love any and all ideas. This is what we have come up with so far.

Homemade battered french fries - they turned out really good, but only uses 1 maybe 2 potatoes.I made 4 pans of cheesey (funeral) potatoes and froze them. I will probably make a couple more pans - I have 2 sisters that are going to have babies in the next couple months and this can be part of a meal for them.

I have barely made a dent in the box of potatoes so send me your favorite potato recipes or ideas on how to use these things.

Happy Birthday

Zack's 1st Birthday was yesterday - Dec. 20th. He shares his birthday with my sister and brother! He has been such a fun addition to our family. He has been such a good baby and happy since the day he was born. He is always smiling and wanting to play. I love it when he laughs just because he hears other people laughing. I love when he cuddles with me and lays his head on my shoulder. I love his deep, low laugh that we get to hear all the time. Here is a look back over the last year of his life.The day we brought Zack home from the hospital - he was born with his hair that white!

Relaxing in the bathtub. Zack has always loved baths, as soon as he hears me turn on the water he comes crawling as fast as he can and tries to climb in.

The day Zack was blessed - he was about 3 months old.

Zack sitting in his bumbo chair about 4 months old

Relaxing in the stroller

Rolling all around the house

Zack is always trying to "help" me with whatever I am doing

Right out of bed on his birthday - he woke up excited and happy and ready to play!

Happy Birthday Zack - We love you!

Weekend in Utah

We went down to Utah to spend the weekend with our friends last Friday. We have such great freinds and have so much fun when we get together. We went to the Christmas Village in Ogden Friday night. There were lights all over in a park and little Christmas houses lit up with christmas scenes inside the houses that the kids could look through the windows to see. It was really cute and the kids loved running around looking in the houses.
After staying up until 3am playing games we all went to Chuck E Cheese on Saturday. Kade has been so excited to go to Chuck E Cheese - this was our first time - and probably last! :) The kids loved it and Rich and I even got into a few games, but the food is not that good and there were SO many people and it was so loud and crowded. It probably didn't help any that I got a 24 hour stomach flu that day and was running on about 4-5 hours of sleep. :)
I had the stomach flu all day Saturday and after throwing it up that evening I was feeling much better, but had passed it on to Rich. My friend gave us some make-up for Christmas and we started to play dress up. This is the before picture when we were just starting out.

This is the after picture! The reuniting of our Rock Band!

Sunday before church I wanted to try and get a picture of my boys all together - you can see how well that turned out. This was about as close as we could get. :)

Ten years ago today....

We got engaged!

I love our engagement story and Rich for putting so much thought into it. Some of you may already know the story but I am going to tell it again.

Rich and I had been dating for about 2 years and we had looked at rings and I picked out what I wanted but didn't want to know when it would be done being made or when Rich picked it up - I wanted all that to be a surprise. Rich was graduating from college in the spring and had been applying for jobs and had an interview up in Seattle with Boeing. In the email coordinating his trip up there his plane tickets were through Southwest and they had a special going on at the time for buy one get one free on plane tickets. So Rich asked if I wanted to go with him. I was so excited and we were going to stay with my friend who had just gotten married and lived in Seattle. A few days before we left the jeweler called and told me my ring wouldn't be done for a couple weeks. I was so mad that he called me, because I didn't want to know anything about when it would be done. But, since he did call me I knew that Rich wouldn't be proposing in Seattle because there was no ring. We flew up to Seattle and our plane was delayed for something and we got in really late and missed the interview which was suppose to be that night. Rich called the guy and rescheduled for the next morning. We were meeting him for lunch in the restaurant at the top of the space needle. Rich and I were both dressed up and went to the restaurant and were barely seated when the waitress came up and told Rich that he had a phone call. So he left and came back after the call and said the person doing the interview was running late and would meet up with us for dessert after lunch. I was relieved that I didn't have to eat in front of some strange man. We got our lunch and ate and after we were done the waitress came walking up from behind me and said, It's time for dessert and set down a dessert like the picture below, but instead of the ice cream on the stand there was my ring! I was so surprised, and there was so much smoke I could barely see Rich across the table.
Rich took the ring and then got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I was still in complete shock - I think I said yes! Everyone in the restaurant started clapping and cheering. I was so confused and kept thinking the man was going to come to interview Rich. The whole interview was all a lie and part of his plan. After lunch we had to hurry back to the airport to catch our plane back. We were married 3 months later on March 13.

Countdown to Christmas

My sisters and I made this cute Christmas countdown over Thanksgiving weekend. They turned out so cute and the kids love to countdown the days until Santa comes.

They are just 4x4 posts cut into blocks with the edges sanded and then stained. Then you just mod podge christmas scrapbook paper on the sides and put numbers on.

Here is another one of my favorite countdown to Christmas. My mom gave this to me a few years ago and my kids love pulling the numbers out and watching santa drop down the chimney. I think she got this out of Terry's Village.

Christmas Lights and Plasma

This is what I have been up to the last few days. Last night we drove around to look at christmas lights. I got directions from my friend to two different houses in Iona that have christmas lights up around their house that are set to music. One of the houses being their uncles. They were so fun to go see. They had tons of lights and their own radio station you turn to and then watch the show. Of the two houses we saw we liked the Belnap's uncles the best!! They are worth the drive to the other side of town to see. Here are some directions:

Take Iona Rd. heading east. Go past Ammon Rd. and continue going east. There is a subdivision on the Right hand side named Mountain Ridge and the first house is back in there - you'll see it. We could not get their radio station to come in. :( The lights are still fun though.

To get to the Belnap's uncles you would continue going east on Iona Rd. to 55th and then turn Left - you can't miss it.

I went in today for my first time donating plasma. I got the physical and first time stuff all set up but NO donation because by the time I was ready to donate it had been about 5 hours since I had eatten and they wanted me to have food in me. I did have to get blood drawn today and after trying and failing in the first arm they poked me in the other arm - thankfully they were successful. So tomorrow morning at 7am I will go donate for the first time and get $20. You get $30 for the second donation and can donate 2x in 7 days - that is $200 a month. That is a pretty easy $200 bucks, and nice, quiet time away from kids :) If anyone decides to go try it tell them I referred you!

Quick Update

I know it has been a while since I have posted or updated my blog, but with Rich searching for a new job he is on the computer most of the day and I am not :) Plus we have been busy getting ready for our ward Christmas party which was last night. It is such a nice feeling to have that done. I think it turned out really well. We had it open house style and had activities in a few different rooms for people to just wander through as a family. This seem to work really well to accommodate the large amount of people we have in our ward. We had a santa in one room where we took family pictures with santa. We had a christmas craft in one room, a bunch of different nativity sets displayed in one room and then the dinner and slide show of different activities from our ward throughout the year. We had around 240 people come.
Here are a few pictures from the last couple weeks.

I don't know what it is about guys growing facial hair and being so proud of how much they can grow but I am not a facial hair type of girl. So when Rich started growing out his beard a couple weeks ago I would ask him to shave it every morning. When he finally had to shave it for an interview I was out running errands when he shaved and this is what I came home to. He told me he was going to interview with the police force since he had the mustache for it. He did not leave the mustache, thank goodness, he shaved it all off .

Zack turns 1 year old on the 20th and is just starting to take his first steps. He is so silly that when he tries to walk and falls down he starts laughing and just keeps laughing every time he tries - he has no focus :) so it is going to be a long process. He got 3 new teeth in the last 2 weeks. Thankfully they finally broke through, he was a little nightmare while getting all 3. This picture is of him after eatting his first Oreo cookie. I gave it to him and walked away to do something and this was what he looked like when I got back. He loved it!
One of the boys Christmas presents got shipped to us in this box - the present was this tiny little box that they shipped in this huge box. The boys loved it and made it their mario ship. It kept all 3 of them entertained for a long time.
Over Thanksgiving my niece had a cousins birthday party. She turned 4 and had a minnie mouse birthday party which was a big hit with everyone. Here is a picture of most of the cousins, Ty is crying - of course - because I made him get in the picture with everyone. Another one of Ty's crazy quirks, he does not like to have his picture taken.