Family Pictures

General Conference Notebooks - Mutual

For the next 7 weeks, the youth from 14-18 years old will be practicing for the Cultural Youth Celebration for the dedication of the temple. That also means for the next month that my lone Beehive and I are on our own. She'll be able to participate on the day of the celebration, but there isn't anything until then.  There are some fun things that we have planned for the next couple months and Ally and Madison are going to go with me so she isn't by herself. I think she was a bit releaved, too. Here are pictures from tonight of my girls.

First Day of School

We had some very excited kids on the first day of school.  When I picked up Emily from Kindergarten, she told me, "it was the best day of kindergarten ever!"  I think that she was ready.

 Madison:

Ally:

Emily:

Pinata

When we went to Utah on the 11th, we spent an afternoon with Ben and Suzannah.  Ben's sister-in-law was given a pinata for her last day of work from her co-workers and she was sweet enough to share it with Suzannah's kids and by default, our kids.  It was really fun for them and they did such a good job taking turns hitting it.

The funny thing is that Matthew didn't want anything to do with hitting the pinata. The little boy that likes to hit everything didn't want to when it was okay.   

                                          

                              

Hot Dog Eating Contest

On Monday, our friend came over to ask Charlie a favor. This friend manages a Maverik store and needed to come up with somebody to take part in a hot dog eating contest on Wednesday (yesterday).  Charlie was a little hesitant, but was off on Wednesday and Paul needed help.  The goal is to be the fastest person to eat 5 1/3 pound hot dogs plus their buns (they are called Bahama Mamas).  The winner from yesterday gets a trip to Salt Lake City to compete next month against all of the winners from all 10 regions.  The winner in Salt Lake City gets an all expense pain trip for 2 to the Bahamas.

When we showed up at Maverik yesterday morning, there were a couple of guys strutting around.  Charlie had kind of decided that there probably wasn't a huge chance that he would win, but it was a free lunch and he likes hot dogs.

Lining up at the beginning:

Getting down to business:

Finished #1.  The current fastest time was 8 min 30 seconds.  Charlie's time was 4 minutes 57 seconds.  Two people came up to Charlie when he was done and asked him if he ate hot dogs professionally.  Nope, this was his first rodeo.  Yes, the guy behind him is throwing up.

Picture at the end with the radio station.

So, we are going to Salt Lake August 11th and if he wins there we get a trip to the Bahamas.  Who knew the only way we were going to see the world was by Charlie eating his way there?

Temple Square Layout

 I think that I made a New Year's Resolution to do one scrapbook page a month so I should probably try a little harder.This is from our impromptu trip to Utah in April. Charlie had a graveside in Springville so we went with him and it was a really nice trip.  We don't get to travel with him very much so we take advantage of it when we can.

Freezer Cooking 2

I loved how easy May was with not having to think about dinners so I'm going for round 2 of freezer meals.  There are only 6 meals this time that I will double for 12 meals total.  I will supplement them with regular meals that we feel like eating and what we have in the freezer.

Here is my Google Document with my shopping list and recipes.  These meals were compiled from a couple of different places so I needed the recipes in one place. I haven't tried the BBQ Chicken Quesadillas, but they sound good this week so we'll give it a try.  Ally told me this morning that "I don't like the manicotti.  I LOVE it!"  It really is good.

This month's 6 meals:

Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin

BBQ Chicken Quesadilla

Cream Cheese Chicken

Café Rio Pork

Asian Marinated Drumsticks

Sloppy Joes

Manicotti