A Shameless Plug

In case you haven't, you should really check out John & my blog together. It will make you laugh, I promise! Here's the address: http://johnandrenae.blogspot.com/
There is also a link over to the right, the one that says "John & Me" I think that's what it says anyway.

Poop

My Uncle Robert and Aunt Melody had a major house fire this morning. Half of the ward weren't at church today because they were there helping out. Everyone got out fine, that's good. The roof is burnt to heck, as is the back wall of the house. Man, that has got to be awful! Makes you appreciate all that you have. People were so good though, they've had about a million offers of places to stay, and hotel rooms bought for them. Their neighbors raised over $1000 for them amongst themselves. Good people! Good news, the Crammer picture survived! ;) (They have a huge, framed picture of Crammer from Seinfeld. It was in their basement. I think one of their kids bought it for them for Christmas.) Well, what can you say, it's a sucky situation to be in, that's for sure! But it is just stuff after all, and no one was hurt. So, that's good.

In other news, we had a party in honor of Harry Potter's birthday this weekend. It was the kids' idea, but it was a good time. Todd, Suzanne, Tommy and our family went over to Mom and Dad's house for dinner, dessert and a game of muggle quiditch. I found a recipe for treacle tart on-line and I made it. It wasn't so great. Maybe I didn't do it quite right. The quiditch was great fun, we will have to do that again. Bruce and Tommy were the keepers. Todd & Lydia were the chasers for one team, and Trent was the chaser for the other team. Ashley and I played the beaters. We each had a wet wash cloth (They were supposed to be Nerf type balls, but they got lost somehow before the game even started, but the wet wash cloths turned out to be so much fun, that who cares that we didn't have the balls!) which we ran around and threw repeatedly at the other players. Ross & Suzanne were the seekers. They had to catch a certain amount of fire-flies for the game to end. It was really fun!

We were over at Mom & Dad's today, and they had this box thing out in the back yard. It was big enough for me to get into with my legs criss-crossed. It was laying down, so I was on my back with my legs inside this box criss-crossed in the air. It had an open part where my face and shoulders were. How to explain? It was kind of like if I had gotten into one of those big trashcans that they have in public places with a flat top and a flap where you put your garbage in the side, except that there was no flap, and it is laying on it's back with the flap part facing the sky. Make any sense? Anyway, the point was that I got inside all sneaky like, with the intent to lay there out of sight until someone came by, and I'd growl and grab their ankles. The only problem was that my mom saw me get in, and she did a dastardly thing! I was laying there with my legs crammed in and just my face and shoulders exposed, and I was somewhat trapped. Mom gave me away and they all came over and poured ice cold water in my face, and I pretty much couldn't do anything about it. Funny!

That reminds me of a new game we invented for family night a couple of weeks ago. We played tag with a water bottle. The person who is "it" has a squirt bottle and they tag you by squirting you. If you get wet, you get the bottle and are then "it."

It also reminds me (Boy, I am full of yammer tonight, is anyone going to actually read this whole thing?) of another time when one of my attempts to be funny backfired on me. I used to think it was really fun to draw a huge face on a pillow case, put it on over your head with your hands at the sides of your face, to make pillow case keep it's shape. Then you tuck your pillow case into a jacket that you wear around your waist. So, it looks like you have this huge funny head and really short legs. (The jacket covers down to about your knees.) You dance around, and it's comical. Anyway, we were over at Mom and Dad's a couple of years back, and I thought I'd be funny and go into the other room and quick do one of these get ups, then run out and convulse everyone. Well, convulse everyone, I did. The problem was that I picked out a pillow case that was a bit too small for me. I had just got the whole thing on (I did the jacket first) when I realized that I was stuck inside this pillowcase. I was starting to get a little claustrophobic, so I ran out of the room, in this lunatic get up, yelling, "Help, help, I'm stuck!" I think John nearly wet himself laughing at me.

Six Flags

We dropped the J-Bird off at Grandma Sever's for the day and went to Six Flag with Bruce's family. We had a good time. We all stuck together for a while and rode rides until lunch. We all packed a picnic and found a shade tree by the parking lot to eat under. The kids ran around and played while we grown-ups relaxed for a while. Then we went to the water park for a couple of hours. After that we split up. Bruce took Lydia and the more adventuresome people to do the roller coasters. I took the smaller kids (happily) and did the kid rides with them. I'm not a fan of roller coasters. I can do the rolling upside down & the spinning part fine, but the drops are torture for me. If I have one unreasonable fear, it's drops like that. I don't mind heights really, I can stand on high things and look down, no problem, but I hate drops. Bungee jumping or sky diving sounds like utter torture to me. I don't even like to jump off of the high dive. Lydia, on the other hand is a roller-coaster maniac! She couldn't wait to go on the meanest, scariest ones! Anyway, I didn't bring my camera, because I didn't want to have to keep track of it all day. Bruce took these with his phone camera. (That's why they aren't the best.)

And here's a beautiful nugget that I put on here just for the gross out factor. This is the picture of me that Bruce has as his wallpaper on his phone. Lovely isn't it!
Oh, here's an amusing thing. We didn't get home until about 11:00 pm, so Mom had long since put Justice to bed in the port-a-crib. She has one of the old kind that you have to assemble (it doesn't just pop up). Justice thought it was really neat when she was putting it together, clanking all of those metal bars together! But as soon as she put the top of it on, and it looked like a bed, he got really mad, and wanted nothing to do with it.

Here I Go Again!

You know, I feel bad that I have more post about Justice then I do about all of my other children! But what can I do, that kid makes my life sooo freaking hectic! I can either scream, or laugh and run for the camera. I do both frequently. Here he is just a few minutes ago. He was standing in the sink with the water running and overflowing. The other picture is my library room. He does this to it all the time. He's constantly getting in to something and making a big mess of it.

On another note, I got to get together with some of my Mortensen cousins and their kids today at the park. It was a lot of fun. We had 15 children combined. I brought along Chloe and she was a big hit. I got her when my cousin, Amy moved to Utah, so all of the Mortensen grandkids love her. She got to see her old family again. We got home from the park and Chloe just laid down in front of the door and panted for about a half an hour, completely exhausted from her good time. It was a good time.

Well I've got to run. My house is still a mess from my week of HP and canning.

Back to Reality

Okay, three days later; I am really finished with HP this time. My house is a wreck, I've got laundry up to my eyebrows, and I've got 5 gallons of green beans in the fridge waiting for me to can them. But I finished the book. Yes, it was all I had hoped it would be. I loved it! Don't ask me to manually read another book for the next couple of years (scriptures excluded). I get all of my reading, apart from scriptures, by listening to them on tape/cd's. I signed up for the waiting list at the library for HP 7 on cd. I expect to get my hands on it around April 08. Yes, I loved the book way much, but I'm glad to be done with it. Tomorrow looks to be a not so fun day of catch-up cleaning, and canning till I drop.

Me and Harry Potter

Okay, I admit it, I LOVE Harry Potter! I couldn't take it, I've already finished the book. I read practically all night and all day today. Can you believe what Hagrid did?!! He totally killed Snape. Man, and then to find out that he was a good guy after all. How tragic! I bawled.
And that part about Dumbledore's brother Aberforth (did I spell that right). Very clever J.K.! I knew that RAB was Regulas Black! He sure helped Harry out with those horcruxes! But my favorite part was the big battle! I can't believe that Harry killes Voldemort with a gun! How cool, V. never saw that coming! How perfect was that!

Here's How My Summer is Going

It's that time of year again. X(

It's green beans this week; I'll be doing salsa till my eyeballs pop out in about a week or two. Then it's grape jelly time. Oh the Joy!

We did a trip to Nauvoo and then to Peoria to visit J & L. (my pics got out of order a bit) We had a good time. Here's Justice sharing Erik's breakfast.

Here's my baby getting into trouble:

On Ross's wheelies
Aren't they sweet!

Here's our trip to Nauvoo we camped out & the weather was not bad actually.

It was a good time.

Lydia at one of the shops
A sign in a shop that caught my attention. I asked if there was a reason for "Frends" to be mispelled. Apparently it was a mistake. I thought it was funny. They had it displayed with all of the other stuff, as if there were nothing wrong with it.

Killer Pancakes

I had a pancake recipe that I've been using for years. I thought it was fine until I went to IHOP one day. Their pancakes were much better than mine. Then I went to Amy's a couple of weeks later, we had pancakes for lunch and my children all agreed that Amy's were way better than mine. I had to agree. So I started tinkering with different recipes. So, by taking a little from this recipe and a little from that recipe, I've finally come up with a recipe that kicks some hootie. Try this and tell me what you think.

The Ultimate Pancakes of Death

Sift together the following:

2 cups flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup sugar

Add in:

4 eggs - yolks only (set aside whites for later)

2 cups milk

6 TBS. melted butter

In seperate bowl, beat 4 egg whites until stiff,

then gently fold into the other mixture. Cook as usual.

-makes about 18 pancakes-

Sometimes I Really Feel Like This Cat

http://www.stupidvideos.com/video/Cat_Herding_1/?m=new&tf=all

One Good Day, And One Not So Good

Here's Terry (my father-in-law) and I after our biathlon in Hillsboro. We were a surprise team. Terry is on his way back from an injury, and wasn't released to ride yet, but he could run. So, he ran and I did the bike. We did good. Considering that I had probably one of the worst bikes to ride on there and that I've only been riding for about a month, I did very well. Blah, Blah, Blah. It was a good day.


Here's my cat, Marius. I really loved this cat. I've had her for 13 years. We had to put her down yesterday. She was old and I couldn't stop her from peeing around the house. My children were heart broken and mad at me. I miss her a lot more than I thought I would. I hope it wasn't a mistake.