California Vacation

We were going to go camping with some friends, but due to the monsoons taking over almost every evening...we decided that camping wouldn't be the best idea with small children. So....we went to California with Jake's brother Kyle and his family. They had a time share and let us come along for the vacation. We got a great deal on tickets to California Adventures and Disneyland with fast passes. So we spent ALL day and night there. We left Disneyland at like 12:15 in the morning.

Jake and I getting ready to do the Grizzly River Run

Niece Tori and Jake

Nephew Kevin and me

The kids and Kyle with their bug eyeglasses getting ready for It's Tough to be a Bug 3D show. It was totally freaky with all the stuff they did to us.

Jake and I getting ready to do the Bug's Life show. Can you see that I'm still wet from that raft ride.

Tower of Terror ride. We loved this one!!!

Jake and I entering Disneyland

Pirates of the Carribean (one of my favorites)

Thunder Railroad

Matterhorn (we got in line for this one about 20 minutes before midnight)

Star Tours

Jake acting scared because of the "huge" Big Foot print found in Switzerland. (He's always been kind of scared but interested in Big Foot)

One of my other favorites...Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

The beautiful castle

It's A Small World..during the fireworks show

On another day we went to a museum and the kids fell asleep in the car due to the late night at Disneyland. Kevin fell asleep with his foot propped up and a straw in between his toes.

Kyle's wife Meeya had her nieces from Korea come down for a long visit. Sumee is in the white jacket, and one of the twins (Sudeem) in the pink, and then Tori Kyle's daughter in the yellow.

We went to a dinosaur museum which was free on Wednesday. It was pretty cool inside.

All of us, except me in front of the museum

A giant crocodile fossil, it was bigger than a T-rex, can you believe that!!

More bones

woops, sorry, we burried one of the twins and made her a mermaid

I don't think I've ever been buried before, so I let my niece and her cousins do it. They gave me some big boobies.

Tori with even bigger boobies.

Jake taking a nap, as usual, so was Kyle next to him

Kyle and Sudeem (we tried boogie boarding here, but we just couldn't ride the waves. We aren't sure why..there were plenty goods ones, but just not ridable...maybe it was all the rocks close to the shore...won't go to this beach again!!)

Santa Monica Beach (didn't like it much)

Kyle and Jake found some good smooth, round rocks for skipping

Girls Night

I had another girls night at our house tonight. We had lots of fun!! We played Wii Rock Band and then SCUM. We had lots of yummie munchies too. Thanks ladies for coming!!! I took these pictures from Nikki's blog. Some people left early and some even came later, but here's some of us. Thanks for taking pictures.

Baking Bread Frenzy

So....I'm home for summer break....what to do?? Hmmm, let's make homemade whole wheat bread by hand, meaning no mixers of any kind. I have a really good recipe for a mixer, but I thought, hey, I've got time, let's do it by hand today. So the first day I did a recipe found on one of my food storage websites and tried it to see if I liked it. It makes two loaves. Pretty darn good!!! So a few days later....I go all out and make 4 loaves, BY HAND!!!! It took about 3 1/2 hours total with all the risings. My wrists were tired from kneading it. But oh so good!!

Gotta rise for the last time, one more hour

looks ready to bake now

mmmm, after I brush them with some crisco

If you have that kind of time, you've got to try this recipe. It comes from a wonderful blog that shows you how to use your food storage and many wonderful recipes. Check out the blog: http://safelygatheredin.blogspot.com

Whole Wheat Bread--made by hand
recipe by Jeri Shelton

1 Tbsp yeast
2 cups warm water
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp honey (or 2 Tbsp sugar)
4 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup hot water
3 Tbsp oil
1 Tbsp honey (or 2 Tbsp sugar)
2 cups whole wheat flour

Dissolve yeast in 2 cups warm water. Add salt, honey and four cups of flour to yeast mixture. Mix together until smooth (will be a very thick batter). Cover with a warm moist towel. Let rise until light and bubbly--about one hour.

To this mixture add the hot water, oil and remaining honey and flour. Mix thoroughly--gradually add more flour (1 to 2 more cups) until dough becomes manageable to knead on counter. Dough should be soft and tacky (not sticky and not stiff or dry). When it reaches this point, knead for 10 minutes.

Put dough back into bowl and cover. Let rise another hour until double in size. Punch down and form into loaves. Put into greased loaf pans and let rise until doubled. Back at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes. Remove from pans and brush tops with shortening for soft crust. Eat. Groan with pleasure.

Zucchini and Deer

My zucchini and deer have nothing in common, unfortunately. I wish it was a deer that ate my zucchini, but it wasn't. I picked some more zucchini from our garden and found this:

Isn't that yuckie!! It makes me wonder what visitor entered my garden. If I had to guess....I would say either a rabbit, gopher or prairie dog. We don't have problems with gophers or the others for that matter, so I'm not sure.

I forgot that we had this picture. While camping for the 4th, Jake and I went driving just about everyday in the woods near where he goes hunting, on dirt and paved roads of course, when I spotted this deer eating. She wasn't afraid either. She never ran away, just looked at us and keep on eating, even when I honked the horn.

All Caught Up----FINALLY

Well, friends and family, I am finally caught up on the blog from our trip. I'm so glad!!! So we just got back from camping for the 4th of July with Jake's brother Kyle and his family. It's so nice to get away from the heat and go somewhere cooler.

Just real quick...when we got home from our trip, we went out in the backyard to look at our garden. This first picture is of our sunflowers that Jake planted back in the spring. I just wanted you to see how much they have grown since then.

Jake is 6 feet tall and the sunflowers are a tad taller. Unfortunately, some are bent over because they are either to top heavy or because of the heat.

Here they all are in a row

Here's a close-up, does it look big enough?

Umm, yeah, it's quite big compared to Jake's hand. He's so excited to get some of the seeds out and eat them.