Mom's Cheese Sausage Soup

4 medium potatoes
1/2 stick butter
1 onion
3-4 carrots
3-4 stalks celery
1 lb. sausage, cooked and drained
1 lb. Velveeta
3 cups milk
salt & pepper

Combine first 5 ingredients. Cover with waters and cook; do not drain. Add sausage, cheese, milk and seasonings. Heat, but do not boil.

(I would probably saute the onions, carrots and celery in the butter. Then add the potatoes and water.)

Christmas Cautions

Christmas can be a dangerous time. The number injuries from bad combinations of water, electric lights, and dry Christmas trees goes through the roof. We've avoided those perils so far, but below we have a couple of pictures of Helen caught in risky behaviors.

In case any of you are worried about Helen eating the infamous poisonous poinsettia - According to the Madison Poison Control Center, a 50-pound child would need to ingest 500-600 poinsettia leaves to suffer ill effects of any significance. Another risk at Christmastime is food poisoning. Luckily for us, we caught ours before we ate it. Unfortunately, it had already stunk up our refrigerator. Good thing the temperature dropped outside so that we could just transfer everything to the porch.

Mom, Dad and Hannah made it to our house safely, albeit a little cold. They were wide awake when Helen woke up in the middle of the night. I wonder if they noticed that I wasn't really awake when talking to them. They have since moved on to Iowa for a couple of days.

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

For Ryan's birthday I made him a delicious chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting and covered with some chocolate ganache.  He has been trying to let me eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

The story of Ryan's birthday dates back to last year when Ryan got a shredder for his birthday.  All last year he campaigned for a shredder and even enlisted the help of my brother Craig to talk about the merits of his "roommates shredder." Whether or not Craig actually had a roommate with a shredder has yet to be proved. Anyway, I gave in and got him a shredder for his birthday.  

But, three months ago this shredder became disgruntled with it's normal diet of addresses and went after my curtain.  The picture was not included because of its' graphic nature.  Once again we were left without a shredder and our risk for paper cuts on our hands increased exponentially as we began manually tearing up our addresses.  Thus the search began for a new shredder for Ryan's birthday.  Please note that I found something that won't eat the curtains on its' own.

In fact, this shredder is silent and does a much better cross-cut.  

First Meal

On Saturday Helen had her first experience with semi-solid foods. It was hard to tell if Helen or Ryan was more excited.

Helen didn't know what was coming, but she was more than happy to help put the spoon into her mouth, as it is one of her favorite things to do. Ryan decided that she was not helping very much so he gave Helen her own spoon to play with. This only complicated the situation.

Somehow a little bit of rice cereal still made it in her mouth despite the amount you see on her face. Surely you can also see by her expression that it was not nearly as sweet, warm and delicious as what she's used to.

Thanksgiving

Matt, Emily, Zach, Quinn and Chloe came to visit us for Thanksgiving weekend. It started off with a bang. Quinn threw the full trash can down our carpeted stairs - sorry, I forgot to get footage. Later that evening we tried to make turkey-lurkeys. Zach & Quinn acted like they were going to help us by unwrapping the Rolos, but between unwrapping and handing them to us, most made detours into their little mouths. Sometimes Quinn didn't wait for unwrapping. Thanksgiving was a big success, as we only spent 1.5 hours on preparation (with the exception of the turkey, but it basically makes itself). On Friday we went to the zoo. Emily's favorite animal was the basilisk, Ryan liked the bayou, Quinn liked the fake lizard, I liked the white tiger, Zach liked the giraffe (which we didn't see, but that's okay) and the lion cub liked Zach. The lion cub ran after Zach from behind the glass wall when Zach started running with the stroller.

Early Thanksgiving

In mid-November we had a wonderful trip to Utah and squeezed in as many visits around the valley as we could. We started with the Grandparents Johnson, and you can see here that Helen was a very happy traveler. We came with lots of family history questions and we left with answers, pictures, and all sorts of great stories.

At my Dad's we had a delicious early Thanksgiving dinner, complete with a pumpkin story presented by Jubal, Natalie and Cyrus (click on the pictures here to see more). Here you see the table were all the fun was - no adults allowed.

Here we are with Brice and Craig for dinner at my favorite restaurant, Burger Supreme. I discovered the delicious Western Burger here during my BYU years and have not yet found it's equal.

Natalie let us stay at her house and get her boys all wound up for a few days. Here's Cyrus caught in the act of stealing Michelle's slippers, a favorite pastime.

We were lucky that Mom and Nate's trip to Utah lined up with ours. Over at Natalie's we celebrated Nate's 12th birthday and saw Regan ordain him a Deacon.

Gingerbread Around the World

Every year in our stake each family is asked to donate a gingerbread house. The theme this year is Gingerbread Around the World. Ryan and I quickly decided that the Taj Mahal was beyond our capabilities so we drew upon our international pictures; and what do I have tons and tons of pictures of? Fruit stands. Ryan was in charge of drafting the design, I made the gingerbread (the first time ever), Ryan put the walls together, I made about a bazillion stars, Ryan put the roof on and I made some sweet bananas and sign. Here is the final result, click on the picture to see the process.

Here is the gingerbread house that I made and we decorated at our Relief Society Enrichment Meeting. We called it Christmas in Pompeii.

Happy Halloween

Helen was a kitty this year complete with kitties on her socks. We were unsuccessful at getting a picture of her socks, you will just have to trust me. We only had three knocks at our door which means I will be saving all the spooky pencils, bugs, erasers and bubbles for next year. At this rate we have enough for the next 10 years. Hopefully they stay good as long as our powdered milk food storage.

Six under six

This week Helen and I went to Amber's house in Tennessee to help with her new baby. I hope that was the closest I get to having twins. It seemed like Levi and Helen took cues from one another to cry, nurse and fill their pants. They became good friends over the week. Below you can see that they were looking at an art book and this is their fine interpretation of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.

Below are the pink ladies (Ella-marie & Helen) with the hats that Amber helped me make, or nearly completely made-- if we are being totally honest. I wanted to try and make them myself because I felt that I might have the same problem with sewing that I do with steering the canoe: I just never got the practice I needed and have yet to reach my potential. But I am sure glad that Amber stepped in, otherwise neither would have gotten done and I would have just wrapped the fleece around Helen's head like a turban and called it good.

Corbin celebrated his 6th birthday and requested sand cups for dessert. For those of you who are worried about the effect on tooth enamel, it's not really sand. It's pudding, vanilla wafers and Nemo gummies. In our other pictures (seen by clicking on any you see here) you'll see the good help that Hunter was unwrapping and analyzing Corbin's presents.

Here we are singing together. We're really good at holding out those fermatas for a loooong time. I hear the house is quieter now that Helen & I have left. I turn up the radio really loud now that we are home so that I don't feel so lonely.

Something to Make You Smile

Helen learned to laugh this week. I taught her myself. All it took was a startling noise and a baby in a good mood and the result was a case of the giggles. - Ryan

Here are a few recent pictures as well.

This is how we got Helen to enjoy tummy-time. I think she's going to be a bookworm like her mom.

The Great South Dakota Tour

Ryan got a few days off work last weekend, and we used it to escape to scenic South Dakota. We were too late this year for the Sturgis Rally (and we don't own a motorcycle) but we managed to find a few exciting sights. Our first stop was Mount Rushmore, which was Ryan's favorite attraction. It was a cool rainy day, so it looked like our founding fathers were crying, as you can see for yourself.

We camped two nights at Custer State Park, a short drive south from Rushmore down a white-knuckle road. The temperature dropped down into the 30's at night, and Helen, in her pink marshmallow suit and multiple blanket layers, was the only one with toasty warm feet. The rain found its way into our tent overnight, as you can tell from our full clothesline in the picture below. It's definitely time to invest in a new tent. I'm thinking of one with no seams that hovers about 4 inches above ground.

We had the company in our camp of many wild turkeys, horses, deer, birds, and some mischievous squirrels. One even had the gall to run into our car while Ryan was making peanut butter sandwiches. Then, when Ryan went to shoo him out of the car, the squirrel made a dash for the peanut butter jar!

We strapped Helen into the carrier for a hike up to Little Devil's tower. The trail was rocky and steep, but not very long. Ryan and Helen had to stop before the summit because it was just too steep for their high center of balance. I went on to the top, as you can see if you click on the picture to get to our Picasa album. The view was spectacular.

Custer Sate Park has a large wildlife preserve that you can see from your car as you drive on the Wilderness Loop road. It's the closest thing to an African safari that we've been to in the USA. We sighted lots of pronghorn antelope, deer, bison, and burros on the beautiful grasslands.

We spent our last night camping in Badlands National Park. This is maybe my favorite park from my childhood. We saw lots of prairie dogs and one fast moving coyote. We're sure there are more coyotes out there because we heard them howling at the full moon all night.Our last stop on the way back to Nebraska was the world's only Corn Palace, in Mitchell, SD. They've been decorating this building with the fruits of the South Dakota harvest (corn, grain, grasses, wild oats, brome grass, blue grass, rye, straw and wheat) nearly every year since 1892! This is a must see, especially for individuals with a taste for fine culture.

Applesauce Anyone?

A few weeks ago I got a Victorio Strainer 200, which I think shows that I have really come of age. I love being a stay-at-home mom; you can get anything on ebay without the go-to-work dad knowing about it until there's an open package on the table and he says, "What's this, honey?" A couple of friends and I found an itty-bitty apple orchard where they let us pick all the apples we want for free. It was then up to us to convert the apples into applesauce. We made 50 quarts - that represents a lot of worms cut out.


Once I recovered from our last batches of applesauce I thought it would be fun for Ryan and I to go apple picking. That leads me to the next topic: I am not allowed to choose what we are doing for our date night for a couple of weeks . . . Earlier this summer I knocked on the door of a houses in the neighborhood where I walk to ask if I could have some apples from their apple tree. He told me that I could take the whole $%?& tree. I took this as a positive invitation to come back and get rid of the apples for him. So then last Friday, I got Ryan all excited* to pick apples and he asked me if they knew we were coming. I danced around the question by referring to the previously mentioned conversation and then I thought I would make Ryan feel better by telling him that I thought the people were gone on vacation or moved out or something. This did not improve Ryan's overall impression of my date idea. I think that he might have used words like illegal, trespassing, breaking and entry, and vandalism. I responded by telling him that we were actually doing our neighbor a favor and protecting his lawnmower from running over all the rotten apples, but he was not convinced. We drove by and I knocked on the door, but no one answered. This was the about the time that Ryan suggested that we just go out for ice cream and call it a night.

This is a portion of our garden, the part that is taking over our porch. We took this picture a couple of weeks ago. The tomato plant now reaches the top of our porch and has over 40 tomatoes growing on it. Our swiss chard that you can see in front of the tomatoes is doing really well, probably Ryan would say that it was doing too well. He has not acquired a taste for the deliciousness that is swiss chard. We planted snap peas and lettuce for our fall harvest and they are doing great. It is amazing how much you can get out of a little space with good planning and miracle grow.

Helen is doing great. As you can see, she loves chewing on my shoulder and taking baths. One of her newest tricks is to fuss when she's alone on her blanket until someone comes over to talk to her. Most likely she will end up being a social butterfly like her father (ha, ha). She also likes forcing her entire fist into her mouth to suck on. Good thing she is not a snake, she would probably put her whole arm in there. Ryan's favorite daddy-daughter-time activity these days is to put her in tummy time and then show her how to roll over again and again. If Helen could talk she'd probably call it daddy-daughter-torture-time; she's really not a fan of rolling yet.

*by excited I mean, willing to participate if forced to