Happy Father's Day

We have had a great Father's Day today. And in honor of the best Father in our family I thought I would share a few pictures of Mark.


Here he is as a cute baby and as a handsome Payson High School Graduate.

A few weeks ago in Activity Days I helped the girls make "Charm Pop" Boutonnières for their Dads. Mark not only had two daughters at the activity, but John participates as well since I'm the leader. So Mark wore two to church and let John wear the other one to church.

Then after church we headed down to Santaquin to be with Mark's Dad and family. John decided he would make an Alden Boutonnière Club. And all the men in his life with the name Alden got a Boutonnière. So here is the picture of Grandpa Alden James, John Alden and Mark Alden sporting their Boutonnières.

I just have to say I am so lucky to have these three men in my life. Since marrying Mark it has been wonderful having a Father around in my life again. And Mark is a wonderful example of what a Father should be. In church they talked about Fatherhood and how a man should provide, protect and partner. Mark does all these so well. And John is just my little man that is so cute and brings joy to our lives.

Happy Father's Day to all the Fathers out there!

Let The Fun Continue

Happy Birthday Big John! John turns 5 on Monday, June 16, so we had his first friends party on Saturday to celebrate the big event. He was so excited for weeks before to be able to go to Costco and tell them exactly what he wanted on HIS cake. So even though most of the party was a Spiderman party, he picked a Golf cake. It was finally warm enough that we did a water party and pulled the slip and slide out and let the kids loose with water guns. They had a blast and John felt important for the day.
But the day did not end there. Orem City knows how to do a parade right -- it starts at 7pm. We discovered last year that the floats line up near my mom's house which was a great spot to sit because of all the grass near by. So we were on 800 East and 500 South. The parade doesn't begin until 400 South, but we walked down and saw the few floats we missed.

We crashed the Rasmussen clan, or did they crash our spot, I'm not quite sure what. But it was fun sitting with my cousins. Eden had already nailed the little shade from the tree, but shared her beautiful umbrella with me until the sun went down.

And my mom was famous! She is the white hat driving the VW Bug Convertible for the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.

Then after the parade and hanging out at Mom's for awhile we found our perfect hidden spot for the fireworks - The playground at the kid's school. Last year when we thought of this place there were a couple of other families that did the same thing. But this year we were the only family there. It is a great spot, just off State Street on 400 South, so only 4 blocks away from the action. The kids hung out on the swing set while we set up our chairs and enjoyed the 15 minutes of fabulous fireworks. Needless to say we brought home 3 very sleepy children way past their bed time, but it was a great day!

Summer is HERE!!!

Today was the first day the weather finally made it feel like Summer, and it is the middle of June!!! We had the heater on just a few days ago. But today was gorgeous, beautiful and warm. And on top of that it is Orem Summerfest this weekend. Sometime in the last few years it has become a family tradition to go to Summerfest. When the kids see it on the calendar they get so excited.

Because of our crazy schedule this weekend we decided to ditch Dad and make a go of it just the kids and I. It started at 2pm on Friday and we were there by 2:30 and we still had to park two blocks away. The kids love seeing the Fire Engine and Ambulance. (Side note: notice John's hat. We got it at Walmart in Florida and it has become his "lucky" hat. It is hard to get it off of him) Orem City does such a great job of the carnival. For $15 we got 20 tickets for rides and all the small rides were only 1 ticket and the big rides were 2 tickets. The kids were then responsible for anything on top of the tickets Mom bought for them.

The girls rode all the "big kid" rides together. The loved the Sizzler so much that they even bought more tickets with their own money so they could ride it again. I do not participate in any of the carnival rides because they all have the same theme, a circle. And my stomach cannot handle going round and round and round. I'd blame it on the Jesperson side of the family (Eden), but my Dad had worse motion sickness than my Mom.

It is amazing what a year can do. All the rides John got scared on last year he conquered on his own this year. No one had to go up the Fun House to help him through, yea! And he was even brave enough to climb to the top of the Fun Slide by himself and come down. He did say he wanted to throw up at one time, but he did it!

We missed having Dad with us, but I enjoyed no lines and getting home in time to relax. And tomorrow after Team Meeting in the morning, John's B-day party in the afternoon then we'll have the whole family together for the Parade at 7pm and the Fireworks at 10!

Cookbook Software

What started out as a way to get rid of all my recipe clutter turned into a Christmas project in 1998. I was tired of all the loose recipes flying around my recipe cupboard and started typing them up. Ten years ago our family budget was really tight so I decided to make a recipe book for my Mom and Sisters that year for gifts. They loved it and even my In-Laws loved it even though it was mostly recipes from my family since we had only been married 2 years. I created the cookbook using WordPerfect. It was a lot of manual work, but I knew the software well enough I was able to make it do what I wanted it to do.

For the last couple of years I've been wanting to update that cookbook. My copy is trashed and my recipe clutter has increased ten fold! (Mark would say 100 fold) I've searched for basic software to make the cookbook but have never found any I like. All the ones I found were too complex or I had to have that company publish it and then you have to order 1000 copies.

This last week I think I finally found my solution! Once again I did a Google Search and this time found a fairly new company called The Cookbook People. It will allow me to cut and paste the recipes I already have typed up and add to those recipes. I can then print it at home and take it to the local copier to copy and bind. And the software is only $29.95. I even e-mailed them with a few questions and they not only replied, the developer called me to discuss my ideas. Made me feel important!

I'm now waiting until their next software release comes out in the next couple of weeks before I purchase it. But I thought I'd throw this out into cyberspace and see if someone knows of another software I should be looking at? Does anyone have experience in printing your own basic cookbooks? I don't want fancy hard bound stuff, just a basic family cookbook of tried and true recipes. But I want the software to categorize the recipes and put them alphabetically with at least a Table of Contents.

Tag . . . Books

My friend and one of my Pampered Chef consultants, Jenn Z tagged me with this post.

A. Pick up the nearest book

B. Turn to page 123

C. Find the 5th sentence.

D. Type in the sentence.

E. Tag 5 more people.

OK so here is my result...

A. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

B. Done

C. Done

D. "Charlotte did not stay much longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what she had heard." This is in response to Charlotte telling her she is engaged to Mr. Collins.

E. Tag -- Christy, Natalie, Kyleen, Eden, and Megan!

Director Retreat

I just crawled back in the house after a FUN overnighter and had to share. Every Spring and Fall we have a Pampered Chef Directors Retreat. My Director, Shauna S and all her downline Directors meet at Shauna's cabin in Fruitland, UT for an overnighter. This time we had nine of us up there. There is something inspiring about getting together with all these fun gals and visiting, networking, chatting, eating, hot tubing and squeezing in a little training here and there.

Cynthia, Cass, Christy and I got to carpool up together from Utah County. We introduced Cass and Cynthia to Christy and I's favorite bakery. It is the Backerei and Eise at the Zermatt Resort & Spa in Midway. They make French Pastries right before your eyes. They are the most delicious, melt in your mouth, beautiful, amazing pastries I have ever had. The last time Christy dragged me to this place we fell in love with the Macadamia Nut Carmel Chocolate Tart. I was so sad when it was not under the glass this time. But I got the last chocolate cupcake (frosting is to die for) and the Chocolate Mousse Cup. We all got something different and then sat in the car and tasted them all. They are so rich and amazing. I still have a little Mousse left to enjoy.

Here we are at the cabin toting our cute boxes the pastries come in. I should have taken pictures of the desserts before we bit into them, oh well, next time.
Once at the cabin we had a blast. We spent Friday night making Vision Boards to hang in our offices. Enjoyed our fake homemade versions of Cafe Rio Salads. Some got in the hot tub and some painted their nails. Then sometime after midnight Talladega Nights was put in the DVD player. I would pass on this show next time, but lots of laughter was heard.

Saturday morning was spent sleeping in since bedtime was sometime after 2 am. We had Cream Cheese French Toast for breakfast. Highly recommend this recipe I found while blurking. And then Shauna tried to enlighten us with some training. I think her goal is to get us to coach our consultants to have better businesses.

The hour and a half trip back down the mountain goes so fast. Though we did have to stop at the Dairy Keen in Heber City for a bathroom break and some good french fries. Can you tell we are all foodies! All and all it was a fabulous 24 hours spent with wonderful women. Thanks gals!

Death to the Powder Blue

The powder blue shutters and door are finally gone after nine months of our ownership. I feel bad that Edna had loved the color so much and we wanted to get rid of it so much. I'm sure Gail H is sad every time she sees us change the outside of the house because I know she misses her good friend. But the powder blue just really wasn't us. Nor was the wagon wheel (sorry!)

We always wanted to paint the townhouse door black, but when the neighbor painted hers we didn't want to seem like we were copying her. So when we moved in we planned on painting the house door and shutters black. When the L's just to the East of us painted their door black last Fall we were a little sad, but decided since our walls are not connected it wouldn't seem so copy cat. We hope they don't mind!

Mark worked hard last week on removing the shutters, spray painting them, and putting them back up. Somehow painting the front door is always my job. So I decided today was a good day to have the door opened all day. My painting arm was out of practice. The scary painting clothes came out and I began to conquer the door. Three coats later most of the blue is gone. We still need to paint the door jam, but I think it is going to be white to match the siding. We think it makes the place distinguished looking!

Dinner Tonight!

I LOVE Cafe Rio and I know many of my friends enjoy this obsession as well. Unfortunately most of my immediate family members do not enjoy Mexican cooking. I love Mexican. I grew up in Southern Calif and had Grandparents that lived in South America on multiple occasions. We used to have enchiladas for the extended Family Christmas dinner. Tonight I put together several recipes I'd collected thanks to one of my hosts, an Enrichment dinner and the web to make our own version of the great Pork Barbacoa Salad. I was shocked when almost everyone at the dinner table enjoyed it (it is hard to please Ashley). Let me share the recipes with you!

Pork Barbacoa
4 lb pork roast (I used a 6 lb roast and you could easily get a bigger one. I put part in the freezer for another night)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp cumin
1-2 Tbsp molasses
2 1/2 cans tomato sauce
1 to 1 1/2 C brown sugar
2 C Dr Pepper
1/4 tsp salt
pepper to taste
Cut fat off pork. Place pork in crock pot. Mix ingredients and pour over pork. Simmer in crock pot until meat pulls apart easily. (6-8 hours) Remove meat from crock pot, shred, skim fat off juice and mix back together and let simmer another hour to let flavors blend.

Cilantro Ranch
1 packet TRADITIONAL Hidden Valley Ranch mix (not BUTTERMILK)
1 c. mayonnaise
1 c. buttermilk
2 tomatillos, remove husk, diced
1/2 bunch of fresh cilantro
1 clove garlic
juice of 1 lime
1 jalapeno (if you like it spicy keep the seeds in it, if you like it mild, just remove the seeds)
Mix all ingredients together in the blender then refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Cilantro Lime Rice
1 c. uncooked rice
1 tsp. butter or margarine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
1 can (15 oz) chicken broth
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tsp. sugar
3 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro
In a saucepan combine rice, butter, garlic, 1 tsp. lime, chicken broth and water. Bring to a boil. Cover and cook on low 15-20 minutes, until rice is tender. Remove from heat. In a small bowl combine lime juice, sugar and cilantro. Pour over hot cooked rice and mix in as you fluff the rice.

I only had sticky rice on hand so I just cooked it about 10 minutes longer.

I also bought the flour tortillas from Costco that you cook at home. I have made flour tortillas from scratch many times, but these ones from Costco are almost as good and save a TON of time. And we had guacamole from Costco in the freezer, they never put enough of it on at Cafe Rio! We had some romaine lettuce, cheese, sour cream and chips to add to everything above.

Everyone loved that they could put what they liked on their tortillas and I loved the whole thing! Enjoy!

Memorial Weekend

We are just wrapping up a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I don't remember a Memorial Weekend that has been this cold and this rainy ever. But we have made the best of it.

Friday started a little crazy ;) but luckily it has calmed down. Saturday morning was spent on the yard working on sprinklers again, but I think they are now all fixed! Then we spent the afternoon in Santaquin with Mark's parents. We headed over to the cemetery to visit the Peterson graves. Unfortunately my kids and I have never met any of these relatives.

I've never been much of a grave visitor. I grew up in La Canada, Calif and our closest relative was 3 hours away. I don't ever remember going to visit graves on any holiday. On the other hand Mark was born and raised in Santaquin and visiting graves was a tradition.

When my father passed away in 1981 my mom had him buried in San Diego near distant relatives and because we were planning to move there. We visited a few times before we ended up moving to Utah instead of San Diego so we still never had a chance to visit graves regularly.


Then in 1993 my mom and I flew to San Diego for the San Diego Temple dedication, rented a U-haul and made arrangements to bring Dad to Utah. The cemetery loaded him in for us and off we went. It was a great trip. Since it had been 12 years since he passed away the emotions weren't so raw. My mom and I stopped at all the shopping outlets along the way. By the time we got to Utah we had lots of shopping bags around the casket. It was a trip I will always remember taking with my mom. We were then able to re-bury Dad in Orem and rededicate his grave.

We decided to visit the Orem graves on Sunday. We cut snowballs from our yard to place on the graves. We were able to visit my Dad's mother's grave, Orla Pritchett (picture to the left with my Dad, myself, and my sister Kim) and my Dad's brother-in-law, David Horlacher which are together underneath the tree with the bench at the North East corner of the cemetery. We then went to my Dad's grave that is at the North part about in the middle at the very top of the hill. He is buried next to my Mom's parents, Jim Jesperson and Doris Bender Jesperson. And just down from them are Grandpa Jesperson's sisters, Lenora Brown and Vera Jesperson. And just to the East by a couple of rows is my cousin, Chase Jesperson. We had a good time telling stories to the kids and wondering if they will remember any of them.

Cute Grandma Jesperson after her stroke

We've also been able to enjoy a few BBQ's with family. Kids enjoyed Grandma Pat's Wii. And we had a great time with neighbors on Saturday night when they invited us over for a campfire in the back yard to roast S'mores, yum!

Crazy Friday

This school year Fridays have become the day of craziness. John would get out of preschool at noon in North Orem at the same time the girls were getting out of their Charter School in South Orem. Throw in Ballroom practices and piano lessons and I would just plan on not getting anything done after about 11:45am on Fridays.

Well just when I thought they could not get crazier this last Friday topped them all.

John graduated from Preschool at the same time the girls had Awards Assembly and we were strongly recommended to be there. So Mark and John went to Preschool Graduation while I headed over to the Charter school. I love these pictures Mark took at the graduation. How could you not love that face! John has attended this great preschool for the past two years and has loved Ms. Brenda and Ms. Angie.

I took the old digital camera to the Charter School and was quickly reminded why we upgraded and let the kids use the old one. Needless to say I didn't get any pictures worth posting. But both girls earned the "Golden Sneaker" award for the activities they did outside of school. Mark and John joined me for the last 20 min at which point we sneaked out of the last 5 minutes and headed over to Costco.

We had about 45 minutes to pick out new frames for Mark's glasses that he has needed for the last two years and to get some shopping done. Didn't think we would squeeze it all in, but we did. Picked up the wonderful Costco Hot Dogs for everyone for lunch and made it back to the school in time to pick the girls up from car pool. At this point Mark headed off to work.

Grandma Pat has created a great distraction in my kids lives. I had informed the kids earlier in the week that Grandma had gone Wii, Wii, Wii all the way home. Which created great squeals when they realized Uncle Brent had convinced Grandma to buy a Wii. Since that moment every time the kids thought we had a spare moment they begged to go to Grandma's. Of course, we hadn't had any spare moments this week. But finally on Friday the kids convinced me to take them over since we had an hour before piano lessons. By the time I got it unboxed and set up the kids only got about 30 minutes in of play, but they loved it.

Off to drop the girls off at Piano Lessons and run home to get the food from Costco put away. Luckily it was a cool and overcast day, so nothing got spoiled while at Grandma's. Back to pick girls up from piano and stop at our friends, The Smarts, to pick up their 3 oldest to come play since their mom was out of town and Dad needed to get some work done.

This was supposed to be my moment to breath for the day. I hadn't really been home since 9:30am and it was now 3pm. John had been a little testy the last day or two, but I thought it was because he wasn't getting to bed on time. But about 30 minutes into play date he breaks down into tears to say his ears hurt. Not one, but both ears. Friday at 3:30pm on the beginning of Memorial Day weekend. Do I go to the Dr or not???? Didn't take me long to decide to make the call and pray they could get me in, but not too soon so I'm not dragging SIX kids to the doctors. Yea, they had a 5 pm appt, great! Kids still got to play and then drop off friends on the way to Dr. And yes, it was confirmed that both ears were infected. Probably from the swimming that occurred earlier in the week.

Tried to pick up prescription from pharmacy on the way home since the doctors now have a fancy system that will fax it for you. The Pharmacist laughed in my face and said kindly, "We just received that, it will be 25 minutes." Thank goodness this was through the drive up window so I hadn't dragged all three kids inside store.

Get home and now I'm so glad I picked up that rotisserie chicken from Costco earlier in the day. At the time I thought I was splurging, but in the end it saved us a trip to Wendys! And how does Costco make their chickens taste so good??? I probably don't want to know the answer because I'm sure it involves extra calories.

After dinner I run back to Rite Aid to pick up prescription while Mark starts to mow the lawn. I still had a few coupons for a $20 gift card with new prescription that expire next week, yea! So I pay for my $15 prescription and get the $20 gift card. I now wander slowly through the store, not really wanting to rush home. Pick up $10 worth of items on the gift card and both items are free after rebate, so I'll be getting the $10 in cash next month. What a bargain!

Get home in time to help Mark finish up the yard and fix the slide on the new swing set. But can you ever finish the yard??? I don't think so . . . a few weeds here, cut back a limb there and next thing you know the green waste trash is full!

After getting the kids in bed we both finally got a moment to crash. Wow, I'm getting tired just remember the day. Glad we have a week to recover before the next Friday, which will be the last for this school year!!!!!