Makeup Party

Our Cute Young Womens Group

We had a short lesson on modest make up and then
began to play with my stage make up. I showed the girls how to do Geisha makeup like I did when I was in the King and I and I showed them how fun fake eyelashes are :)

Our Geisha Megan and Katie our newest member

Teaching rag curls :)

Brittany with Rag curls with 20's bangs

Sierra

Cuta Alyssa with funky gold eyelashes and curly hair

Marla and Payton. Like mother, like daughter

Megan

Smores and Hotdogs for FHE

Sushi Making

In the last few years, I have developed a love for sushi. I had raw fish before in Mexico and Chile, fish so called "cooked" with lemon but still slimy and odd textured. I went with Laura to my first suchi bar and LOVED it. My favorite was the las vegas roll, the deep fried shrimpy goodness that is tempura. Since then we have discovered several sushi restauraunts that serve good sushi including an all you can eat sushi buffet in Vegas and even some decent california type rolls from Wallmart. We even found a good restaurant here in Martinsville that have sushi deals for lunch and our whole family can have sushi for $24. Jack loves it because they do hibachi cooking and light onion volcanoes and cook his food in front of us. Charlie loves sushi too, he got his first exposure when he was just a few months old.

We had BYC at our house and following tradition wanted to make some dinner/ appetizers for all the kids in the branch. Laura decided that we needed to make sushi. Our branch pres warned us that these are southern kids who just like biscuits and gravy and may not eat anything different, especially if it's not deep fried. I thought maybe they wouldn't ask us to host it again if we traumatized the teenagers with sushi rolls. Thanks to Laura who made a special trip to Danville, we got all the ingredients and Jack had lots of fun trying to roll them up. It actually is alot harder than it looks, sometimes the seaweed wraps break or we would try and fill them to full and then we couldn't get them to seal. It took us a few hours to make 3 or 4 cookies sheets full of sushi-type rolls (We didn't use raw fish, just chicken, crab, cheese, ham and even some hot dog bits.) Although we were nervous, all the teenagers tried them and most of them liked them alot! Most of them went back for seconds... I think a few eyes were opened to the goodness that is sushi tonight.

Robby's Latest Adventure

INSPIRE

Robby and Alissa opened a Food Cart Business where they are making organic juice and raw pies. These pictures are from christmas time and we tried some of their yummy pies. Instead of using eggs sugar or oil, they use coconut milk and chop up nuts to squeeze the oil out and then they all stick together just like a regular pie only healthier because non of the ingredients have lost their nutritional value. We tried a chocolate and a key lime pie that was delicious!

Here is the approximate recipe if you'd like to try it.

Key Lime Pie
Tart and sweet at the same time, it really hits the spot!
Makes one 9" pie, serving 8-10

Crust Ingredients:
3 C fine almond flour*
4-5 fresh medjool dates
2 T coconut oil
1/2 tsp. sea salt

Filling Ingredients:
2 small ripe avocados
1 banana
1 1/4 C juice from key limes (regular limes will also work fine)
1/2 C mango chunks
1/2 C agave nectar
1/3 C coconut cream concentrate or oil
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Preparation:
To make crust, place almond flour, dates, coconut oil, and sea salt in a food processor and blend until it balls up. Firmly press crust into pie pan and set aside.

To make the filling, process all filling ingredients in a high-powered blender such as a VitaMix until smooth and fluid. Pour into pie shell and freeze about 4-6 hours or longer. I like to serve this topped with a little shredded coconut and mango chunks or slices.
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*Almond Flour is made when you grind almonds for making almond milk. Almond pulp is what is left over. After the grinding process, strain it as much as possible and dry it in your dehydrator. It is kept best in the freezer in an air-tight bag or container.

If you do not wish to go through this process, you are certainly welcome to just use ground raw almonds, but you won't get the same fine texture on the crust. I learned that from these guys. Isn't that cool you can make flour from almonds? While Robby is in India, Alissa is holding down the fort literally and starting an awesome business.

Good Luck Robby and Lis in your New Venture!!

Yellow Cars

(see if you can spot the camoflauged bumble bee- the bees here are HUGE)

I was warned that in the East, there is a month or two where everyone's cars turn yellow with pollen and you can wash and wash your car, but within i few minutes it will be yellow again. This morning, we came out to yellow pollen dust all over our cars. Spring Has Arrived! I love spring and have really enjoyed watching everything bloom. I planted some purple potatoes 2 weeks ago and they are already high enough that I had to cover them up again. We had the most beautiful fields of daffodills. The parking medians are chocked full of daffodills and everything is just yellow and happy. We have tulips that are looking great and bright pink bushes in the yard that I don't even know what they are called. It's been 80-90 degrees and humid. Our swamp coolers have been running and our fans, but it is still hot. We are thinking we may have to find a new place with central air, because it's only April and we are dying! The flower petals at the church were magical and fell on us like snow in between conference sessions. I love spring and the renewal and hope it brings. Life just seems better in the spring. (I do feel a little guilty about posting this because of my family back in Utah who had to hunt Easter Eggs in the snow :( I hope spring makes it that way next.)

After almost 30 years, I have finally received my pay back

My friend Alison recently asked if Charlie has been painting any walls blue, the answer... not exactly.


My Mom likes to tell stories and one of her favorites is the time they were camping at the Greys in the tent trailor and on one of the first days camping, she laid us kids down for a nap. (It might have been just me because I was very young.) When she came to get me I had taken my poopy diaper and painted the trailor. She said she was so dismayed at the thought of cleaning up that mess with no hot water, in the wilderness, in the heat of the first week of August and just decided to pack up and go home and that was the end of the trip! She has often reminded me of this sacrifice and told me just to wait, that I'd get mine...


Today I took a 2 hour break to watch the boys while Adam had to take a test. Charlie was in bed and Jack was finishing a movie. Soon after I arrived, I heard Charlie cry and went upstairs to this....
It was dry and crusty and nasty! Jack did this when he was little, but I think Charlie is more artistic and thorough. It was on every single bar, on the floor, in his hair, all over his face. I stopped to document as the blogger in me demanded, I quickly reviewed my budget to determine if I could justify just chucking it out and moving Charlie to his big boy bed. After all, the next baby (especially if it's a girl) doesn't want to deal with crappy hand-me-downs. :) There was a dry diaper flung across the room so he must have done his artwork and then fell asleep. So gross! Today was our first day with temperatures in the 90s so the smell was bad!! It took some time to clean up and Charlie enjoyed an extra long shower but I was definately glad that I had a shower and wasn't stuck camping in the middle of nowhere. This is the 4th accident in the last 48 hours, I think I deserve a raise!

Good Friday Easter Fun

I really missed Grandma B's Easter Egg Hunt this year. Today is Good Friday and we usually dye 13 dozen eggs at Grandma B's and make hot-cross buns. We attempted to dye 18 eggs but I couldn't find the vinegar so we couldn't get them very dark and we probably ate more than we finished. Charlie preferred eating them with the shells on (he is a little strange sometimes). We did a small hunt with the branch primary and it was quite fun. Jack gets very excited about the hunt and very nervous if it seems like all the other kids are getting all the eggs. We went to a hunt last week and just hopped out of the car and jack ran around but just as he got to the eggs, the other kids scooped them all up and he didn't get any. Laura says now he has post traumatic egg hunt syndrome. Any advice?? Maybe we just need to try again next year...