Kelly Times Two

Lindsey drove to the airport last night for the first time with me in the back seat to pick up her BFF, Mindi, from Colorado. Mindi will be here for a week. She came out last year to attend Especially for Youth in San Antonio with Lindsey. This week will be purely a social visit. They invited Todd and Saxon over last night to play Rock Band and I joined them for a while and it was a blast. It's going to be a fun week with Mindi here!

We now have stairs to get down to the ground of our back yard! Yesterday a guy named Bubba spent twelve hours here measuring, sawing, hammering to git 'er done before we finish the pool. Kelly asked me if his name really was Bubba. It's Anthony, but he goes by Bubba. Bubba built two wide steps so I no longer have to use the ladder (or jump) to get to my wood deck. To celebrate, I cooked pork chops this afternoon from my grill on the deck. I negotiated a $200 credit from Cody Pools for these two particular steps since they refused to have anything to do with the wood, but it should have been included. If I had known that, I would have hired Bubba two months ago to resolve this. It's all good now, so I'm grateful. He did a great job matching our existing deck. We actually recycled the black pickets (since being green means you're supposed to flaunt it, so here I go) from our former deck that got demolished and taken out for the spa and Sundeck. It saved us about $1...

First, check out our new kitchen sink, faucet and garbage disposal that Kelly and his dad installed recently. I taught my kids how to make a lattice top pie yesterday. Here's Lindsey demonstrating the weave while I take pictures. You cut the strips of dough, then place several on top of the pie going the same direction. You then start in the middle to place one strip at a time, lifting back each piece that it crosses to alternate. These are such fun pies to make and they look artistic. As you can see, the piece that Lindsey is putting on, she will start in the center, then fold back half of the strip to lift the other piece over it and repeat that process. We used a pastry wheel to cut the pie dough with a zigzag edge. If you don't have one, a pizza cutter will work just as well. After you finish creating the lattice design, you pinch the edges together and form a pretty crust, then sprinkle the top with sugar, then bake it. Christopher feels like he just finished art c...

Yes, I pretty much love this man. I have the most huge smile just thinking about him and what a sweetheart he is. I can't believe how crazy in love with him I am, still. Our lives together haven't always been easy, but I'm grateful we've kept working at it and have built what we have now as a couple and a family. He is so easy to be married to, and such an excellent husband and dad. Kelly, happy birthday to you! To celebrate tonight, Kelly and the kids and I will have a family favorite dinner that his mom makes, smothered burritos with a pork green chili sauce, and cherry pie ala mode, instead of birthday cake. That's what I'll be whipping up today, in between trying to finish reading New Moon while he's at work. Kelly's office has officially relocated out of the ADI building over the weekend in Riverplace to the new space in Bridgepoint. He'll be working today, but if you want to call him or email him, or leave a comment for him here, I...

My sister, Julie, woke up to this news about our brother's son in the Deseret (used to be called-Morning-) News today. Thank goodness my nephew made it out of this hiking ordeal safely. My poor brother must have been worried all night long. We are all grateful that Taylor is safe.

About nine days ago, I added a counter on my blog. I know that a lot of people look at my blog, but have never kept track of how many. So Kelly added it for me and I had him start it off at 5,000, knowing that in the past 24 months when my blog began, I've easily had that many lurkers and actual people who make comments. In just nine days, my counter is already up past 6,000, so I guess I was getting some traffic here and there. I feel validated and want to say thank you! Another new icon you might have noticed is a little printer icon next to the comments place, where you can print out any particular post. It's an HP printer thing, and I also added it to Heidi's recipe blog (with her consent) to be able to print out specific posts. I am in the process of formatting my blog to print it into a book through blurb.com and it's been so enjoyable to look over the comments (as I'm editing it for line spacing, how much to put on each page, and so forth) reading the l...

3 JOYS --Doing something fun together with my family, like playing Rock Band last night --Sending someone a homemade card --Fresh flowers, I can't get enough of them. I love any color, any variety, tiny bouquets, large ones 3 FEARS --Gaining more weight (gosh, I looked pretty good 35 pounds ago!) --Having something scary, bad, or awful happen to my children --Loss of communication with family or friends 3 GOALS --Genealogy --Swim like a fish when my pool gets done and try to swim off some poundage --Do better at putting away laundry. It drives me nuts when I wash something, then never put it in the dryer, then a couple days later have to rewash it because it's smelly. Forget plastic bags...I could conserve water by not doing this as much. 3 CURRENT OBSESSION/COLLECTIONS --New Moon. I just started reading it today, and have done nothing else. --My swimming pool. Sorry for blogging about it so much. I'm beyond anxious to have it completed as it's going to be the answe...

Biscuits & Gravy Two cans Pilsbury Grands Buttermilk Biscuits 1 lb. ground breakfast sausage 2/3 cups flour 4 1/2 cups milk salt & pepper Bake biscuits according to package instructions. After placing them in oven, start the gravy. Put meat in large skillet on medium high heat. Chop up the meat into small pieces. Keep chopping meat as it cooks and browns. Brown the sausage completely. Add flour slowly, sprinkling it over all the sausage, then cooking it into the sausage until it's brown again. Start to add milk slowly. Switch tools to a gravy stirring type, stir slowly and turn down heat to medium. Keep stirring until the gravy thickens. Add salt and pepper if needed. Split a biscuit in half, brown side up, then add gravy and enjoy! I got this hearty, down-home recipe from my sweet brother-in-law, Jimmy, in Oklahoma.

I've actually taken plenty of pictures of the pool and the progress that is being made, but I don't feel like posting much, so here's a good look at the steps that got done last week. A clean up crew filled up truckloads of construction debris and was hauled off today. The fence that was taken out got put back, and some fill dirt was spread over all the pipes and the yard. On Monday, the crew for the Sun Deck surface will get started on that, and then we'll be ready for plaster and filling the pool with water. Cross your fingers that this process will be done by next week--mine are already crossed.

Kelly's parents came to visit us for a week and we had a lovely time doing fun touristy things with them. They arrived on the last day of school, so after Christopher and I picked them up from the airport, we picked up Lindsey from school, then grabbed a quick bite to eat at Mesa Rosa, then Lindsey headed off to one of the many parties she attended that week. That evening, we met Kelly after work, then went downtown to go on a bat tour on Ladybird Lake (formerly and more popularly known as Town Lake) to watch the 750,000 pregnant female Mexican free-tail bats come out from beneath the Congress bridge for their own dinner. Later in the season, the bat population doubles (since they're all expecting) to make it 1.5 million, the largest urban bat colony in North America. It was a beautiful night and the tour was interesting, packed with details about Austin, some true, some partly true, by Captain Kasey to make it sound good. The next morning, Lindsey and I whipped up a good ol...