Just looking at this nerves me out.

west elm

Lemonade Stand

Ethan had a some buddies over yesterday and what did they decide to do? Random... a lemonade stand. Ethan provided the table, chairs, cups and quarters and Sam provided the product! They had a great time. I think they each went home with over $3 so that was pretty good for selling each cup for 25 cents. You could hear them screaming "STOP" and "LEMONADE" from two streets over they were so loud. Cohen was angry with me because I kept telling him to stop drinking the lemonade. He was loving it.

D Day 2011

Ethan made it through yet another year of dealing with type 1 diabetes. I love spoiling on his D Day because a day full of spoiling Ethan is way better than a year full of moaning and complaining about having to do blood sugar tests and eating a restricted diet. He really is great about it. In February he will be switching to a new pump which hopefully, will be an easy transition.

In essence it's his day to choose what to do, so of course he chose to go to Chuck E Cheese again to play the arcade game. I refuse to eat there so In N Out was his first choice - because of the shake. I was a horrible mother to forget my camera - the iPhone just doesn't cut it but I guess it's better than nothing! Here's to one more year of health without any emergency room visits!

Read This

This article was interesting - never really thought of "us" this way.

thanks Nat

Summer's here?

January 15th, 2011... what were you doing?

Won't shut up about it!!!

Diane got me this book for Christmas. I was excited because I love using a slow cooker but am kind of sick of just making pulled pork and pot roast. So, I tried the recipe on page 189: Sirloin Teriyaki. Let's just say Eric won't stop talking about it and is now insisting that I try a new recipe from this book every week. So here it is....

2/3 c soy sauce

1/4 c vegetable oil

1/2 c rice wine (mirin)

1/4 c packed light brown sugar

1 t freshly grated ginger

2 cloves garlic, minced

One 2.5-3lb sirloin roast (tri-tip)

2 c beef broth

2 large sweet onions, chopped

2 t cornstarch mixed w/ 2 t water

Chopped green onions for garnish

**the author is a huge fan of the slow cooker liners you can get in the Ziploc aisle of your store. I used one and it was amazing - no clean-up!!

Combine the soy sauce, oil, rice wine, brown sugar, ginger, and garlic in a large zipper bag. Add the sirloin to the bag and marinate in refrigerator for 8-24 hours.

Pour the marinade and the meat into the slow cooker. Add the broth and onions. Cover and cook on high for 4-5 hours.

Remove the meat from the cooker, wrap in foil to allow to rest for 15 minutes. Remove the cooker liner from the slow cooker and pour liquid through a strainer into a sauce pot. Bring to a boil. Taste the sauce and dilute with water if it is too strong.

Add the cornstarch mixture (i started with the recommended teaspoon but ended up using a tablespoon to get it to thicken how I wanted it), bring back to boil.

Served meat with sauce and garnishes. I also had brown rice and broccoli.

Drive-in

Last weekend Eric got this wild hair to take us to the drive-in. I haven't been to a drive-in movie theater since I was a kid. I didn't realize they still existed. Good news...they do, but you have to visit City of Industry, not a town I would ever volunteer to spend time in. The boys were confused about the whole concept but ended up enjoying themselves. The double feature included Tron and Yogi Bear. Tron kept Ethan's attention but Cohen was not that into it. By the time Yogi Bear came on it was 9:30 and Cohen fell asleep 10 minutes in. What was amazing was that we were able to do this in January.

Happy Resolution Making

Etsy

to blog or not to blog....

Wow, I am seriously struggling with this. I started this blog in 2007 because we lived in BFE and needed a way to keep family and friends up to date on our lives in the Midwest. When I moved to California blogging became a chore. I look at my archives and the number of posts have seriously dwindled. However, the amount of times I have had to reference this blog because I couldn't remember when a certain event happened tells me that I have no memory of anything anymore and that blogging might be imperative if I am actually going to remember what happens in my life and the lives of my children. Talk about a really long sentence.



CRAP.

TBD.

A brief summary

January: celebrated new years's in arizona, celebrated 5 years with diabetes, and enjoyed a ton of rain.

February: stayed busy with school and work, hung out with friends in park city, hung out with the sayer's in park city, tried to teach the boys how to ski and lucy turned 2.

March: saw a taping of the ellen show, researched a practice in colorado, ethan lost more teeth, ethan's yankee team made me team mom, and tenderly remembered noah.





















April: had visitors from boise, played tennis and hung at the beach. teachers strike, spring break with cortney at the beach, birthday trip to palm springs, easter sunday.

May: welcomed baby carter to the barnes family, renovated diane's bedroom, went to the zoo, finished up baseball, flew to slc with my family for megan's wedding, and drove the boys up to san fran for a fun weekend with anne and mike.

June: took a quiz for our anniversary - i won, went to dana point on the 12th, anne and mike moved to la, ethan finished up 1st grade, lakers won the nba finals, and we got excited for summer.

July: trip to zion's nation park for the 4th, mom turned 60, tons of pool time, visitors from omaha, jump and shout, and knott's berry farm.

August: blessed baby carter, toy story 3 at el capitan, too much swimming, back to monterey to see two more practices, and ethan started lego camp.

September: best yosemite trip yet, ethan turned 7 and started 2nd grade. cohen started preschool, football season started, and 110 degree weather.

October: cohen's first field trip, molly's baby shower for hank, cohen turned 4, trunk or treat, halloween, pumpkin patch and ethan started on a basketball team.

November: started to prepare for the holidays, said goodbye to grandpa bishop, visitors from omaha and provo, remodeled the kitchen, dad turned 60, utah beat byu, thanksgiving, and made an advent calendar.

December: went to molly's for hank's blessing, got released from young women's, decorated for christmas, made another christmas cd, christmas eve party - eric turned 35, and a trip to park city for new year's with my family.