Inspired by Spring

Lipazzaner Stallions

Yep, I saw the "world famous" Lipazzaner Stallions this week, and yes they were very cool.

Random Pictures From the Weekend

As close as it gets?

So the two cats don't get along all that well. It's pretty amusing to watch. They keep their boundaries...however, slowly but surely their "comfortable distance" is shrinking...?

Their first picture together!

It's April 16th!!!

The view outside my window this morning...isn't there some kind of rule about it NOT snowing after Easter? Sheesh! There's more snow today than there was on Christmas morning!

Easter Reflection

"Above all, we proclaim our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. All that we are—all that we will ever be—we owe to Him. While we gaze in awe at His majesty, He does not ask us to stay our distance but bids us to come unto Him. “I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him” (Revelation 3:20).
His words echo through the centuries:
“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
“And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26).

Brothers and sisters, He lives. He is resurrected.He guides His holy work upon the earth. His prophet is President Thomas S. Monson. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

--Elder Neil L. Anderson

I love my Savior and I am grateful for the atonement and His triumph over death. He has invited everyone to come unto Him and promised to never leave us comfortless. This Easter as I have reflected on the blessings in my life I am grateful for His light and love which help me to strive each day to become more like Him.

Happy Easter!

Abram, Airie, Baron and the kids came over and we had a fun afternoon with Hawaiian Haystacks, Totoro, shattered glass(story to come;), Easter baskets and of course egg dying and hunting. It was a beautiful day, the best this week. Here are some pictures we took of the day! (pictured above: Galveston with Easter basket)

Leslie and Brie checking out the kite and other Easter basket goodies.

A new plant? ...no this was dessert!! With pudding and cookie crumbles!

Taking the party outside to dye some eggs!

Using stickers to decorate!

The finished product!

The hunt is on.

All done.

Would you like a little glass with your lunch?

We had a small incident today during lunch. Luckily no one was hurt, although Abram was right in the line of fire. After we all had our food and were in the living room watching Totoro, Abram went back into the kitchen for seconds...and all of a sudden shattered glass was everywhere. It took us a few minutes to we had a small glass pan placed inside of a large glass pan, and that larger pan was on top of a burner that had been left on low from heating the gravy. Apparently this combination of items was a bad idea and the bottom glass pan exploded and hot glass flew everywhere. Miraculously Abram didn't get touched at all with any glass which was really good. We got all the glass cleaned up fast so it would melt the floor. In the end the only casualty was one burn spot on our linoleum. Now we can just look back and laugh!

Fund Raising, Festival of Colors and Ratty Ranch

This weekend was a super busy one for me. We had a big fund raising "ask event" for the center that I work at. "The Investment of a Lifetime" breakfast was an event to educate the community about our center and give people the opportunity to get involved. For anyone that doesn't know I work at the Famliy Support & Treatment center, where our primary focus is the prevention and treatment of child abuse.

Our breakfast was really fun but took quite a bit of preparing. There was a lot to the event but to simplify the explaining let's just say there were tons of stuffed toys, pin wheels, clients art, musical numbers, slide shows etc. Leslie and I went on Friday night to help set up and then after it was over there was all the awesome clean up. Over all it was a really positive experience.

Later that day I went to the festival of Colors. It was in Spanish Fork at the Hare Krishna temple. It was lots of fun! Tons of people, colored chalk, good food, entertainment etc. Here are some pictures of the event:

The Temple

Mantra Chanting

"The throwing of colors"


I got me some color.

The food was really good, authentic vegetarian Indian Food

Me, Michael, Tyler, Rodney, Leslie and David (We had a good time)


Of course we stopped by and said hi to the llamas.

On the way home from the festival we stopped by Airie and Abram's place to check out the newly completed "Moochies Manor". What a fun place for the Ratties! All I can say is that no one can give me a hard time about "spoiling" Maki anymore ;) I snapped this picture of Moochie lounging.

What a Saturday! Fun, fun fun!

Kaya

So I haven't blogged about this yet because I didn't want to seem like a crazy cat lady...So We found a half starved cat over a month ago. We took her in and we have been trying to find her a good home ever since. We named her Kaya (a souix indian name) and she is the sweetest cat, very cuddly and well behaved. She's a really small cat too, well I guess compared to Maki just about any cat would be small ;) Anyway we're doing our best not to get attached and hope to find her a good home soon.

Asian Food Night

My friend Sara served her mission in Korea and we talk about the wonders of Asian culture and the food all the time. Recently while at my house she noticed that I had some Kimchi in the fridge, she asked if it was any good. I answered that it was but that is was going bad. She got really excited about this and stated that in a few weeks when it was really fermented she would make me Kimchi Soup. M'oh boy.

So the day came and we decided to make it at her house since it apparently sinks the house up a lot and her place is bigger than mine(more space to disperse the stink). I brought my "bad" kimchi and some sticky rice and Sara made the soup along with some egg fried squash and giyoza.

To make kimchi soup you do very little...you put the kimchi in a pot, add water, onion, garlic and then some type of protein if you wish...something like tofu, beef, shrimp...we added canned tuna. Then you just let it cook down until a lot of the water is gone.

Sara was right, it did have a very distinct smell, and since I'm not used to eating so much kimchi all at once, at first the taste took some getting used to as well. But in the end I really liked it. I think prehaps I would like it better with tofu though...I've never been a huge canned tuna fan.

In the end we had a lot of fun and decided to make "Asain food night" a monthly thing, since neither of us ever make Asian food anymore. Next time will be my turn...umm I wonder what I should make? Fuji rice, okonomiaki, mabodofu...etc.

Fun on a Friday Morning