Monday, April 26, 2010

Mother's Day ideas

Today at work as I reviewed the calendar and holidays with K-2 students . . . preparing to change the month to May this coming weekend I got some pretty cute responses to Mother's Day gift ideas. We go over the day of the week, the month and upcoming holidays. When asked what students were planning on doing or giving their mothers I got the following responses:

* I'm going to get a giant jumping house in our back yard so she can jump in it, but she can't be too crazy because she has a baby in her belly again.

* I'm going to give my aunt a Sponge Bob puzzle. I got a set of 6 Sponge Bob puzzles and they are 100 pieces! That's too many for me. I don't like them.

* (this kid with total enthusiasm, he could not WAIT to answer) I'm taking my mom to see Iron Man II!! It comes out on May 7th.

* I'm going to buy her dinner, chocolate, and candy.

* I'm going to make my mom a painting.

* (little girl's response) I'm going to rub my mom's feet. (boy's response) That's disgusting. Feet stink! (girl's response) MY mom's feet are clean.

* (one of my personal favorites) I'm getting my mom a plasma TV!! (my response) Wow, that's an expensive gift! (boy's response) I have 30 bucks!! (Good luck financing that!)

* I'm going to build my mom a lego city . . . (think's about it) a GIRLY lego city!

* I'm going to give my mom a snail. We have snails all over our sidewalk. (what every mom always wanted)

* I'm going to give my mom a manicure. (Yes, these are southern CA children some of whom have grown up celebrating their birthdays at all day spas as 6 & 7 year olds)

To all the mom's out there reading this, Happy Mother's Day! I'm looking forward to celebrating Mother's Day this year with my mom and Ben's mom in LA! They will both be here that weekend for Ben's graduation from seminary. Yeah! :)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

apple pie!


french apple pie success!


the day after

Being a wife has been a blast to say the least. One of the things I've enjoyed most is expanding my cooking and baking repertoire, particularly baking I love to bake. This past fall I attempted a home made french apple pie, a recipe I got years ago from Joani Curtis. All went well except that I covered the top with foil a little late in the game and the top burned. I attempted my second french apple pie this past week for Ben's birthday and it turned out perfect! Yeah! We had our friends the Horton's over Friday for dinner and desert and it was a hit! Thanks Joani!! I'll blog some more of Ben's birthday later this week too. :)

Reese Mehringer


Mama & her girl


Reese Mehringer



Ashley and I have known each other for a long time. I used to actually babysit her and her three younger sisters in Alaska and ended up being Diana's (a younger sister) youth leader for 5 years. Now Ben and I are neighbors with Matt and Ashley, small world! Matt and Ashley had their first this past March, little Reese. We are glad she is here after a 40+ hour labor! You're a trooper Ash!

Friday, April 09, 2010

Mammoth!


The Hortons


Clive and his Pa trying out his new hunting hat


Clive or as I call him "Little Bubba" (Bart and Amy's little man)


cards and John Wayne


Ben and me upstairs in our loft bedroom, super cute and cozy


Schat's Bakery . . . AMAZING bread!


Bart and Ben on the way out of Mammoth

This past week was Ben's and my spring break. We had the opportunity to spend the first three days/nights of it up in Mammoth with our friends Bart and Amy Horton staying at another friend's cabin there. Amy's brother Jesse was in town and got to come with us too. We had a blast! It was super relaxing, super snowy, and super beautiful! The perfect break from big city life.

We played lots of spades and watched two or three John Wayne classics (thanks mom and dad for the Christmas gift) along with seeing some of the sites. For those who don't know Mammoth is a huge ski resort (20+ chair lifts) on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It's right around 8,000 feet elevation and we were feeling it walking up and down stairs and hills. The had 6-7 feet of snow build up when we got there and the night before we left is snowed 3 more feet delaying our drive home a few hours. The guys ended up having to take a shuttle bus in to town to get chains for our cars b/c it was too slippery to move. Rather humorous that two Alaskans were so unprepared for snow.

Ben and I were going to go from their to Yosemite just the two of us after that for a couple more nights but 4 highways connecting Mammoth to Yosemite were closed for the winter which would have made a two hour drive over a mountain range an 8.5 hour drive going south almost all the way back to our apartment or north as far as Lake Tahoe and back down. We opted to forgo Yosemite as much as we wanted to see it b/c the snow was coming down so hard and Yosemite reported having just as much meaning the interstate may have closed as well. We'll have to make the trek back down sometime in the future to explore Yosemite.