Starbucks Lemon Pound Cake

Two posts in one day?!

(I must be sitting in a really boring class right now)

In an effort to use more of my lemons, I found this recipe for lemon pound cake on the "internets" (as President Obama would say).

Just like the lady who posted the recipe, I found that in searching for a lemon pound cake recipe, most of them call for lemon extract rather than using real lemons. Well that doesn't help my lemon problem. So this one is claimed to be "Better than Starbucks", and I don't know if I'd go that far, but this is pretty dang good!

Use up the rest of your lemons, make this cake.

Next, I'm going to make this Baked Lemon Risotto. It sure looks delish. I'll let you know if it is!

Gloves in a Bottle

My hands are dry.

Like really dry.

Winters in AZ certainly don't help in the skin moisture department.

For example, Sunday I was in nursery (I work with the 18 month to 3 year olds at church), and I was writing a child's name on his coloring when I noticed blood on his picture. After quick inspection, I found that the blood was from my thumb, and it wasn't from a cut, but a crack from dry skin. How pathetic is that? Granted during nursery I do alcohol sanitize my hands like 20 times over the 2 hours I'm in there, but alcohol aside, my skin is dry anyway.

It was to the point that my hands were always uncomfortable. I'd constantly be applying lotion, but only have to reapply an hour later.

Well, let me tell you about this,

Gloves in a Bottle.

This stuff is amazing!

It's not greasy, doesn't wash off, and it creates a "shield" to protect your hands and keep your natural moisture in. I've been using it for a day and a half, and am already seeing a big difference in my hands! I applied it this morning, and haven't reapplied lotion to my hands yet, and they aren't all dry yet!!

If you are having dry hand issues, go buy some!

(It wasn't at Walgreens or CVS, but I found it at Fry's.)

Ragnar Del Sol 2012

Introducing the

SPARKTACULAR SIX!!!

Six as in instead of 12 members on our Ragnar team, we had six.

So because we had half as many, we ran twice as far.

And slept half as much too.

As if getting less sleep is possible right? Well it is.

We sparkled up our van.

This Ragnar was amazing. And key to that was the girls.

Can you imagine being stuck in a van for two days with people you don't care for?

Luckily we did NOT have that problem.

Let me introduce the players:

Moi

(great picture I know!)

Marie

Carolyn

Breezy

Jasmyn

and Erin

And let me tell you, silliness ensued.

For instance here, I am hiding behind this lush bush to jump out and scare an approaching runner.

front seat sandwich making

And don't ask what I'm doing behind this random play pool we found.

But I might be on my way to find a spot to do the same thing here too.

Let's just say I only hit the porta pottys once over the two days. The rest of the time, I was getting to know nature.

Or what about when our van broke down, and we thought it was all over for us?

We also had road side rolling, and thank goodness for Carolyn, I was there to flag that car away.

Impromptu Justin Bieber dance parties.

I'm adjusting my britches here to make sure I'm always modest.

Right girls???

When we finally finished, we were a little sad it was all over.

It was such a fun bonding experience for six sparktacular ladies.

Who are also some of the toughest girls I know!

D-boy

If I'm not wanting to kill this boy, I'm smothering him with kisses. Seriously, he has been all sorts of naughty and funny and sweet lately. Observe...

Here's my boy helping out at the ward service project.

Of course he was just so excited to use a shovel.

Look at this outfit.

Who doesn't love a little boy with a big puppy belly, and skinny little legs and hips?

(and really really stinky feet!!)

How about the school work he still brings home with pictures on the back?

bombs, tanks, hot lava pit, parachutes-

bombs-

pirate ships and sharks-

And getting to wash this:

(don't look if easily offended)

TWO. WHEEL. BIKE.

Riding a bike has been a sore subject in our house for Gwen. I guess it's hard when you're five, and your barely 3 year old brother decides to ride his bike without training wheels. We were so excited for Drake, riding a two wheel bike as a tiny 3 year old!

Gwen then decided that riding a bike just wasn't for her. If I asked her if she wanted me to help her learn, she'd snap out "NO!" And here's the hard part, she relied too much on her training wheels, and would ride her bike leaning on one side letting the training wheel support her. If the bike tipped to the other side so the other training wheel was supporting her, she'd freak out! So she was done.

So are training wheels a good thing or not? Drake just picked up and rode sans training wheels. Gwen had them, and couldn't learn how to ride her bike.

Anyway, fast forward to last Sunday. Gwen was on the back porch and just decided that she was going to try to ride Drake's little bike, and wouldn't you know, she figured it out! So then she decided to get her bike and take it out front and try to ride. And my Gwenny taught herself how to ride a bike

ALL. BY. HERSELF.

She was so excited, a bike ride to Gigi's was definitely in order.

Look at my cute little bike riders, with helmets of course!!

Oh, and what's that you see on my bike in that picture??

Just my sweet drink holder!!

I love it.

I love my cruiser.

And I love my cute little bike rider!!

coconut veggie curry

The other night the kids and I were headed home, and all I could think of was "let's pick up a pizza on the way home". And I have this silly game that I play with myself, where when I'm tempted to go pick up food I like to go home and see what I can throw together with what I have on hand. Then I justify spending what I saved not buying fast food for my family with something later, like a cute pair of earrings. (sometimes! And other times I actually DO save money ;)

Well I got home and saw that we didn't have much in our house. But I did see that can of coconut milk and new I wanted curry. We are CURRY.FANS in our house. So I started the rice cooker, and started rummaging the cupboards for ingredients. This is the curry I came up with:

1 15 ounce can of coconut milk

2 T Braggs Liquid Amino Acids (use soy sauce if you don't have this)

2 t Curry powder

1 T Agave Nectar

1/2 t Salt

1/4 t Ground Cayenne Pepper

1 T Corn Starch in 1 T Water to make a slurry

Pour coconut milk in a sauce pan, stir in all the other ingredients and bring to a boil over medium heat.

Then after my sauce was made, I stirred in a bunch of frozen veggies (from the Costco stir fry vegetable bag) and let them cook up.

Serve over cooked rice.

Gwen ate three servings. After first declaring that she hates this dinner.

Lemon Rolls

My neighbor Barb is hilarious. She keeps us in the loop on all the neighborhood gossip, even speculative gossip. She is probably the best neighbor ever. When we had roofers working on our house while we were out of town, she went over and grilled them making sure they had permission to be there. Then she called me to make sure they were telling the truth.

Anyway, Saturday she asked me to meet her at another neighbors house because she needed to help with their lemon problem. Their tree had tons of lemons, and they were going to go to waste, so she had a bag for me and helped me pick a ton of lemons. That was sweet. But what am I going to do with all those lemons? Yep, I made lemonade. Then searched out a lemon recipe for something to bake. I found this recipe on the interweb.

They were scrumptious even though I didn't have cream cheese. Doh!! But I improvised and used that fat free sour cream in my fridge (why would I ever buy FF Sour Cream!?) instead, and the frosting was great! Sweet and tangy.

The dough is interesting. I've never used that much butter in a bread. But it rolled out nice and thick, and I love thick rolls for these things. My other gripe is the "filling". IT is so thin, it mostly ran out as I was rolling the rolls, and I wish I sprinkled the dough with the lemon zest and sugar, and then rolled them and drizzzled the finished rolls with lemon juice. Also, I would reduce the ginger, probably by half.

So there you have it. Lemon rolls.

Arizona Centennial (V-Day)

I love AZ.

Tons.

Therefore it's only appropriate that this sweetheart state celebrates its birthday on Valentine's day.

I've been trying to instill a love for AZ in the kids too.

So we've been talking for at least the last couple of months about Arizona's 100th birthday.

They've been super excited for it.

Gwen went with me down to the state capital for the big celebration.

Arizona is the nation's largest provider of copper.

And this copper chopper was commissioned for the celebration.

Gwen got down with the Marines and cranked out 10 pushups to get an "army guy" poster for Drake.

What a sweet sister.

This was a mini USS Arizona.

You know, the ship that was attacked during Pearl Harbor, and you can still see parts of it sticking out of the water there.

Arizona had some key parts in WWII, like the sinking of the USS Arizona with tons of service men on board, and then the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the US communicate with their unbreakable code (the Navajo language).

By far though, Gwen's favorite part was panning for gold.

Here she is with her treasures.

I didn't tell her it's fake though.

Should I?

She thinks she's rich!

Then on the 14th, we had a bunch of people over for Navajo Tacos, cake and ice cream.

I slacked on the pictures, but we had so much fun.

And learned a lot about Arizona too.

Good job on the quiz mom and Tawnya!

How would you do? Can you name the 5 C's of AZ's economy? (sorry Holly, courage is not one of them... but it should be right?)

Or do you know how many Interstate Highways are in AZ and can you name them?

What about AZ's highest elevation?

AZ's nickname?

Oh, and here's a shout out and thank you to Jack and Aubrey for the valentines!

Can you tell the kids are straight out of bed?

Don't hate me because my friends are cool!

Seriously cool. They planned a trip to Hollywood, and FORCED me to go. But really, who wouldn't want to go have a girls weekend and pretend like there are no chores to be done, or cases to be read, or papers to write, or responsibilities to be tended to.

So off to Holly wood we went, like little kids running around the hotel, so excited to have somebody else make our beds. Beds that we get to sleep in on!!

The first thing we did the next day was cruise down to Hollywood to seen all the wonders that Hollywood has to offer. Like a Michael look-a-like.

We couldn't tell if Michael was a boy or a girl, but what ever he was, I love how this Michael didn't stop smiling the whole time. Even hours later when we saw him again, he had his perma-grin on.

Oh and then there were other people who were dressed up and would come up to you and ask if they could take their picture with you, and then they would say that you'd need to tip them for it. So I told these Spidermen that I wasn't going to tip them, and I didn't need a picture. They didn't believe me. But my friend snapped a picture as they were trying to beg money out of me.

1. You can barely make out the Holllywood sign in the back ground.

2. Don't you just love squint into the sun kinds of pictures?

Oh, and when we were walking down Rodeo Drive, we saw a crowd of people gathered around snapping pictures. Was it a celebrity!??! We were so excited to see what it was....

Oh, it was this.

A Bugatti.

A Bugwhatii? That's what I thought.

Apparently this car is worth somewhere between $1.7-2.8 Million dollars. And somebody left it just sitting on the side of the street. Crazy. People were taking all kinds of pictures and even touching it. If I had a car worth that much a) I'd be too scared to drive it, b) I'd be too scared to leave it parked somewhere, c) I'd better have at least 10x that much put away in savings, or that'd be just plain stupid. Well, it's just plain stupid anyway.

Oh, and of course the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

That's where Pretty Woman was filmed.

We had several Pretty Woman moments there...

like fixing our boots on the seat in the elevator.

Oh, and let's talk about the calories consumed over this weekend.

We decided early on that calories didn't count on Saturday and Sunday, and we took advantage of that!

But it's not a good vacation if you don't come home a few pounds heavier, right??

Oh, and this was the lone celebrity spotting we had.
It's Lisa Leslie and her husband. They were adorable!

My hurryandgetyourphoneoutandunlockitandturnonyourcamera pictures have a lot to be desired.

We also tried to soak up so sun at Santa Monica.

And we had so much fun people watching.

People watching is the most fun when you have dark glasses on so you can stare, and phones so you can text and maybe sneak a crazy picture. I won't post the picture of the crazy guy with super short shorts who happened to be everywhere we went, incase he's somebody's uncle.

And then, the weekend had to end.

The car ride home was spent talking about dreams (like winning the HGTV dream home), embarrassments, fears, laughing, and all around good girl bonding.

Thanks to my amazing friends for whisking me away for a much needed respite.

But I was super excited to come home and hug my babies.

And look what they made.

Thanks babies!!

xoxo