Knee News

Have any of you ever had your hard drive crash? If not, you are MISSING out!! It's the BEST! Now, to the post at hand:

So there Jon was, flying down the mountain. Wind whipping his hair, snow blowing in his face as he braces for a totally rad jump. He squats down, getting ready for it and as he reaches it and straightens up, he gets a tear in his miniscus! OK, he might have been on the Wii board doing the ski jump, BUT he did get a tear and there was a flap that needed to be removed. What is a miniscus you ask? It's a little "pad" in your knee to keep the bones from hitting each other. Here is a visual anatomy lesson:

He had the surgery on the 19th down town. Here he is waiting at the Surgical Center:

He never stops working! OK, he's really talking to the kids. Doesn't he look cute in the gown?

To give you peace of mind about the upcoming procedure, you get to write "YES" on the right limb. Then for even more comfort, you AND the Dr. get to sign it - just to make sure. Doesn't he have cute knees?

While Jon was under the knife, I was eating a chocolate drizzled cherry croissant from Au Bon Pain and looking at the view. This is looking at the zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Butterfly Terrarium:

I wonder if Jon even remembers me taking this picture. He was a little groggy.

The recovery has been great. He went to Physical Therapy (or as he keeps saying Rehab, which makes a better story) and they said he is doing better than they thought he would. He has almost the same range and motion as a normal knee and there's less pain than before, so things are good!

Our Girls Getaway

MWAA HHAA HHAAA!! I love a good surprise, and I've had one for about a month now that I had to keep from my mom because . . . Thursday night I flew up "home" to Utah and my sisters and I kidnapped my mom for her 60th birthday. I had planned on having my camera with me to capture her surprise when she saw me and of course I forgot it, but this is almost as good:

We went to my sisters in-laws Condo in Midway and I got to be there for the first snow of the year. Cold weather isn't too bad if you have the right clothes for it, which I did this time!! This is my mom and me. I hope I look that good at 60!! All my sisters are about 6 inches taller than me, but my mom and I are almost the same, but see mom??? The proof is here, I AM taller than you!!

For her birthday dinner we went to the Blue Boar Inn and even though I wasn't very hungry after having gorged myself on Indian food for lunch, still had a delicious soup and salad here. Doesn't it look so inviting?!?

The sisters. We were always around this fireplace - chatting, eating, chatting, snacking, talking about all our favorite show - The Biggest Loser, chatting some more etc. We needed another night for all our chatting.

The sisters with mom.

We played a LOT of games while we chatted . . . and snacked, and talked about the Biggest Loser . . . right across from the fireplace.

We also went shopping at the Park City outlets and it was about 20 degrees, snowing and blowing, but really pretty.

It was so much fun and my only complaint was that it was too short! I love you guys and Happy Birthday Mom!!

Yay!

I can't wait for this weekend. I'll be posting pictures next week. . .

Pumpkin Streusel Squares

(Photo from Allrecipes)

Crust:

1 c. flour

1/2 c. rolled oats

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. butter

Filling:

2 c. pumpkin

12 oz milk (evaporated)

2 eggs

1/2 c. Turbinado (Raw Sugar)

1/4 c. brown sugar

2 1/4 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice

Topping:

1/2 c. chopped pecans

1/2 c. brown sugar

2 Tbsp. Butter

Handful Rolled Oats

2 - 3 Spoonfuls flour

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x13 pan.

Cut crust ing. together and lightly press into pan. Bake 15 min. until golden brown.

Blend filling ing. and pour over crust. Bake for 30 min. or until firm.

Mix topping ing. and sprinkle on pumpkin and bake 15 more min.

GO MAKE THEM!! So yummy - so easy. Delish.

Halloween

We had a new and unusual Halloween this year. I have been a little "disenchanted" with our Halloweens here. The last 2 years we've gone trick-or-treating, we have had neighborhood crazies attach themselves to our little party for the whole night and I just did not want to deal with that this year. I made a bold plea that we stay home, have our own little Halloween party and watch a movie etc. The kids thought it was a great idea. Jon asked if they realized that meant no trick-or-treating and I said I'm sure they did. I got "the eye" from him so I asked the kids if they realized what I meant and they said yes. I almost wanted to feel their foreheads to make sure they were ok. We started with carving Jack-o-Lanterns. Yes, most people do that at the beginning of October, but things start to rot after about a day outside here, so we did it that night. We had our usual meal of Mummy Dogs and Ghost Potatoes . . .

(Table by Grace. These were the "savory" part of the meal)

Jon got out the dremel tools and the fun began. . .

The kids and I were done in about 1/2 an hour but Jon took about 2. The final result:

The rest of night didn't include many pictures. Who wants to see us sitting and watching King Kong (the 70's version - wouldn't recommend it) and munching. Collin wanted to hand out the candy and dressed in an "80's" outfit. The door rang 5 times. FIVE people!! See my disenchantment? Anyway, we had a fun night and the kids keep saying how fun it was (?) so I guess it was a success. We've been enjoying our pumpkins in Pumpkin Choc. Chip bread too. YUM! I love fall food.

The Week in Review

I know it's not the end of the week yet, but it's been a long, rainy one and am looking forward to next. Or maybe I have just eaten too many cat cookies and it's catching up to me. Either way, this is the scene yesterday while the kids were working. The males and females in our house switch roles and always have. Collin is the dresser - up in our house and couldn't wait for our Fall Festival last night. He could have spent hours at the store choosing which costume and accessories to get. Grace on the other hand, didn't want a costume this year.

Me and Sister Shoener, representing the RS Presidency at the Witches Brew last night. I forgot to buy a hat, and that's a decoration behind me. Since I was here the whole night and Jon had the camera, we have no pictures of the kids dressed up.

Yesterday Grace and I made our new traditional Cat Cookies. When we were picking up the Candy Corn for the eyes, I saw they had caramel flavored, so we got those and it made them extra delish. (I also made some "turtle" cookies with 2 pecan halves and 2 caramel candy corns pressed into the top - yum.) Grace is getting to be a professional with these cookies!

Our little "school" Halloween Party.

Gearing up for the festivities in a couple of nights. We are trying something new this year and hope it's as good as I want it to be. Have a great weekend!! Don't eat too much candy!!

Collins new Addition

New glasses . . . same ol' boy. Can't get him to sit still if there are insects flying outside!!

Pink Necks

So, what do you do on a Saturday afternoon if you're a good Texan???? Head to the shootin' range, that's what!! I loved the cross street names at the range:

Gracie was a little nervous and said, "I only want to shoot once or twice", unlike Jon, who turned into a 7 year old!!

Collin shootin' the .22. These two are all boy.

Midgie Moodles ended up loving the gun and we couldn't keep her away!

This is my shoulder getting blown out of it's socket by the . . . . well, the BIG shotgun (sorry Jon, I can't remember what it is!!). My arm hurt for days. Needless to say, we need a recoil pad.

We headed out to the sticks later to check out some MORE guns where we stuck out like a a sore thumb. I wish I had taken a picture of our little Mini stuck in between all the huge Pick-ups in the parking lot, but we were already getting so many weird looks, I decided not to bring anymore attention to ourselves.

Jons candy store. I had NO idea he liked guns so much. I also couldn't believe how many guns there were here. This is only ONE of the walls. I had to keep wiping the drool off Jons shirt. I also loved the misspelled "y'all". I never knew having an English Professor for a dad and getting corrected on my speech growing up would make life so much more interesting later in life!

Refer to the statement above about misspelling fun. This place is "country cookin' at it's best". They even say it on their sign, so it must be true! Let's just say that Jon had liver and onions and leave it at that. They are famous for throwing fresh, hot rolls to you (those were delish!).

But I was excited to finally get to taste some real, southern Fried Green Tomatoes!! They, along with fried okra, were our complimentary appetizer. They were really yummy and I could tell would be GREAT if cooked a little differently.

We're going campin' this weekend to McKinney Falls out by Austin. We've never been there before, so we're excited. Have a GREAT weekend. And Ya'll come back!

Recent Randoms

I went to our local cannery and canned 11 cases of all different foods. When you don't have a friend with you and you're alone in the room, you have to entertain yourself some how. How often do you get to wear hair nets???

I made some delish strawberry jam out of freeze-dried strawberries . . .

Collin is taking a cake decorating class at our homeschool Co-op and while practicing, showed Grace the ropes . . .

The finished cake. . .

Dallas/Ft. Worth

We've had a few recent adventures that I thought I'd share. Jon wanted to go to a Tradeshow up in Fort Worth and we had never been up there, so we decided to tag along. It was fun to watch the scenery change from pine trees to other unknown types and we saw REAL cotton growing - we didn't realize what it was till it was too late to get out the camera. But we did get a picture of this town . . .

We stopped for gas and ta DA! We came across the Collin Street Bakery!!

With a name like that, it MUST be good!

We got some sandwiches on Pecan bread that were really good!

Jons Tradeshow happened to be right next to the Fort Worth Water Gardens, thankfully for us because I'll take this opportunity to say, I want to know WHO coined the term "Dallas/Ft. Worth area"!! That is like saying the Salt Lake/Provo area - it's about the same distance away! I had Googled Dallas and had a list of things for us to do while Jon was busy but when we found out how far away they were, I had to scrap my plans.

The Water Garden ended up being really pretty

There were different areas in a maze of concrete.

But the BEST was the Active Area. It sounded like you were under a roaring waterfall and you could "hike" down in it etc.

Even though I had to scrap most of my plans, there was one that Jon (bless this man) would not let me give up. We drove the 45 minutes back to Dallas through bad traffic to go here. . . Recognize it anyone?

Oh yeah. SPRINKLES!!! Their strawberry cupcakes are "the bomb" (Collins new favorite phrase), although they do have to come in second to the Nutella in my opinion. MMMmmmmmmm.

That's it for now folks. I gotta go wipe the drool from my mouth.