What do you get???

So....What do you get when you have lots of these....

...one of these....

...and one of these...???
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Applesauce and...

...fruit leather!!!!

A BIG thanks to all those who helped me get to this point in my life! I'd like to thank my Aunt LaDean for her willingness to give up so many of her apples for us and for letting us borrow her Victorian Strainer. We would have never accomplished this without her! I'd like to thank my brother, Ryan, and my Mom--my mom for giving Ryan the dehydrator to make jerky with, and Ryan for leaving it here at our house...it has helped us so much! (tear, :*-/). I'd also like to thank my co-worker, Teresa, who gave us the idea, after our third attempt, to use parchment paper to put the applesauce on before we dried it, instead of just slapping it on to the trays (who'd have thought!). And my husband, Kenny, for his support through this grueling process, and for being there to pick me up after three attempts of making leather that just stuck to the trays! Thank you all for all of your support! (Sniffle)

My Saturday at home...

I had a Saturday at home today, something I don't get very often. So what did I do?

1. Friday night Kenny and I stayed up late watching "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (yes, it's even more corny now than it was over fifteen years ago).

2. I slept in til 9am while Kenny got up early to go deer hunting with his friend Cade

3. I tried to study, but that wasn't working out

4. I made yummy Baked Potato Soup (Julie's recipe, I think) so that there was a good lunch for the guys when they got home from hunting

5. I also baked some Caramel and Cinnamon Rolls from a recipe my mom gave me:

These are the Cinnamon Rolls that I made festive by dyeing the frosting orange. :)

These are the Caramel Cinnamon Rolls

6. I cleaned the house, a much needed task to be done

7. I put up Halloween/Fall decorations! I haven't had time until now and it's been driving me crazy because fall is my favorite season (especially since I saw Aunt Shelley's decorations on her blog)!

My Fall village

Do any of the Baums recognize the pumpkin on the right? It is a cookie jar lid that Grma. Baum painted in 1987. Unfortunately I don't have a cookie jar, so it is just a shelf decoration. It was one of my mom's Halloween decorations that she gave me. Also, I painted the kitty on the upper shelf many years ago at Grma and Grpa Baum's and I remember getting upset because mine didn't look as good as everyone else's ceramics, so Julie helped me "spruce" it up. I've been happy with it ever since--I guess big sisters can be useful sometimes.... :-)

The "Pumkin Patch" was made by my mom, Julie, and me quite a few years back also. That year we made a whole bunch of Halloween decorations, but over the years they've gotten broken or lost or something because this is the only one I have left of the ones I kept.

And then you have my little ghost hanging from my fan.

8. Then I took a nice, long shower (sorry, there are no pictures for this one)

9. Now I am blogging, waiting for Kenny to come home from his evening deer hunt

It was a good day, even though I didn't study as much as I should have, but oh well, I needed a break. :-D

The Front Fell Off

My friend, Shelley, emailed me this video and I thought it was hilarious, so I thought I would share it:

SEPTEMBER

It has been a very busy month for us! At the first of the month, Kenny's sister, Tabitha, got married in the beautiful Rexburg temple to James Monson. While we were waiting for them to emerge from the temple we noticed a small bat just hangin' out on the side of the temple, so I had to snap a picture.

The middle of the month I made Kenny a nice dinner since I don't get to do that very often. I thought that I would try Chicken Cordon Bleu since I had never made it before. I found a recipe online that worked with what I had for ingredients. I made a pasta salad and a caesar salad to go with it and dinner was delicious! I recommend the Chicken Cordon Bleu:


SIMPLE CHICKEN CORDON BLEU

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast

4 slices Swiss or Provolone cheese

4 thin sliced smoked ham

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1 egg; beaten

1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs

4 tablespoons butter

½ cup chicken broth

1 cup whipping cream

Pound chicken breast to ¼-inch thickness. Sprinkle each piece on both sides with salt and pepper. Place 1 cheese slice and 1 ham slice on each breast. Roll up each breast using toothpicks to secure if necessary. Dredge each in flour, shake off excess, then in egg and finally in bread crumbs. Place seam side down in baking dish that has been sprayed with Pam. Place 1 tablespoon butter on each piece of chicken. Bake at 350° for 35 minutes until juices run clear. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine broth and whipping cream; season to taste (salt, pepper, garlic, oregano). Simmer on low stirring until thickened; Pour over chicken.

...And enjoy!

Now before you become impressed with the salads, I must say that the pasta it "Simply Salads" from a box, and the caesar salad was one of those kits you buy at the store. I figured I spent a lot of time making the chicken from scratch, I could go easy on the salads. :-)

This last weekend Kenny and I a our friend Cade went up to Gravel Creek (east of Soda Springs) so the boys could go bow hunting. There was a beautiful sunset on our way up there, so we had to take a picture of it, but our camera wasn't wanting to give us a good picture, but here are a couple:

While the guys were out hunting, I stayed in camp with the dogs and studied...

Kenny came down from the mountain with a kill :-D ......

Too bad it was just a grouse and not an elk or a deer, but we'll take it either way--it tastes like chicken! The dogs were really interested in it too!

After a lunch of steak and a half baked potato (we tried wrapping them in tin foil and baking them in the fire, but they just burned on the outside and didn't quite get done on the inside), I tried my hand at shooting a bow at a target. It was really fun! I did as good as Kenny! He says I'm a natural, but he may have been going easy on me.

We didn't have a bull's eye target, so I drew my version of an elk and put a big heart on it to aim for. My arrow is the green-finned one and Kenny's is the orange-finned one. ;-)
I had to try it again, and again, and again...

And I finally got the heart, but as you can see, there are no other holes in the heart, meaning I'm the only one who got the heart! Yay for me! As for the rest of the trip, Cade nor Kenny got anything but grouse. On our way out, Kenny and I saw a big elk, however it was after dark, and the elk jumped a fence into a field (most likely private property), so we couldn't shoot it even if we wanted to. Sigh.

School is going okay. It keeps me really busy cause there is always reading to do, assignments due, quizzes online, exams online, and other things to constantly be researching and studying. But I enjoy my program and I've made lots of good friends. Kenny is still loving his program. He also works for his teacher helping other teachers in elementary, junior and high schools to apply for grants so they can do electronics activities in classes. This is to start getting kids interested in it at a young age. He has a lot of fun with it. Work is going okay for me. I'm not working too many hours, but that is good since my program makes me so busy!

Last Fall Semester...

Well, I started school last Monday and it is not going to be an easy ride! ISU shares the program with Boise State University, so all our classes are in the basement of the library where they have a system set up where Boise can view and participate in our lectures and we can view and participate in theirs. It gets kind of annoying because anytime you want to say something, you have to speak into a microphone so that Boise can hear you. Anyway, my classes this semester are:

Clinical Chemistry


Clinical Hematology


Clinical Immunology/Transfusion Medicine


Clinical Microbiology
Molecular Biology
Molecular Lab Methods
Intro to Clinical Lab. Science

So, you can start praying for me any time! ;-) Just kidding. It's nice to be in a program because we only have 3 teachers, and they all know the homework load. This way they know when they are overwhelming us! The funniest part about this is, my Molecular Biology teacher (who was my Genetics teacher 1 1/2 years ago), is actually going through the program with us because he wants to have a BS in CLS (even though he already has a BS/MS/PhD in Microbiology already). It's funny cause when he's lecturing and asks a question, he says, "It's okay, you can talk to me. I'm your fellow student." We have a lot of laughs. I know a few people in my program already, so that's nice. Shawna (Crouch) Dance is actually in my program (for those of you from Ashton) and we've become fast friends. We actually had Immunology Lab together this summer. Her dad went through this same program.

Kenny is loving his program! He is actually on a field trip to EBR-I today, which is out by INL. It was a nuclear power plant back in the 50's, but was shut down due to nuclear meltdowns. No one was hurt/killed that I remember. I took a tour of it last summer and it was very interesting! I recommend it. It's free.

A lot less work and a little more fun!

So, to try to have a little fun this summer, a couple of friends (that I worked with at Fish & Game two summers ago) and I went around to some of the boating/fishing Sportsmans Access sites that we used to work at. We wanted to be able to spend some time together, and I thought that it would be fun to do this. So we took our favorite route and on we went to reminisce:

This is Dana (holding her daughter Lucy who, at the time we worked together, was swimming around in Dana's stomach) and Jerahlyn. They are posing in front of Daniel's reservoir by Malad. The outhouse door had been pulled off, one which we made, painted, and hung when we worked there. We even made a makeshift lock on it that was a door handle and a lock. We were pretty proud of our wittiness and were sad to see the door was gone.

By the time we got into Malad, we were hungry, so we decided to stop and eat at the Dude Ranch. Whenever we used to do the Oneida County route (Malad), the Dude Ranch was never open--especially when we were craving mashed potatoes. That's a small town for ya--open and close as they please (like the Downey Library)! So we thought we would see if they were open this time and they were! We were so excited that we had to take a picture with the "Open" sign in the window. And on the window to the left, they advertise that they have "Ho-made Pie". :)


Here we are eating in the Dude ranch (Dana, me, Jerahlyn, and Lucy). We all had to have our mashed potatoes. :) YUM!


After eating we decided to go to Deep Creek Reservoir and instead of picking up trash, measuring the ramp, cleaning poopy restrooms, weed eating, or painting handi-cap parking signs, we decided to sit on the dock and soak our feet (left to right: Dana, Lucy, me, and Jerahlyn's one foot--she sprained her other ankle, so it was wrapped). I would have liked to jump in and swim, but the water was kind of yucky and had some floaties.


Of course, we had to see what kind of condition the restroom was in, so Jerahlyn volunteered. She reported that there was no toilet paper, the lock was broken, and it was kind of dirty. On the cement pad that she is walking on, you can see some handi-cap parking stripes. We painted those along with the actual handi-cap sign, but you can't see it. It was fading and chipping away--that's what happens when you don't buy Sherwin Williams paint I guess! :) We had a fun rest of the trip and enjoyed some scenery while reminiscing of funny stories and experiences. I am so happy that I had the opportunity to work there and make these two friends because we do have a lot of fun together and we can be ourselves. The type of work we did could have made that job really crappy, however we three made it fun and that's what counts. You could have the best job in the world, but if you don't have good company it could make it the worst job in the world! We had a lot of fun together and still do!

NAME TAG

Since I had some extra time...
1.YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Sassy Ram
2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Bubble Gum Samoa
3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
J-Gar
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Green Retriever
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Lynn Rexburg
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Garja
7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Red Water
8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Russell Harvey
9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Lucky Twix
10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names )
KayAnn Stewart Kent
11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Thompson Tallahassee
12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Fall Lilac
13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Strawberry Scrubsie
14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree
Omlet Oak
15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour")
The Piano Rain Tour

I now tag Morgan, Julie, and Shelley Patterson