Totally Addicted to These...

Random Happenings via My Cell Phone Camera

These are the random pictures that end up on my cell phone camera because whatever we were doing wasn't worthy (such as Disneyland or the beach) of bringing the real camera along for the trip. 

• Eating marshmallows on sticks covered in sprinkles at the Rocky Mountain Candy Factory store at the outlet mall.

• The kids got "face" painted at a church picnic in the park.  Buddy was adamantly against it until Princess Sparkley persuaded him with the dolphin.  Now, almost one week later he's only agreed to two baths and both of those have taken place with his dolphin arm up and out of the water.  It's looking pretty sad... and dirty.  I'm on the hunt for some sort of dolphin temporary tattoo.

• There's a tunnel that goes under the road down the street from my parents.  I loved yelling "echo" in it when we went on walks when I was little, so I showed it to my kids and let them yell "echo."

• Little Guy and Princess Sparkley (who almost got stuck) got to ride in a truck shopping cart at Vons.  They beeped their horns nonstop driving me crazy.

• Buddy worked hard pulling dead flowers and dusting at Grandma's to earn the last few dollars he needed to be able to afford a Lego Star Wars ship.

• I went mattress shopping 2,600+ miles away from where the mattress is needed.  Little Guy enjoyed testing them out.

• And Little Guy has become a fair weather friend to my dad's giant chocolate lab who he's nicknamed Mr. Fenway.  Everyone else just calls him Fenway.

Someday I'll plug in the real camera again and upload some exciting pictures.

Disney Taking Over the World

I don't mind Disneyland (as seen here and here), but I can't stand that Disney seems to slowly be taking over the world. 

Yikes!

While I've already surpassed 22,000 pages read this year (my best year yet) I've failed miserably at this list that I created to expand my reading horizons.  I haven't read any of the books on the list.  I started Beloved but got put off my a human/animal relationship description that I really didn't want to read in the first couple chapters (or ever) and I haven't gotten back to it yet.  I better get cracking.

So far I've read 22,415 pages in 68 books.  Mostly YA books, but I love them!  Here they all are:

Twenty Boy Summer

The Sky is Everywhere

Franny and Zooey

Fat Cat

Bloom

What Angels Fear

Matched

Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Notes from the Midnight Driver

Midnight Sun

Zen and the Art of Faking It

Rachel and Leah

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Charlotte's Web

Truck: A Love Story

The History of Love (2nd time)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Moon Over Manifest

I, Emma Freke

After Ever After

Confessions of a Teen Sleuth

The Great House

Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me

There's No Place Like Home

The Mysterious Benedict Society (#1)

I Now Pronounce You Someone Else

Juliet

When You Reach Me

A Red Herring Without Mustard

Where I Belong

The Book of Tomorrow

What Happened To Goodbye

The Last Little Blue Envelope

Something Borrowed

The boyfriend list

Anna and the French Kiss

Where She Went

The boy book

The Treasure Map of Boys

The Ever-After Bird

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Suite Scarlett

Fly on the Wall: How one girl saw everything

Dramarama

Real Live Boyfriends*

Scarlett Fever

How to be Bad

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Close to Famous

Half Broke Horses

Gimme A Call

Fixing Delilah

84, Charing Cross Road (2nd time)

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Look Me In the Eye: My Life with Aspberger's

Evolution of Me and Other Freaks

Truly, Madly

The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

Fall for Anything

Sisterhood Everlasting

The Enchanted April

Withering Tights

Between Here and Forever

The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May & June

Uncommon Criminals

Deeply, Desperately

Learning to Play Gin

Finally

Cedar Mountain

The first week of our vacation was spent in the mountains above Cedar City, Utah at my parents' cabin.  While there we visited Duck Creek, Duck Creek Village, Bryce Canyon National Park, Cascade Falls, Aspen Mirror, Navajo Lake and Brian Head.  We ate at In N Out Burger in Las Vegas, NV and 25 Main for cupcakes in St. George, Utah.  Then we ate at In N Out Burger in Washington (St. George), Utah on our way to California.  I think the trip would have been better for Jed if he'd been able to eat at In N Out a few more times.  :) And, Princess Sparkley turned nine surrounded my her grandparents, her family and my brother's family while we were up at the cabin.

My most recent trip to Disneyland



If you look closely in the background, the entire family is in this picture.



My First Trip to Disneyland

That's me in the stroller.  The back of the picture says 1979.  So, I'm anywhere from 6 months -18 months old.

BBQ Sauce

Seriously, I could eat this with a spoon.

From Essential Mormon Celebrations cookbook (here)
2 cups ketchup
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
1/4 cup Worchestershire sauce
1/4 tsp Tabasco
1/8 tsp liquid smoke

Heat over medium in a saucepan for 5 minutes.  YUM!  It goes with this flank steak recipe (Friday's recipe on this menu).

Note: this makes a lot.  I half it for my family of five and we still have some leftover.