Mexican Tortillas and Enchiladas with Patty

These videos are especially for my awesome family and friends in Denmark who have been asking me to either send them Mexican food or to tell them how to make it. The problem with mailing Mexican food is that it will go bad (heh) or that a  can of enchilada sauce and a stack of tortillas would be very expensive to mail considering how heavy they are. So that brings me to the second request. Tell them how to make it.....hhhmmmm....that requires me to KNOW how to make it from scratch. Yea, so that is a problem as well so I decided to go to an expert if you will, because that just makes a whole lot of more sense. So I have to tell you that this was yummy!
Patty is this fantastic lady that I have gotten to know and she was such a good sport! And I got to stuff my face with crazy good food! I still do not know how to make the corn tortillas but I think it would work with the flour ones as well even though she says not to.......hhmmmm..... anyways. Maybe I can convince her to teach me how to make salsa as well! She actually also shows how to make refried beans in this here fantastic educational experience of a video sequence! Enjoy and please ask questions!

Institute graduation

first of I have to say that I love these pictures.

Anna was sick and this was the beginning of the strange fever and headaches that would just show up and then go at random. I finally took her to the Emergency Room at Dell Children's hospital since I wanted her looked at by people who knew how to read kids since her symptoms were so odd.

Since she was not feeling well she had a really hard time with bladder control *AND in these pictures she pees on Jed! Priceless! Happy graduation Daddy!

Jed gave a talk at the ceremony and I already knew it was great because I had helped edit but I have heard him talk in the past and i can tell that he has gotten so much better up there in front of people and if that is how he is in the classroom then it is beyond me why he does not have school districts stocking him begging him to work for them. He did such an amazing job on this talk and I was so impressed and proud of him.

*She had gone through several out fits by the time we hid the end of the night. After this picture was taken we had to borrow clothes from some of the other people there because we had gone through the large stack of extras in the car. We had been there for some time before then because Jed cleans the institute building. It is a part time job that he has had for more than a year and it has been very helpful with that extra little paycheck during this last year of school since the student teaching had taken away most of his very little extra time to work. The whole family went with him to clean before the ceremony and Anna tore through the extra clothes. While we were there we also had quite the drama. A young man came in and very politely asked to use the phone. The building was closed to the public and it was just our little family. The only reason the door was unlocked was because Jed was getting ready to clean the front steps. As soon as you looked in his eyes you knew something was terribly wrong. He was dressed like a typical college kid you would expect in this part of town but his eyes were bloodshot and his face was covered in sweat. Jed told him that the building was closed and that he had to leave, he did not want to leave. He finally walked half way out the door then came back in and said he wanted to ask someone else. Jed followed him down the hall way and just kept telling him "we're closed and you have to leave" he finally got him to walk out the back door and again he would not let go of the door. Jed tells he have to let go of the door and then the man says"I do not like your attitude" Jed informs him that he does not care and pulls the door closed. Then the man goes berserk on the door kicking and kicking until the glass breaks screaming profanity. i had stayed with the kids not wanting them to follow him, so now I run down the hallway to see what is going on, Jed is already calling 911 as soon as he man sees he through the broken door he stops or maybe it is not my angelic inspiring aura that makes him act like he ought and he simply just gets tired of kicking the door, I like the first reason better though. He then walks down the stairs. I turn right around and lock the front door then i run to the door by the parking lot where the stairs will take him next and lock it then I watch as he wanders past tell all the kids to go hide in the bathroom, It was not until this point that they thought anything dangerous was happening they just thought it was all very weird. Jed comes out and watches at a distance as the man randomly wanders around on the street parking lot and at odd times takes of at a sprint just to stop again a few steps later, when he sees Jed the profanity and screaming begins again and he suddenly runs in the middle of the street and stops a car, then he takes of at a run down the street and we loose track of him. Just after that the cops show up. Turns out he asked the girls in the car to call the police and stay until they got here. When all was said and done we ended up filing charges and realized that those crappy low quality cameras on our cell phones would have come in very handy just then. Oh well. Then I had a long talk with the kids about why we do not do drugs and why we do not make friends with people who do drugs and if our friends start doing drugs we ditch them. Tough, but do we really want to be friends with people who act like that? Glad that they agreed that that was a really bad idea.

For Jed!

http://www.jed.com/ a directory of people and things named jed !!!
very cool!


http://www.jedfoundation.org/   The Jed Foundation is the nation's leading organization working to reduce emotional distress and prevent suicide among college students.
also very cool in a differnt kind of way!

May, it happened

well let's see.

looking back over the calender. Jed finished all his classes at UT and started working as a substitute teacher at Pflugerville and Round rock independent school districts. It was a small influx of cash before the school year ended and we sure need it. We took Anna to the ER after a week of unusual fevers and bad head aces that would come and go seemingly at random. The doctors were great (we took her to the children's hospital) but they had a hard time finding the cause of the problem. They finally gave her antibiotics for a bladder urinary tract infection because they are so common in girls her age and because the lab work showed a very small trace. What ever the problem was it was gone for good after that visit. Ian and Jed went on a father son camp out with a bunch of fathers and sons from our congregation at church and much fun was had amongst the younger participants. The patient fathers enjoyed them selves as well even if it took a little more effort. Just about everyone had a well check this month (and some sick visits) and some went to the eye doctor and I think for a while I was living in the car driving people around to appointments and finding baby sitters for the other kids. Crazy crazy.

Jed graduated from institute and gave an amazing talk. Then he graduated from the U Teach program (teaching certificate) then the history and social studies graduation, then UT wide graduation. And  he is finally done graduating. Then it was our 10th anniversary and I'm so happy to report that we are confidently planning many more of those. We then packed the kids and the dog and handed them of to various friends and family and went just the two of us to Fredricksburg Texas and had a two night stay in a little cosy cabin. It was VERY nice and I just love my wonderful husband. We are going to be just fine when it is just the two of us again even though I did start to miss the kids terribly the second night. This really surprised me. Then the kids had their last day of school and we took them with us to the temple in San Antonio, then to the Alamo and the river walk. May was a very full and very good month.

My other blog

http://idasonlinesale.blogspot.com/

this is my online garage sale blog

check it out!

Wow! April just ended!

It has been such a quick month! and so much has happened. General conference. Ian Turned 8. Ian was baptised. Ian started cub scouts and earned his Bobcat. A whole lot of Ian and I think Ivy felt left out because she has had some really big BIG tantrums partway through the month so we have tried to make the girls feel special as well and I think it helped. Jed has been Very busy finishing up his student teaching and was very sad to leave McNeil High school where he has been teaching/learning since January. Today is his last day of class at UT before graduation and now he is on to the next uphill battle which is to find a job as a teacher in a job market flooded with qualified unemployed candidates while all the excising jobs are being cut. Last night Bin Ladin decided to wrap up April nicely by getting him self killed. Life has been good to us in April. We have enjoyed many wonderful things like family and good friends. Easter and the celebration of our saviors love for us. Lot's and lots of good food. Lot's of reading books that swallow you up all night long and spit you out the next day extremely tired. We've been healthy and have not had to experience any of the triadic natural disasters we have been seeing in the news, most recently the many devastating tornadoes tearing through the southern U. S. All in all I have to say that we are blessed and I thank my God and savior because I know there is so much to be grateful for.

Tutu Time with Maja

Enjoy the sweet sound of giggly little girls and ignore the sound of big brother crying. Don't worry if you listen really carefully you can hear Dad taking care of him.

For some reason a ton of tutus came our way in the form of hand-me-downs and birthday presents

We had a fun party for the twins at the park and once I get the pictures I will post them.

Now it was time for our little family party.

All the Halloween junk is still all over the living room

Jed and I decided that now that the twins turned 4 they were old enough to get an allowance like their big brother and sister.

So they each got a wallet!

They were quite happy about it.

This was something they had been looking forward to for a little over a month!

Big tank you hugs to Maja!

A typical Anna pouty face who knows why.

Pouty face soon erased by a big smile.

And a Hug from Astrid I think Anna opened Astrid's present to her and this is actually Anna giving Astrid a thank you hug. Heh!

Wives and Daughters

Another great show from girls night!
If you missed last time we watched episodes 1 and 2
all 4 are on here

wives and daughters

Queen of Apple Pie

and here she is! My momma!

Nobody makes pie that delicious! It's all in the crust!

this is how she makes it!

1.5 stick butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups flour

A couple or more spoonfuls of iced water just to help the dough stay cool and moist while working with it.

If you mix it by hand, you need the butter to be room temperature or even hand temperature. If you have mixer, the butter should be cold.

 

That's it! At least she did not just tell me her usual response which is "just add stuff until it is right" Heh!

Big BIG BIIIIIG Spider!

As we were getting ready to leave bull creek my most observant mother spotted this specimen.

It was most intriguing and ever so fascinating.

I know next to nothing about spiders so i have no clue what kind this is.

It was slow and timid

And Even though I have lived in the Austin area for 8 years i have never seen anything remotely like this around before

I had to constantly remind myself and the kids that if you do not know if it can hurt you just assume that it can.

We asked a random jogger if he had ever encountered one of these before and despite running there on a regular basic he had not.

He then brought back some friends of his who were in a different part of the park and one of them thought we ought to squash it.

My mom got quite defence on behalf of big creepy spider so as far as we know he did not get squashed

He mostly just froze and every now and then tried to run away.

as soon as he realized we were following he would stop moving again and just sit there

I found a long twig and carefully poked his leg then he would run away so I think this was not the attacking sort.

I was hoping someone out there might know what sort of critter this is

Do you think it is someones pet spider that they just left in the park?

Eventually we gave him more space and he just slowly made his way down to the water

After getting in the water for a little while, I'm guessing getting a good drink, he started moving back to the trees where he first came from

here is a little video for your enjoyment!

Behold the joy of flinging rocks

So after our first brief stop at bull creek we drove a few yards down the road and stopped at the part with the blessed accommodations also known as questionable public restrooms or porto pottys. After utilizing said public service facilities we then wandered through the greens and picnic tables and back down to the water. This stretch is allot more mellow and has an abundance of limestone rocks just begging to be played with.