Really good recipe

My roommate Krsitina and I made this recipe multiple times back in college, and it is very delicious. I made this today and was reminded how much I loved it and decided to share it. I didn't have a photo of it so I found a picture of tomato soup off the internet. I don't think I would suggest putting cilantro with this recipe though (like in the googled photo).

Western Tomato Soup

3 strips of bacon cooked and crumbled (or more depending on your taste preferences)

1/2 cup finely diced celery.

3 tbsp finely diced onion

1/4 cup finely diced green pepper

3tbsp flour

2 cups milk

1 can tomato soup

16 oz can stewed or diced (whichever you prefer) tomatoes

1 1/2 cup tomato juice

saute onion, celery, and green pepper in bacon fat until limp not brown. drain most of fat, and add flour. Stir and cook for a minute or two. Add canned tomatoes and saute for a couple of seconds, and then add the milk and stir to dessolve the flour and deglaze pan. remove from heat. In a sauce pan combine the milk mixture and the soup. heat and stir until smooth, and then add the tomato juice. Stir until slightly thickened, and garnish with the bacon.

Blue Kitchen

I just happened across the most awesome food blog ever, Blue Kitchen http://www.blue-kitchen.com/ The author, terry (and sometimes his wife Marion) posts extremely delicious sounding recipes that look and sound straight out of a gourmet resturant, with simple (seriously!!) instructions. I happened across the blog, and saw the featured recipe being tea smoked chicken, and I was curious. Terry explained a simple way to smoke the chiken in your grill, and the picture looks so delicious. Some of the ingredients in the authors recipes look like they would be difficult to find in Idaho, but if you were wanting to make a special meal and wanted to do something new and have it taste amazing, this food blog looks like it would have exactly what you are looking for.

My mom made a quick unplanned trip to Orem UT this weekend to move my brother Charlie up there to live. She stayed the night last night at my home, on her way back to washington, and spent the morning with me. I am envious of all the people I know whom have family nearby. I haven't seen my mom in a little over a year, so It was nice to have her spend what little time she could before she had to take off for the 10 hr drive home. It was a nice morning, and we didn't do much (there isn't much to do in the area where I live, and I hadn't had time to plan anything) but it was still nice to just hang out.

Book Question: I would love feedback on this one.

Today two college students from Estonia came by selling educational books for children. Normally I find these kinds of things to be annoying, as most of the claims are silly and i hate having people try to sell me things. You know how it is, they try to tell you how their books are different than most and will make your child a genius, but in realty the books are not any different than normal books you could find cheaper elsewhere. However, this time I actually think these books are worth it. Here is a link to their website: http://www.southwesternathome.com/ Here is the series I want: http://www.southwesternathome.com/Southwestern-Company-Products.aspx?p=131 Ryan wasn't convinced, so I'm going to try to save the money myself and hopefully find a way to buy them at another time. The books I decided I wanted to buy were the Ask Me series which are hard bound scientific/educational type books with beautiful illustrations and pictures and they are very interesting- I would love reading them myself. So, has anyone seen this type of book (the kind that your children would actually like to read) in a series for cheaper than $166 for 14 books? I figure buying the books one at a time from a book store you end up spending $11-$15 a piece for a nice book. It's exactly what i've been wanting to get, so I would love if anyone knows of a similar series for cheaper.

School

Ethan is going to a speech therapist at the hospital, and it is going nicely. I wish the sessions were longer than a half hour once a week, but it's better than nothing. The tharapist pointed out a real problem that is probably the main reason for Ethans speech delay, his tongue muscles are not developed, so he has trouble using his tongue. He could only stick it out as long as it was resting on his bottom lip, he couldn't lift it up or move it around freely. It's nice to finally have an idea of what he was struggling with, so we are doing different things to help him practice moving his tongue around and its working. He can say more words now than I can list, and he's saying full sentences occasionally now. I am in the process of registering him for school, and I'm very happy that their program sounds better than the last school we were at. This school has certified speech therapists who come once a week, and then they have techs who work more often with the children, and the techs are supervised by the certified speech therapists, plus the techs have to go to training twice a month. Last year, the week before school ended, the girl who was Ethan's speech therapist mentioned that she was not certified, she just had experience. I was upset that for a whole year he had only worked with her for speech therapy, which explained why he had barely progressed in speech. She was nice, but Ethan needed real speech therapists to help him. I'm very ready for him to be in school again, it's hard to keep him occupied by myself all day, plus I will be able to do things while he is away at school that are hard to do when he is with me, such as paint or maybe find a part time job to help out with finances. We will see.

8 year old artist

I saw this article http://www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38553499/?GT1=43001 on MSN today, and was amazed by this boys talent. His name is Kieron Williamson, he is 8 years old, and shows incredible talent when it comes to painting. I love his colors and balance in his paintings, and I wish I could sell my art for as much as he is selling his :).

Part 2: about me

1. I grew up in Washington and I really miss it. It is a beautiful state to live in. If I get the chance there are multiple places I would want to live, or at least travel to. Once I took the amtrack train over Stevens Pass, and it was breath taking, and you go through Leavenworth which is a little Bavarian style tourist towns that looks straight out of the Alps. I would love to live in the Seattle area, there are so many cool places to go and see such as museums, AMAZING resturants, and for nature you have the cascades, ocean, rainforest, lakes, rivers, etc. It is SO beautiful there.

2. I love making home made pies. A home made pie is a beautiful thing. Now I'm hungry....

3. I love making stuff. I was always trying to make stuff as a kid. 2 things I would love to learn how to do is re-upholstering furniture and carpentry/woodworking

4. I would love to write a book someday.

5. My favorite memory with Ryan was when we went on a canoe trip the summer of 04 (we were married in 05) with a group from BYU-I. It was a fun trip and I want to do something like that again only just have it be Ryan and I.

6. I broke my arm 4 times by the age of 18, 1- falling out of the cherry tree 2-lost my balance and fell, on carpet, in my room. 3- repeated #2 exactly a year later 3-rollerblading

7. My favorite memory of my family life as a child was going camping. Dad would come home and say "we are going camping" and we would pack everything up and drive several hours north to the mountains. It was always stressfull packing to go and coming back, but the in-between part was wonderful. We roughed it in sleeping bags and tents, and for meals it was the basic camping style food of hot dogs with smores for desert. We would pick blue berries in the morning to put in the pancakes. I hated breakfast, cause Dad always burnt the pancakes and left the insides gooey. Nasty, I still wiggle thinking about it. I loved camping, the 7 of us kids would go through the forests following Dad and find the creek to go fishing in. I have a lot of good memories of camping, and some pretty wild memories like the time when sarah stepped on a hornets nest, and we had to drag her and levi out of there because they were getting stung so much that they panicked and wouldn't move. Sarah sat down in the middle of it, and I remember Heather grabbed one of their hands and just took off running, over logs and bushes. Sarah went into shock and was given a blessing by Dad and a nearby camper who turned out to be a Bishop or something, and she turned out better off than Levi whose face turned out more swollen than Sarah's. fun stuff.