Dinner around the world

I have this cookbook that is a children's world cookbook. I thought it would be fun while we have some time off for the summer if we tried some different foods from around the world. I asked David what country we should try food from. He suggested Iraq. This book didn't have anything specifically from Iraq but it did have food from the Middle East. Also my sister is living in Israel right now so I thought this would be fun to try. The first thing we tried was Hummus. Although the book did have a recipe for this I just bought some at the grocery store. David didn't really care for it but Kage really liked it. I served it with pita bread. It was the first time I had tried it too. I thought it was pretty good.

Here is a picture of the boys trying it out.

The main dish was a salad from Lebanon. It was called Tabboule. The strangest ingredient in this salad was cracked wheat. The dressing was made with lemon juice and olive oil. It also had cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, mint, onions, and lettuce. It wasn't too bad but the boy's did not like it. I think the dressing was a little too strong. The cracked wheat added an interesting texture.

For Dessert we tried a dish called Halva. It was made with a special flour called Semolin, Sugar, water, butter, vanilla. It didn't sound like it would taste bad but it was nasty. We will definitely not try that one again.

It ended up being a fun activity. The kids are already asking what country we are going to try food from next week. I told them we would wait until next week and decide because that was part of the fun of the activity. So now we having something fun to look forward to.

Memorial Day Weekend

We spent most of the long weekend out on the four wheelers. We went riding south of five mile.

This picture is up a little canyon called Black Rock Canyon that is about fifteen miles south of five mile. It was so pretty up there. It was so different from what you see around most of five mile.

We saw this snake right in the middle of the road. We saw a couple of snakes, lots of lizards, antelope ( or as Kage called them cantaloupe), and a few other species of wildlife.

David took this picture of Kage and I as we were driving down the road.

This is how I spent some of my time as the boys were looking for cache's. On Saturday morning the sun was out but that afternoon we got stuck in some rain showers. We rode about 60 miles and found 17 caches on Saturday.

Monday we went back out caching in the same area. We were supposed to meet my Mom and Dad but we missed them while we were out finding this funny cache. Each cache has a name. This cache was called "A nice place for a crappy cache" It is probably the funniest and most original caches we have ever found. We rode another 50 miles and found about 11 more caches. While the weather wasn't the best we still had a lot of fun.

Way to go David!

I get to be a proud mom today. We had our end of year awards ceremony today. In the fall all third graders in the country take a test called the IOWA. Today they handed out awards for students that performed in the top ten percent in the nation on the test. David was in the top ten percent in math, social studies, science, core total (all around knowledge) total composite (total test). Way to go David!

??? I don't know

We haven't really been up to a whole lot lately outside of the normal, school and work. A few weeks ago we had the pinewood derby. Here are a couple of pics of David with his car. He didn't win but I think he still had a good time. This year's pinewood derby ran so much smoother than last years. We spent three hours the night before impounding cars and I think that really helped. The next night the pinewood derby started at 6:00pm and it was over by 7:00pm. It was amazing.

We have been busy getting the yard in shape for the summer. For Mother's Day I got all of the flowers to fill my containers and hanging baskets. I also got one more hanging basket for the deck. I have four around the deck now. I planted everything with pink flowers. They look so pretty. When they get a little more filled in I will have to take some pictures and post them.

Last weekend my little brother Cameron got married. We spent all day Thursday doing the flowers and then Friday at the wedding. They got married in the Bountiful Temple. I had only been to that temple once for the open house many years ago. The views were amazing.

Yesterday (and today for the boys) we had another rocket shoot. The weather was great and rockets are always fun.


Now we look forward to almost being done with school. Nine more days but who's counting!

Spring Break

This week was spring break. Although you would never know it from the weather. It was wet and cold. Tuesday my sister Amber, and her kids Colby and Tyson, My mom, and me and my boys decide to go on an adventure. First we went to the Living Planet Aquarium where the boys got to look at lots of different fish. Here is Kage and Colby trying to touch the stingray's.

David and Grammy letting the shrimp crawl on their fingers.

Kage in front of the alligators and turtles in the South American exhibit.

After we went and checked into a hotel and the kids swam and we just relaxed and had a good time. The next day we went to Discovery Gateway. The kids played for a long time.

We stopped and had lunch then went back and played some more.

It was a fun filled couple of days. Saturday was another rocket shoot. Here's a picture of the rockets lined up on the launch pad.

Here is the Kage's rocket. It flew a long way!

Just to end off here is a picture of our Weeping cherry tree. I love when it blooms in the springs.

We have some birds that have made a nest in the honeysuckle. I think you can see the nest in there.

Now that the weather is great for a few days we have to go back to school.

Easter

Here is a little run down of our Easter weekend activities.
Friday night we colored Easter eggs.

On Saturday we went with Mom, Dad, Cameron, Kathryn, Amber, Gregg, and their boys Colby and Tyson down to "Little Moab."

We rode the four wheelers for a little ways. The weather was a little wet but it quit raining for most of the time we were actually out. We found a spot to roll eggs

It turned into an egg throwing event after we rolled them down the hill. Kelly enjoyed getting David with egg.

We also had an Easter egg hunt in the sage brush.

We watched a few jeeps try to climb some of the hills around.
On Sunday the boy's got their baskets.

Then that evening we went over to Mom and Dad's for dinner and another Easter egg hunt.

April Fool

Yesterday was April Fool's Day. I decided to do a fun dinner for my kids.


I let them choose which they wanted first, dinner or dessert. Of course they chose dessert. So I gave them "cupcakes" At first they thought it was playdoh on top it was really mashed potatoes. The cake part was meatloaf. Then dinner was fish sticks and peas. The fish sticks were cookies with peanut butter and cornflakes, the peas were air heads.
The food still tasted good even though it looked a little odd. I even got a few laughs at school today when I took the leftovers for lunch. (Thanks to Family Fun for the fun idea.)