Tortellini

So I want to toot my own horn a little today.  A couple of months ago my sister in law went to a cooking class that taught her how to make homemade yogurt.  She gave me the recipe and it has saved us a ton of money.  My kids suck down yogurt like it's going out of style.  We had been spending at least eight dollars a week for the cheap off brand and that would barely get us through the week with me being the yogurt Nazi.  Now i can make plenty for about 1.30 a week, it has literally saved us like fifty dollars. 

Anyway it got me to thinking about finding other ways I could save money.  This weekend I decided to try making tortellini from scratch.  It turned out awesome if I do say so myself.

The ricotta cheese beginning to strain

They whey draining

Homemade ricotta

Pasta dough

Pasta machine

Spinach and ricotta filling

Filling the tortellini

Finished product

The only thing I think I will do differently next time is make the dough a little thinner. 

Paizley's Toe

Paizley tends to be about as graceful as I am, she managed to drop some binoculars on her toe at the babysitter's house the other day.  Her toe is very swollen and her toenail is this periwinkle color.  I'm pretty sure she is going to lose it which totally grosses me out. 

Bear Lake

After we went to the cave we went to the lake to hang out and play.  First we went to the public beach but it was full, so we drove down to the hot springs which I think may have been better anyway.  The water was super warm and shallow, the kids could wade out like fifty feet and still be fine.  They had a lot of fun.

Heidi and Hailey challenged Zach and Steven to a sand castle building contest

As the judge, I determined that Heidi and Hailey did a superior job

Someone always has to be buried in the sand

Boppy protecting his head

Nate is thrilled to be alive and at the beach

Minnetonka Cave

On Saturday we had plans to go back to Idaho to pick up the kids from my parents house after their two week visit.   My mom called on Wednesday and said that Hailey and Zach were planning to go to Bear Lake and we should tag along.  It sounded like fun so I agreed.

We thought it would be fun since we were going to be in the area, to take the kids to Minnetonka Cave.  I did some research and the website said that tickets are only sold first come first serve for that day and they tend to sell out quickly.  We decided to try to arrive by ten when the ticket booth opened.  We were able to get tickets to the 11:00 am tour.

We are waiting for our tour to start

Nate, his inappropriate finger gestures and Heidi

You can't see it but the sign we are standing in front of is warning about some weird bat disease that is going around.  If you have been in a cave west of Colorado ( I think) in the last three months you couldn't go in the cave so the bats wouldn't catch it. 

The kids are watching some chipmunks.  They had absolutely no fear of humans, they would run right up to kids and they were practically petting them.  I was like seriously people they might be cute but they are still disease ridden flea bags that will probably bite and give your kids rabies.  People are stupid.

Heidi and Hailey in front of the entrance

They were very excited to go in and were all prepared with their flashlights.

Heidi and Paiz in the heart of the cave

Cave popcorn.  There was also cave bacon but it was too far away for my camera.  I was disappointed because seriously who loves bacon more than Lishs

This is the only stalagmite that we could touch. My dad said he was defiantly going to get his seven dollars worth.

Castle

After the cave we found a campground and had a picnic lunch

Crisis Averted!!

This morning we had a minor crisis in the Ross household.  We had been trying to keep Felix and Yoshi apart, because although Felix hadn't tried anything more than some menacing hissing and weird throat growling, I was still nervous that things might get more heated if we weren't around.  Yoshi had been spending the day locked in our room with a litter box in the bathroom.  I finally got tired of waking up with a cat on my face so last night we took a chance and let them spend the night together in the rest of the house. 

We woke up this morning and Yoshi was nowhere to be found.  We looked all over the house and then I noticed there is a hole in the sliding glass door screen.  If you remember we live in the dark ages and don't have air conditioning so all of our doors and windows are open.  Steven and I decided that she must have slipped outside during the night.  When the kids woke up there was plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth so I told Steven to get them breakfast and go outside to see if he could find her.  I was really nervous because Redwood road runs right behind our house and I was sure we were going to find her squished on the road.  Luckily she was perched in one of our trees, so Steven pulled her down and brought her inside.

It's amazing how something so little can totally worm it's way into your heart in just a couple of weeks.

Our New Addition

On Saturday during Emily's shower a kitten showed up at the church.  Paizley of course immediately fell in love and bonded with it.  It jumped up and was hanging off her shirt and she said "Grammy I think the tiny kitten is trying to give me a hug!"  Who could resist that?  We decided that someone must have just dropped it off  because there aren't many houses in that area.  I was afraid it was going to run down and get smished on the road and I am a total sucker so we now have a kitten at our house. 

We have tentatively named her Yoshi because she has a very squeaky meow that reminded Heidi of Yoshi on the Mario games.  I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the name yet but we will see how it goes.

Felix is none too pleased with the new development and has been even more surly than usual.  She has been skulking around and hissing whenever the kitten gets too close to her.  She hasn't actually tried to attack so that's a good start.  I'm sure she will get used to the idea eventually.

I was trying to get a decent picture of her but of course she is very full of energy and wouldn't hold still for even one minute.

I tried to hold her down but then she just thought I wanted to play.

It's A Girl!

On Saturday we threw Emily a baby shower.  If you remember my post from a few weeks ago Heidi, Hailey and I got together to plan and send out the announcements.  We decided that we should have it in Inkom because other then the rinky Lish children most of our family lives in Idaho. We divided up the responsibilities and had a great time shopping for what we needed.

Heidi and I planned to drive up Friday after work.  Hailey had my kids that week so she was going to also drive up and hand them off to my mom.  As luck would have it Hailey caught the flu.  She called me at work Friday morning and asked if I minded driving through Logan and picking up the kids because she didn't think she felt well enough to attend the shower.  We did and arrived in Inkom at about 10:00 pm. 

We spent the next morning trying to get everything together for the shower at 11:00.  About an hour before it was suppose to start we packed up the car and headed to the church.  Heidi and I started getting a little nervous because people kept stopping by the church to drop off their gift because they couldn't stay.  We thought for sure it was going to be us, Emily and my mom.  Luckily we did end up with about 15 guests and Emily received some really cute stuff.

The gift table.  My mom made the blankets that everything is sitting on.

Heidi found the template for these paper diapers. (One has poop in it hehe)  Heidi and Steven had a race on the drive up to see who could cut out the most the fastest.  Steven lost and was ticked.

Heidi sampling the food.

Here are some guests.  From the left Jennifer Young, she's from the Inkom ward, Meemer, Lisa (my mom's sister), Tina (cousin), Joyce (my dad's sister) and Nicki Murdock (another ward member)

This is my cousin Debbie and her cute kids.  It's awesome her two year old JD is taller than Paizley.

Paizley and her cupcake

Ready for gifts!

Hailey made this. It is pretty much amazing.  She rolled up various baby things to look like a plate of sushi.

Heidi made this diaper cake.  It turned out rawsome as well.  My aunt Joyce was telling us how someone she knew paid $200 for something similar.  People are ridiculous.

Ryan loves sock monkeys.  My aunt Lisa gave Emily this outfit.  We all joked that she needed to make sure Ryan didn't swipe the blanket to sleep with.

My aunt Diane gave her these.  It's a cute headband and then a very small version of those butterfly wings that little girls wear.  And of course a onsie that says she won't be dating until she is thirty.

These are the cutes booties I've ever seen.

All in all the shower went very well.  Congratulations Ryan and Emily!!