Happenings of our lives

Thursday Justin had to go to work and Julie had class so we got to spend the morning with the kids. We wanted to make pancakes but when we started to make pancakes we realized we didn’t have any butter left, so Jordan went to the store and got it for us. So Ilana and I made pancakes and had a great breakfast with everyone. Nicole came over and we made some really cool paper rockets and shot them off with something she made when she was teaching. The kids loved the rockets, and loved decorating them.

After we shot off rockets, we went to the State College Arts Fest. We drove and parked at the stadium and rode a bus down to the festival. Aspen was so excited that she got to ride a bus, she said it was her first bus ride. We started walking around and there was some really cool stuff but it was so expensive, Julie met us and we ate lunch. There was a painting that cost $20,000. It was an old man coming out of a swimming pool. We walked around and eventually decided to go home.

We went to Wegman’s bought some great food for Friday night’s dinner. When Justin got home from work we went to The Corner for dinner, It was so busy because of the Arts Fest and the restaurant is downtown in the middle of it all. So when we finally got in we (Jordan and me, and Nicole and Nate) ended up sitting at a different table than Justin and Julie.

So we got our menus and finally decided what we wanted to eat. I got a philly cheesesteak sandwich and Jordan got a Ruban sandwich. All the food was great and not that expensive, which is also great.

Justin and Julie went home and Nicole and Nate showed us around Penn State. We got to go to the Creamery which was pretty fun. The ice cream was good, but I don’t think it is better than BYU’s ice cream, especially because you can split scoops at BYU. We went back to Justin and Julie’s and talked about lots of books, which Jordan made a list of so we would buy them .

Painting the kitchen has been on our to do list since we moved in the house. I was gone most of June and when things settled down the house was a mess (specifically the kitchen). There is nothing more motivating to have your house clean than something new and exciting. So we decided to paint. Way back when we were under contract with our house I picked out colors for most of the rooms, but once we looked back at the color we didn’t really like it anymore. So we pulled out all the paint chips and the pamphlets filled with paint chips and looked at more colors. I narrowed it down to two colors: Behr Eastern Amber and Behr Apple Crisp.

Conveniently, you can buy small cans of paint to try out before you buy an entire gallon of paint. I bought those two colors and promptly when home and painted two big blocks on the wall next to the sliding glass door. We left them there about a week so we could see the colors in all lighting and eventually we (meaning Jordan because I’m really indecisive) picked Apple Crisp.

Here are the before pictures:

and here are the after pictures:

I bought some picture frames for the big wall behind the dining table. I’m working on picking out pictures to print off, we have so many pictures to choose from but I have some good ideas.

UPDATE: I also put some curtains on the Sliding Glass door because so much heat comes from that window in the afternoon. I’ll take a picture of the pictures I printed off and the curtains.

Here are pictures of Youth Conference this year. The youth had a great time and the life-sized game of LIFE was great, they learned so much.

Happy Mother’s Day Moms in our lives! Hope you have a Fabulous Day!

My Grandma, and Great Grandma:

My Mom and Sisters:

Jordan’s Mom:

So a while back I made this post about homemade wheat thins. I’ve made them a lot since then and discovered a much easier and less time consuming.

First, use lots of flour.Cut the dough in half (or thirds) and roll it out as thin as possible, making sure you use lots of flour so it doesn’t stick to the counter.

Second,spray the cookie sheet and transfer the entire sheet of dough to the pan (DO NOT cut and pick up every cracker, this will make you not ever want to cook them again).

Third, poke with a fork, then cut with a pizza cutter on the cookie sheet.

Fourth, spray the cut crackers with cooking spray and put salt on top.

Cook like normal.

The pictures are below. Seriously these crackers are so easy to make ( I probably made them 4 times when Jordan’s Parents were here), and they are so good. You’ll never want to buy crackers again. The only problem with them is that everyone likes them, so they never stick around.

Click on the pictures to go to the gallery.