Dinner at the Nguyen's

We had a great time (back in the middle of March) trying Pho for the first time at the Nguyen's house with the Robinson's. Pho is a Vietnamese food and it is sooooo good!

Ladda also makes the BEST egg rolls ever...

I never knew there was such thing as fried garlic but I will be stocking my pantry with it from now on!!!

Ladda gave us the low down on all the good stuff we could get at the Asian grocery store.  We decided we are going to go on a field trip there some day with her. :)

Ladda's friend Dee was a pro at cooking it and putting it together too. 

To die for!...

Ladda even made fried rice with Asian sausage in it...because the big serving size bowl of Pho, and multiple egg rolls just weren't enough! :)

The kiddos were having a fun time on Minecraft while we were stuffing ourselves.  They stopped long enough to eat at an Asian table (one of those circular trays that you sit on the the floor around) that is so cool.  I will have to get a picture next time.

After we ate we played Headbanz and laughed our heads off!

We all thought it was hysterical (it's a Mormon thing) that Jason got church right after he had beer.

We had so much fun and can't wait to get together again ASAP!  I some times dream of those egg rolls....Except not right now because we just went to Bronco's and stuffed ourselves with yummy Mexican food (Jake is at a friend's birthday party so we had a date night).  Aaron doesn't like egg rolls usually and he ate at least 10 of them that night.  Ladda you are an  amazing cook and friend!

I love this post...

Every now and then you get the chance to make a wonderful friend that you have never meet in person...thanks to the internet. :)  A couple of years ago I meet a brilliant lady (that I am sure was a great friend of mine in the pre-existence), randomly through blogging.  She is one of those amazing people that I am sure never sleeps because she does amazing things like making soap, raising a small farm, and homeschooling all at once!  Whenever I am on the internet I check to see if she has posted anything, because she never ceases to amaze me!  Today she posted this post called Family.  She had me in tears and that was before I was surprised and totally honored to see the picture of my family!  Read this post and it will make you happy.  It is a great reminder to me of our Heavenly Father's plan for us and how important family really is---whether it is blood relations or someone you have never met in person. :)

Diggin' in the dirt

On Tuesday we went on a little field trip with some of our friends from our homeschooling co-op.  We went gem mining-but not the regular sifting it out kind.  We went diggin' in the dirt for some Quartz Crystals.  We all chipped in on a "Groupon" and got a great deal to search for treasures in the dirt.

We were all equipped with shovels, gloves, picks, brushes, and buckets. and we headed out into the dirt mounds....

That were HUGE.  This is like a boys dream day.  They got to wear old ratty clothes and were told to go dig and get dirty.  Does it get any better than that when you are a boy?

Rita was determined to find an Amethyst but it wasn't in the cards that day.  Maybe if we go back we will hit it big. :)

These guys were on a mission to find some good stuff and we did find a bunch of good stuff!

We found a scorpion.

And here is my first piece of Quart.  We had to dig out rocks and use a brush to see if it was just a rock or something more.

We met an old pro from Maine (I knew as soon as he started talking he was a fellow Yankee), who showed us the awesome things he made with the crystals he found.

Of course we had to take the traditional Jake and me picture...It is proof that I am actually there since I am the one taking the pictures. :)

The boys found a place to throw big rocks into water and that of course lasted until it looked like they were going to go in with them....

Our Yankee friend showed us some of his amazing finds and some tricks of the trade.  He was getting all the crystals he could because today he was going in to have surgery on his back.  I hope all went well for him.  We got his business card so we could visit him at the flea market he sells things at.

The man that owns the land (I am assuming.  He was there to greet us and tell us all we needed to know) came back to check on us and see how we were doing.  The boys took turns showing him the big stones they had found and he told them how great their finds were.

The boys even went with the Yankee to help him while he tried to bust up a really big crystal filled boulder he had found.  They helped him haul out his tools and bucket of crystals.

His finds were more impressive than ours, but I think we did pretty good for first timers.  This is the inside of part of the boulder he was working on.  The picture doesn't do it any justice.  It was so sparkly and gorgeous!

This was Jake's largest find and Yankee told him it was a really good one. :)

We took our finds to a car wash to really wash off the dirt and see what we had.

This is what we ended up with.  A box of beautiful crystals that I have no idea what we are going to do with...

Any ideas? 

Please Pray for Cole....

These pictures are a little old but I wanted you to see the sweet little guy I am telling you about....

Our good friends Norb and Elizabeth (and their daughter Morgan) need your prayers for their sweet little boy Cole.  They just found out he has 2 brain tumors (the doctors believe that they are non-cancerous) and he is having surgery tomorrow to take some of the fluid off and relieve some pressure.  He will then have to have radiation to shrink them because they are inoperable.  If you would like to join us in a fast Friday, January 6th and Sunday, January 8th, that would be wonderful also. We know the Lord hears our prayers and this amazing family can use ours now. 

Putting Pinterest ideas to the test and cheering up a friend.

Yes, I am addicted to Pinterest.  In order to make my self feel less guilty about it I have been putting some of the amazing ideas to the test.  I will admit that I did pick some pretty easy ones, but you have to start some where right?  I already did the chore magnets and cute laminated room cleaning check lists, so I figured one more easy one would seal the deal.  Introducing the $0.96 (there really should be a cent symbol on the computer...) soap holder turned card holder:

Smart, easy, and cheap.  That is right up my alley.
The next thing I tested out was this:

Yes, the concept worked, but I am adding a step so I don't have to rub my skin raw trying to get off all the extra nail polish.  I put Aquaphor (you could use Vasaline) all around my finger (except the nail itself) so when the nail polish dries I could just wipe it and the extra nail polish off.  It took some time but what else am I supposed to do on a night Aaron works and I can't sleep.  There isn't anything good on TV at 1:00am so I swirled my nails. :)

We also put a couple of "recipes" to the test when we went to visit Jake's buddy Corey for a "field trip".  Corey had to have surgery on Wednesday to take car of an awful broken arm (Corey on a bike vs. hill...The hill won, poor kid) and needed some cheering up, so we packed up some fun one handed science experiment and headed out. We decided if we did science experiments we could still say we homeschooled.  

Okay, so how cute is Jake?  I love that he loves to read so much that he does it in the car even though we have a portable DVD player. :)  He was finishing Seekers #1-The Quest Begins.  He started reading it a while ago but got interested in about a dozen other books. He finally came back to it and really loved it.  He wanted to finish it so that he could loan it to Corey to read.

We made a "lava lamp"-there is no lamp just lava, but it turned out very cool!

I love this picture of Jake and his lava bottle.  That makes more sense than lamp, don't you think?

We even brought a festive $0.99 (see I needed the cent symbol again!), Halloween tablecloth.  Just in case of spillage or worst case scenario: an explosion.  You never no with science experiments.  I guess you can really only call them science experiments if you include an explanation of why it works...That will be a follow up lesson-they were way to distracted. :)

We also made slime.  Don't worry they played for hours before we "forced" them to sit and do "science experiments". :)

Turns out you do need two hands to mix it.  Corey's didn't really turn out so great because of the whole "one hand" thing, so Carrie (Corey's mom.  Yep spelled the same name as me and everything.  Do you know how weird it is leaving a voice mail and saying: "Hey Carrie!  It's...Carrie...".) stepped in and tried to salvage the goop!

It didn't work so, we ended up adding all sorts of stuff to it just for the fun of it.  More glue, more borax,...and more food coloring...It looked like bleeding intestines to me...That probably really isn't what intestines would look like but with it being Halloween weekend that is what came to mind. :)

Jake decided to add some more food coloring to his too and here is another Halloween"ish" photo for your viewing pleasure.

Yes, even though he has showered and washed his hands a bagillion times he went to church today with tinted fingernail beds.  A crazy angle for a cray slime picture.  We were going for mad scientist creepy...

And just because I miss my Basset Hound (and first baby) named Daisy, I had to take a shot of their sweet doggie.  This sweet face belongs to Billy.  How cute are Basset Hounds?

  We had a ton of fun hanging with Corey-so much so that we were tired pooped to go to trunk-or-treat that night...That was Jake's decision and we didn't mind at all. :) We are skipping the whole trick-or-treat thing tomorrow and opting for a family Halloween party for FHE.  Then on Tuesday morning we are hitting the stores and getting 70% off Halloween candy (an idea that I would like to carry through to Christmas, but no one else is buying into the idea...)!  Why spend $50 to hand out candy and go to peoples houses we don't know, to get candy we may not like?  We are turning off the outside lights, carving our pumpkin (no we still haven't done that...) and planning on  what candy we really want to buy for cheap the next day.  We are kind of party poopers when it comes to Halloween I guess.  The past couple of years of Aaron in school have made us home bodies and I don't mind that at all.  When we are all home (and awake) we want to be together.  What can I say?  We like each other. :)