Hidden Picture

Can you find the toddler in this picture?


In real life finding the toddler in this mess gave me quite a start. I didn't know he was there.

Ready to take on the world!

I am so happy today and yes ready to take on the world. At least my little corner of it. I had to teach Relief Society today for the first time since receiving my new calling, (1st counselor) so all week I've been a complete zombie. I haven't had a lot of experience in the teaching adults department so it was a bit daunting. I've had that lesson in the back of my head for so long that I feel like I can finally think clearly now that it's over. I feel kind of like I got my life back. Tomorrow I'm going to go running, paint the bathroom, go Christmas shopping, print and distribute flyers for the school, plan menus and grocery shop, stock the shelves of our new store, put up Christmas decorations...anyone need anything I'm going?

P.S. I think the lesson went well. They look impressed to me.

My Idol! Seriously.

She's Home!

Yes it's Thanksgiving but this post is not about food. Instead I get the pleasure of reporting that our neice/cousin Sister Mary Shepherd returned from serving in the Geneva Switzerland mission today. This could not have been a better Thanksgiving for our family. I wanted to get these pictures up so everyone could get a feel for this homecoming.

The family reunited. L to R- My nephew Joey Shepherd with his wife Kim in front, (expecting baby Alivia any day), my sister Debbie Shepherd, Mary, and brother-in-law Lynn Shepherd.


The anxious mother.




There she is!







Well done Mary. We love you and are so proud of you. Thank you!

William and I ended up in a matching color scheme today so I tried to take some pictures. After a couple of failed attempts because I kept closing my eyes William started to get silly. Note for future picture taking with 4 year old: 1-2 tries maximum! (Especially after church.)



It also didn't help that Dylan was taking the pictures. It's not one, two, three, click. It's one, two, three/click. He would push the button as he said three! OK I'll also admit that I don't do pictures well. For some reason my eyes go funny with the flash. I guess now that I look back it was a pretty funny experience with us all goofing up and blaming everyone else!
But look at that little guy, is he a goof ball or what?

Jokes

Thanks to the recent influx of Laffy Taffies at our house, there have been a lot of jokes going around. This morning I was eating breakfast with William when he said "Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?" Thinking I would nail it I said "because he was monkeying around." To which he replied "No because he was DEAD!"
I gotta admit, I didn't see that coming. Good one Will!

Salsa!

Tomatoes were so late this year I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to make any salsa. I even broke down half way through August and bought a box of tomatoes from the local growers so I could get started. I finally ended up getting enough tomatoes to do 3 more batches in Sept.
The kids helped me for Family Night a couple of weeks ago and we whipped up a batch in about an hour. I didn't process it that night because it was late but it was great to see how well it worked with us all pitching in. (Glenn was out of town so he didn't get to help.)
Here were the assignments:
Dylan-Onions, peppers, jalapenos, garlic
Garrett- Blanching tomatoes
Abby and Emily- Slipping skins off and mashing tomatoes and making a general mess of sink, walls, ceiling, counters, cupboards and floor
Me- Coring tomatoes with occasional stints at onion, pepper, garlic station
William- Running in to pose for pictures

Here are some pics. Note Dylan's snowboarding goggles for the onions. He said it really worked.

My awesome husband made all of my wildest dreams come true on Monday. He painted the front door! (Why, what were you thinking?)
Seriously our front door was an eyesore almost from the time we moved in 6 years ago. The painter did a horrible job and the paint never really stuck. Anytime anything touched it, the paint would pull off revealing the white door underneath. After 6 years it looked pretty speckled. Glenn, being a painter in his previous life knew how to do it right but just hasn't been able to do it until now. Yeah! I didn't even know he was planning it so it was a great surprise. It took most of the day because they had to strip all of the old paint completely off and also prep and tape the side-lights. (They meaning Glenn and Zach. Sometimes it's great to have a nephew that works for us so we can make him do jobs like this as well.)
Anyway here is a picture of the door. If you are look at the picture and think it's brown what's the big deal, that is exactly the point...it's BROWN! I love it, thanks Honey!

Moving inside now. A few weeks ago Glenn cut the vinyl for some wall words that I've been wanting. (More hubby points!) This one over the inside of the front door turned out so good that I had to take a picture of it. I love the color, the font, the fit and just everything about it. Glenn helped me put it up which I was really worried about but it even went up without a hitch. (Which is more than I can say for the last time we tried to put up a wall border together, we're still in counseling over that one.)
Here's the pic.

If you click on the picture to make it big you can see the detail of the font. Did I mention that I love it?

Happy Birthday Abby!

Ok I know I've been neglecting my blog lately so it's time to make amends. I have several things I've been wanting to post about but just haven't had much time. Let's start with Abby's birthday, yes it's been awhile.
Abby's birthday was on a Sunday, (Sept. 28) so we had a party for her on Saturday. This turned out to be a really easy party because she wanted to go swimming so we just had the girls come over, we fed them, opened presents and then went to the pool. It turned out to be free admission day at the pool so we didn't even have to pay for anyone.
We did a Hawaiian theme which was fun. As the girls arrived we took them downstairs and dressed them in hula girl attire and took pictures. For dinner we had Kalua pork, (crock pot style), rice, pineapple and carrot and celery sticks. I think the significance of the luau-style dinner was somewhat lost on 10 year old girls, they probably would have preferred pizza.
We then opened presents and it was apparent the Abby had let all of her friends know that she wanted Webkins which are stuffed animals that have an accompanying on-line game. She received three Webkins and was really quite thrilled.
After presents we loaded up and went to the pool. We let them swim for a while then took everyone home. We gave them a cupcake on their way out of the car, and that was it- Party Successful. (Parent points accumulated.)
Here are some pics.

Vegetable Pasta Cheese Bake

Here is another meal that we discovered that fits into the "Has Healthy Elements and the Kids Like It" category. To be honest I'm not sure why the kids like it but I'm grateful. (When I was little I would have voluntarily fasted before eating this meal, but I didn't do broccoli back then.)
Here's the recipe:

1 cup uncooked medium size shell macaroni
1 1/2 cups broccoli florets
1 1/2 cups cauliflower florets
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1 teaspoon dried parsely flakes
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon salt
Cook macaroni according to instructions on package, leaving out any fat and salt. Drain well and set aside.
Steam broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and mushrooms in a small amount of boiling water until tender-crisp, about 7-8 minutes. Combine cooked macaroni, steamed vegetables, cheese and all spices; mix gently. Pour into a 2 quart casserole dish. Bake at 350 degress for 10 minutes or until cheese melts. Makes 8 servings.

I like that the amount of cheese is small, just enough to make it a little gooey and make it kid friendly.
Here are pics from the first time we had this.

The completely empty baking dish.


The girls with empty plates. See how happy and satisfied they are?


Here's Will who wanted me to take his picture too. I complied even though he didn't eat any, he only eats cottage cheese. Last week we got him to try a bit of "Pasagna". He also bit a carrot once and now brags that he eats carrots because they're good for you.

Uggggghh

I just came in from my run and it was tough today. My legs felt like lead and to make matters worse my Ipod battery died half way through. Running stinks without my tunes! For some reason I came in with "All Creatures of our God and King" going through my head. Where did that come from?
What I really wanted to write about was how much I love some of my worldly possessions, the first one being my Ipod.

Glenn surprised me with it last mother's day (2007). I had a little Rio Mp3 player that worked just fine and held plenty of songs so I wasn't expecting an upgrade at all. At first I thought that I'd take it back because it was too expensive but I ended up keeping it and have loved it ever since. I have lots of different play lists which I am way better at organizing and I love to plug it into an IHome and have tunes while working or cleaning. I also plug it in on Sundays and play church music. I don't have any videos on it except one episode of Dora that I put on for William when he was younger. It still helps me out in a pinch though. My boys can't believe that I don't have any videos on it but I'm still a greeny. I can't get over how cool the music is let alone think about putting movies on it!
Another thing I love is my running hat.

It makes me happy every time I use it. I wanted a white lightweight hat so I'd been pricing some on E-Bay but they were too expensive. I ended up at the running store and found exactly what I was looking for at half the price on Ebay. Don't you just love it when you that happens? I think this hat is probably "last year's model" and they were clearing it out because everything is dri-fit now, but it was just what I was looking for. It's totally practical too, which I love. (I am my mother's daughter.)
The last worldly item I wanted to mention is our BlendTec blender.

This one is for Glenn. He probably loves this one more than me but don't you just love it when something just works so well? It's kind of like a fine tuned automobile, it's just good. When Glenn went through his weight loss program over the summer we were drinking a lot of smoothies and the program recommended getting a BlendTec but wow, talk about pricey! Luckily we ended up getting one at wholesale, that one just worked out for us too. Our favorite smoothie is Chocolate-Peanut Butter-Banana, but we do different versions of it. Glenn's is more healthy than mine.
It's kind of fun to watch the "Will it blend" videos that Blendtec makes if you've never seen them (www.willitblend.com). They have blended everything from golf balls to cell phones and the guy that does it is this very dry guy in a lab coat who always starts the segment with "Will it Blend, that is the question." One of the coolest ones I've seen was the 12 glow sticks, they did that one with the lights off.
Well those are a few of my favorite things...

I guess I'm a pretty simple person but I prefer it that way.

Beef lips revealed

What is up with the beef lips? Several people have inquired about the title to my blog so I thought I would finally explain the origin.
The line comes from a comedian named Jake Johansen who Glenn and I kind of liked when we were first married. (1990) I don't know if he's still around or if he's still clean (he was back then) so I'm not necessarily plugging him. But he did this bit on hot dogs where he was saying that everybody says hot dogs are bad and you don't know what goes into them so he was reading the ingredient list, hoping to find something about the little white ball maybe in parentheses, but he had to stop when he came to the beef lips. Then he said "Why are the beef lips in our food?" He then goes on that maybe we should give the beef lips to the dog, and you could probably get a dog to beg for a lip etc.
Not that that is hilarious in and of itself but it has become an inside joke of sorts between Glenn and I whenever one of us asks a "why" question, the other will often respond with "Why are the beef lips in our food?"
I actually thought it was a really good title for my blog because when I was first started the blog I didn't know if it was going to be about nutrition (healthy recipes and such) or more of a journal so this title really worked because it has a food element, it's personal to Glenn and I, and it's also kind of funny. So thus the beef lips blog was born.
My only concern has been the web address because I learned that if you don't put the hyphen in you will go to a blog that is not good. I thought about changing that part but first of all I don't know how to do it and second I think I'm somewhat established now at beef-lips so please remember the hyphen!
Here's Jake Johansen

and here's a hot dog

Enjoy!

Random Pictures

Here are some ramdom pictures that I've been meaning post.
Here are the girls before their first day of school.

This is William before and after his first day of pre-school.




This is Dylan in his golf "uniform". I grabbed him yesterday just as he was running out the door for school. He played in a JV match and although they lost, Dylan had the best score on his team. He looks good doesn't he?

Shelves

I am dedicating this blog entry to shelves. Yesterday I spent 12 hours in the basement working on organizing some different areas. The first was my cold storage room. We had some shelves built into the room but they were so far apart that there was a lot of wasted space. Each wall had 3 shelves so last week I added two more shelves giving us 5 per wall. That was a real pain. (I really don't know if it was a smart thing for me to learn how to run the cordless drill. I look back now 15 years ago and think that it was probably a mistake to install our first garage door opener rather than waiting for Glenn to find the time to do it. My impatience set a bit of a precedence.) Anyway I finished that storage room yesterday and quickly filled it. We had some food storage in the garage because of the lack of space so even though I completely filled the room I did get everything in there that was supposed to be there. I wish I had before and after pics but you will just have to settle for after. Here's the cold storage room.

Next we emptied some storage shelves in the basement laundry room and used them to organize the books for the amazon account that the kids will be running. This was Dylan's account but we decided to make it a kids account so they can all pay for their extra-curricular activities. Dylan was ok with the change because he now gets help and it's paying for the same things that he was using it for anyway. We used to make him pay for baseball, golf etc. but now it will be paid out of this account directly. A lot of my time yesterday was spent overhauling his amazon account. He really wasn't listing things correctly so a little more training was probably in order anyway. Here's how the book shelves look now. The girls did all the stacking and I think they did a great job.

All the books on these shelves were still in boxes that were stacked in corners and crannies. This isn't the whole inventory, there are two other book shelves by the computer just outside this room. I'm excited to have this organized and to have the kids all helping. I think it will be a good system.
And lest you think I have it all together here is the stuff that we cleared out of the laundry room which is now awaiting more shelving!

I never really have it all together but I do love the feeling of progress!

Swimming and snoozing

The kids went swimming a couple of weeks ago and I thought they looked cute so I snapped a picture. I love that they are old enough now to go swimming by themselves. This was on a Saturday afternoon and they were getting bored so we just shipped them off to the pool for a couple of hours. The only tricky part is William since he's not able to go without an adult yet. Luckily on this day William was not around while the kids made their plans and got ready. Of course I had to go make sure he was safe so I sneaked upstairs and found him...


The picture doesn't do it justice but he was sleeping all crammed into the wall. It looked like maybe he was looking down the side of the bed for something and then just fell asleep. I also need to mention that he ran around all morning in bare feet down at our office which is a big dirty warehouse. Ewwww, I'm glad he wasn't under the sheets!

"Building Up a Righteous Posterity"

I mentioned that I'm reading the transcpript from the Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting on the side of my blog but since that changes often I thought I would get a more permanant plug in.
I did not hear/watch this meeting first hand, in fact I knew nothing about it, but I remember the next day at church was a fast Sunday and a lot of people were referring to it. I was kind of disappointed (and bugged because I didn't know about it) that I had missed something so good and relevant to my situation.
Soon after I printed the whole thing from the internet but I didn't ever read farther than the first talk. Then when it came out in booklet form with the last Ensign I set it by my bedside to read with Glenn. Finally last night I decided that I just needed to read it! Hopefully I can read it later with Glenn but if not oh well.
Anyway it's a great resource. I love the way it was presented in a round table discussion because it feels so comfortable, like I'm just talking with a group of good friends. And what friends! I really admire all of the people that were involved: Elder Holland, Elder Oaks, Sister Beck, Sister Tanner and Sister Lant.
Elder Packer and Pres. Monson also spoke in the meeting. I think I'll be referring to this resource often in the next 20 years or so, or more likely forever.

The last summer Hurrah

I'm not sure why but the last four weeks of our summer were so busy that it seemed like we were trying to pack the whole summer into those four weeks. You can tell by my blog most of what was going on, the Idaho trip, the birthdays, the company, swimming lessons etc. I don't know what happened to those weeks but they sure were fun! For our last hurrah, we had all of Glenn's family coming to stay a couple of days and go to Lagoon. (It was really a last minute attempt at a family reunion which did serve its purpose of getting us all together and also setting an expectation of something for the following year.) To add to the excitement our friends the Wilson's (Trish was my college roommate back in the day) wanted to come stay during the same time because they had to come pick up their son from baseball camp. (See last blog.) Anyway we said the more the merrier and they came as well. They were planning on bringing their camping trailer down to stay in but we have a vacant house across the street from us which the owners had offered to let us use so we took them up on it. It's funny because William now refers to it as the Wilson's house.
The Wilson's came Thursday night and took off on Friday to go to BYU and do some family stuff. Dale came Thursday night at midnight, (Glenn forgot that he was coming that night) and he and Garrett disappeared for most of Friday too. I think they were scoping out fishing holes and root beer float joints.
Glenn's parents and Chanse arrived Friday afternoon and Jill, Mark, Jacob and Alexia came later that night. It worked out that Jamie and her family would be able to meet us at Lagoon on Saturday so everyone was able to be there.
We convinced the Wilson's to go to Lagoon with us too. We got to Lagoon just after 10:00 am and spent the whole day there. Thank goodness for cell phones because we had people everywhere. My girls ended up tagging along with Trish her girls quite a bit, so a lot of the time I found myself with just Glenn and William. I've got to admit that is my favorite way to hang out at an amusement park. I'll take those two guys and the kiddie rides any day.
It's funny that we had 24 people with us but I mostly got pictures of William and Alexia, the little ones.
Dale gave Abby and Emily cameras though so maybe when I get their pictures developed I'll have more.
Anyway it was a really fun day and I would have to say that our last minute family reunion was a success. Everyone left on Sunday (including Glenn because he had a 7:00 am flight to VA for books) and then school started for the kids on Monday morning. Whew, talk about a whirlwind weekend!