Sprinkler Phobia

Wouldn't you know it, summer finally arrived around these parts and our $12 deal of a plastic wading pool we purchased last summer has a giant crack in the bottom - sorry Hayden, no swimming wading sitting in 3 inches of water this year!  Seeing as the pool lasted us all last summer, I suppose we got our money out of it, but it was still disappointing nonetheless.  So Dave ran out this past week and bought this fun toy for the boys!

"What fun" we thought... a wiggling, squiggling, super sprinkler that Hayden could run and play in and would double as a nifty device to keep our lawn green.  I had visions of my boys running and skipping and shrieking with delight as they gallivanted across my lawn and I got glorious photos of them in action worthy of istockphoto!

Well there were shrieks alright... just not the delighted kind.  Hayden apparently has a "sprinkler phobia."

He is happy to watch the sprinkler.
Run AROUND the sprinkler.
Encourage others to get in the sprinkler.
But as for getting wet, he wants none of the action himself.


There was much crying, shrieking and flailing of appendages when we suggested* he get in the mix and try it out.

* suggestion may or may not have included forcibly moving said child into the middle of sprinklers against their will.

(Click photo to enlarge)

We finally figured out that we'd have to either carry or drag him to get him to play in them - and so that's what we did. It was a whole family affair with all four of us in the sprinkler.  Elijah loved it, Dave and I took turns running through with the boys, and I'm happy to report we got smiles and giggles out of our "trembling with fear" toddler which was the goal. We kept telling him how brave he was being and then bribing him with otter pops to let us run through with him again.

Yes... give the kid sugar to make him do what we want... that's how we roll!

At the end of the day I'd love to tell you his phobia was cured... but it's not....yet. 
However, there's always tomorrow.
And I've still got a whole freezer full of otter pops!

Summer Rice

My Aunt Pam is an amazing cook, and she first introduced me to this tasty little treat when we moved to the States in 1992. Today, it's one of my favorite go-to recipes when I need to throw together a dish and don't have much time, energy or ingredients in the house!  It's the perfect potluck dish, a great BBQ side, the answer to your comfort food craving AND it makes sensational leftovers! 

It's easy.
It's fool proof.
It's delicious.
I like this combo!!

Go ahead and add it to your "I'm going to make this tonight" list - you can thank me later!

Here's what you need:

1 cup uncooked rice (or 3 cups cooked)
2 cups water
2/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 4oz can of green chiles
1/4 cup green olives with pimentos (optional)
2 cups shredded cheese
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/2 tsp onion salt or kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Start by cooking your rice... 1 cup of rice + 2 cups of water = 3 cups of rice!  MAGIC!  Leftover cold rice works great in this recipe too.

In a separate bowl, mix together your sour cream, mayonnaise and chiles.  If you're using the green olives with pimento.. toss them in too. I prefer the rice without them, but if green olives are your thing...go for it!

Stir your rice in and combine well.

Then add your chopped tomatoes, salt & pepper and mix again.

Lastly you want to add your cheese.  I always use medium cheddar (guaranteed on hand in my house) but experiment with whatever you have handy, I bet a good sharp cheddar or Pepperjack would be glorious, giving it a little extra kick!

And this is what you'll have after all that.  At this point you can refrigerate until you're ready to heat, or throw it right in the oven to eat within 30 minutes.  I love versatile foods! LOVE THEM!

When you're ready to serve... just throw it in the oven at 350'F for 30 minutes or until heated completely through.

The end result... a cheesy, creamy, delicious dish that is dangerously addicting. Comfort food at its best - and did I mention the leftovers are divine?

Why are you still reading?  Get out there and make this already!!



SUMMER RICE:
Prep time: 20 minutes (counting rice cooking time)
Cook time: 30 minutes
Ready in: 50 minutes

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup uncooked, or 3 cups prepared rice
2 cups water
2/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 4-oz can of green chiles
1/4 cup chopped green olives with pimento (optional)
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped and seeded
2 cups shredded cheese
1/2 tsp onion salt or kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cook your rice!  In a saucepan combine 1 cup rice with 2 cups water.  Cover and bring to a rapid boil, lower heat to low and simmer until water is absorbed and rice is tender.

2.  In a separate bowl, combine sour cream, mayonnaise, chiles and green olives.  Add in rice and stir to combine.

3.  Add tomatoes, salt,  pepper and cheese and mix together.

4.  Transfer to a casserole dish and bake at 350'F for 30 minutes or until heated through.

Special K & Kids' Camp

I'm known as some variation of Kelly, Kells, Kell-Bell most of the year round, but come the last week of July each year I take on a new identity...

I am...

SPECIAL K.
Camp Counselor extraordinaire!

The girls from my cabin this year.

 8 years ago I attended my first Kids' Camp from our church as a camp counselor and was nick-named Special K by the leaders there, and the name has stuck. Now Dave (AKA Brotha D) and I go each year, and have slowly taken over most of the responsibilities.  We lead worship, we teach, we plan activities, and make sure the kids have the time of their lives. It's three full days and nights of go-go-go and we bring a bus load of 5th & 6th graders home completely exhausted at the end, but it's wonderful.

The whole crew - 16 fifth graders, 6 sixth graders, 7 counselors

Showing off our silly sides

This year was an especially great year - everything from the theme, the teaching, the activities and the kids response to the Lord was easy.  Our children's pastors said that in the 17 years they'd been doing Kids' Camp that it was among the very best and I'm really glad we got to be a part.

It's not just fun for kids either - us counselors have the time of our lives too.  The beautiful thing about this age group is that they're old enough to be semi-responsible for themselves and yet young enough that they still listen to everything you say.  This is how we could send our kids to bed each night in their rooms and tell them to go to sleep... and they would.  This is also how us counselors would stay up for several hours longer playing card games, eating totally unhealthy snacks and laughing until the wee hours of the morning.

Serious frisbee golfing

 It's also how we were able to allow the kids to keep making runs on the Alpine Slide while we got in a game of frisbee golf down the hillside of Mt. Hood.

And it's where I got this nice sunburn after telling all my girls to wear sunscreen and then not applying any myself!

Sometimes not practicing what you preach is painful!!

However the view to get that sunburn was WELL WORTH IT!  We took the kids up to the Alpine Slides for the day and riding the ski lifts up the side of ski bowl gave us the most gorgeous view of not just Mt. Hood, but also Mt. St. Helens, Rainier and Adams all in Washington, and then also Mt. Jefferson and Sisters ridges on the Eastern side of Oregon. 

Riding the chair lift up

Part of the track of the Alpine Slide

View of Mt. Hood from the top!

The whole weekend was tremendous...and I'm so grateful to the Lord for the ministry He did not just in the kid's lives, but in mine too.  It's a beautiful thing how you spend all this time preparing to teach the kids and the Lord turns around and teaches you too.  Kids' Camp is a great platform for me to be stretched and move out of my natural comfort zones... while I've been leading worship for years now, doing more of the teaching/preaching side, prophetic ministry and leading pre-prayer still gets me a bit nervous, but the kids were responsive and the Lord was gracious and I'm already pumped up and excited for next year!

Leading pre-prayer before our first general session.

Having an awesome worship time with the kids

Teaching Saturday morning on "knowing who we are in Christ."

I was also so very proud of my dear husband, who has NO problem whatsoever in teaching/preaching/prophesying/ministering because he's AWESOME and was in rare form this past weekend!  Oh what an amazing man I married.  Watching him in action makes me fall in love with him all over again!

My cutie-patootie preaching machine of a sexy husband!

Who need s'mores when you've got something as sweet as him???!!!

Yep, I think Special K & Brotha D will be returning to Kids Camp for many years to come!

A Cautionary Tale

I recently decided to utilize the "self-clean" function on my stove.  It seemed like a fantastic option when compared to the "bend over and scrub and scrub and scrub" option.  I also thought implementing it during the late evening/night was a great time to try it out seeing as I wasn't planning on cooking while I was sleeping.

I'm good, but I'm not that good!

The following warning is issued for those of you have who may have pondered using this function yourself.

* WARNING * Use the self-clean option on your stove with caution.  And by caution I mean the following:

1.  Do not use while you're home - it stinks to high heavens.  And you feel really bad that the kitchen is right next to your children's bedroom and you're sure you're burning their retinas while they sleep.

2.  Do not use if you have highly sensitive smoke detectors... because it sends smoke pouring out the top of your elements, forcing you to open all your windows so that you don't scare the daylights out of said sleeping children.

2.  Do not use while you're home on a really muggy night - because self cleaning means turning your stove as high as it can possibly go for a long period of time, and that sure makes things really toasty inside, and the windows open on said muggy night means you can't also use the air conditioning because that's just pointless! 

3.  Do not use if you have anything plastic on or near the vicinity of your stove.  My Kirkland brand Salt & Pepper Grinders DID NOT SURVIVE!

The bottoms are entirely warped, so they don't stand anymore.

 R.I.P. little grinders, I sure enjoyed you while you were in my life. 

If you adhere to these warnings - you'll be just fine.  And it did it's job - clean oven with minimal involvement from me.

My Life in Collage Form

Because this month has been so busy, I decided the most effective way to recap without making this post a mile long was to put everything together in collage form. (Click on any collage to see it bigger!)

So here's my look back at life in the first two weeks of July.

Dinner at our house & pictures taken at church together.

My Uncle Matt & Aunt Jenny spent a month in Oregon with our family.  They've been living abroad in England for the last two years and were on their way back to New Zealand before moving to Australia for the next couple years so it was great to catch up with them.  Matt is my mum's older brother and it was their first time visiting us since we've been living in the States.  They picked a fun time of year to come, and we had a great time introducing them to all things America over the 4th of July weekend, showing them around, making them letting them play with our kids and I really enjoyed getting to know them on an adult level instead of the relationship I remember as a little girl.  I feel like I really fell in love with them in a whole new way during their stay, and can't wait until the next time we're together.

Hanging at the Rodeo with Mum & Dad, Russ & Jodi, Matt & Jenny - and about 1000 other fans.

Saturday the 3rd we hit the Molalla Buckeroo... cowboys, cattle ropin', bull riding, barrel racing, bare back broncos, elephant ears & fireworks ~ that's what we call a rodeo!!

Some of the friends & family we "paraded" with this year.

One of my very favorite holidays (second only to Christmas) is the 4th of July.  This year we started our morning at our good friends (and new neighbors) Rob & Shay's for a french toast breakfast before heading to the Molalla Grand Street Parade, conveniently within walking distance of our house and watching it with our family and friends.  Hayden finally got the hang of the "candy getting" this year and stood excitedly with his plastic bag waving and cheering for the floats as they went by.  We told him the more he waved the more candy he'd get and sure enough - he came home with an impressive stash.

Tractors, horses and an occasional driving outhouse... that's what Molalla Parades are made of!

The parade was filled with the usual... tractors, horses, rodeo queens, Ronald McDonald and a couple favorites, the Clinkscales portable toilet and the Kell's Irish Bar Highland Band with their bagpipes.  But this year I was especially excited to see my dear friend LaTonya with her family walking in the parade representing her husband's insurance company... go Feauf's go!!  There they are in the middle left with the Country Financial sign.

Following the parade two of Dave's brothers and their families stopped by for lunch and a visit. It was the perfect weather and we ate lunch on the patio, the kids ran around playing and we relaxed!  Thanks Dom, Syb & Jesse for stopping by ~ it's so fun to be together!

Fun & friends at my parents BBQ

Then that afternoon/evening we had a big BBQ at my parents with family and some close friends. The kids swam and played on the slip n' slide, the adults sat in the shade and then around the fire pit as the day progressed.  We ate until we almost burst and had a wonderfully, relaxing, easy time together.  And Hayden for the second year in a row was terrified by the fireworks.  I really thought he'd be okay with them this year but no... poor little guy shook and trembled and clamped my hands over his ears while shoving his face into my chest... not quite the reaction we'd hoped for.  Oh well, there's always next year!

Mary Poppins at Keller Auditorium

One of my birthday presents this year from Dave was a ticket to Mary Poppins on Broadway with my sister and good friend Jana.  Wednesday, July 6th our day finally came and it was the perfect night... all the way from the weather, to the exquisite dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (Thai Crunch Salad... if you haven't tried it yet, it's a must).  We also learned that if you see a lovely woman waiting outside the theater and you notice that unbeknownst to her, her lovely black sheath dress has ripped completely up the back seam exposing her rear end and some lovely purple panties... the kindest thing you can do is tell her and then walk conjoined-twin-close behind her all the way back to her car so she can rush home and change. This is the type of kind gesture that my sister did for this poor woman... and she was incredibly grateful (and also mortified) that she'd stepped forward and let her know.  The play was wonderful - the props and set were unbelievable and the acting and singing was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!  I couldn't get past watching the young boy & girl playing Michael & Jane Banks, knowing they were the same age as my niece & nephew blew my mind for all the lines they learned, choreographed dances and songs.  The whole night was amazing!

Mike & Linley Meisch - June 9, 2011

And then lastly on July 9th I was the wedding coordinator for my cousin Linley's wedding. Hayden was a ringbearer, along with his cousin Blake and Kendall was the flowergirl/Jr. Bridesmaid.  The kids did GREAT, and it was a really fun wedding that totally screamed Mike & Linley,, including wedding "planking" during the photos!  The only bummer of the day was my ill-chosen shoes that tormented me for 90% of the day!!!

My extremely talented friend Shay of Be Photography did all their photos and I can't wait to see the finished product  I stole a couple of her shots she posted on Linley's facebook page for this collage!

And folks... you're basically caught up!  Whew!

Now I'm going to go harvest some incredible fresh herbs and veggies from my garden (pictures forthcoming) and get dinner going for this family of mine!

My how time flies

Remember that post I did a week ago saying how I'd get all caught up "tomorrow"... let's pretend that didn't happen.  July has proved to be the busiest month of the entire year for my family and it's a miracle that I'm sitting down at a computer right now.  Weddings, Youth Camps, Family, Beach Trips, Conferences, Exercising (don't laugh, I'm really trying) have consumed this month so far and my poor little blog has been deeply neglected. 

Well that and my blog may have also got behind because of the recent acquisition of my first smart phone, which is amazing and entertaining and has a million and one apps to fascinate, captivate and suck away time... like Angry Birds... it pains me to admit this, but I might be semi-addicted.

But I have big plans this week to get caught up on my blog.
If I can put down my phone.
Wish me luck!

Ooops!

Well... I HAD great intentions of writing a terrific recap this evening of our wonderful fourth of July weekend, complete with pictures and a full rundown of everything from my line dancing expo at church on Sunday (big step for me), to the rodeo, the parade, BBQ's and all the inbetweens... BUT....I just plugged in my camera only to find I left the memory card at work today.  GRRRR

So instead I will leave you with a couple tips for the night:

1.  IF you look at your photos at work because you're excited to show your co-workers how your fireworks setting on your camera worked... DON'T forget to put said memory card back into your camera.  It's really a hindrance on blog updates when you don't bring it home with you!


2.  IF you find you can't update your blog and you're home alone with two boys (because your hubby is helping friends move) and you decide to let those boys stay up late as a treat and go for a lovely walk around the neighborhood at their normal bedtime because it's such a nice evening, and then stop at a friend's house on your way and visit for a while... please make sure you're not low on anything at home... because arriving home at well past their bedtime is a bummer of a time to notice that you're now going to have to pack them into a car and drive them to a store to buy necessities such as toilet paper... and bread... and milk.

Which leads us to this tip:

3.  IF you are running to the grocery store at 9:00pm because you have NO TOILET PAPER IN THE HOUSE with two children who are tired and cranky, and you're hot and sweaty from pushing them around the neighborhood in 80'F weather and wearing workout clothes it's ALMOST A GUARANTEE you'll run into someone you haven't seen in years, and that's just the impression you want to leave with them... "wow, she's really let herself go and she's got unruly children... why aren't they in bed at this hour??"  Not that they said that, but that's what I imagined because it's exactly how I felt after that experience.

And lastly because it was just the topper:

4.  IF you finally get home, get your children in bed, put away your groceries and then go out to water your garden and take your BRAND NEW PHONE out with you in case your hubby calls... think carefully about where you place it; because finding it completely drenched in water as a result of overflow from your vigorous "come back to life strawberry plant" attempt, is NOT how you want to end your evening!

And with that... I leave you.
Fourth of July recap tomorrow!