Joplin, MO

Joplin is a little under 2 hours northeast from where we are, and to help cleaning up the city, our church has been sending men from the surrounding stakes to do heavy manual labor on the weekends. Father's Day weekend was our stake's turn. Matt wasn't able to go because he had to work, but his dad made the trip up there to help out. All of the pictures he took of his phone got uploaded onto our computer, so I thought I would post some. (Thanks, Mike!)

The pictures are pretty small, so you may not be able to see much, but from what I can tell the damage is devastating.

Mike said on one side of the street there could be a house that was completely demolished and on the other side a house that only lost a shingle or two. It's crazy how tornados work.

After my first tornado season, I can officially say I haven't seen any tornados, and I hope it stays that way. Meanwhile, my heart goes out to all those who have been affected by tornados this year.

oh, and if this post makes you scared to ever visit Tornado Alley, just remember tornados have been known to occur in lots of other places too :)

Honey Butter Biscuits

I wish I blogged about recipes.

So here I am blogging about a recipe. Ta-DAH!

Since moving here, we have discovered the goodness of Church's Chicken. It's a lot like Kentucky Fried Chicken, but we really only like it for the biscuits. We love Church's Honey Butter Biscuits.

As a quick side-story, for one of Matt's Christmas presents, I made him a little punch card stating I would make one treat of his choice each month. 


Matt requested I try my hand at replicating the heavenly biscuits, so like any resourceful cook wanting to try something new, I found my way to Google, which led me to this recipe (thanks food.com!):

2 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

2/3 cup whole milk

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/3 cup honey

1 Preheat oven to 450°F.

2 Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cream of tartar in a medium bowl.

3 Work shortening into flour mixture by crumbling with your hands until the mixture feels like cornmeal.

4 Pour milk into flour mixture and mix well.

5 On a slightly floured surface, knead the dough about 12-15 times.

6 Make dough into balls (about 2 inches) and place on baking sheet.

7 Brush Dough balls with some of the melted butter.

8 Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden.

9 Meanwhile bring remainder of butter and all honey to a boil in a sauce pan, then set honey butter aside.

10 When biscuits are done remove from the oven and immediately brush each biscuit with honey butter.

I cut down the baking powder from 4 tsp to 3 (which I changed above) just because that seemed like a lot, and the biscuits still turned out amazing--better than the real thing. And the best part is that they're drop biscuits, so you don't have to take the time to roll and cut them out. I think the biscuits took about 30 minutes to make. It doesn't get much better than that!

So if you're in the mood for delicious honey butter on a good biscuit, give this recipe a try. You won't be sorry.

The Garden

Matt read up about square-foot gardening, so we decided to give it a try this summer. He built the box,  we planted our seeds weeks ago, and I'm proud to say we already have some fresh vegetables on our hands!

One advantage to the box is the lack of weeds. We spend maybe 5 to 10 minutes a week weeding the garden. And thank goodness, because that is my least favorite part.

We are growing tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkin, carrots, peas, and lettuce. We don't really know what we're doing, but so far we've had success. Hopefully that continues!

Summer

No one in our immediate family is in school anymore, and we've had summer-like weather here since the end of March, so the notion of "summer vacation" is lost on us. However, we used Memorial weekend to go out to Utah and visit family and friends.

Colin and I went out for a whole week, and Matt joined us Saturday night through Tuesday. My sister Jill and her family drove up from Phoenix too, so it was a big party.

Kimberly and Bridget enjoying dessert 

Colin loves babies! Bridget was kind enough to lend him her doll

Colin checking out his newest cousin, Felicity

Colin and Korbin, who I mentioned back in this post.
They looked alike in November, but look nothing alike now :)

Chillin' at the Waldron's

Charlotte loves babies too, and she loved holding Felicity

Practicing walking at BYU

Colin and Grandma Chris. She drove all the way down from Montana just to see us!

 For anyone who has spent at least 5 minutes with Colin, you know how active he is. He will not sit still for a minute, and even when I'm holding him, he's usually trying to climb up me to get to whatever is behind me. This made for interesting travels. We stopped in Denver both going out there and back, but we were lucky enough to have layovers that were only long enough to deplane and board our next flight. Colin actually did really well on all the flights, and we were lucky enough to sit by lots of nice people. Colin was very interactive with all of the strangers, but his favorite was a little girl that sat behind us on one flight that played peek-a-boo with him for half an hour.

Besides peek-a-boo, here are a few shots of what Colin did to keep himself occupied.

Trying to dive off the seat to play with everything on the floor

Sucking on his pacifier

Looking out the window and patting the glass

Other activities not pictured included eating cheerios and playing with the laminated plane menu and tray. Sleeping? Not so much, but despite that, he was still a good little travel buddy :)

The Big Gift

Matt surprised me with something awesome for Mother's Day. I'm late in posting about it because it wasn't quite ready for pictures until a few days ago.

He bought a piano on craigslist and completely refinished it. Look how beautiful it is!

Ever wondered what the inside of a piano looks like?
Unfortunately, this is the only before shot we have.

And the finished product. It looks even better in person!

I haven't played the piano much in the last 5 years, but I love being able to sit down and play whenever I want now. Now I just need to get some more sheet music.

Colin especially loves this new addition. Almost every time we walk past the piano (which probably happens 20 times a day) he looks at it and lets me know he wants to play. He loves to hit/pat everything, so he really loves the piano because his hitting/patting makes noise!

Matt took this cute video of Colin playing the piano. The piece of the piano is missing because Matt hadn't finished staining it yet. This view was even better for Colin because he could see movement every time he hit a key. I think we might have a pianist on our hands!

Bumps and Bruises

Not to mention being dirty.

That's the phase Colin has just entered.
And when exactly will this phase end?
I'm guessing years.

Last weekend he decided to throw caution to the wind and see what life was like standing on his own two feet. Since then, we haven't been able to get him to stop pulling himself up on anything and everything. In fact, I now find him standing up in his crib every time I go get him up.

He's gotten a few bumps on the head and a scratch on his cheek (the scratch we have our brick fireplace to thank for), but Colin is determined, and he gets extremely happy when he succeeds.

With his new sense of adventure, he has taken to opening the bottom drawers throughout the house. This one in the kitchen is a favorite of his because of all the fun things inside.

And he is quite the helper...look at him helping me fold the laundry :)

In other news, his third tooth just popped through the other day, and according to our home scale, he weighs about 17 lbs. He's growing up so fast!

Trip to the Zoo

Colin and I go to a play group on Wednesday mornings with some women from church. We do lots of fun things like going to different parks, the Children's Museum, and a few weeks ago we went to the zoo. Colin doesn't care too much about any of it, but it gives us something to do, and it has helped me make some friends around here.

My friend Melanie took a few pictures while we were there, so I thought I would share.

Watching the tortoises. Previous to this, Colin pulled off one of his socks and dropped it over the side of the stroller... 

We stopped for a snack along the way.

The empty strollers during the snack break. Can you imagine this parade of strollers walking through the zoo?

The kids enjoying the penguins.

I've never been a big fan of zoos because I don't particularly like animals, and this zoo trip was not much better. Most of the animals were sleeping or otherwise boring. The penguins were by far my favorite because there were a bunch of them, and they were swimming and waddling all over the place. Despite my feelings, I can see how the zoo is fun for little kids, and I'm sure in a few years Colin and I will be spending a lot more time there!