They're BaAaAaAck!!

I am so excited to see my swallows back again this year. I think they may have brought friends and family with them as well. I saw some others checking out the other bird houses. Another pair has nested in our neighbors box. Will this mean less mosquitos???? We can only hope!

This will be another fun year of watching the babies learn to fly etc.!! YEAH SUMMER!!

Aisling's 72-Hour Emergency Food Kit

Aisling is a student at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Last week for Family Home Evening this was their activity. The ward purchased and supplied the ingredients for a 72-Hour Emergency Food Can for each student that attended. Here is what they contained. Day 1: Breakfast: 1 package hot chocolate, 1 granola bar

Lunch: 1 can tuna, 1 pouch juice

Dinner: 1 package dry soup mix, 1 package trail mixDay 2: Breakfast: 1 package hot cocoa, 1 packet oatmeal

Lunch: 1 pouch juice, 1 beef jerky stick, 1 fruit snack
Dinner: 1 Candy bar, 1 fruit leather, 1 granola bar
Day 3: Breakfast: 1 packet hot cocoa, 1 packet oatmeal
Lunch: 1 Candy bar, 1 package nuts, 1 fruit snack

Dinner: 1 can tuna, 1 fruit snack I told Aisling that the only thing she has left to do is to buy a can opener and tape it to the can.

Thanks Bishop Willey for taking such good care of our kids!!

Spring Break in Utah

For Aisling's spring break, we went on vacation while she stayed at college. We went down to Utah and with her help started on the new Queen Bee Gardens website using Adobe Dreamweaver. It's new to me. Thankfully she has taken a dreamweaver class in college!! So, we're progressing! While we were there we also did some visiting. What fun!! Sunday we went out to Tracy & Steve's in Grantsville. Tracy has some great food storage/budgeting ideas that I wanted to see. (I'm incredibly visual!) She also shared with us her cool water pump from Macy's for draining those 55 gallon drums of water. They are only about $8.00!! We ended up buying two. One for us and one for a friend.
That afternoon we went to visit my Uncle Don. He lives about 6-8 miles from Tracy in Erda. What a great time to get to visit him.
We spent the first part of the week with Karen, an old friend of mine. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures there, and those I did take didn't turn out.

From there we went to Provo and stayed with Laurence's cousins Bonnie and Rylene. Laurence's grandfather Laurence and their father Howard were brothers. They have their nephew Duke living with them. He is their brother's son.

Duke and Laurence
Rylene and Bonnie

Bonnie is a real family history buff, so she and Laurence had a great time!! They were able to find a link in one of their genealogy lines that took them back several hundred years.

While we were there I kept trying to get a picture of Aisling, she wasn't very cooperative:)

The last evening we were there we went to dinner with my cousins Roy and Karen. Once again I forgot to take pictures. We sure did have a great time.

Aisling--

Aisling had the opportunity to travel to San Diego this week with Weber State for the NIT basketball game. Although Weber got killed by SDSU, the supporters are having a great time. Here are two of the pictures she sent me on her phone.

The top picture is of the San Diego temple and I don't know where the bottom one was taken. Hmmmm..... I wonder if San Diego will now be her choice of a temple to be married in. It sure is beautiful!!

I am so glad that she is able to have these opportunities while at college!! Good thing she has a job and works hard so she can!!

St. Patrick's Day in Colstrip

As many of you know, I was whining about the lack of corned beef in Colstrip. But actually our meal turned out even better!! All the time I was in Ireland I actually NEVER had corned beef. I remember one time tracting and the man said he was cooking corned beef. That was my only contact with it in the 1 1/2 years. With corned beef being out of the question, I actually cooked something that we ate a lot of.
Fish, chips, cooked cabbage and trifle. I made Sharon's tartar sauce instead of having malt vinegar (this is Colstrip you know). It was wonderful.

I Love Ireland!

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OK, So It's NOT the Iron Chef Competion

Being the partying kind of fools we are, we DIDN'T have an Iron Chef Competition, or light 89 candles on a beautiful cake only to blow them out. Although I wish we had been there for both events! Laurence and I spent Valentine's Day canning beef stew!! Bet you wish you'd been here:)
We are going to mom's this week. She told us on Thursday that they had made special arrangements with the butcher place that we could pick up our 1/2 beef while we are there. If you could see my freezer you would know why this sent me into panic mode! There was only one choice..... eat it and can it. I had 8 packages of stew meat that were taking up space. Laurence and I turned them into 8 quarts and 20 pints of beef stew. YUM!!! I am so tickled to be looking at this on our pantry shelf!! (I think my church calling is affecting my brain....)
AND..... after all the fun was over we cooked filet mignon and peach cobbler for dinner! It was a wonderful day!! Not to mention the beautiful rose Laurence gave me.
Happy Valentine's to All!!