Corn Chowder Recipe

Thanks Kate! You gave this to me awhile ago and we finally made it. It's fantastic!

CORN CHOWDER
1/2 cup Diced bacon
4 Medium potatos, peeled and chopped
1 Medium onion, chopped
2 cups Chicken Broth
3 cups Cream-style corn (2 cans)
2 tsp. salt
2 cups half & half (Kate used fat free)
Black Pepper to taste


Place the bacon in a large pot over med-high heat, and cook till crisp. Drain and crumble, reserving 1-2 Tablespoons of drippings in the pot. Mix potatos and onion in the pot with the crumbled bacon & drippings. Cook & stir for 5 mintues. Pour in the broth, stir in the corn. Season with salt & pepper. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and cover pot. Simmer 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until potatos are tender. Mix half & half into chowder, heat through. ENJOY!

Errands & Lists

So this weekend was a weekend of Errands & Lists. We both made "to do lists" and we accomplished them. Well i still have one thing on my "dust". UGH! I hate dusting with a passion! I added a few things to Kevin's list, but it did them graciously and without complaint He even did one off my list...mop! He is THE BEST HUSBAND IN THE WHOLE WORLD!

Taryn & I ran to Idaho Falls so i could get a b-day gift for my co-worker/friend Kathy. We went to JoAnn's and got some material so i could make a Valentine's & St. Patricks day curtains for my front door. They look great i finished them last night. I had a $20 gift card...i have 16 cents left on it. LOL.

Today is a typical Monday morning. Nothing too exciting.

OH! we made Corn Chowder last night for dinner. It was AWESOME! And i made some of my home made rolls. Which i am very proud that i only ate 1.5 rolls last night. Normally i'd eat like 4 or 5 of them easy. LOL. I'll post the recipe for the Chowder. It makes ALOT for 2 people. But a family of 4-6 it would be good, with maybe a little leftover...depending on much your kids eat.

Jackie to the Rescue

So as i mentioned in my previous post, Kevin plays basketball everything Thursday night. He drives down to Rigby and hitches a ride with Eric to Idaho Falls. Well I get my normal call close to midnight came saying "ok i'm on my way home". "OK great, i'll see you soon". Well last night i received a second phone call. Kevin had ran out of gas! Luckily he made it only about 1.5 miles from home. So i threw on some clothes, put my contacts back in, and gave the car like a second to warm up and was on my way. We pushed the car over to the shoulder, the plan was originally to just push it over to Cheveron, but it looked closed. So we pushed the car to the shoulder, drove over to maverick, bought a little gas can, filled it with $3 of gas and drove back to the freeway on ramp, put the gas in the car and we were on our way. I followed him to Maverick again so he can fill up completly and i just topped off my tank, i was going to do it today anyway. So there we were at 1:20am freezing, filling up both cars with gas. So then we got home i took out my contacts and went right to bed. I fell asleep in about 15-20 mins, but i woke up at 4:30am and noticed Kevin wasn't in bed yet. So i go out to the living room, there he is under 3 blankets asleep in the beanbag. So i woke him up and took him to bed. What a night.

Oh, i did make it to the gym barely yesterday. I was so tired after work that i said "if i don't go now, i won't make it." So i went home changed and left for the gym. It was much harder last night then the previous night. But it was good.

Workout Buddy

Since Kevin is FINALLY getting off work on time now a days he has decided to be my workout buddy. I've decided since doing this biggest loser competition if i want to win, i have to hit the gym. Last night was our first night. It was great having Kevin there with me, though with all the students in the gym we were never technically near each other, but it was nice to know he was there supporting me.

Kevin plays basketball every Thursday night, so he is not going with me tonight, but i think i can handle one night a week by myself at the gym.

I thought i was going to be really sore this morning, but i'm not and i actually feel pretty good. I can't wait to go tonight.

Weekend of Games

We had a fun time over at Eric & Rochelle's place on Friday night. We met some great people and had a fun time. We are going to get together with this same group hopefully once a month and play games. We will rotate houses each month. I wonder how 12 people are going to fit into our apartment...should be interesting. LOL.

Then Saturday our friends Tina & Jared came over and we played MORE games. It was alot of fun! I think they were originally calling to just exchange some movies they borrowed, but i talked them into playing. :)

Sunday was good. DC did better, not great but better. So i'm hoping in about 2 months he will be able to sit in his own chair and not running away when there is an open door. LOL. Sharing time is over and done with for another 3-4 months when it will be our turn again. fun fun.

Game Night

Well our friends Eric & Rochelle are having about 5 other couples over tonight for game night. We are one of those lucky couples. Should be interesting, i'm sure we are going to know no one other than Eric & Rochelle. LOL. We were asked to bring a "snack". Well everyone was asked to bring a "snack". Kevin tried clarifying with Rochelle last night but all she said was "not really dessert but snacks". ugh. I need to have something assigned to me. Like..."Jackie please bring chips & salsa" or "Can you bring some drinks?" I hate this open ended stuff.

Also i remembered this morning while i was getting ready for work we have to do Sharing Time in primary on Sunday. Oh joy! So i was looking up stuff on Prayer this morning. Hopefully we can make something out of it. LOL. Oh yes and i was called and asked last night to give a prayer during Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. I chose the closing prayer because i know we will be late, we are always late. LOL.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. We'll see you at the start of next week.

Oh and if you are wondering, it's a toasty 20 degrees outside (at 5:20pm) and it feels great! :)

Thanks Nomee

OK, so my friend Naomi mentioned on her Blog that she downloaded this thing on her desktop that will tell her the weather outside at a glance. We are always looking it up here at work, so I thought that would be pretty cool. I downloaded it TWICE! LOL. It's in my tool bar when I open up Explorer and it's also down in the right corner of my screen--you know where it has the time and such. I look at it ALL THE TIME! Thanks a lot Naomi! I've become addicted to knowing how stinking cold it is outside. LOL. Though this morning we were in the POSITIVES!!! First time in a LONG time. We even got some very fluffy snow last night and it's still snowing. You just walk by it and it flies away its so light -- looks really pretty. We are currently a toasty 13 outside.

Inside Weekend

OK, so it was absolutely FREEZING all weekend long. I think the highest we got over the past 3 days was 11 degrees yesterday. We are still in the negatives until about noon everyday. When will it end?! We've entered hell and it's completely frozen over! We literally only left the house when we needed to. Other than that we tried to stay warm. We did go bowling on Saturday with our friends the McDonald's. I won the first game with a score of 118. Calvin was a close second with 113. But the second game, not so good.

Sunday was the first time I met our new sunbeam class. Boy do we have our hands full! Kevin and "I really miss our other boys". I'm sure these ones will "grow up" and be good like our other ones. Give it 6 months. LOL. I held one boy, DC, on my lap the entire time of primary. And yes, that seems to be his name. Kevin asked me at one point is I was "OK". I think he was glad not to have to worry about him; he just dealt with the other 4-5 boys. They all seem to love him and want nothing to do with me. LOL.

Well the official "weigh in" for my "Biggest Loser" competition was yesterday. Wish me luck! Cat, I'll take any training, eating, whatever advice! I need to make a good workout schedule that doesn't just repeat the same thing all the time -- it doesn't work. LOL. I want to loose 25-30 pounds. I know I can do it, I just have to be determined!

in the NEGATIVES

OK, so i love winter and snow. But this morning is just HORRIBLE. When i left for work at 8:30am ( i was totally late) it was NEGATIVE 14 degrees! We are only supposed to get up to about 6-10 degrees as our high. What the heck is up with that?!?! Why did we leave CA for this?! Though summers are fantastic. So, i need to live in CA in the winter and ID in the summer. So needless to say, this weekend we will be inside the whole time!

Biggest Loser

So, i've decided to join my friends in a quest to get in shape. We are starting a competition with a little prize at the end. Check out our "Biggest Loser" blog.

http://toomanyrolls.blogspot.com/

feeling better

Well i am feeling a bit better today. Not nearly coughing as much and don't feel sick to my stomach. But the day is still young. :)

I was SO tired last night that i fell asleep around 8:30 and woke up and made myself go to bed around 11pm. Slept till about 7:10am. Woke up to about 3-4 inches of snow. I really didn't think we were going to get anything cause it's SO COLD, but sure enough it came.

The Mazuran Family found out they are expecting a GIRL in May. YEAH!!! I'm so excited!!! Max & Sam will be great big brothers to protect her. CONGRATULATIONS!!!

ugh!

OK, so I never really get "sick" but this cold/flu thing is kicking my butt! I made it through the day at work barely on Monday. Tuesday was a different story. I felt totally sick to my stomach all morning and then finally I had to leave a conversation I was having to go throw up. So needless to say I went home yesterday. Today, so far so good. I didn't take any sort of pills or medicine this morning. Hoping that my stomach will be fine. No, I'm not pregnant. This is strickly a cold.

Well, my goal is to clear off my desk today. That's been my goal for awhile now. LOL. Lets see if I can get that atleast accomplished today so I feel like I've gotten something done.

Oh! My friend Sarah Maz. should be finding out the gender of their 3rd baby today. I hope it's a girl, but Sarah thinks it's another boy (they have 2 already). Hopefully the baby will cooperate!

Sick

Well, the New Year came and with it came a cold. I was out of the office on Friday and went to the Doctor's. He thought I might have the beginnings of the flu. I think it's just a bad cold. Kevin might be coming down with it now. Oh joy. I hate that colds just get passed around. So, I have been laying around the house for 3 days and made myself come into work today. I'm doing OK. Especially if I don't talk, then I don't cough. It's a good plan.

Yesterday was our first Sunday with our new Sunbeam class of all boys (again). Kevin said it would be alright if we didn't have this new arrival in our ward named DC. Kevin had to literally hold him the entire time. I felt horrible that I wasn't there to help him out. I'm not sure how much help I would have been though. I'd make them all sick so none would be here next week. LOL.

2007 here we are!

I can't believe it's 2007! WOW!

Well, we ended up going to our friend's Calvin & Megan's for games & snacks on New Years Eve. Though Kevin admitted he too would have been fine going to bed as well. We had alot of fun with them though, it was worth it. We have to spend time with Calvin while he is in town, he works for two weeks (in WY) and then is home for a week (in ID). So he isn't home all too often. Their house is BEAUTIFUL!!! They got these great couches for their family room. So soft and comfy. Makes me want a couch bad, we just have two bean bags and a banana chair. We went to bed around 1:30am on Jan 1st. I slept horrible that night and was yup around 7:30am. YUCK! I so wanted to take a nap, but when it was time, I just couldn't fall sleep. Then last night we were over to our friend's the Larsen's to watch the Boise State game. Which was AWESOME!!!! I could not believe it! We were all getting into the game - jumping, oohhhing and ahh-ing. It was alot of fun! Now today we are both back at work. This has been a LONG morning. Thanks Kate for chatting with me. :)

I am starting to get a cold so I am trying to fight it. Good thing I have 11 hours of Comp time I can use before I have to touch my sick/vacation time. So I won't feel bad for leaving early or not coming in later on in the week.

New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR (almost)! I can not believe it's going to be 2007 in a few days. CRAZY!!! I don't know if we really have any plans yet, but i'd rather be sleeping...i'm not big fan in trying to stay up to say i was awake at 12:01 am Jan 1st. LOL.

Whatever you all do, please do so in safety!

See you in the new year!

Books for sale

My sister Natalie is now a consultant for a book company. My 2 year old nephew Sam LOVES the books. Check out the website and make sure you order through Natalie Pederson's website. That way she gets credit for the sale.

Usborne Books Online
www.ubah.com/M2366

THANKS!!!!

Totally White Christmas

Well, Christmas Eve morning we woke up to get ready for church and looked outside to see about 5 inches of beautiful snow freshly on the ground. So we totally had a white Christmas! It was alot of fun. Jeff & Kevin got in some good snow ball fights and they also built a 7 foot snow bear. But it didn't stay too cold that night so he partially melted. So good thing we got some pictures with his parents new digital camera. Hopefully we will get copies. Jeff also "white washed" their mom in the snow.We forgot our camera AGAIN! We forgot over Thanksgiving and then we forgot for Christmas. We are slackers! The roads weren't too bad heading out to Kevin's parents on Christmas Eve. Coming home on the 26th they were beautiful! We totally got spoiled this Christmas. We used some of of Christmas money to go towards bills and then the rest we used to purchase "winter wear". We are now fully equipted to play in the snow. We've got boots, snow pants, and gloves (for me, Kevin already had some). We just need to get Kevin a hat/ear muffs. We woke up this morning to about 1-2 inches of new snow after most of Christmas' snow melted due to rain pretty much all day yesterday.

Kevin enjoyed his day off yesterday. He got some stuff done he wanted and we also made a trip to Idaho Falls in the afternoon (i took the afternoon off). We had our treadmill looked at yesterday because ever since the move we haven't been able to use it. Well a baring is going out in the front roller and the belt was loose. So he tightened up the belt, but we said not to fix the baring because it's gonna be about $300 (parts/labor) to fix it. So we'll use it till it starts to go bad and then give it to DI or somewhere and let someone else buy it & fix it. Still cost $79 to have someone come out to look at it and tighten the belt. What a rip off!

Work is SO quiet this week. I should be able to get alot done, if i could get motivated. :)

White Christmas?!?

OH PLEASE! OH PLEASE! It started lightly snowing last night around 8:30pm. Seems to have lightly snowed all night. We have a nice little layer of snow. It's still trying to snow all day so far. Luckily its below freezing outside, so the snow is like dust. Easily just brushed off the cars, etc... I've been looking on line at the weather checking to see if we will have a white Christmas...looks like we have a good chance we'll have something. YEAH!!! But like everyone keeps telling me "Wait 5 minutes and the weather will change". So, i guess we won't really know until Monday if it will be white.

I hope you all have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope you get to spend plenty of time with Family and Friends. I miss my family in CA very much. But i hope to see them soon. Please everyone travel safe, as we will try to do on our way to Kevin's parent's house.

Clean Up Begins!

So last night after everything (my part of graduation) was done, i dropped off everything at the office in one big pile. So now the clean up begins. FUN FUN. But i wore jeans today! YEAH!!!

Everything went fairly smooth yesterday, though there were TONS of kids picking up their caps & gowns right was they were lining up to walk in to commencment. So i think our numbers might be off. Which scares me.

The luncheon about killed me yesterday. There were people not on the RSVP list that should have been and so i didn't make placecards for some people, cause i didn't know they were coming. I seriously thought i was going to be sick! Which i didn't eat much yesterday anyway. No breakfast, maybe 1/3 my lunch and then a plain waffle for dinner. I fell asleep around 8pm last night! I was worn out!

Today i'm feeling much better, though i still haven't eaten that much. But i've lost 5 lbs. LOL.

4 Days till Christmas...are you ready?!?! I think i am. For the most part. Gotta get the food we need to bring to Kevin's parent's house. But other than that. I'm good to go.

Just a few more hours...

I have just a few more hours and graduation will be over...until April. But still it's a break! I have alot of nerves today about the Luncheon and getting everything ready for the convocation's tonight. I am feeling totally sick to my stomach. I hate getting nervous! I couldn't even eat my breakfast this morning, but i've had two glasses of 7-up.

I was talking to Natalie on Monday and thanked her for the pictures and i told her how much i think Dallin looks like her. And she told me that our mom pulled out her & my baby pictures and it was a toss up between us who he looks like. My neice Madison looked a bit like my pictures too when she was born, but now she looks SO much like my sister Carolyn. I hope my own kids will look like me, since my sisters kids look like me. :)

We got a package yesterday from my parents and then i picked up our package from my sister Carolyn this morning before they tried to bring it to the apartment again, when we aren' there. I was there just before they opened at 9am, and i was 6th in line and then more people came in after me. The post office has to hate this time of year!

Well, wish me luck in making it through today.