Home Repairs

Travis had a few days off work this last week, so we (mostly he) was able to get a lot done. We repainted our living room and hallway, and the ceilings in the living room and hallway. We also repainted the hallway baseboards and door frames and half of the livingroom baseboards (I'll try to finish those this week...) Travis also put a new toilet in our main bath, and we bought some new linoleum for the main bath yippee! Now when we have company, I won't have to give the "How to Flush the Fifty-year old Toilet" speech, which went something like this... "If you go #1, and you only use a few small pieces of toilet paper to wipe, you can flush, but make sure you hold the handle down for 45 seconds. If you go #2, then go #2, and then flush BEFORE you wipe, holding the handle down for a FULL 45 SECONDS. Then wipe. If you need to wipe more than 3 times, make sure to flush again (again, holding the handle down for 45 seconds). If the flushing process doesn't work, don't even attempt to flush again until the tank has COMPLETELY STOPPED running, which will take 3-5 minutes. When the tank has stopped running, you can try to flush again. But again, if you don't hold the handle down for a FULL 45 seconds, you will need to wait 3-5 minutes, and try again..." No wonder most people would rather "hold it" or company would usually make a quick trip to the corner gas station... Now, you can actually GO in our house! Hooray for NEW TOILETS!




While Travis was putting in the new toilet, He dropped a bolt down the creepy sewer hole...and his arm was too big to fit down there....ewww, so I had to reach down the toilet hole to get it, but only after I had on a rubber glove and wrapped my arm in plastic wrap...

Soup Time...

Ahh...fall...cool weather...soup time...
I was just reading my cousin Katie's blog and she started a soup recipe swap. So here is my new favorite soup. Please try it and tell me what you think, then add your own favorite soup recipes as a comment, or post it on your blog!

Fifteen Minute Soup
1 can (16 oz) great northern beans
1 cup water (I did 2 cups)
1 teaspoon (or cube) Beef or Chicken bouillon* (I did 1 tsp of each)
2 cans (16 oz) tomatoes
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp garlic salt
1 Tbs oil, marg, or butter
1 package (10 oz) chopped spinach
1/2 cup macaroni (elbow or any other shape)

1 In a saucepan, saute onion in butter. Add all ingredients except spinach and macaroni. Heat until liquid comes to a boil.

2 Stir in and break up spinach, bring to a boil again.

3 Stir in macaroni and simmer until macaroni is tender, 6-10 minutes.

Makes 4-6 servings
Cals per serving: 106
Fat per serving: 1 gram
Prep time: 15 minutes

When I made it, I didn't have the frozen spinach, but I had a 12 oz bag of fresh spinach. Travis just chopped it up, and we put it in. It seemed like a LOT of spinach, but it cooked down to nothing...Also, some of my kids are squeamish about tomatoes, so I often run them (or part of them) through the blender...Travis loved this, even though it had no meat in it. He thought it might be good with Italian Sausage, too.

*I thought it needed more liquid, so I added another cup of water, and put in 1 tsp chicken bouillon, AND 1 tsp beef boullion and it gave it GREAT flavor (I learned that trick from Cowboy Grub's vegetable soup-they use half beef and half chicken broth)
I also cooked up dry beans in the morning, and simmered until tender or you can soak overnight, then simmer til tender if you don't have canned beans on hand.

So now, it's your turn! Give me a good recipe, please! (Sharena, if you get on here, I want your White Chili recipe...)

Apple-Picking

Fall is Here! Our neighbors, Ron & Lanelle VanOrder have a couple of apple trees. They are so sweet (both the neighbors AND the apples!:) and let us pick them. It is one of the kids favorite things to do (the teenagers don't love it so much anymore--notice they are absent) but the little ones still love it.

Some Cute Fall Pictures of Zoe Brooke

My friend Sharena babysat Zoe. When I came and picked her up, she had fixed and curled Zoe's hair so cute! Zoe NEW she was adorable. She kept jabbering unintelligibly, then raising her eyebrows, and touching her hair, as if to say, "I'm a gorgeous babe!" I wonder if Sharena would come over on Sunday mornings to doctor up all my little girls...





The next time Sharena babysat Zoe, she came home with THIS hairdo!
Not really! Zoe was playing on the trampoline. Wow! I love static electricity. Super Cool, eh?
My little Zoe is such a sweetheart. You can't help but love this funny little girl.

Some Internet Statistics...

I took this information from imView. The link to imView is in the column to the right. I don't know why I can't copy it over here. But here are some scary facts:

One third of kids have been contacted by a stranger and half of these were considered inappropriate.
81% of parents of online youth say that kids aren't careful enough when giving out information about them online.
76% of parents don't have rules about what their kids can do on the computer 65% of parents believe that kids do things online that they wouldn't want their parents to know about.
95% of parents didn't recognize the lingo kids use to let people know that their parents are watching.
89% of sexual solicitations are made in either chat rooms or instant messages
20% of children age 10-17 have been solicited sexually online; that's 1 out of every 5 kids.
75% of youths who received an online sexual solicitation did not tell a parent.
4,000,000 children are posting content to the Web everyday.
15,000,000 youth use Instant Messaging.
9 out of 10 parents will never know that any inappropriate contact has occurred.
14% have actually met face to face with a person they have met on the Internet.
1 out of 17 kids have been harassed, threatened, or bullied.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of online teens believe that someone their age is most likely to be approached by someone unknown to them online as opposed to offline.
When asked how they responded the last time they were contacted online by a complete stranger, just 3% of online teens said they told and adult or authority figure.
Most kids will not report inappropriate Internet contact to their parents because they are afraid of losing Internet privileges.
61% of 13-17 yr olds have a personal profile on social networking sites.
44% of online teens with profiles like Facebook and MySpace have been contacted by a stranger, compared with 16 percent of those without profiles.
71% have reported receiving messages from someone they do not know.
45% have been asked for personal info from people they do not know.
48% of 16-17 yr olds report that their parents know "very little" or "nothing" about their online activities.
MySpace deletes 25,000 profiles weekly of users who don't meet the site's 14-year-old minimum age requirement.

This imView sounds like it is an excellent way to monitor internet activity. The link is in the column on the right, and titled "Family Online Safety Program" check it out and tell me what you think.

I really am still alive...seriously...

I know, I know....I promised to do better, and I haven't kept that promise...yet...But I will...hopefully...soon....
My last post I copied off of my cousin Katrina's blog, and I think the one before that I gave the excuse that I was busy canning peaches, and now my excuse is EVERYTHING, because I'm sure you are all doing nothing....

But here's my last month or two in a paragraph:
made 14 jars peach jam
bottled 8 quarts peaches
bottled 14 quarts peaches
bottled 35 quarts peaches
bottled 10 quarts peaches
bottled 38 quarts peaches
bottled 6 quarts tomatos
packaged 140 ears of corn to freeze (yes, all grown from our garden :)
bottled 14 pints salsa
bottled 12 pints salsa
bottled 20 jars zucchinni relish
picked abt 300# apples
dehydrated 32# apples (should have weighed after, probably turned into, like 2 lbs!)
Made 27 jars of applesauce
Moved 150# of apples to garage to can later...
Picked over 125# green tomatoes out of my garden before they froze to can as they ripen & make green enchilada sauce
Wonder if Trick-or-Treaters would enjoy green tomatos
Bottled 48 jars grape juice
Cleaned my house about 600 times
Wondered why my house is still a mess...
Changed somewhere in the vicinity of 700 diapers
Potty-trained Zac
Wondered how 17 month old Zoe would re-act to potty-training...
Unloaded the dishwasher 100 times
Loaded the dishwasher 127 times
Wondered if disposable dishes are really THAT bad for the environment...
Did 8 bazillion loads of laundry
Got a new washer and dryer (I guess 8 bazillion loads is too much for 1 machine to handle...)
Wondered if joining a nudist colony would cut back on laundry...
Planned YW Evening of Excellence
Decided nudist colony is a "no-go" after hearing Stake YW Presidents beautiful talk...
Substituted in the Church Nursery 8 times
had family scripture study 55 times
had Family Home Evening 9 times
slept too little
yelled too much

And I think that about covers it. So, until my next post (which, at the rate I'm going, will be another excuse of some sort in a month or so...) hope you are all well & happy!

Grandpa & Grandma Campbell's DC Trip

I copied this off of my cousin Katrina's Blog. Thanks Katrina! I am so happy that Grandpa and Grandma were able to go and so thankful to Uncle Gary and Aunt Teri for making it all happen!

The following is an article that was in the Daily Harold, Utah County's newspaper this morning. It is about a trip my grandparents made to see the WWII Memorial in Washington DC. It's pretty cool. Courtesy photo Nephi and Elaine Campbell of American Fork visit the U.S.Marine Corps War Memorial in Washinton, D.C., better known as the Iwo Jima Memorial, with a daughter-in-law and three great-grandsons.

The couple's children and grandchildren pitched in money to make the trip possible.Saturday, 11 October 2008Veteran visit a family affair: Family, vets group pays for AF couple to visit WWII memorial Caleb Warnock DAILY HERALD Gary Campbell was sitting in the American Fork home of his parent, talking about his upcoming Vietnam War reunion in Washington D.C., when a thought struck him."I said, 'Dad would you like to see the World War II memorial they just built in honor of vets,' and he surprised me by saying, 'I wouldn't mind seeing it,' because he never goes anywhere. He never leaves the house," Campbell said.There was a small problem."He won't fly," Campbell said. "He's never been on a plane."At a family reunion, Campbell asked the couple's children to pitch in $100 apiece and the grandchildren $50 apiece toward the trip, raising $2,700 in total.And when Campbell's fellow Vietnam veterans, the India Company Third Battalion Fifth Marines, heard he was bringing his father to see the memorial, they donated $1,000 to put the family in hotel rooms."That was not cheap, what a wonderful gesture," Gary Campbell said. "So many of the World War II vets never got a chance to see it [the WWII Memorial] because they were gone before it was built. They built it 30 years too late. I didn't want my dad to miss seeing it, along with Mother. Sometimes we forget the sacrifice the women made."With everything in place, Nephi and Elaine Campbell, 86 and 84, Gary Campbell and his wife, and three of the elder couple's great-grandchildren arrived in Washington after a 50-hour train ride.There had been one small mishap -- during a layover in Chicago, Gary Campbell hit a bump in the street while pushing his father's wheelchair. His father spilled onto the pavement, hurting his knees, banging his head and blackening his eye.Because the train arrived a day and a half later than scheduled, the family had a hectic trip, visiting the WWII, Vietnam and Korean war memorials the morning after arriving."I saw tears in Dad's eyes, though he won't admit it," Gary Campbell said. "It was beautiful."Many Vietnam and Korean war veterans, upon spotting the elder Campbell in his WWII vet cap, stopped to express their thanks for his service, something neither the elder Campbell nor his wife had anticipated."You can't imagine the men coming up to him and say 'I want to thank you,' " Elaine Campbell said with emotion."It felt good to be there and see all that," Nephi Campbell said.When asked what he thought about at the memorial, pain creeps into his eyes. "I lost a close buddy of mine, from Cedar City. We were both in the same rifle company. He got killed and I managed to get out of it.""It was really emotional," Gary Campbell said.The family also went to Arlington National Cemetery, viewed the outside of the White House, visited the Lincoln Memorial and other sites, and Mount Vernon."This couple has been married for 67 years," Gary Campbell said. "That is a long time with one woman, as Dad says, and even longer with one man, Mom says. They have 42 grandkids, approximately 125 great-grandkids, and I think around 20 great-great grandkids."When drafted in 1944, Nephi Campbell was a Geneva Steel worker, married and living in American Fork "with two kids and a third one on the way," said Elaine Campbell.After boot camp in Texas, the elder Campbell was part of General Douglas MacArthur's liberation force in the Philippines, after which he went to Japan as part of the occupation. He earned the bronze star, among many medals, which are displayed in cases in the family's living room.After returning from the war, Campbell spent another decade at Geneva before deciding to go out on his own as a bricklayer, a job he did not retire from until he was 80.Having never been east of the Mississippi, the trip to the nation's capital touched the couple."I never thought we'd see anything," Elaine Campbell said. "All those grandchildren and my children, I just can't believe they would think enough of us to give money for us to go."Elaine begins weeping. A silence falls over the room."They are a bunch of sweethearts, I tell you," she says, still crying.