Goodbye June

What a fun week! Gabe started soccer on Wednesday and really loved it. The coach asked the kids to come up with a fierce team name and Gabe suggested for his team to be called "the giraffes".

On Friday we went and visited my friend Teresa in her new condo. We went swimming and the kids loved it. She lives near my very first college job where I first met Manuel "Copies Plus", I couldn't believe it was still there so I took a picture. Hadn't seen that place in over 10 years.

My mom came up and spent the weekend with us. We went to Syracuse Heritage Days and saw the parade, the carnival and the fireworks. There was a full moon out above the lake and the fireworks were so pretty. The kids had a great time with grandma. The next day we made waffles and grandma went to church with us. Then for dinner I made these yummy taco salads - check out my recipe blog for details.

The kids cried when grandma left. They had a lot of fun with her.

Father's Day Weekend

Wow! What a fun and busy week we had. Thursday my sister had me and the kids over for a High School Musical movie marathon. I had never seen the movie before so this was fun. She decorated her house with the themes and characters from the movie, it was so cute! She also made a rice krispie treat of the main character (Troy's) face.

Then Friday we had my other sister and her husband over for a German dinner. I made spatzle in mushroom sauce, schnitzel, weiss wurst, dumpling soup, sour kraut, herring salad, cucumber salad, and breaded mushrooms. We also had kaiser rolls, German cheese, and the traditional sauces (curry sauce, garlic sauce, sweet mustard and curry ketchup). We also had some traditional drinks - black currant juice, cherry juice, mezzo mix (orange cola), and sparkling apple juice (a German brand).

Manuel made his famous and yummy German desert. It's like a cinnamon roll but it has a poppy seed past inside of it with raisins. So yummy!!

On Saturday we went down to the Manti Pageant and stayed at my grandma's house. We went to the craft fair and bought lots of fun treats and then had dinner at the booths (BBQ turkey dinner, mango ice cream with vanilla custard, and a fried spiral potato) wow!! We found one of my cousins and he saved us some really good seats. It was a fun night and Gabe had the best time! He loves the stories from the Book of Mormon so he enjoyed the pageant and seeing all his favorite prophets.

The next day my grandma made us breakfast and we went to her church. It was Father's Day and so they gave all the Dads a soda pop with a straw that said "we soda love you". She attends the really old church house in Manti that has two levels. The chapel is on the second floor and it even has seating above the chapel like the old tabernacle. It also had a beautiful mural painted of Jesus across the entire wall behind the pulpit. So pretty.

One of my cousins is in my grandma's ward and was the nursery teacher, so she watched Paisley. After church my grandma made us a big dinner and our other cousins came over.

After that we drove 2 hours back to my Dad's house and celebrated Father's Day. He had a Luau BBQ with the yummiest ribs! Candice made delicious strawberry daiquiris, margaritas and pina coladas. My dad built a beautiful waterfall in the backyard. It was such a nice weekend, but we were exhausted on Monday :)

Today (Tuesday) I set up a water park in the backyard and the kids had fun getting wet!

I've updated my food blog with some yummy apricot recipes and more! http://cookwithlindsey.blogspot.com/