sometimes it's not good to let them dress themselves

Shirt on legs, underwear on head, and a big grin. Too silly for words.

Orange Quinoa Salad

Here's the Salad I made for our trip to the Guadalupe river with the Hansens. It's a fun summer salad and pretty healthy since quinoa is a nice whole grain with lots of protein. You can add chicken if you're not feeling so vegetarian. :)

Orange Quinoa Salad

Dressing
1/4 Cup Fresh Orange Juice
2 T. olive oil (extra virgin)
1 1/2 T. buttermilk (I rarely have buttermilk so I just do the milk plus vinegar thing)
2 tsp Honey
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp fresh ground pepper

Salad
1 1/3 C. uncooked Quinoa
2 3/4 C. water
1/2 tsp salt
2 green onions thinly sliced
1 C. dried cranberries
1/3 C. fresh parsley-- chopped
1 handful of chopped almonds

optional- feta cheese

Wash quinoa. (This is very important, if you don't wash the tannins off the quinoa it will have a bitter taste.) Wash by placing in a fine sieve and covering with water. Rub quinoa between hands for 30 seconds, then rinse. repeat two more times.
Bring water and salt to a boil, then add quinoa, cover and simmer on low heat until all water absorbed. About 20 minutes.
Add cooled quinoa to other salad ingredients, cover with dressing and refridgerate until ready to eat. Top with feta if desired.

Lizzy and the guadalupe river

The Hansens

Some friends from Milwaukee matched to San Antonio (Hooray for them!) and we were lucky enough to have them stay with us while they searched for a house. Amanda and I had taught nursery together back in the Milwaukee ward and it was wonderful to spend some time with them. And they found a sweet house! Here's some pictures of our trip to the guadalupe river.
Dell and Lizzy in the River
Lizzy napping in some beach towel shade

Skipping rocks. Go Amanda!
Henry went to the high ground to better shoot people with his squirt gun. He had a great time soaking his dad.

All in all it was a great time. We had Quinoa Salad (I'll try and post this recipe) for lunch on the shore, threw rocks, got wet, and sat about and chatted. Then we drove out to New Braunfels for some yummy Texas BBQ. Sigh.

random pictures of Henry and Lizzy

Lizzy in denim. My dear baby.




































Henry in my Tiara from young womens. Isn't he sweet?

Nothing's more fun than a sleeping baby

I capture the castle

Some fabulous friends of ours invited us up to their property a couple of weeks ago. What an amazing place! I was so jealous as they walked us around telling us what would go where. The house here with a great view, the garden here (surrounded by 8 foot fence to keep out deer), the hammocks, tree house, camping place, archery range, and most of all, the castle. These people have their priorities straight and the first thing built was the castle. Henry was thrilled. And even more so when he found some water guns left over from an earlier water fight. He and Dell had a great time storming the castle and fighting bad guys. Henry especially loved being in the turret on the roof.

children's museum

A bit ago Dell took Henry to the children's museum while I hung with Lizzy at the Pottery Barn Outlet. Here's some pictures of the fun Dell and Henry had. I love the car that kids get to paint. How simple and fun is that?

Projects

Here's a quick look at some of the projects we've been working on lately.

The Backyard.
We (mostly Dell) spent the past several months working on this. We'd head out in the evening with the wheelbarrow to gather rocks from vacant lots in the neighborhood to border the flower beds we wanted to create. Then we got a dumptruck load of dirt dumped on our driveway and used that to create flowerbeds inside the rock borders. Then we had lots of fun at nurserys around the area. We now have 2 asian pear trees, 1 avocado, 1 bradford pear (ornamental), and one pomegranet tree. Various native plants and shrubs-- go low water use! We also have a garden area with blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes, beans, onions, carrots and corn. Henry loves his corn. While planting it he was very excited and when Dell told him he was very good at planting and could maybe be a farmer when he grows up, Henry was thrilled. Now he talks about being a farmer a lot and goes out to check on his corn every day. It's up past his waist now and doing better than expected. Henry also sang a cute song he made up while we were planting all our plants. "It's a beautiful day in my garden, a beautiful day in my garden." So so so sweet.

A view of the backyard after planting. Can't wait for things to start to fill in!
The nursery. Okay, we did this ages ago, before Lizzy was even born, but I realized we didn't post any pictures. So here's a quick on of the wall by her crib. I'll try to post some of the rest of the room another time. A talent girl in our ward sketched and painted the tree for the wall. I adore it!