beauty

I have talked Kevin into going to this with me tonight. I am making it a date night. Hes not so excited, but I am. If you have never heard this womens story, watch this video, or visit her blog, her story is truly inspiring.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHDvxPjsm8E

Her blog: http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/


On another note, I need new moccasins. My pair is falling apart, like they so often do. I go through phases with many things. With shoes, its either flip-flops, moccasins, brown boots, or uggs. Right now I am obviously in the moccasin phase. I go through these phases until the shoe I am currently liking, wears out. And now my moccasins have holes. So bring on the next phase...lets see...Its almost UGG season! My favorite phase. But for some strange, weird reason, my husband doesn't believe I need new uggs, I think all of you need to talk some sense into him.

recipes and hadley

My cute niece Hadley is 11 months old now. She has started to walk, and has the cutest personality. She changes every time we see her.

This is my favorite way to make rice now! I didn't have any parsley on hand, so I compensated with rosemary. I really don't know how well of a trade this is, but it tasted great.

Rice Pilaf with Slivered Almonds

2 cups uncooked long grain white rice
5 cups hot water
5 chicken bouillon cubes
1 (2 oz) package slivered almonds
½ teaspoon marjoram
1 Tablespoon parsley
1 ½ squares butter or margarine
2 teaspoons salt

Dissolve bouillon cubes in water. Mix together everything except the rice and almonds. Put rice and almonds in 9X13 pan. Pour liquid mixture over rice; don’t stir. Cover dish with foil. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes; uncover and stir again. Bake uncovered, for 15 more minutes or until liquid is gone.

Rice pudding for some reason sounded good to me, so I tried it out. And it was yuuummmy! Kevin was hesitant at first, but once he tried it he went "MMMMM Ecuador!" He ate rice pudding a lot I guess on his mission, but didn't remember until he actually tasted it. Ohhh I love making Ecuadorian food unknowingly.

Rice Pudding

3/4 cup uncooked white rice
2 cups milk, divided
1/3 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup golden raisins (I didn't add these, but should have-that is how they made it in Ecuador)
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions

In a medium saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add rice and stir. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
In another saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups cooked rice, 1 1/2 cups milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy, 15 to 20 minutes. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup milk, beaten egg and raisins. Cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and stir in butter and vanilla. Serve warm

Burma

So I am writing a policy brief for my Global Health class. It is on human trafficking. I have learned a lot about it and it is fascinatingly sad. But by reading up on this, I came across an interesting thing...

So Burma is the largest country in Southeast Asia. It is a hot spot for human trafficking. It used to be one of the wealthiest countries in Southeast Asia. But today, it is one of the WORLDS most impoverished countries. Why is this and how did it change so drastically? Well in 1948 their Prime Minister at the time, U Nu, tried to drastically change their country into what we call a welfare state. A welfare state is based on the concepts of equality. Equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to basically provide for themselves (welfare). The state assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. All aspects of welfare are considered and universally applied to citizens as a "right".
After this, their largest exports fell dramatically- upwards of 96%. Then in 1962 they tried another economic scheme called the Burmese Way To Socialism. These dramatic changes and programs led Burma to be one of the most impoverished countries in the world.

I really hope this doesn't happen to us.

pink eye sucks

I have had pink eye for the past week or so. It sucks. I thought it was just stress and lack of sleep (ok mainly stress, to be honest I get plenty of sleep). Then my sore eye became pink. So I self-diagnosed myself with pink eye (duh). Well I believe that sometimes when you get sick, you just need to let your body take care of it. Just like my car... My car engines light has been on for quite some time now (two years?) but I believe in my car and I believe that it is fine. And you know what, because I believe in it, it still works for me. It still is a great car. I am not going to waste money on going and getting it fixed because frankly any time I have had anyone touch my car, they have failed to do anything positive. Jiffy Lube actually broke something while trying to fix something. Idiots. ANYWAYS, I tried to wait it out to see if my pink eye would fix itself, but then I started getting blurry spots. That freaked me out. Maybe I cried and told kevin I was going blind, maybe I didn't. But that was when kevin made me an eye appointment. I hate any kind of appointments, but If it meant my sight, I decided to go. So I went, and yes I have pink eye (I should be an optometrist), and he gave me a prescription for some fancy eye drops. Well $140 later, this pink eye better go away and fast. I am sick of looking scary, and getting dizzy from the blurry spots.

second best roll baker in my husbands life

We do everything outside now

We are loving our new patio set the Browers gave us!! We now eat dinner outside every night. And with our new grill and new sod; this makes for a great combination. I found this recipe on My Kitchen Cafe for salmon, but I tried it with chicken. It is Kevins new favorite chicken recipe.

Best Chicken Ever

lemon pepper to taste
garlic powder to taste
salt to taste
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS
Season salmon (or chicken) with lemon pepper, garlic powder, and salt.

In a small bowl, stir together soy sauce, brown sugar, water, and vegetable oil until sugar is dissolved. Place fish/chicken in a large resealable plastic bag with the soy sauce mixture, seal, and turn to coat. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

I also made my Grandma Moser's famous rolls*. I really didn't believe I had the skills to pull these off. Or if they did turn out, they would taste like sock. But they turned out AMAZING! And the best part is, now I don't have to wait for Christmas, or every other year on Thanksgiving, to satisfy my Grandma Moser roll tooth. Kevin even said that they were the second best rolls he had ever tasted. Which is pretty good. His #1 rolls were the sweet rolls he ate on his mission in Ecuador. So my next task now is to become the #1 roll baker in my husbands life. If you have any Ecuador sweet roll recipes, pass them on over please!

*I am sorry I cannot divulge this secret, secret recipe.

canyoneering

Kevin went canyoneering this past weekend with a bunch of hippies and buddies. I don't really like it when he is gone, but guys need guy time. Well lets be honest, the real reason I was fine with him going was because my weekend was packed-full of work, homework, and meetings. He went down with his photographer and they got some really cool shots. I have yet to see them, and I wish I could post them on here but the photographer wouldn't allow it. That is why this picture is downloaded from Google. But they did stuff just like this. They rappelled 80 feet down into this cave with a small, very deep pool at the bottom. Yikes. I am pretty sure if I did that I would either A. fall because the rope broke or B. get pulled down into the dark, deep pool by dead bodies (envision Harry Potter). Well that is what I would be thinking at the moment at least. Last year we went rock climbing up Big Cottonwood canyon with our friends Ashley and Josh. I was just fine climbing up (I tried to not look down) but right when I reached the top and I had to give my complete trust in this simple rope, I froze. I think it took me 20 minutes of pep-talk, and another random guy to climb up to me to assure me that the only way down from there, was well, down. But for some reason, I think I still like rock climbing and would totally go again.

Well it was a long weekend without my husband. But I did get to watch some chick flicks he would never watch with me: Back-Up Plan and The Last Song. Back-Up Plan was pretty taste-less, but funny and entertaining in parts. For some reason I loved The Last Song. I watched it twice, and it made me all teary-eyed. It made me like Miley Cyrus, which I definitely did not before.

When Kevin got home I got all giddy and excited like a little high school girl. I love that he is mine!

Kevin just told me that the other photographer on the trip has posted the story and some pictures here: http://perpetualweekend.com/wordpress/2010/09/slot-shots/

Brower Party Time

We have had quite the week of fun. Kevin's brother Daniel, his wife Shalane, and their two girls Alta (2) and Ellie (3 mo) came to play with us all the way from Virginia. For the weekend, Natalie and Jeremy even came up from Vegas. We all went go-karting, which actually this needs to be talked about. Kevin as a young boy was a dreamer. He wanted to do everything. Go-karting was one of them. He. was. obsessed. There is a video that Mark and Lorna took of all their kids where they asked them questions like what they liked to do, what their favorite school subject was, what they weighed etc... Well Kevin, unlike his brothers and sisters, hated school. He could not think of one subject he liked. I think he ended up saying recess... But he had plenty of things to say about his hobbies and favorite things to do. One thing he said he liked to do was Go-karting. And why this was so funny was because he never had go-karted yet. His mother even annoyingly added on the video right after he said this, "He has never go-karted." He had thought and dreamt about it so much that he thought that was his favorite past time. This was just a perfect kevin moment. One thing I cannot wait to do when we get up to heaven is watch kevins childhood. I can't wait.

Anyways... We went go-karting, we went biking, we had football parties, we played with virginia babies, played ping pong, ate raclette, and ate so much of Lorna's amazing food. This trip, Alta liked both me and Kevin a lot more. Kevin won her over with gummy bears and jumping on the tramp with her. I won her over with playing on the ipad with her. She is one electronic baby. She knew exactly how to use that ipad, it amazed me. She new how to get on youtube. And she new how to find her favorite baby video. It was the most annoying video I have ever seen, but I cant tell you how many times she wanted to watch that. She just kept watching it over and over and over again. I finally got her to like another video, it was called "Gummy Funny Bear," but that got annoying fast too.

Ellie is the fattest baby. She is the perfect fat person, I love it. All she wants to do is sit, eat, and sleep. So me and kevin had some fun with her.
Crest trail/puke hill #2. Except this time we had some real puking. Daniel was not so used to Utah altitude and Utah mountains. He said he had been biking the "Virginia mountains", but c'mon, they don't have mountains. So this combined with biking hard equaled puke x4. Well they didn't name this hill "puke hill" for no reason.
I didn't puke, but my legs felt like it. For some reason I thought it to be smart to workout my thighs the day before. You know, warm them up. WRONG. They died.
Shuttling up
Ping-pong time. They think they are better then the Chinese.
MMmm Raclette! This was the best dinner! Mark and Lorna recently went to Switzerland and brought back this fantastic idea of a dinner. You have a raclette grill which grills your meat and shrimp on top, then on the bottom you have trays to put the amazing Swiss cheese in to melt. Once the cheese is melted, you either put it on potatoes or bread. It is heavenly.
Me winning alta over. My favorite alta quote from the whole trip happened right after this picture was taken. Lorna and Shalane that day had gone to Baby Gap and bought Alta the cutest skinny jeans. They were adorable on little Alta, and she knew it. She even called them her "skinny jeans." Well while we were sitting and enjoying Gummy Funny Bear, she grabs at her pants and says "Too tight!!!" As I undid her snap, all I told her was "Beauty is pain Alta, beauty is pain."Skinny jeans on little girls? Crazy! But they looked so much cuter on little Alta.


Thanks Lorna for letting me steal all your pictures...

We got Sod

Before

here is the almost-finished retaining wall Kevin built. he did an amazing job! The only thing I did was watch, talk, occasionally pack down dirt, and buy him slushees.


Thank you sod for making our white trash backyard less white trash. Having sod is awesome. We cant stop staring at it and walking on it. We had a "sod party" to lay the sod down and enticed helpers with pizza and slushees. I guess slushees are only for kids and me because the older you get, the more painful brain freezes you get. Mark and my dad could not handle them and Kevin constantly gets them. Its age I tell you.
Well it only took a few hours to get all the sod down. Me and tyler careened the wheelbarrows full of sod down to the Men and they placed them. It was great teamwork.
I think we are moving up in the world; we have a sod backyard.

my green monster morning protein shake

My mom used to make this shake for me when I was on the swim team. It might be an acquired-taste type shake, but I love it.
I make this for my school days, and also after a good workout.

I don't know how much of each I put in, I have just figured out how much to blend for my bottle ( I sound like a baby).

Green Monster Shake

6 or so Ice cubes
milk
tofu
almond butter
scoop of Green Super-food Powder (I found this in the health food section of Harmons)
honey (if you want it a little sweet)

And blend.

More publishments for Mr. Skier over here

Im sorry but I have to brag... here are his: not one, not two, but THREE publishments in Backcountry Magazine! Go Kevin!!!

Sorry that I am horrible at taking pictures. I obviously understand little about lighting. I feel like that is just to be expected when you have a normal camera. An un-normal camera to me would be a way sweet, expensive, big, bulky one. I love bulky stuff. One day we will get an un-normal camera. Probably when we have kids in a few years; when it deems responsible for us to take nice pictures of the mini-browers.

Well I have so much more to blog about, but those posts will have to wait. With school, work, and 2 Virginia babies to play with, things have been quite busy lately.