Painting in Missouri

While we were in OR I got a call from my friend Leah from MO who asked me to come paint a bunch of murals in a new church. (see the complete story and the rest of the murals on my art blog: www.melodyaa.blogspot.com or click on "A peek in the kettle" link on the right.)

The boys and I spent two weeks there and I mostly painted my heart out while my boys were very well cared for by our good friends. We did get a few moments of brief fun in though. We drove to this great new pumpkin farm south of town and got a few pictures and a jump in the blow up Thomas the Train. (I hate those things because they always smell like stinky feet, but Eirik love them. ug) The place was great, as was the company.



I don't remember what Eirik was saying here, but it was something that totally cracked me up. It was probably something like, "I know mom, we can go up in space and make friends with the aliens. It will be so much fun mom!"
I was so glad we got to go to the pumpkin farm since it was the only chance I had to see a bunch of my good friends. How sad to visit our old home and work so much that I didn't get to see our friends much. Well, I hope they all forgive me. I needed to get my kids home as quickly as possible. We ended up leaving before I was done painting because they had had enough of road tripping and we needed a break. But before we made the drive home we got to stay overnight with Katherine and Bobby. What a treat. I felt very spoiled to get the "Domestic Goddess" treatment with this awesome pumpkin penne pasta and homemade rolls, not to mention the great scones and other homemade bread she brought to help me keep painting. Katherine also did me the honor of bragging about me on her blog. I never thought I would be on the front page of a newspaper! Only in Kirksville!



Patty and Alana also came to visit me at the church while I was painting! Thanks ladies. You are such good friends! I miss you all!
Leah and Jo, how can I repay you for such an awesome opportunity! You were such great hosts and friends!
I was a bit worried about the 12 hour drive home with 2 babies, but it turned out great since I left at 7pM and drove straight through until 7AM. I've never had a Red Bull before and yikes! I was shaking like a leaf. It was awesome! :) I didn't yawn once. Plus I was so excited to get home. After almost 7 weeks away.. home sounds pretty good.

Utah

We have been home for from our trip for one week now, and yesterday it hit me that we are back to real life again and I have to say that as much as I love our life here in MI, vacation is more fun. (sorry MI friends, you know I love you, but vacation rocks.) I got a bit of the blues realizing that we get up in the morning, Paul leaves for the whole day and it's just the three of us to hang out together and (again; no offense to my awesome kids) they are fun, but I had even more fun when we shared a house with lots of people that we love.
We got to stop in Utah to see family on our way to and from Oregon. It was only a few days but it was like a big glass of cold water in the desert. I just love these people. I'm glad we will get to spend a bunch of time with them in Dec.


I love this shot of Kristen and her little chip. So pretty!

My mom arranged a trip to a goat and horse farm run by one of her friends. Eirik wanted to see horses of course. We got to milk a goat and try the milk. It was actually very good. I guess goat's milk is much better for the human body than cows milk. The goats were pretty cute too. Joren loved hanging out in the hay and Eirik pretty much complained the whole time because he liked the neighbor's black horse and not the brown horse we came to visit. What a picky child!






My bros Dave and Daniel got a rad new motorcycles and they let Paul ride them. Paul turned into a man obsessed. Those few moments rekindled Paul's true love. For the two weeks I was in MO all Paul did was research motorcycles. He found all the best gear, the best deals, looked into safety classes and licenses and emailed me all the links. Thanks brothers because even though Paul was sexy before, now he is super sexy.


Is Davy wearing blue socks? Yeah, he's cool. That's a mark of character if you didn't know.

This was the best shot I got. 5 of us look pretty unprepared, but everyone else looks good. Sorry mom and dad and Paul.. he he he
My boys and their adorable cousins! What a fun time. The red heads together at last. :)
We had a fun dinner on the porch. My mom made roast. Is there a trend here?

And we got to celebrate Davy's birthday! Happy B-day brother!
We thought his new cute girlfriend was pretty adorable. Hey Becca!

My bro Dave took one look at our ghetto setup and died laughing. Yes, we are that cheap. We didn't buy the equipment to play our IPOD through our car speakers so we scotch taped the computer speakers to the headrest. There are a few problems with this, the biggest one being that only the person driving can hear the music. So Davy hooked us up with the cassette tape with cord that hooks into the IPOD. What a sweetie. Plus he totally hooked us up with some great new tunes for the road. The scotch tape came in handy on more than one occasion on this trip. The other most memorable one was when I scotch taped my sunglasses to my glasses. (No picture available of this atrocity, however if you wish to laugh at me, be my guest.) I long for the day of lasik. ahhh... that will be great.
We also learned on this trip that those chargers that plug into your cig lighter are awesome for road trips. We kept our IPOD, phones, and comp all charged the whole way. What a deal. (Thanks Anona for the lend)

Oregon

Here are some photos of our trip to Oregon. We loved being near family and sharing in the day to day stuff with them. Eirik had fun with his cousins. Here he is with Jake and Megan. Aren't they a bunch of blondies?

We had a great time with Kiersten and Dave at this gorgeous state park in Oregon . We love this place! And we love these two amazing people too.



I want to blow this one up for our house. What a gorgeous view-(and thanks to my new rebel, not a bad shot either. )Pat and Steve prepared this awesome Sunday dinner for us.

They served:

Delicious Roast with vegies
Pototatos and gravy
Homemade Nauvoo bread rolls with homemade strawberry freezer jam
Green Salad
Green Jello salad with sprite and pears and cream cheese topping
Homemade plum juice
Homemade blackberry pie- hand picked blackberries
Key Lime pie
ice cream

It was all so very pioneer spirit, down home garden style, meat and potatoes goodness it made me realize that I probably shouldn't shun tradition so much and maybe one of these days actually make my first roast because there is a reason it's tradition; it's delicious. It was a lovely afternoon and we were so glad Grandpa R could join us.



One of the first things Paul wanted to do when we got to Oregon was go for a walk and the first thing he did on the walk was smell the dirt and insist that I did too. Yum! Yes we love rotting soil. It's the best.

I made a Thai dinner for the family with a coconut soup that called for all kinds of ingredients that I would not have been able to get here in MI, but there was an AMAZING Asian food market just down the street from my in-laws house. I used lemongrass for the first time and many other unusual ingredients. Sorry, I didn't save the recipe. I wouldn't have been able to make it here anyway. It was a hit as was the amazing mango sticky coconut rice desert I love to make.
It was Grandma A's 90th birthday while we were there so we took her out to Sherry's restaurant and we got to look through the scrapbook that she got for her birthday that had a card from every one of her descendants and friends. It filled 90 pages! Cool gift!
Paul and I got to take our kiddos to the art festival downtown Portland on one of his days off. What an amazing festival. They are very selective about who gets to show their work so you can always expect to see a lot of amazing things.. and we did.
Two of my favorites were Jamee Linton who does great landscapes and Cheryl Gail Toh who does encaustic work. We also saw Jill Platner's jewlely line at Twist Gallery again. I have loved her work since I saw it years ago when I met her in Cozumel. She's a really cool lady and someday when I have money I think I'll buy one of her necklaces and wear it everyday forever.

These are some pics from our fun day in Portland.
We also had a good time at the OR state fair. Some punk kids vandalized the horse stalls and shot all he horses with fire extinguishers so all of the horses had gone home. Can you say drama? Eirik was devastated. But we found some carved horses that almost sufficed... almost.

Iron Chef Extravaganza

So much has happened in the past 8 weeks. My head is sort of swimming with all the things I want to record and all the stories I want to tell.

Since I have to start somewhere I guess I’ll start way back in August with this awesome triple date that we planned.

We called it Iron Chef Extravaganza because whenever you add the word "extravaganza" it means that it is not to be taken seriously. So one couple got to be the judges/ babysitters/ hosts and they had the honor of choosing the secret ingredient. We all met at their house to discover the secret ingredient and drop off the kids. We immediately went to the store for our ingredients and then to our respective houses to cook within the 1 1/2 hour time limit and return to the hosts house ready to present the food. We were pretty confident going in that we would be able to put together a pretty respectable presentation. The real trick was that we couldn't use any recipes, internet searches or phone calls. Everything had to be right from our own heads and experience. It was really fun to work as a team with Paul to come up with an appetizer, main dish and desert. We came back surprised that the challenge was more difficult than we had expected it to be, but still pretty confident. We plated our food and were ready to go when we saw that our exceptional opponents had made homemade ice cream! What! We knew at that point that they had trashed us. We had nothing on them. The secret ingredient was Peanut Butter! We made peanut and coconut encrusted shrimp with a marmalade peanut sauce. Our main dish was a Thai chicken peanut sauce dish with cilantro and the desert was Hagan Daas Dolche de Leche ice cream with a homemade chocolate sauce with peanuts and toasted coconut. (Katherine's recipe from memory)

The Miner's made this amazing pork appatizer plate with a peanut sauce and raisins- so good!
The main dish was a spicy curry dish that I still have to get thier recipe for and the desert was homemade peanut butter ice cream with a peanut butter cereal (like rice crispie) treat bar.
They toasted us top to bottom but it was SO fun and all the food was good and we all enjoyed eating after the judges creamed us. :) Thanks you guys! It was so fun.



After we ate the kids did an impromptu talent show for us. We had some real hams. It was so fun and led to some adult singing as well. Not too shabby!
I highly recommend this date idea! I can't wait for Iron Chef II. I'm getting some new ideas up my sleeve!