Rain Storm

We had a rain storm last night! It was amazing! Anyway, I was supposed to have a shoot last night, but because of the rain it was postponed. But I still felt like taking some pictures. So I took my own handmade model, Miss Lucy out for a couple of shots. I never get tired of taking pictures of this baby! I want to get this printed up on canvas (so it's huge!), what do you all think? Is it worthy?

and one more, just for fun:

Garden

Kyle's so cute. He has been dying to have a garden since we got married, so this year he worked it out with my dad so that we could use some of their land to plant some stuff. He loves it! He gets so excited when things start growing and just to get in and get his hands dirty (he says he doesn't get enough of that because he works in an office). Anyway, today he picked his very first crop! It's a summer squash! And don't mind the fact that he looks super tired. I forced him to take this picture at like 11 at night. He is so proud! I'm sure I'll post more on the garden.

Family Vacation!!

We got to go on a little vacation last week with Kyle's family. It was wonderful! I found out that I really needed a break. No cell phone reception, computers, or anything else like that for 4 days. I loved it.

We went river rafting up in Idaho. Our brother-in-law Mikey has all the rafts and equipment (or his parents do), so he was the boss. He goes out of his way to hit the biggest part of each rapid. It was awesome. And the second day there were enough people up there that we needed two rafts, so Kyle got to captain the one Mikey wasn't on. He did an awesome job!

Me and my two sisters-in-law took turns staying behind with the three babies. Lucy loves her cousins. She was so excited to play with "Prie!" (Capri), and was constantly walking around calling to "Ellieee!". In fact, Lucy would be by our tent and would yell "Ellie" and then Ellie would yell back "Ellie!". It was really cute!

This is how we contained our young:

This is so grainy, but I love how they were holding hands!!

Lucy in her long johns:

Cute little Ellie:

Darling Capri:

And some on the river!

Close up from the last shot. Check out Kyle's mom's face. :)

Right before a massive rapid. Scary!

Slow Cookers

Ever since we got married, I have loved my Crock Pot. I usually use it at least once a week. Well, since I started my internship, we've moved up to slow cooker dinners 3 times a week. And I'm so into it that I really just want to cook with it on the other 2 days too! If you're not a crock pot fan, you really need to give it a try. What could be better than being gone all day, then walking into your house smelling delicious and a home cooked meal ready to eat. Yum.

Anyway, I only had maybe 6 good slow cooker recipes before. But that's just not enough these days. So, I found this fantastic blog:

A Year of Slow Cooking

She used her Crock Pot every day for a year (in 2008) and blogged the whole thing. She still posts new recipes regularly. And she has category tabs on everything! It's wonderful. Try it.

Some of the ones I've tried this week are:

Slow Cooker Green Pepper Chicken

Crock Pot Tamale Pie

Barbecued Chicken and Cornbread

And tonight I'm going to try the Slow Cooker Puffy Pizza. Hope it works!