Sunday Dinner at Grandma's

Grilled Marshmallow/Chocolate Chip Sandwiches

1)Spread slices of bread with marshmallow cream and melted chocolate chips.

2) Put together sanwich style, then brush melted butter on outsides.

3) Grill both sides to toasty golden brown. Enjoy

For Dessert: Fruit Pizza
















A meal you would only get at Grandma's House.

Saturday the girls, their cousins, and my dad went swimming in Yakima's indoor pool. Apparently the water was cold, it took a lot of persuasion to keep them swimming.

This is Cammie and her cousin, who is just a few weeks younger than her.

They have the same smile.

This is my Dad showing his grandchildren a Totem Pole he helped carve. My dad has always loved working with wood. This last year, he and a friend took on the project of making this pole for a family member of his friend. It took them about 9 months of carving, preserving and painting to finish. Now it is waiting for the spring to be transported to its resting place. As compensation, the person who commisioned the pole, is sending my parents on a trip to New Zealand, where my dad served his mission.

Fair Day

Friday we went to the fair. I have not been to a fair for many,many, many years. It involves a lot of walking around.

The girls had fun collecting freebies from the information booths, and looking at all thejunk people were trying to sell.

(Here they are banging on a lot of rusty stuff,

that is an attraction there)

We walked around and saw lots of animals. The girls were a little sad to learn that these were not pet animals, and that they were intended to be eaten. Mindy started wondering if she wanted to eat meat anymore, now that she had seen the pigs, cows, and chickens that most of what she eats comes from.

Of course, we indulged in some yummy fair food. GIANT Elephant Ears, covered in cinnamon sugar, that filled us up for the rest of they day. I'm already craving more of the chewy, warm, fried deliciousness.

My Set-Up

The real purpose for this trip is so that I could work on copying my grandmothers history. For several years I have been wanting to copy her many books of family history/memory books. About a year and a half ago I decided that with the good quality of scanner/printers I could come up and just copy everything, then go have it professionaly copied and bound into books for any other relatives that wanted it. I made plans to come during this break from school, and then had the happy realization that I now had a laptop, so I could just scan the books into it, which would be much faster than scanning and printing.

Today I went to my grandmother's to get the books. I had thought she had about 9 or 10 books. My mom thought she had about 5. It turns out there are 15. This is going to be much bigger than I thought. I managed to get 2 books copied tonight. Luckily I have a whole week to get this done.

Vacation

We are off on our "Girls Only" trip to Washington. The girls have really liked being free of the boys and the male push "to just get there". We have made some random stops at places along the way that looked interesting. (Although the stops have been short due to the 40 degree drop in temperatures that we were not prepared for-one of our stops was to Wal-Mart for jackets.)

Here are the girls during our stop at Stonehenge overlooking the Columbia River.

Sandra is 8

Yesterday was Sandra's birthday. Friday night she had a roller skating slumber party, with a few of her best friends. There was lots of falling down, a few tears, lots of friends helping each other, tons of fun, and very tired girls by the end. She even let Mindy and Cammie tag along.

She received some neat presents, from her friends and family.

She chose to have birthday brownies instead of cake.

My camera battery died, and unfortunately the new one didn't arrive before the party, so I tried to take pictures with my cell phone, but they all turned out blurry. This is about the best I got, Cammie was very proud of her roller skating abilities by the time we left. At first she fell down a lot and was sad, but after about an hour, she was having a great time.

For some silly reason, I decided that the girls needed new dresses and the boys new ties (boys are much easier) for Christmas this year. They were going to wear them the Sunday before Christmas. When I showed the girls the dresses I had picked out for them, they were happy and excited, except for Sandra, she admitted that she had a very pretty dress, but wanted to know why she had to be different. Apparently, she feels that she often gets the one thing that is a different color, and Mindy and Cammie are always the same. So to appease her, I told her that I would go buy me a green dress to wear, then there would be two green and two red. I did not have much luck in my quest for something green. Fortunately, we had Krystal came during this time. She was totally willing to go spend a day shopping, looking for something green to wear, just so Sandra wouldn't feel different.