Slip N Slide with Smiths

We went over to the Smith's house for some slip n slide action and we sure had a fun time. Berta used her mad-fantabulous photography skills to capture some great pictures and these are only a small sampling of the cool pics she took. I should have taken a picture of Berta sitting at the end of the slip n slide risking herself and her camera for some of these shots. Well worth it I'd say. They all took turns running and sliding and Mark even tossed them down a few times and they loved that. Caleb is much more conservative so her usually walked the slip n slide the wrong direction. When we were right about to clean it up Caleb decided to give it a try. Berta spent quite a bit of time trying to capture Caleb's face as he tossed water up in the air, again, a risky job. I have some great pictures that tell a story about our day and I can't wait to print a few off and hang them on our wall :) Thanks for all your hard work!

Castles and Coasters

We got to go to Castles and Coasters thanks to Papaw's work! They throw a company party there each year. Here are some highlight pictures.

Caleb finds a dime!

I feel so happy about these pictures. I am part of an unofficial photo club and we work on assignments. Part of our objectives is telling a story with pictures and this week we are working on manually setting our cameras. This is a challenge but here are a few pictures I took. I feel like I accomplished both our objectives and did our homework too! Tell me what you think photog ladies.

Hiking This Morning with the Arliskas girls!

Above: Micah leads the way
Below: Caleb eats a snack on Hannah. What a life!

Snack time

Mark balancing on a stump. Zoe thought it was funny every time Mark hopped down.

Caleb Stopped to smell the roses, I mean, pick at the bottom of his shoe.

Smile girlies!

Hiking the trail.

Friends

Great day!

Hitching a ride.

A green desert!

Accidental Green Bean Casserole

I had a couple handfuls of fresh green beans and a half a purple onion along with some mushrooms that equaled about a half a box to a full box and I decided to chop the mushrooms up small cut the green beans and dice the onion. I warmed my skillet and used olive oil to saute about three cloves of garlic. Then I added the green beans and last the onion and mushrooms. Oh wait! I had a fresh tomato that I diced and tossed in once everything was almost done cooking. When they were finished I dumped it is a casserole dish. At this point I didn't realize I was going to make green bean casserole. But then it hit me I had all the ingredients except the white sauce. So I cooked up a small white sauce. Using two tblsp of butter and flour and some milk til I thought I have enough. It thickened and I dumped it over the veggie mess. I shredded some kinda yummy Italian cheese over the top (Mark knows the name.) I stick it in the fridge and covered it. I heated it up on 350 for maybe 30 minutes. Oh my goodness! This was the best green bean casserole ever. I had to type this right away after eating it because I want to remember how it came about so I can try to duplicate. I don't measure very many things so it is hard for me to write out my recipes. I make some awesome dishes and think that I will remember but I never do so I am using my blog to archive them for myself. I'm not sure if I can put these in a separate folder. Let me know if anyone knows how to do that so people don't have to see these. I have tried many recipes for green bean casserole and I'm so so so glad that I had some mushrooms, green beans and a half an onion that needed to be cooked all at the same time. Fun fun for my family!

Honey bread recipe

New bread recipe. I was trying out a new bread recipe today and of course I couldn't just follow it! So now that it is baked I am trying to figure out just how I changed it. Here is what I think I did for my own archives but if you are interested in yummy homemade bread here's a good one.

Honey Bread

4 1/2 tsp of active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (105-115F)
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup butter
3 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups very warm water (120-130)
4 1/2 -5 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flax meal
1/2 cup rice flour
1 cup all purpose flour

1. Dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup warm water.
2. In large bowl mix honey, butter, salt and very warm water and then let cool for a few minutes
3. Beat 3 cups of whole wheat flour into honey mixture and then beat for a few min til it is nice and mixed.
4. Beat in all other flours and dissolved yeast mixture.
5. Then add the rest of flour a bit at a time and knead by hand ten minutes or if using electric mixer with hook like two or three maybe, until smooth and elastic.
6. Grease bowl and toss the dough in there then grease top of dough and cover with cloth. Let rise til doubled in size. I didn't check clock, my bad.
7. Punch down and split in half roll out on floured surface into a rectangle, roll up to fit into your regular sized bread pan. Grease pan and put dough in pans. Cover with towel and let rise again.
8. When doubled in size bake in preheated 375 oven for 30 minutes. Turn oven down to 350 and bake 10 ish minutes longer (until when tapped on it sounds hollow) Take bread out of pans to cooling racks. It is much easier to cut bread when it is cooled but hey if you are hungry who cares!

2 Loaves

I think next time I will try this with less all purpose flour and honey and salt. We'll see how it goes. The family really likes it so it's a winner.

Our last trip to the zoo

Take note of the hand holding the coffee cup in the picture below people!

14 miles an hour! Guess who?

Mommy and Ali are kissing the frog :)

Ali would like you all to know that the rinos have big bootys :)

We took our last trip to the Phx zoo with our zoo pass. We let our kids ride the carousel and had a super fun blast. We won't renew our pass this year. Sad times. We had downloaded our pictures and then my computer crashed. A friend found most our pictures but unfortunately it looks like we only got a few zoo pictures back. Here's some fun pics! We're glad to have gotten some of them back for sure!