Help, Again!

I have gotten a lot of great comments on helping me with the evil bread situation, which I will be trying some of the ideas tomorrow on a new batch of bread. I wanted to ask for a little more help from anyone with any cute ideas.

I just received another calling at church. Well I am being released from playing the piano in primary to getting called to be the chorister for primary. It is a step up in the world I guess. But now I am faced with having fun activities for both young and older kids. If anyone has any fun games I can try to get them to sing their little hearts out please let me know. My first reaction to this calling was, "Are you insane!?!" Not a very good reaction but I just wasn't ever seeing this calling in my future, ever. So I am a little scared. I am fine teaching kids one on one, but 15 kids at one time and keeping them interested in what I am doing is a WHOLE different story. Please help if you can!

EVIL BREAD

Bread is so evil. I just have to say that right out. With rising food prices and wheat prices and everything, we, meaning I am trying to be more domesticated with some of the food we eat. For example: I have been making our own cereal, just granola, no biggie. Matt and I enjoy eating our 12 gran or even 24 grain bread as long as it is mostly whole wheat, which is our fav. Well my current trial at this time is trying to get the bread to rise. I have seriously tried everything that everyone has told me. Sit it outside on a humid day to rise, I did that and when I went to move it to the oven it sunk, like as if someone popped a balloon. Put it in the oven with some warm water under, nope didn't work, barely moved. Put it on top of the oven with it at 375, not it even started to cook it too early. Seriously I have tried. Well I finally tried something different and it worked, kind of. It was not a whole wheat bread recipe but it rose and mostly stayed "raised" here is a pix. I promise you I do have a life but it is truly not that interesting.

~The Whole Wheat Bread~

~The Other Bread~

~Now Side by Side~

Also as promised here are some pix of my garden:

~I have about 10 tomatoes on this plant alone, my other 2 tomatoes are about to start producing as well. Also my purple bell pepper plant just flowered so I should be getting some bell peppers soon.~

~My Thyme and Rosemary just started to grow out of nowhere. I though that they had died!~

~Also I was told by my student's grandma that there was an article and pix on the newspaper today about the recital. The one day that that newspaper was delivered to my house and my studio is in it. Here is the clipping. I have it framed now and it is in my piano room. I didn't even know that they were going to put anything in the newspaper, so it was a huge surprise to me. One of the parents asked for the names of all the kids in order, I just thought that she wanted it for scrapbook reasons. Well I am very OK with free advertising.~

That's about it for tonight. Have a wonderful Saturday everyone. Also Melisa thanks for the swimsuits I love them!!!!

The crazy month of July

So I finally figured out my schedule for the next month with teaching and everything else that is going on. I figured out that 3 out of the 4 weekends I will be gone and I will be missing 4 weeks straight of church. July 4th weekend actually I have nothing planned, yet. The next weekend is the family weekend for Matt's military unit in New Jersey and I do know that on Sat, we are probably going to the Six Flags in New Jersey, sorry Elizabeth but you won't be there, you can fly out if you really want to though. And we will be making a stop in NYC. I haven't been there since High School and I barely saw anything. It will be so much fun being there with Matt. The weekend after that I am flying out to Vegas for a wedding of a friend, and I will be staying at another friend's house while I am there, Corrine I look forward to seeing you!!! The week after that I leave for PHX and spend a day in PHX to see my other friends, Laura, can't wait, and also go to the best MEXICAN FOOD IN THE WORLD: TIA ROSA'S. I have been starving for some real Mexican food. I even asked my mom to ship me some overnight, that is how desperate it got. And Sunday the 27th Matt and I fly to LAX with the fam and leave for the cruise for a week to Mexico. I am just going all over the country this next month and I am so excited.

Also I will be posting some pix of my latest trial, baking bread and getting it to rise. Also some more pix of my flowers and garden.

My first Garden!

So I am excited to tell you guys that I have finally grown my own flower garden and here is the proof.

~A Butterfly Bush~I have had some very beautiful butterflies pay me a visit since it started to bloom.

~My Strawberry and tomato patch~

Also last night Matt noticed that one of our food storage waters had sprung a leak and was leaving water in the bottom of our pantry. Matt pulled out Archer's bag of food and I went to pick it up and move it and the bottom was so water logged that it bust open. Archer went to town while we were cleaning up the food storage mess. Here is a pix from before Archer stared to scarf down and here is a pix when he decided he had had enough. There really was a huge difference in how much he ate. Hope all you fathers have a great day today!

Chattin' With German Folk!

So my in-laws are in town, and this week I have been playing "tourist" in my part of the country. It has been a lot of history lessons and as most of you know I am so horrible at history that it has been very difficult for me to stay interested in all this stuff. I went back to Monticello and went to Monroe's house. I also went to Jamestown on Thursday and learned a lot there and then to VA beach on Thursday night, Matt did have Thurs. and Fri. off to spend the day with us and we had fun walking on the beach and enjoying the time out there. Friday we went to York town and we had a ton of fun there too. They have people that are dressed up and they explain how life used to be and actually demonstrate how to cook and plant things. Today we went to the Luray Caverns and I overheard some people talking, and they weren't speaking English. So I started to listen in and figured out that they were speaking German. For those of you who don't know I am semi-knowledgeable in the Germanic Language. We said hi and started talking. One of them grew up in the Czech Republic until he was 15 then his family moved to Germany. So he knows how to speak Russian and German. But he didn't know any English or only a little English. He had fun speaking with me and he was helping me remember my German. I was really racking my brain on remember German. It has been about 3 years since my classes. The other 2 were fluent in English so if I couldn't remember a word in German than they would help out. It was very fun. I was having so much fun on talking with them, and I was trying to help explain what the tour guide was saying cause they had a difficult time understanding him. There names were Thomas, Alexandra, and Merrick. I did get Alex's email address to get a recipe and to try to keep talking to her. Anyhew Matt is going to help me keep getting better at German and now we are talking about going to Germany. We'll see what might happen in the future.