Sunday, January 31, 2010

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Hair Cut Dilemmas



Dilemma, may be a harsh word...But I have to admit I was just a little traumatized when I had may hair cut in Argentina. A nice young man...ie...women, came and asked me what I would like done with my hair...he/she only spoke Spanish and I only English, but I had a wedding coming up and my last haircut was way over due.
So, my Stylist, pulled out only what I could describe as Edward Scissors hands! And he began cutting...there was hair going everywhere, and LONG strips of it.
When he was done and I paid my $20.00 pesos..I believe every ounce of color was gone from my face.
But...I had one really good haircut.
It stays like I wanted it to and was out of my eyes,
PERFECT
So, when I come back to the states the girl that had been cutting my hair had moved, so I need to find someone who will cut my hair. Amber is like one of my own!. I have pictures of her setting in the crib playing with Derek but I thought why not..she always looks nice and put together.So, I call Amber and ask if she only does "tweens" haircuts or if she could do old ladies haircut too. She said yes that she could...
I will tell you my haircut is amazing!
It looks nice all the time.


and then she did my eyebrows...I wish I had done a before picture...
Let's just say I could give "Ugly Betty" a run for her money. So, Amber...you have a new client.
and I would strong encourage any of my friends to ask for Amber at
JLA Salon in Burley, Idaho

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

100 DAYS

January 19, 2010
"I love you so much mom,have a good week and stop counting the days!"
January 26, 2010
"PS BLAAAA I GOT MY PRE TRUNKS THE OTHER DAY!!! it is the letter that asks if you are going to fly home or is you family going to pick you up, what airport do you want to fly into and all that other crap!!! I didn't think I was that old to get that!!! mom it really sucked! haha well i love you!

Derek has 100 days left of his mission in the Indiana Indianapolis Mission...
and YES I AM COUNTING!!!


Pres. Joseph M. Sagers and Elder Derek D Burgess

President Sagers set Derek apart to be a missionary on April 29, 2008

Monday, January 25, 2010

Vintage Valentines

The Garage Sale Gal had a giveaway last week and I was drawn to be one of her winners!
"The Gal" is amazing at finding really cool stuff at sales. I love peeking in and looking at what she was able to collect each week and she just has a really cute blog. You might want to stop by and tell her hi.
I saw the cutest picture frame on someones blog with valentines in it. NOW I can not find it
....but that is what I am going to do with the gift from "the gal".

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Not A Bad Cook

I do not think I am a bad cook matter of fact...after watching the Food Networks Worst Cooks in America, I think I am a pretty decent cook.
anyways...I am always up for new tricks or ideas.
I had never watched "Cooking for Real" w/ Sunny Anderson but I was flipping through the channels and she was giving a tip I had never heard before. She was frying chicken bits and said ....
Are you ready...
Add corn starch 1/3 Cup to your 1 Cup of flour
that you dredge your chicken in and it will make the crust lighter.
CORN STARCH are you serious??
AND let your chicken "rest" for about 10 mins on a wire rack before you fry it.
Ladies and gents (you never know maybe gents read my blog too)
It was the BEST fried chicken ever.
You really do need to add lots of
SEASONINGS (add LOTS of SALT & PEPPER & GARLIC POWDER)
to your flour and cornstarch and mix it well. I also seasoned my egg wash.
I didn't care much for the orange sauce that she made...first it had to reduce for about 30 mins (NO YOU DO NOT ADD CORNSTARCH TO IT)
I think I would have preferred a sweet and sour.
So...there is my new trick for the week, thanks to Miss Anderson of the Food Network.
Let me know if you try it.

Kira Totally Fits In

Kira's sister in-law Antonella sent me a New Years Eve Family picture...
Does Kira fit in to her new family or what!
Her in-laws are some of the nicest people I have met.
I just hope they know how lucky they are to have MY daughter.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Wordless Wednesday

I am not sure who "started" Wordless Wednesday but my sister, Lene usually has something neat posted...
I on the other hand... pretty much could have wordless Wednesday, Wordless Week...
yea BLA-BLA-BLA

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Birds and Seasons

I know I talk about this quite often on my blog, but it really is something I enjoy.

I enjoy the many birds that we get to see during the year...I love watching the sky change to its different colors of blue...and know what birds are getting ready to leave or come.

The Geese and Eagles have been amazing this year...
and I hate to see them get ready to leave.
But, I know that it is getting close...yes there is an eagle setting in the branches

The geese have been hanging around a little longer in the mornings,
as if to rest up for their next big migration.
I love how geese have a "look-out" you have heard of "eagle eyes", well we should also have the saying of "geese ears". The "look-out guy" will start letting out little honks the moment I start opening the balcony door...and before I know it...he will wave his wings and HONK and they are gone.

but secretly, I have to admit...as much as I like the geese, I am ready for the Robins and Pelicans...just because it has been a very LONG winter...I missed summer last year while being in ARGENTINA (southern hemisphere has winter during our summer and yes, it is cold) and I am ready to get warm.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

3 Months

I can not believe 3 months have already passed from the time Kira became
MRS. kira!
Time is going so fast...


even more amazing is Derek will be home in 4 months
and Celes will be her in 5 month!!!!
Life is good,

Friday, January 15, 2010

Haiti; LDS Assistanace on it's Way



Earthquake crushes Haiti; LDS assistance on its way
By Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010

Editor's note: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has authorized an initial response project to provide aid to Haiti, according to Emergency Response Director Lynn Samsel. The Caribbean Area Presidency is also expected to utilize local fast offering funds to help with immediate relief.
For more coverage on the Haiti earthquake, see these stories:LDS Church begins Haitian relief efforts; missionaries all safeLDS Church continues Haitian relief effortsPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- A powerful earthquake struck Haiti's capital on Tuesday with withering force, toppling everything from simple shacks to the ornate National Palace and the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers. The dead and injured lay in the streets even as strong aftershocks rippled through the impoverished Caribbean country.Associated Press journalists based in Port-au-Prince said the damage from the quake -- the most powerful to hit Haiti in more than 200 years -- is staggering even in a country accustomed to tragedy and disaster.Women covered in dust crawled from the rubble wailing as others wandered through the streets holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares late into the night, singing hymns. Many gravely injured people still sat in the streets early Wednesday, pleading for doctors. With almost no emergency services to speak of, the survivors had few other options.
An image obtained from Twitter purportedly shows destroyed buildings on Tuesday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after an earthquake measuring 7.0 rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation, toppling buildings and causing widespread damage and panic, officials and AFP witnesses said. A tsunami alert was immediately issued for the Caribbean region after the earthquake struck. Photo: AFP/Getty Images Thousands of buildings were damaged and destroyed throughout the city, and for hours after the quake the air was filled with a choking dust from the debris of fallen buildings.The scope of the disaster remained unclear, and even a rough estimate of the number of casualties was impossible. But it was clear from a tour of the capital that tens of thousands of people had lost their homes and that many had perished. Many buildings in Haiti are flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions."The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Louis-Gerard Gilles, a doctor and former senator, as he helped survivors. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."An Associated Press videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians as well as many poor people.At a collapsed four-story apartment building, a girl of about 16 stood atop a car, trying to peer inside as several men pulled at a foot sticking out in an attempt to extricate the body. She said her family was inside.U.N. peacekeepers, most of whom are from Brazil, were trying to rescue survivors from their collapsed five-story headquarters, but U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said late Tuesday that "as we speak no one has been rescued.""We know there will be casualties but we cannot give figures for the time being," he said.Many U.N. personnel were missing, he said, including mission chief Hedi Annabi, who was in the building when the quake struck. Some 9,000 peacekeepers have been in Haiti since a 2004 rebellion ousted the president.Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said its embassy was destroyed and the ambassador hospitalized for undisclosed injuries.The National Palace crumbled into itself, but Haiti's ambassador to Mexico Robert Manuel said President Rene Preval and his wife survived the earthquake. He had no details.The 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, centered 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti. In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic and also shook Haiti, producing a tsunami that killed 1,790 people.The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, said earthquake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California. The quake's size and proximity to populated Port-au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damage, he said."It's going to be a real killer," he said. "Whenever something like this happens, you just hope for the best."Most of Haiti's 9 million people are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of the buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.Tuesday's quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, and some panicked residents in the capital of Santo Domingo fled from their shaking homes. But no major damage was reported there. In eastern Cuba, houses shook but there were also no reports of significant damage."We felt it very strongly and I would say for a long time. We had time to evacuate," said Monsignor Dionisio Garcia, archbishop of Santiago.The damage in Haiti, however, was clearly vast.State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington that U.S. Embassy personnel were "literally in the dark" after power failed."They reported structures down. They reported a lot of walls down. They did see a number of bodies in the street and on the sidewalk that had been hit by debris. So clearly, there's going to be serious loss of life in this," he said.
document.writeln(AAMB3);
The Diocese of Norwich, Conn., said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed trapped in rubble.With phone service erratic, much of the early communication came from social media such as Twitter. Richard Morse, a well-known musician who manages the famed Olafson Hotel, kept up a stream of dispatches on the aftershocks and damage reports. The news, based mostly on second-hand reports and photos, was disturbing, with people screaming in fear and roads blocked with debris. Belair, a slum even in the best of times, was said to be "a broken mess.""Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official visiting Port-au-Prince. "The sky is just gray with dust.Bahn said there were rocks strewn about and he saw a ravine where several homes had stood: "It's just full of collapsed walls and rubble and barbed wire."In the community of Thomassin, just outside Port-au-Prince, Alain Denis said neighbors told him the only road to the capital had been cut and phones were all dead so it was hard to determine the extent of the damage."At this point, everything is a rumor," he said. "It's dark. It's nighttime."Jocelyn Valcin, a resident of Boynton Beach, Fla., who flew in to Miami International Airport from Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening, said he was at the airport when the earthquake hit."The whole building was cracked down," Valcin said. "The whole outside deteriorated."Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N.'s special envoy for Haiti, issued a statement saying his office would do whatever he could to help the nation recover and rebuild."My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti," he said.The United States was sending disaster rescue teams and President Barack Obama said the U.S. stood ready to help Haiti. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said from Honolulu that the U.S. was offering full assistance -- civilian and military.Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said his government planned to send a military aircraft carrying canned foods, medicine and drinking water and also would dispatch a team of 50 rescue workers.Mexico, which suffered a devastating earthquake in 1985 that killed some 10,000 people, was sending a team including doctors, search and rescue dogs and infrastructure damage experts, said Salvador Beltran, the undersecretary of foreign relations for Latin America and the Caribbean.Haitian musician Wyclef Jean urged his fans to donate to earthquake relief efforts: "We must think ahead for the aftershock, the people will need food, medicine, shelter, etc.," Jean said on his Web site.Eva DeHart at the humanitarian organization For Haiti With Love in Palm Harbor, Fla., said colleagues at the group's base in Cap Haitien reported that northern town was spared damage. But she said damage to government buildings in the capital would make coordinating aid difficult.In Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, dozens of people gathered at the Veye-Yo community center, where a pastor led them in prayer. Members embraced each other as they tried to contact relatives back home.Tony Jeanthenor said he had succeeded in reaching a family friend in Haiti who told of hearing people cry out for help from under debris."The level of anxiety is high," Jeanthenor said. "Haiti has been through trauma since 2004, from coup d'etat to hurricanes, now earthquakes."

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Easy Pot Pie

I knew I had to find something for dinner besides hot dogs last night...poor Kirk has been very understanding to my cooking blues and even more to the things I have been wanting to fix...such as hot dogs.
I have been following Sandra and a group of ladies trying to use their pantry and freezers more for meals. They have been sharing some really yummy recipes.
So I went to the fridge and had everything to make pie crust...but even better...one that was already made.
I had a whole chicken in the freezer. I thawed it in a sink of warm water. The chicken was added it to a large stock pot 1/2 full of water and then cooked with onions, garlic and all kinds of herbs. It had a wonderful gravy in the bottom of the pan,
I boned half of the chicken and put it on the top of the crust.
(the other half I put in the fridge to make enchiladas)
With the yummy juice at the bottom of the pan I used a little cool water and corn starch to make a thicker gravy.
best little trick to mixing corn starch...use a canning jar. I keep a ring and seal in a drawer just for that purpose. add cold water, starch and shake!
Next from the pantry, Smith's is having their BIG case lot sell and so I purchased several cases of mixed veggies...I usually use frozen, but to be honest I liked these better...maybe because they have potatoes in the can too.
I drained all the juice and poured on top of the chicken.
Next adding the drippings gravy.
and then seasonings
I added the one item that will pretty much make anything taste good,
Butter
Put the top crust on.
made a little vent on top
Baked 375* for 30 mins

and ATE IT HOT!

and all from the pantry and freezer.
Thanks again Sandra. If you want to see some of the yummy things she is making visit her blog, and if you would like...tell her I sent you.
OK Get Busy...
EASY, PEASY Dinner

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I Got To See My Grandbaby!!

January 11, 21010 at 3:45....
Josh and Ali had invited Valerie, Ali's mom and myself to the very first ultra sound of their baby.
It really was amazing to watch the little baby's arms move and fingers and see all 4 chamber of the heart beating with the red and blue colors...
Ali asked is it a boy??? With a hopeful tone in her voice....ummm the answer would be
Pretty sure Josh is going to have a "Daddy's Girl" They gave a picture to both of us grandmas!!
First Pictures of
Celes Marie!!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

I Didn't Know It Was That Cold

Monday evening as I was walking in with groceries, Kirk asks, "Is there anything else that needs carried in?"
I answer, no not right now. I have pop in the back seat but I will get it later.
He sweetly says, "You will not want to forget it"
When I went to get in my car yesterday...
There was brown SLUSH everywhere...I was so confused as I tried to find where in the world it came from...

AAAAAUUUUGGGHHHHH...I forgot to get the pop out of the car!

Thank goodness, the slush was easy to scrap off everything. I was so impressed with the tops how they popped off...the tabs didn't open just the tops...

So what can I say...I am easily entertained!

Friday, January 8, 2010

Love Letter

Fresh from Argentina! It has got me thinking...When was the last time I wrote a "love letter" to someone...
How about you?

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

What? When Did That Happen?

I started the Christmas holiday with a double ear infection. Not only did my ears hurt but it felt like my brain behind my eyes was going to explode with pressure at any moment.
I visit the doctor and he prescribed an antibiotic
and being the smart person I am I purchased some Afrin nasal spray.There is a reason why they tell you to be sure that your over the counter medicines will not interfere with the Rx's that you take and yes I take several including a anti-anxiety med.
But this is nasal spray...really...
Christmas came and went...and well, to be really honest I have about an entire week that I do not remember...GONE! Totally Gone...
I was trying really hard not to set in a corner and rock like a baby thinking...CRAP I'm not even 50 yet and I am getting dementia. I decided to get on line to look up
Short-Term Memory Loss before I forget I had it and this pops up on my search:
All medications, both prescribed and over-the-counter, Nasal spray such as Afrin ®, Neosynephrine™, etc., should be avoided. ... Depression, Short Term Memory and Concentration impairments.
...
http://www.panicattack.net/treat.htm
Hum....
Guess I will remember the warning:
DO NOT MIX OVER THE COUNTER MEDICINE W/ Rx's

Monday, January 4, 2010

I Will Be Busy Tonight

Who do you think I am cheering for?

GO BSU!!!

side note: Congrats BSU on your 17-10 win

DELETE

I was just wondering ...

am I the only one who has deleted a post on their blog?

Just wondering...

Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy Birthday Brandi

My oldest niece, Brandi's birthday is yes...today...NEW YEARS DAY!
I always remember it is coming up
but I do not think I have ever sent her a B-day Card...crazy I know!
so Brandi...
Happy Birthday

Brandi has to be one of the most enduring people I know.
With the challenges that have arrived in the past few years to her physical body, she has a heart and mind that go and go.
My nephews are so lucky to have her for a sister.
My brother, Morris lucked out when he married Brandi's mom, Rhonda
and I was instantly an aunt! Pretty darn cool for me!

Brandi has a fun blog...check it out and wish her happy birthday!

Infinite Power of Hope

My 2010 word of the year is:
Hope
after listening to this video...
all the other words kind of faded in the background.

What will be your 2010 word of the year? Leave me a comment and let me know...

and enjoy the video.