The Wonderful Milestone of 50 Years!

What an amazing milestone it is 

to be able to celebrate 50 years of marriage!

In a society, where many marriages end in divorce, OR, many people that get sick and leave their spouses to death, I think it is such a wonderful accomplishment to make it to  

50 years of marriage, especially in great health! 

We had SO much fun planning a 

surprise anniversary celebration for Tracy's parents; 

while they knew that we were doing something FUN for them, they had no idea the magnitude it would be. 

The event was held at the home of Shane and McKenzie with McKenzie, Shelley, Genessa and Ashley working in the kitchen doing SO many things "behind the scenes". 

My sister-in-law Cheryl had fresh floral arrangements made for the centerpieces and corsages, there were white linens for the tables along with colored linen napkins. It was complete with a musical number (by Lisa, Shae, Cheryl and Margaret), slide show done by Travis and Tracy, music from the 60's era, The men grilled up veggie and meat kabobs, there were LOTS of yummy salads and a variety of desserts/rolls, that were made with love by their kids and grand kids.   Candace created a family tree and we all put our thumbprints on the branches for the leaves.  Cheryl made up candle tins as favors for all of us and the evening ended with a family toast around a bon-fire with everyone telling their favorite memories they had of growing up.

It was a perfect and wonderful evening 

and I could tell it meant the world to Clair and Josie.

(It was SO windy, the wind was blowing all of the linens off the table, so we had to move everything into Shane's shop for the celebration).

WOW!  

50 years has treated the two of you great!
Ready to go inside to the SURPRISE PARTY...

I had spent HOURS and hours of time

putting together photos for a Memory Lane Tree to display.

Clair & Josie spent SO much time looking at each photo and commenting on it and the memory that they had of it.  

It was SO awesome seeing them SO happy...
they were full of emotions of all kinds!

Josie's favorite quote is:

"We don't remember the days...

we remember the moments!"

 I savored each and every hour that I spent with Josie while I scanned in photo after photo from their family photo albums. I treasured having heart to heart conversations with Josie while she told me explicit details about the photos and I can honestly say I had four wonderful days of "memory lane" FUN.

I was SO excited to really capture the evening well in photos...

However, before we started eating, Jade had a bad seizure and I was spending most of the time with him, making him comfortable, making sure he didn't try to stand up and fall down and hurt himself.
I was pretty stressed out, worrying about him and  
feeling SO sad that he was missing out on all of the fun. 

 Jade is a PEOPLE person 

and LOVES getting together with family and friends and he had been looking forward to this night all month long. 

He was even ready at 11:00 in the morning and the celebration didn't start until 5:00.

He and I pretty much missed out on the majority of the celebration.  

Thank goodness for the photos I did get and Tracy tried to snap some photos as well, in between, doing the slide show.

Jade and I were at least able to watch Clair and Josie dance for us and enjoy the special bon-fire moment. 

Precious keepsakes from Josie and Clair's wedding day...

announcement, wedding tiara, garter, flower worn on Josie's wedding suit, tie worn by Clair, ring box, necklace and earrings that were a special gift to Josie from Clair on their wedding day,

Here are some of my favorite photos from my

four wonderful days of scanning in photos

with Tracy's mom Josie...

I love these two people so much...

they always bring so much JOY, laughter and FUN to our lives!  

They are just like parents to me and what a 

WONDERFUL 21 years of being married to their son that I have had!

What a blessing it is to be able to be a part such an amazing family...

 I hope that Tracy and I are just as lucky 

and make it to celebrate 50 years of marriage as well. 

Here's to many more wonderful years 

of health, happiness and love!

Kimmie in Real Life! (week 17)

WOW!
I forgot what it is like to have a somewhat "normal life", with cooking dinner every night. 

It was SO fun to be back spending lots of time in my kitchen cooking yummy things for my family to eat.

As I type this
I am down to my last 5 gallon bucket of flour, I have 7 cubes of butter left, 10 pounds of sugar, 2 pounds of raisins, 2 pounds of cheese and a few dollops of sour cream, AND PLENTY of all of the other staples we use on a daily basis, so I will definitely make it 2 more weeks without doing any shopping,  
albeit,
I don't know if I will make it without running out of paper towels, or gallon Zip-loc bags. 

 I have been enjoying this challenge SO much 
and I think it's going to feel a little weird 
to actually be able to go out and shop and buy things again!  

Here are the food highlights from our week!

I made these up using POWDERED milk.
I put 1/8 cup dry milk powder and 1 cup water in my Vita-Mix and blended it together.
I then added in the rest of the ingredients and blended for 30 seconds and we had a PERFECT batch of Oven Pancakes to enjoy for breakfast!
I think I'll be making these with powdered milk from now on!

If I were to think of one of my favorite meals
(other than SALAD, or Lentil Stew), it would have to be this yummy fresh, Tomato Soup.
So nourishing, delicious and comforting and PERFECT served with your choice of bread sticks!

BOTH of these Bread Sticks are a hit at our house!
SO fun to have enough leftover soup the next day to make up a different style
of Bread Sticks the next day.

You don't have to worry about serving leftovers, 

when you have a yummy bread to serve with it!

I found this recipe when Jade was just a youngster,
when I went to a Women's Conference and I attended a class entitled... 
"Feed Me Right, I'm Yours"! 
Fun, yummy recipes to disguise things to get your kids to eat them!
My kids enjoy these LOTS and loved that there were leftovers to enjoy in their lunches the next day at school.

When it's the first week of Autumn, 
you know that this yummy meal will grace our dinner table!

We had a frost and it killed our precious squash/pumpkin plants, but we had this lone pumpkin and pulled it and let it sit in front of the window of our sliding glass door to finish ripening and it was perfect for our yearly tradition!!

If you have access to pumpkins or Sweet Meat Squash, you should try making this up to add a little bit of FUN to family dinner time during this wonderful Autumn time of the year!

YES, apple pie also graces our table 
to be enjoyed after our "Dinner in a pumpkin"!
Ethan commented that the way we scooped the homemade ice cream on top of the pie, looks like a "Storm Troopers" head from the Star Wars movie.

LOTS of delicious garden produce
sauteed together, filled inside homemade tortillas and sauce made the most tasty and savory Veggie Enchiladas!
Love this recipe and the FUN memories it brings with it!

Fresh Apples and Pears that were 
shared with us from our neighbors abundance.
WOW, pure heaven is what we were in 
when we got to enjoy these yummy things this week!

If I were to think of a specific meal that is our favorite, 
 it would hands down be this delicious and savory Beef Stew, served over a bed of mashed potatoes!
Jade especially enjoys this!!
This is what you call "Man Food"! 
I love that you can take somewhat "tough" stew meat, make this yummy stew and then put it in the crock pot for a few hours on low and it tenderizes the meat and makes it SO tender that it falls apart in your mouth!

DELICIOUS!!

I found out on two occasions this week that when you freeze extras,
they ALWAYS come in handy on days,
when you have a lot going on,
thus was the case when I made up some Lemon Bread and French Bread a few weeks ago.
I didn't have time to make treats or cookies and I was wondering what I could add to our lunches and so I looked in my freezer and had a loaf of Lemon Bread and pulled it out, cut it up and we such a yummy treat in our lunches.
This is on Tracy's TOP 5 list of favorite treats that I make up!

We had to go on 10 mile hike with the Scouts on Saturday and we got back from Jade's Cross Country meet on Friday night around 10:00 and there was no time at all to bake bread, so thank goodness I had a loaf of French Bread I could pull out of the freezer...
I scrambled up some of our eggs from our chickens
and these were PERFECT for lunch on our hike!

Saturday morning I baked up a batch of Raisin Cookies while we were getting our backpacks packed so we would have something yummy for energy on the trail.

This one recipe is SO versatile, delicious and ALWAYS a hit.
It is definitely a yummy, frugal thing to make for trail bars,
rather than buy pricey Odwalla or CLIF bars.

I'm so grateful to have kids that eat whatever is baked up...
it's amazing that my sweet nine-year old, LOVES Raisin Oatmeal Cookie! 

Some of the apples we were given were really SOFT
and were more of a cooking apple and not a eating apple.  
SO, I boiled them up, pulled out my strainer and turned them into applesauce.
Heated them on the stove and added in a little cinnamon and some raw honey and let simmer 5-10 minutes and put the applesauce in containers for lunches and used the remaining applesauce to make Applesauce Muffins!
 It is SO much fun being creative
with all of our abundance of produce that we have going on this time of year,
and making sure none of it goes to waste!

September 11th to 17th

Sunday
Oven pancakes, sliced apples
Fresh Tomato Soup, Yummy Bread sticks 

Monday
Steel Cut Oats
Granola Cereal with milk, carrot sticks, apple and string cheese
Leftover Tomato Soup and Bread sticks (made a batch of Bread Sticks/Pretzels)
Raisin Bars

Tuesday
Steel Cut Oats
Tracy...leftover soup, bread sticks, boiled egg, apple, and raisin bars
Jade...Granola Cereal with milk, bread stick, apple, raisin bars
Ethan and Kimmie...boiled egg, bread sticks, apple, raisin bars
Celebrated the first week of Fall with...Meal in a Pumpkin
My neighbor brought us over an Apple Pie for tending her animals for her while they were on vacation...we baked it up along with some homemade ice cream

Wednesday
Steel Cut Oats
Lunch for all of us...Leftover meal in a pumpkin, apple, lemon bread
Homemade Enchiladas, (made up tortillas, added in leftovers from last night)
Made an apple pie for my family and we made up another batch of homemade ice cream

Thursday
Steel Cut Oats
Tracy, Jade and I leftover enchiladas, apple, lemon bread
Ethan went on a field trip to Craters of the Moon and took tortilla rolled up with ham/veggies, string cheese, apple, chips, lemon bread
Beef Stew served over mashed potatoes...truly our family's very favorite meal! 


Friday
Steel Cut Oats
Jade Leftover Beef Stew and apple (took peanut butter balls/string cheese for energy for his cross country run)
Ethan boiled egg, apple, string cheese, peanut butter ball, chips
Tracy and I met in town and had lunch at Taco Time (since we won't be getting a date since we will be attending Jades cross country meet in Blackfoot)
Went and watched Jade run at his Cross Country meet in Blackfoot and then took the kids and enjoyed Western Lemon Chicken at New Hong Kong since it was Pay Day (we usually treat the kids to dinner when it is Pay Day)  

Saturday
(woke up and made a batch of Raisin Oatmeal cookies for our hike)
ZOOM cereal for breakfast
pulled French Bread from freezer and made up scrambled egg sandwiches for our hike, also took apples, string cheese cookies and chips
Wonderful 12.4 mile hike with the Scouts
The leaders bought the kids Square Ice Cream cones on our drive home

Links to recipes used this week:
Yummy Bread Sticks
Bread Sticks/Pretzels
French Bread
Oven Pancakes
Garden Fresh Tomato Soup
Meal in a Pumpkin
Beef Stew over mashed potatoes
Homemade Tortillas
Veggie Enchiladas
Raisin Bars
Lemon Bread
Apple Pie
Peanut Butter Energy Balls
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

SO grateful to be blessed with the BEST kids in the world!
They never complain about what we eat, 
 and I hear "thank you for the yummy lunch"
every day of my life from my kids, when they walk in the door and greet me after a long day at school.
Even when they get sent with Potato Salad, fruit and a muffin for lunch, they never complain and if it is a hectic morning and there is only an option to have a Tuna Sandwich on a homemade biscuit for lunch, or to eat school lunch, they ALWAYS want to take a lunch from home.

Can life get any better than that?!?  

I love my wonderful life

and I'm so grateful to have a home, 

where Gratitude & Love are in abundance!