Ward Halloween Party

Here are a few pics from our ward Halloween party and chili cook off. I made pumpkin pie, but next year i am definitely making chili. While what was there wasn't bad. It was definitely Utah Chili. I will have to show them Arizonan chili, you know where there is actually a little heat to it. I should probably mark it as hot so they don't burn their taste buds. The kids had a great time. I even got asked to be in a skit with the RS presidency, it was an American Idol theme. I was Simon, not very convincing though since I have only seen the show a few times.

The Costume Parade

Odelia after being pushed in the Parade, oh the drama.

Harrington & Odelia before we left, all smiles.

Salsa & Pumpkin

Last Tuesday I set out to make a few quarts of Salsa, as we were all out. And tomatoes are so cheap right now and I already had the rest of the ingredients from my garden. (Unfortunately I never had enough tomatoes all at once to use the tomatoes from my garden.) Anyhoos Zeb had the day off so I figured he could help keep an eye on the kids while I made the salsa. So after my prenatal appt. I came home picked up Eva, one of my babysitting kids and headed off to Walmart. I bought all I needed and two pumpkins. I failed to inform Zeb of the two rather large pumpkins that were in the back. One fell out of the back of my SUV and landed right on his toe. Since it was cracked it was throw it away or can it, waste not want not. So we had salsa to make and pumpkin to can. 14 quarts later I still have about 5 more quarts to do, so tonight I am taking my double canner to my Cousins (it doesn't fit on my stove under my micro hood) and we will finish the pumpkin as well as do some pinto beans. So much for a few simple quarts of salsa.

Pumpkin Pie anyone?

Mary Kay

Okay so I decided to try something new. Starting my own business. I have been researching direct sales for a while and I kept coming back to the same company, Mary Kay. For those of you that know me I am not to prissy when it comes to make-up. But their business plan made the most sense to me and I already use a lot of their products. They encourage God first, family second and business third. Which is the way I have always felt. I am so ready to suceed at something new. So check out my website and email me with any questions.





www.marykay.com/jamiray


jamiray@marykay.com





If you are interested in hosting a beauty class, or would like to order product let me know. I look forward to being a sucessful director by this time next year. But I will need the help of my friends and family. I am soooo excited to be a part of this great company. If you are interested to know why I am so excited just ask. I would love to have you on my team!

Wild Hair Day

It was wild hair day at Harrington's school, something to do with Red Ribbon Week. Anyhoo, I got Harrington's overgrown buzz cut in to the best mowhawk I could. He better live it up, because if he ever comes home with a real one, he's in a lot of trouble. He liked it a lot, he didn't even complain about all the hair gel, hair spray and the blow dryer.

Fall Color

I just thought I would add a pictures of some of the beautiful fall colors and scenes that surround my home. A great picture taker I am not, but hopefully you will see some of what I see. Heavenly Father blesses us with such a beautiful world, and Utah has some great sights. If I can get up to Provo canyon and shoot of some pictures I will. I am so grateful for this time of year where we reflect on the fall harvest, not just the food but the blessings we receive all year round.My Front flower bed

The view out my front window, the mountains look way better in real life.Odelia's new monkey P.J.'s, not fall colors. But so cute. Don't you love when it's warm enough for footie P.J.'s

Tutu tutorial

Princess Tutu Tutorial

Odelia has about 4 Tutu's but none that match her butterfly headband that she wants to wear for Halloween. So I decided to make her a pink and green tutu. Here are the steps if you want to make one. They are super easy, and require very little sewing.

Materials List:
*6-8 yds toole (can be two colors, make sure you buy the kind with the small holes, it looks better)
*1/2-3/4 inch elastic - long enough to go around waist
*Thread

Step 1-Measure the princess's waist, even if they refuse to smile. Cut elastic just smaller than waist, by 1/4"Step 2 - Over lap ends of elastic 1/4" and hand sew or machine sew together. I like to Zig-Zag it about 4-5 times back and fourth, you want it hang up to lots of play.

Step 3 - Set waist band aside and cut all your toole in half lengthwise. I use the crease from where it is folded on the fabric bolt as a guide. You may want to cut shorter than half if you have a short princess.
Step 4 - Cut strips 1' wide.
Step 5 - Separate by colors in to two bags. Or put all in to one bag if you use all one color.
Step 6 - Go turn on your favorite TV show and get ready to tie knots. Place toole on inside of elastic band. Make sure the elastic band is in the middle of the strip and tie a square knot. Alternate colors until all toole is used up.

Finished Tutu
Princess Odelia Rose modeling her new Tutu

Cheesecake by Odelia Rose

Recipe Courtesy of The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, cute little girl courtesy of Heavenly Father.

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 350, combine crushed graham cracker 1 2/3 cups with 1/4 cup Sugar.

Step 2 - Add 6 tbs of melted butter to Graham Cracker mixture and stir.
Step 3 - Firmly press mixture into spring form pan, and bake for 8 minutes.
Step 4 - Prepare cream cheese filling. Beat 3, 8 oz pkgs of cream cheese in electric mixer until creamy.Step 5 - Gradually add 1 cup sugar, beating well. (Sugar not child)Step 6 - Add 3 Large eggs one at a time.
Step 7 - Add 1/2 tsp of vanilla, mix well.Step 8 - Spread cream cheese mixture over prepared crust, bake for 35 min at 375.
Step 9 - Lick beater, then wash beater and bowl so you are ready for to make sour cream topping.Step 10 - After the cheesecake has baked 35 min, beat 16 oz sour cream, 3 tbs. sugar and 1/2 tsp of vanilla for 2 minutes. Then spread over cheesecake and bake additional 5 minutes at 400. (Picture not taken for this step)

Step 11 - Cool Cheesecake to room temperature on wire rack, then cover and chill 8 hours.

Enjoy!!

Arizona Trip, Parent/Teacher Confrence & Trash

Okay, so Desirae helped me and made the slide shows you see below. It's kinda hard to describe whats going on in each picture since they are a slide show. But bless her heart for taking pity on me. While I was in Arizona we made a tutu for Charlotte, and we went canoing. You will notice that in all the pictures Zeb is in the Canoe, that is because he was the only one paddling. He was our tour guide, and pretty cute too. At first Desirae and my Dad didn't even want to attempt the Canoe, but we broke them down. If you look closely you can see my dad isn't on a seat he was sitting on the bottom of the canoe holding on for dear life. He hates cold water and was afraid of capsizing the boat. This coming from a man who served in the air force and at one point was a light weight boxer. Yes you heard me right light weight. You would never guess it now but he weighed like 125 lbs when him and my mom married. She was a scant 85 lbs. They have both gained another person in 50 years of marriage. After the canoe ride my dad had to take a nitro for his heart and lie down on the dock. My niece Charlotte road in the canoe for her first time, and she loved it, especially looking at all the ducks. She is the cute little one, with the life vest as big as her. I have been asked to do a tutu tutorial, but I don't have the step by step photos so you'll just have to wait until I make another one for Odelia. It's actually quite simple. I saw them at the mall and figured out how to do them on my own.

On another note, I am a scatter brained mom. I thought I had everything so planned for Harrington's parent /teacher conferences. I did my hair, Zeb got off work early, we ate dinner early as not to be late. I even changed my P.b. & J stained shirt and put make-up on. We got to Harrington's school, and his teacher wasn't there. We were supposed to be there the night before. I still don't know how I messed up on the night. I wrote it on the Calender, Harrington's teacher even sent a reminder note home. I never thought I would be a mom that would miss a Parent/Teacher conference. Somewhere between watching 7 children and going through Harrington's back pack I recorded the wrong day on the calender. Harrington even told me last night that we had Parent/Teacher conference and I assured him that it was tonight. Being pregnant messes with your brain... sometimes I think my mind is totally lost.

Second totally retarded thing that happened today. It's trash day, I heard the trash go to the curb and saw it on the curb. So I crossed it off my last, so glad that Zeb had remembered to do it for me. So this morning I emptied all the trash and the diaper pail (I have 6 kids in diapers... so it was a full bag of just diapers) I noticed that the trash can had less trash than usual for us. I shrugged it off because we were out of town. So I proceeded to go back inside and grab my broken brown chair I have been waiting to throw out and added it to the can. Then about 11 I heard the trash guy so I thought I would check the mail and haul the can back to where we keep it behind the fence. And to my surprise when I opened the gate there was my trash can, almost full. I had been putting trash, diapers and a broken chair in my neighbors trash can. Thank goodness she didn't see me, or I would have been totally embarrassed. So I wheeled her trash can back to the curb, and went inside totally disgusted that I hadn't checked to make sure my trash was out.

Lets hope tomorrow is better, at least I have the picture fiasco taken care of. Thank you, thank you, thank you Desirae. Lets hope I can sleep tonight.

Visit to Arizona 2

Visit to AZ

Blogging Gods

Okay, so I have tried everything to get my nieces pictures to open and still nothing. She has sent them to me 22 ways from Sunday and still nothing doing. The only pictures I did have of my sisters 50th birthday are not opening now. So I got desperate and I ordered the picture CD from costco.com. I know that is a blatant waste of $3.18, but I will use less toilet paper squares on the potty to save money. It's worth it for a little bit of sanity. If the CD doesn't work then so help me, so help me, bum, bum, bum, bum... (line from Disney's Monsters Inc.) I woke up at 4 this morning so annoyed and have been trying to get them to work for the last hour with to no avail. Then I decided to blog about how annoyed I was and I kept getting a message about the server being too busy to post. Then my internet stopped working completely and I had to restart my computer. I had right clicked and copied my blog, but when I restarted all was lost. So I am going to attempt to post this now and get a couple hours more of sleep. Hopefully the blog gods are smiling in my favor, because it it doesn't go through I will be more annoyed and I can't sleep when I am annoyed. Hence why I am even awake right now. Good Night :)

I need a vacation from my vacation

Okay so I am back from Arizona and I have a few things to blog about my trip, but I can't get the pictures off of my email. Hopefully my niece Desirae can help me out. So you will have to wait with baited breath to find out about all the fun I had. We got home late Sunday from AZ, and since then I have been trying to catch up. There has been a lot of laundry. I am proud to say that I have the month's FAMILY CALENDER all updated. My family Calender comes from years of having a desk job. I had a large desk calender where everything I needed to do was right in front of me. I know that their are more modern technologies, such as a blackberry, PDA and online calenders. I have used all of them, but I am retarded, I have to see it in large print everyday so I can prepare, and remember. Since I spend very little time at my desk in my home office, I rip out each month and pin it up on the wall in the Kitchen. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing thing, but it keeps me sane.
Harrington is all caught up his school work, and we are getting started on a project for the Utah PTA competition.
Zeb has been busy at work getting the show room up to par for the big "VP" visit on Friday. Saturday Zeb and I are going to the Discount Tire annual party and we are staying the night at the Hilton. I am sooooo excited, Zeb and I haven't been on a date in forever, much less getting away for a whole evening.
Odelia has been reacquainting herself with all her toys and enjoying having time to herself in her own room.
Since I am finally past the first trimester, I am starting to feel good enough to cook and bake. I have made dinner two nights in a row. Yesterday I even made bread and cookies, and today I made granola. Money is a little tight since our trip, so making goodies from scratch is a way to use my food supply and save money. One day I will be rich, then I can make things from scratch for fun, instead of necessity.... some day.

Family Pictures

Here are some of our pictures from last
Saturday of the Ray Family.

Vacation in Arizona

Well we made it 12 1/2 hours to Tucson. We stopped as little as possible, argued a lot, but we made it. We had a great time with Zeb's family. We went shopping, swimming, had some new family pictures taken and best of all blessed my new nephew Zander. Of course my kids were awful during the picture taking and we didn't get nearly the amount of pictures I wanted. The baby blessing went well, except for Zander losing his entire breakfast in the middle of the blessing. Thank goodness he missed his outfit and the men's suit's, it hit the floor. I tried to clean it up with paper towels after sacrament meeting, but I think they will need to shampoo that carpet it was a huge spot. We left on Monday to head up to Dewey with little incident. We picked up my sister Karen's little girl on our way through Chandler. Since we have been here we have enjoyed relaxing and eating. We are going to the mall and movies today and tomorrow we are taking our canoe to the lake. My mom found a few chairs on the side of the road before we came in to town so I am working on refinishing them while I am here. For what purpose I don't know. Some times I can't help my self. I made my famous crusty white bread yesterday and it didn't turn out, I was so dissapointed. I will have to try again when i get home. It's so much easier to bake when you have all your own tools. Now it is off to the blow dryer, time to make me beautiful... or at least try. Being pregnant does crazy things to you hair and skin.