DROOL RULES & WINTER BEAUTY

There have been soooooooo many amazingly beautiful days this winter. But it's also been plenty cold, so most of my snapshots have been from inside looking out the window or stepping out onto the front porch! It was fun in this photo to see a bird in the lower left hand corner looking around for something to eat. There have been a flock of these around this winter.

This was the view from the front porch one day near Pete's birthday--greetings from Doug!!!!

This Sunday morning was REALLY spectacular with every branch and surface covered with frosty white. After the Patriarch gave a blessing this morning I asked him to step out the front door for a photo shoot. His hair was frosted just like the trees! Very beautiful!

Pete and I enjoyed a fun Valentine's Day together. After a delicious meal at Sizzler I was planning to do some grocery shopping, but decided I didn't want to fight the crowds any more. The town was packed to the gills with shoppers and diners--every restuarant parking lot we drove by was completely full; the mall parking lot was as full as I've ever seen it, and people in cars lined up one after another everywhere! Pete said, "Doesn't look like there's a recession in Idaho Falls!" Earlier we had met a patient of Pete's at his office and she had brought him three jars of HOT homemade salsa. So as we debated what to fix for Sunday dinner Pete suggested I do something so we could try out the salsa. That sounded good to me. A quick mental checklist confirmed that I had everything at home we would need, so we headed home and just stopped at Maverick for bread and milk.

Sunday morning I put a pork roast in to cook while we were at church and took out a bag of frozen rice, a can of refried beans, cheese and the salsa and sour cream. After church I started assembling everything and the corn tortillas I took out of the freezer didn't look very appetizing, so I decided to do homemade flour tortillas. I'd made them before a LONG time ago. While I was rolling them out I was getting pretty tired--they take a lot of rolling and pressing to get them flat enough. So I called in reinforcements and Pete agreed to finish rolling them out while I continued to fix the other things. He was groaning and sweating about how hard the job was, but kept at it. (They tasted REALLY GOOD.)

Suddenly he said, "Oh, oh, I drooled on that one!" I started to giggle. Then I told him that the unwritten rule of the kitchen is: IF YOU DROOL ON THE FOOD, JUST DON'T TELL ANYONE!!!!! We had a good laugh about that and, of course, didn't say anything to Chris and Ryan until after they had finished their meal . . . sorry!