Tis the season to make your Christmas cards!!

I love Christmas! And it just so happens to be on its way! I love sending Christmas cards, and love receiving them. My favorite to receive are photo cards...I scrapbook all the ones we get in the mail.

In the past few years, I have gotten engaged, married and had a baby, and so have many of my friends and family members!....so I have designed many, many, invitations to showers, and many thank you cards...along with Christmas cards.

My *favorite* site to make Christmas cards is Shutterfly. I just recently made Halloween cards from shutterfly, with my favorite pumpkin, Casey, as the centerpiece.

There are a whole bunch I am contemplating for my Christmas card this year... Check these out , I am really liking Starlight Snowflakes, No Mistletoe Neccessary....and a whole lot more. In fact, there are 747 to look through. I can't give you my final choice, you have to wait for it in the mail.

Shutterly is currently offering 20% off all holiday cards, Go Make yours!

dog show!

Ryan and I train and compete with our aussies, Josh and McKenzie. He competes with Josh, and McKenzie is mine. We are members of the Columbia Basin Dog Training Club...a fun crowd! I have been competing with my dogs since I was in the 5th grade....first Bailey, then Tobie and Rylie, now Josh and McKenzie. I have always loved training, I love my dogs like they are my children, and I am pretty sure any of them would have laid their life down for me if presented the chance.
We had our big club show of the year the first weekend of October. I showed McKenzie in Rally Excellent both days. While she didn't behave as well as I had hoped, we still qualified with 3rd place each day. This finished our RE title!! McKenzie is now, Country-Ways French Kiss, RE. She has earned her Rally Novice, Advanced and Excellent titles! Training consistently is difficult with a baby, and with working full time, but we do what we can. Our dogs are certainly pets/children first, training is a necessity to teach them to be good dogs, and competing is just a hobby.

Another fun part of showing, is that my friend Nicole also competes, so we can go together. Nicole and I started showing dogs in 4-H together almost 15 years ago. We also went to the same high school together, worked together in high school, were together at WSU for 4 years, 2 as room mates, and were then in each others weddings! After all these years, Nicole still associates with me:)

Here is Casey at the dog show! He is very busy, but did well 2 full days of shows!

The Pizza Bubble

The Pizza Bubble is one of our new favorite recipes. I found it on a website contest for 7 ingredients or less and the cheapest you can make a recipe. This was the winner. I never follow the recipe exactly, but here is the basics.

1 can pillsbury rolls
6 ounces turkey pepperoni
1 jar pizza sauce
1 can fat free cream of mushroom soup
pineapples
green peppers
onions
2 cups mozzarella cheese

Mix the cream of mushroom soup and pizza sauce. Cut rolls into fourths, add them in, cut pepperonis into fourths, add them in. Mix in pizza ingredients (you can use whatever you like on a pizza...onions, peppers, pineapple and pineapple happen to be what we like). Mix in 1 cup mozzarella cheese. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes in a 9x13 pan. Top with another cup of cheese, bake til melted.

Soooo good, and the leftovers are really good too! Super easy and fast to make. As you can see, pretty cheap, especially because a lot of the ingredients go on sale.

Mya's birthday

Casey's girlfriend, and future wife, Mya turned one on Sept. 11th. We went to her birthday party at Keewaydin Park in Kennewick. Casey has never had any real sugar, and I figured we would wait until his 1st birthday, when he could have his very own cake to play in. But when April and Mya asked Casey to strip down and eat cake together....we couldn't say no!

Casey, Mya and Mya's cousin all stripped to their diapers (Casey was super relieved he was wearing his cool Huggies jeans diapers) and we put them on a blanket with the cake. Casey dove right in! He absolutely enjoyed his cake, he is like his Mom! At one point, in an attempt to get closer, Casey sat in the cake! I think he has a good idea...cake should be a whole body experience! At one point, Mya's cousin got too close to the cake, and Casey- full of green frosting- pushed her away, with a trail of green across her chest. Then it was just down to Casey and Mya....eventually Mya started crying because April put a party hat on her, and Casey was the last man standing, or sitting, in the cake. He just kept eating! He was pretty serious about the cake, and looked at it in wonder. When he was done, he went after some party hats and ate those too.

We tried to wipe him off with baby wipes and got nowhere fast, so we washed him under a faucet at the park, just good enough to get him home, where he got a full bath before the CSA party.

CSA Farm Party

On Saturday, September 11th, we headed out to our CSA's Farm Party. We missed the party Memorial Day, so we were excited we could make this one. There was a farm tour, BBQ potluck and bonfire. Schreiber and Sons Farm is in Eltopia, just outside of Pasco. It is 156 acres, which makes it tiny, according to the farmer, Allan Schreiber. We loaded up on tractors and hay to tour the farm. They have organic land, conventional land, and lots of research land. Research is where they make all of their money. The farmer has a PhD in entomology from WSU, and used to teach there as well. I guess that makes him Dr. Farmer Schreiber. He started the CSA for fun, and this year, there are 353 members. We saw where they make our boxes up. He told us a lot of interesting things about the culture of the Mexican workers they use. They have been using the same family, from near Guadalajara, for almost 20 years. They have their own space on the farm to grow peppers and things to sell at farmers markets and the flea market in Pasco. They grow peppers that are 100x hotter than jalapenos...and would send us gringos to the hospital:)

We toured all the fun pumpkins we will be getting! They are growing Casey a giant pumpkin (50+ pounds), and we will get the cool gooseflesh pumpkins that look like they have warts, Indian corn and squash and pumpkins of all sizes. Makes me look forward to fall:) Casey took a little nap during the farm tour...I tell you that kid can sleep anywhere!They BBQ'd chicken, turkey and duck on a huge BBQ thing. Everyone brought a side dish. Even though we were last to get our food, there was still plenty. While in line, Casey provided the entertainment...by laughing at everyone who looked at him. People would laugh back and that makes him laugh even harder. He is quite the comedian. We got many comments on how he was the happiest baby they had ever seen, and they had never seen a baby laugh that much. That's our boy!We also were able to grab a bunch more veggies and watermelon, cantaloupe and apples to bring home.

We didn't stick around for the bonfire and smores, we had been on the go since 6am, and while Casey had been a trooper all day, he needed to get to bed! We loved the party, and seeing how our food is grown, and hearing all the statistics and thought that goes into running a farm. It was fascinating to me. They had a huge turn out, so many people and their families and kids playing together. It was a really neat experience. I can't wait for the next one!

Enjoying my knife time....

I am getting pretty good with knives these days. With our CSA box, we are getting so much stuff that needs to be cut, chopped, sliced, diced and all the other terms I don't know. We have come to the realization that our knives suck. A lot.

*Hint, hint, wink, wink* to anyone who may want to get Ryan and I a birthday (Ryan will be 30 on Oct 9, and so will I on October 16!) or Christmas present....we need knives!

My Dad is amazing with knives, as he was a chef. I may need to take some lessons.

Last night we made a salsa/pico de gallo thing with:
Green, yellow, red and purple peppers
Jalapenos
corn
black beans
onions
tomatoes
avocados
cilantro
juice of one lime

We chopped all these up into little pieces, and put it on tortillas with some cheese and sour cream. We also had some tostitos scoops to put in on. So good, colorful and flavorful!! Lots of prep work to wash and cut up everything, but well worth the effort! We have made a variation of this a few times over the last few weeks. I even made something similar with cucumbers as the main ingredient.

Benton Franklin County Fair

Ryan and I were so excited to take Casey to the fair and see all the animals! He loves his dogs, so we figured he would like all the other weird looking "dogs". And yes, he did! We visited all the 4-H animals, and all the 4-H exhibits. I showed in the fair in 4-H with many projects, but mainly dogs, so I love to look at all the stuff.

We got to see a little bit of the dock dogs, those were fun to watch, ours don't enjoy the water all that much. I tried to sneak democrat stickers on Casey's stroller, but they were rejected by Ryan....rude! Just for that, I ate his candy, ha!

Casey liked the petting zoo, he got to pet goats, sheep and ponies. I loved the look on his face, sheer amazement and utter curiosity...priceless.

Some how, among all the noise and hustle bustle of the fair, Casey managed to sleep over an hour in his stroller. We watched the arm wrestling championship...pretty dumb, but kinda like a train wreck that you can't help but stare at.

We were really excited to go to the Luke Bryan concert....but realized well before that, it was just too loud for Casey. The warm up was soooo loud. So we headed to the rodeo!! Our favorite is the mutton busting...Casey will be competing just as soon as we can strap the kid to a sheep. Something tells me my fearless kid will enjoy it! I guess we can practice on the dogs.