FHE Temple Trip

For our family night activity a few weeks ago we took a trip to the Houston temple to walk around and enjoy the grounds. I don't know why we didn't get any pictures of us in front of the temple, but here's a few random shots!

The group:

Emery contemplating the truths of eternity and the beauty of forever families:

And now she's trying to swim in the fountain:

Here's a shot of the entryway:

A shot of the steeple:

Garage sale finds

Whitney and I went garage-saleing on Saturday and hit the JACKPOT! We stopped at 3 sales and practically filled the van with our treasures. One was an estate sale and we scored so many awesome kids toys for cheap. It was the BEST garage sale trip I've ever had. One of the favorite things I found was this train set. It was filling 2 boxes and looked kind of chaotic but I could tell there were some really cool pieces (see the clock tower and windmill?). It was $10, which for a garage sale made me wonder if it was worth it, but I took the chance, bought it, and I am SO happy I did. I had Gavin sit down with me the other night and try to sort through what I bought. 

 Here's the chaos all dumped out:

Here it is after a few minutes of piecing together what we have:

Here's another shot:

See that frame in the background of the last picture? Scored that for $1 at a sale. The picture doesn't do it justice, it is so pretty. 

So, apparently I have a couple of sets of a FisherPrice GeoTrax train set. It doesn't have the remote controlled engine, but it does have the remote and a bunch of push trains. This is no sissy train track people, it is the REAL DEAL. Eventually I think I'll buy a new engine car because I think Emery will really like it (and I think Gavin will too, let's be honest). We're planning on giving it to her at Christmas, maybe even setting it up around the Christmas tree! Ooooh, so fun!

Look Mom!

I was putting on mascara the other day, when I ran off to answer my phone. I came back to find Emery hiding in the closet like this:

She actually did a fairly good job of applying it...until she started brushing it all over her feet, hands, and legs. Haha, what a cutie-pie! I'm just glad it wasn't nail polish!

Hatch Peppers

Have you ever cooked with hatch peppers? I hadn't heard much about them until a few weeks ago when I started seeing them EVERYWHERE in the stores: hatch pepper salsa, hatch pepper jelly, hatch pepper EVERYTHING. Here's an internet picture of the little beauties:


So I wasn't surprised when we got some in our bountiful basket this week. One day I was trying to make a salad and I thought I'd cut one up and see what it tasted like. I cut off the bottom inch and popped it in my mouth and was pleasantly surprised to discover it tasted just like a green pepper--mild and fairly sweet. I chopped up the whole thing, put it in the salad, picked up a bunch of seeds that had fallen out and threw them away and went on my merry way.

Twenty minutes later I itched my eye and when my finger touched my eye, SEARING PAIN!!! I couldn't rinse my eye enough and had to take out my contacts because it felt like they were going to melt onto my eyeball. Apparently they weren't as mild as I thought! I don't know what gives off the heat in those peppers, maybe the seeds, but I cut up one pepper and half of the pepper slices in the salad were very spicy and the others were just mild.

The next morning I got yet another gift from the peppers as I went to put in my contacts and there was still some hatch pepper heat on there. Those suckers have some KICK!