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Saturday, January 28, 2012

Recipe

Hi blog buddies! :) Right now I'm using my iPod to post because we're on the way to the farm for the weekend. Dad wants us to build a firepit and we have some fencing to tear down so we can till the ground where the garden will eventually be.

Today I decided to post the recipe for what we had for dinner last night. It was a new recipe and it was AWESOME. So, here it is! :)I'm not sure what cookbook it's from, because the cover is ripped off. I know it's from Taste of Home though.

Creamy White Chili

Ingredients:

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, pour into 1/2 inch cubes.
1 medium onion, chopped
1-1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 T. vegetable oil (we used olive oil)
2 cans (15-1/2 ounces each) great northern beans, rinsed and drained
1 can (14-1/2 ounces) chicken broth
2 cans (4 ounces each) chopped green chilis
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground oregano
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions:

1) In a large saucepan, sauté chicken, onion and garlic powder in oil until chicken is no longer pink. Add the beans, broth, chilis and seasonings. Bring to a boil.

2) Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in sour cream and cream. Serve immediately.

Yield: 7 servings.

Because it only made 7 servings and Dad hadn't had lunch, we got less than we would normally get and ate it with tortilla chips. That was pretty good. :)

So there you go! I'm not going to say that much because it's really hard to type in the car :) So, I'm going to sign off now. Bye!

Kayla

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

A kinda random post

Hello blog buddies. (That's what I've decided to call all of you :) ) I don't know why, I just did. I don't really have that much to post about, but since I said that I would try and post 3 times a week, I figured I might be able to find something to say.

Courtney and Rachel, thank you for your comments about the new look of my blog! I really appreciate it. The more I look at it the more I'm liking it . :) And Rachel, thank you for your offer to help me figure out my header. I would love to talk about it on Sunday if you have a chance.

Not much has been going on lately. Pretty much everyone except Jonathan is sick, which hasn't been very fun. But we're starting to get better, so that's good. My throat doesn't hurt NEARLY as bad as it did yesterday. Last night it hurt so much I was just about ready to cut it off! (Well, not really, but you get the point)

Saturday we went to help my grandparents move. The good thing is that they live in a mobile home park, and they were just moving from one side of the park to another, so it wasn't that far. :) In fact, my grandma had forgotten some creamer in her fridge, so Hannah, Sarah and I walked over to get it. I think we must have looked pretty silly to those people driving past us on the way back. :) We got there about 9:30, (I think) and most of us didn't get home until about 5:30. Jonathan and Dad stayed to help some more, and they didn't get home until about 8. I was really concerned that Dad would be super sore on Sunday, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We actually went down to the farm, which is a 2 hour round trip, and he was driving. Normally when Dad's super sore he hates to drive. So I was really thankful that he was ok.

Oh. I just remembered something I wanted to post about. So in order to move to the farm we needed 2 things to happen. 1) Dad needed a new work truck because he didn't trust the one he had to drive that extra 2 hours every day. And 2) We needed a barn. Not necessarily for animals, (yet) but so that Dad had a place to put his tools. Right now we have a 1,200 square foot garage in the backyard that Dad has all of his tools in, but at the farm we don't have that. So those were the 2 things we needed, and it looks like God may be providing both of them!

So my Dad owns his own company, and my uncle works for him. Well, on Friday my uncle was driving when an older lady drove right into him. He's ok, but the truck isn't. So, now my uncle gets Dad's old truck, and Dad gets a new one! Not to make this sound like my uncle getting into an accident was a good thing, because it wasn't. It is just helping us get to the farm faster. :)

And now for number 2. We could very easily build a barn, but I think what Dad really wanted was a steel building. Well, He and Mom had looked at several different buildings from several different companies, but they were all WAY out of our price range. Like $500,000-out-of-our-price-range. So, Dad decided that we were going to build a barn. Well, some friends on my grandparents that live in Colorado had sent something to Mom and Dad about steel buildings. (Thank you Mr. and Mrs. V!) So, Dad decided to look into it. Well, it turns out that for the size that Dad wants, buildings from this company are WAY cheaper than some of the other ones. So I think for the size he wants, (I think it was like 50x100 ft.) it's only 22-32 thousand dollars. That's still a lot, and we still would have to take out a loan, but that's still way cheaper than 500k. So, it looks like God may be providing us both of the things we needed to move! Yay! It's been over 4 years since we bought the farm, and I told my Nana about a month ago, that if we weren't on the farm by next Christmas, (meaning 2012) that I might just start crying and never stop. Seriously. I have waited so long to move. Annabeth doesn't even know a life without the farm. She was only a couple months old when we bought it. And for that matter, neither do Sarah and David. Sarah was only 3 and David was only 1, maybe 2. I don't remember.

I really hope this works out because I want to move so bad. I mean, I won't be looking forward to driving for an hour and a half instead of just a half hour, I won't be looking forward to getting home from church at like 9, but I'd much rather do that than stay here.

Well, it looks like I WAS able to find something to write about! :) See, when I'm in the mood I can be such a rambler. :) Oh well. God gave you a mouth, I suppose there's nothing wrong with using it as long as it's used in the right way, right?

So, I guess I'll sign off for this post. Bye blog buddies! :)

Kayla

Monday, January 23, 2012

So.....

What do you all think of the new look of my blog? I decided that after it looking pretty much the same ever since I started last May, that it was time for a change. On a normal basis I would have a header, but for some reason I can't get it to work. My pictures always are way too big. Also, I changed my background and font. So, what do you think? Drop me a comment and let me know!

The background came from this website I found. They have lots of really neat backgrounds. You can look at them here.

And sorry I haven't been that good about blogging lately. For some reason Blogger isn't letting me upload any pictures. So, it may have to be just writing for a little while. But hey, I figure posts with just words is better than no posts, right?

So again, let me know what you think of the new look of Kayla's Corner!

Kayla

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Surprise party and video

Ok. So I have 2 good reasons why I didn't post on Thursday or Saturday. I didn't post on Thursday because I wasn't here. For quite a bit of the day I was at violin lessons, and then I was on a sleepover at my grand parent's house. Plus it didn't help that I really didn't have anything to post about.

Saturday we had something big going on that I was planning on posting about, and we got TONS of pictures, but by the time we got home it was after bed time. So, I wasn't able to post. But, I'm here now, ready to post about what happened yesterday. Surprise party!!!!!

One of Mom's really good friends is turning 50 on the 22nd, and we were planning to have a party on the 21st. That party she knew about. But then Mom and Mr. Goodale decided that it would be more fun to do a surprise party on the 14th...Saturday. Mom (and Hannah and I) spent weeks preparing for this party, and Mom did a SUPER job of keeping Mrs. Goodale from knowing about it. Mom told her that it was a 'becoming of age' party for Jonathan for his 13th birthday. :) So, come Saturday we get up, get ready, and leave. We did some errands, and then Dad dropped us and the food off at church. (that's where we were having the party) Then Dad went to go pick up Wes and Will MacDonald, because the rest of their family was sick and couldn't come . :-( In the meantime, the rest of us stayed and got set up. Mom made the fellowship hall look pretty neat. I think she could make a dump look festive if she had to. :) Well, eventually people started showing up, and before long it was 3:00, which was when the party was. Everyone was there except for the Goodales, their daughter and her husband who were driving in from San Diego, some friends of theirs who came in from Phoenix, and our pastor's family. When the Goodale's showed up we kept talking so that we didn't give it away by being too quiet, and waited for her to come in. The look on her face was priceless. And then when she found out that her daughter and son-in-law were coming for the party, she was so thrilled.

We played for a little while, and then ate. Mom got 2 6 foot long sub sandwiches from Fry's, and we had those along with chips, salsa, a veggie tray, and macaroni salad. It was pretty good. So then we went and played some more, and then had cake. Because of course you have to let your food digest before you have cake. :) And then there was some MORE playing, and then the part that made me nervous came.

Mrs. Goodale had been planning for a while to sing a song at the party, and week before last at church she asked Wes to play guitar, and then last week she asked me to sing with her! I was super nervous about it since I only had a week to practice, but it made it better when we decided that I was only going to sing the chorus. So, come Saturday we go into one of the rooms at church and close the door, and then went out and performed it! I didn't think my part went very well, but that's just me. Here's a video.


And by way, just to let you know, in the video you can see my face kind of curl up in a smile quite a few times, and that's because I kept looking over past Dad (who was taking the video) and kept seeing Will stuff one chip after another in his mouth, and I just couldn't help smiling. I actually almost burst out laughing. He just kept sitting there, eating the whole time. So that's why I kept smiling a little bit. :)


Ok. And here are the pictures.



Mrs. Reeves and her grandson Calvin


My beautiful sister


Hannah and Katy


We got a cake from Costco, but we weren't sure there was going to be enough, since we had about 70 people coming, so we made cupcakes too.







Sorry this photo is a little big blurry.


Um, I'm not sure that you can see this really well, but I think if you click on the picture you can see it bigger.



Mrs. Goodale and her mother in law


And for some reason right now every time I try to load more pictures, it says "Error, please try again". So, I'm going to have to try again later.


Please comment and let me know what you think!

Kayla


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Hello my beloved blog readers

(I did write this on Tuesday, it just didn't get posted until today)

Ok, so I know that I haven't been very good at this whole blogging thing, but just to let you know, out of my list of New Years resolutions, keeping better care of my blog was number 3 on my list. That's how important you all are to me. So, part of my resolution was to try and post 3 times a week. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I'm not sure why I chose those days but I did. So, please expect a post from me on those days, unless something exciting happens and I HAVE to post about it right then. It probably will happen more than once. :)

We had a wonderful Christmas, and I hope everyone else did too. I would post pictures but somehow they ended up in someplace other than they need to be, so for some reason I can't get to them through Blogger. So, that won't work. Not only those pictures, but ones from Jonathan's birthday on the 22nd of December and going to Winterhaven with some friends that night. I'll keep trying to get to them and hopefully I'll eventually get to post them. We'll see.

Not that much has happened recently. Jonathan's birthday was on the 22nd of December and David's was on the 3rd of this month. I think they really like having birthdays so close to each other. :)

Ever since the first of the year Mom has been trying to take sugar and grains out of our diet, which is ok. I still miss having dessert, but we've been having some good new food. Well, not all of it was so good, we ALL decided that, but overall it's been ok. The hardest part is not being able to have pasta, potatoes or bread very often, because the grains make some of the kids in the house go CRAZY. Seriously. I happen to share a room with 2 of them, and it kind of makes bed time... well.... not exactly very fun. (or quiet)  :)

We haven't been to the farm in a couple of weeks. All of last weekend Dad spent working on cabinets and doors for the house. He hasn't had much time to do it lately, so it was nice that he was able to get some things done.

My Etsy shop is going ok. I haven't sold anything since May, but I'm not complaining. I still love making things with my hands whether I sell them or not. And I'm considering donating some of them to Crisis Pregnency Center or maybe a nursing home. I'm not sure.

By the way, as of right now my header picture is HUGE. I know it's not right, and I'm trying to fix it. But since I haven't changed my header picture or my template since I started this blog last May, I thought it was time for a change. So, I'll keep working on it.

School is going ok. I'm almost done with 10th grade, and I hope to graduate by the end of the year. I know that it's a pretty big ambition, but even if I don't make it, at least I have a goal.

Ok, so I know this has been a pretty random post. And all of my posts won't be this random. Just this one. So, I'll sign off for now and I'll talk to you on Thursday!

Kayla