New Pianist

We have a new pianist in the family. She just started two weeks ago. She is so excited you wouldn't believe it. We HAD to start her - she played the piano all the time and she only knew one song, "Heart and Soul". After hearing it played 400,298 times in 98,434 variations we said ENOUGH. The girl needed to add to her repertoire. We never have to ask her to practice - she is all over it again and again and again....... So, after the first week I asked Rachel (ye olde fabulous piano teacher), in order to help us hang onto the small amount of remaining sanity we have, if she could please give Micah more than 1 song per week. At least now she had TWO songs to play 36,002 times that week. ;)

Morning Dunham Smoothie

I have been making a morning smoothie a lot lately. Mostly because it is a great way to get your vitamins (I have made my own vitamins in an herbal tincture over the past year, but I also have the same "formula" in a powder and can easily blend it in a smoothie. That'll have to be another post). I have certain non-vegetable likers who really need the greens and vitamins too and this is an easy way to get those to them. Here is our current recipe (well, I haven't actually measured anything - that's just how I cook):

1 1/2 - 2 cups frozen fruit (we use cherries and apricots from our trees this past summer)
1/2 cup plain yogurt (Brown Cow, Cream on the Top)
1 -2 cups fresh baby spinach (Costco, glorious Costco)
2 T orange juice concentrate (the kind with no garbage in it)
about 1-2 T raw honey
1-2 heaping T flax seeds
1-2 heaping T vitamin powder (I make my own, but it is very similar to More Than Alive Superfood. Or you can buy all of the individual herbs there and make your own.)
about 1/16 - 1/8 tsp. of cayenne pepper (depending on who will be drinking it)
enough water to make it all move in the Vitamix

If it isn't sweet enough you can add more OJ concentrate or a little more honey. Yes, it is kind of brownish green, but no one here complains - it tastes that good!

Freecycle Strikes Again

We posted on Freecycle a couple of weeks ago for an espresso maker (again - the last one just died) and I immediately received an email from Father Rudy at a local catholic church saying that he had one we could have. In our email communique, he also said that he had a nice guitar and wondered if we wanted that too!!!!!! Us, a guitar??? Heck yeah!! We got over there to get the items, and not only was the espresso machine a Krups Il Primo - looks brand new - but the super
nice guitar was in a case, with a stand, and included an instructional DVD set - 25 DVDs with the books and extra bonus practice DVDs. What a huge blessing. The DVD set is awesome. All the boys are using it in their school day. I love Freecycle. Isn't the Lord amazing to do things like that in our lives? And God bless Father Rudy!

Differences

People are always wondering if it was a big culture shock moving to MT after living in CA. It is funny, but the culture shock didn't come when we moved here; it hit when we returned to CA after living here for a while. The differences are many, but the most noticeable are the traffic, the crowdedness (pretty sure that's not a word) and the obsession with appearances (personal, cars, fashion) in Southern California. One small, but wonderful, difference is the post office. When I lived in San Diego the post office was one of my very least favorite errands second only to shopping at Walmart (which I avoided almost like the plague, until I had a very long, necessary list and had no choice but to go and wade through the stacked to the ceiling, unorganized, too-thin aisles - ugh). Things sat around gathering dust until I rustled up the gumption to withstand the misery of the post office. And I didn't go to places like Mailboxes, Etc. because I am too cheap to pay the surcharges, and the lines were just about as long there anyway. When we moved here I was amazed at how easy and quick a visit to the post office was. In Columbia Falls, the longest I ever waited was 10 minutes - AT CHRISTMASTIME. In Lakeside, where we now live, I have only had one person in front of me at any time. In East Glacier, the only waiting is for the attendant to come after you ring the bell at the counter. Now, I know it isn't always this way - the Kalispell main office is busy and I have waited 15 minutes before, but that's nothing compared to the30 - 45 minutes that I would normally stand in line in the Rancho Bernardo post office. I love Montana - difference #1.

Merry Christmas, Elias!

After a very long and tiring mishap with Elias' Christmas present which involved the sending of it to a wrong address on the other end of the country (my brother and sister-in-law housed it for a few days until UPS came back to get it - twice!) and then being back-ordered, it finally arrived yesterday.

After a bunch of unpacking and set up, this is what we ended up with:

So, raise your hand if you think this was a good idea........Kelly's hand is raised ...........and..............and..............over there in the corner - is your hand up? No? Hm. Anyone else?? Anyone?

Friends

We took our family photos with the Rickels and Millers. We just had to do a kid photo. I love it. 3 Rickel kids are missing (2 married, 1 soon to be married.....yahoo Paige and Josh - less than a month!!) and there are still 14 kids here. We are so blessed that our kids have such great friends.

Happy New Year!!

So my father won't continue to be disappointed as he wears out his computer coming to my blog to see if we have posted anything....tada. The first photo of 2011. We rang in the New Year with a big group of great friends. And I only took one photo. Here it is. Happy New year, Mom and Dad.