Friends with Benefits

In High School the term "Friends with Benefits" meant one thing.

Now, as a married, stay-at-home mom, it has a whole new meaning :)

Last week I was able to spend the day with my Chinese friend, and her friend (also Chinese), making Zongzi.  Glutenous rice and whatever delicious filling you can find (we used pork, shrimp, meng bean, and mushrooms) and wrap it all up in a bamboo leaf.

(The friend that joined us ended up being one of my Chinese teachers from BYU, Kayla Lam, or Lin Laoshi.  So weird to be having a "playdate" with her!!  It was incredibly refreshing to be surrounded by Chinese again, I forgot how much I love it!  The best part was when Sofie came home, after 6 hours of playing with their kids, speaking gibberish that sounded pretty dang close to Mandarin!!)

Here's the inside.

YUM!

Today my wonderful Guatemalan friend brought me some homemade Chuchitos.

Corn meal with a pork and tomato based sauce filling, all wrapped up in a corn husk.

AMAZING!

The best kind of friends come with edible benefits :)

I also love that these two treats are so incredibly similar in technique yet so different in flavor!!

Now I've got to get myself some Indian friends!!  I was spoiled as a child with a best friend from India that invited me for dinner often.  Wish she lived around here!

Oh What Do You Do In the Summertime?

I love camping, and I love taking lots of pictures :)

Last weekend we went camping up at Jordanelle Reservoir.  We've gone camping lots of times with extended family, but this was our first trip with just the 4 of us.  It definitely had it's ups and downs, but overall it was great!

It was hot, but perfect that night!

The girlies helping get the tent all ready.

The tent was their favorite part, even if it was hot and sweaty in there.

Collecting rocks in an empty water bottle.

Playing in the water (too cold to swim!)

Sofie took this great picture!

Fishin' with Daddy.  Too windy to catch anything.

Lots of room to play!

Wishin' I had a high chair!

Desperate to entertain the 3 year old... using a rock to play hopscotch!

(I was saying, man I wish we had some chalk, and my smarty pants husband used a rock!)

My favorite part, the fire, watching stars, and roasting things!!

(Sofie pretending to sleep)

It was a windy windy weekend, thank goodness I brought a kite!

Meili's favorite part was chomping on rocks.

Pretty sure I have a similar picture when I was her age.

I took this picture and was SHOCKED to see all 3 smiling and looking at the camera!!

Trying to fish again, too windy :(

Meili is always snuggling.  If there's a blanket, there's a snuggle waiting to happen.

Trying to get a picture of mommy and Meili, not gonna happen!

Farewell

I Love the month of May.  It's my absolute favorite, with October second.  I am sad to see it go.

Here are some of the May things we caught on camera.

Sofie and I want a kitty.  But it doesn't look like we've convinced the rest of the household.  :)

Until then, Sofie can drag her stuffed kitty around with a shoelace tied around it's neck.

I turned 28!  Most of the things I did for my birthday didn't get caught on camera, but this one did.  I went to lunch with my sister and mom at Rumbi Island Grill.  Yum!

Us.

Yarg!

Mei Mei

Sofie hid my present and had these foot prints leading to it.  (Inspired by the leprechaun that visited her earlier this year.)

Last May I snatched this old, beat up picnic table from my Grandma's house.  We made a few repairs, sanded it down and this month I finally painted it!

I wanted it to scream SUMMER!  I did good!

(the baby tree in the background was one of my birthday presents...I'm afraid it might be dead already!  I am sooooo sad!)

The garden!

Of course, you can't see the seeds/baby plants so well, but there's lots in there!

Zucchini, strawberries, tomatoes, 4 varieties of peppers, pumpkin, sweet meat squash, peas, onions, beets, spinach, lettuce.  (and raspberries to the right)  This year we are growing the tomatoes, pumpkin, and sweet meat vertically.  I stuck a chain link fence in the back (hard to see, it's to the left of the lattice for the peas) for the squash and pumpkins.  Hopefully it works and I can have a great picture of the climbing pumpkins this fall!!  The tomatoes will climb the 3 stakes on the left.

We got a trampoline!!  I think I was more excited than anybody to get this!  I love trampolines!