New Shoes

Our little lady is already wearing heels:

Chop Wizard

Its Saturday, so its time for some infomercial fun!



We have one of these, but never realized it was from an infomercial until it was on TV today. It really is the most wonderful thing ever and everyone needs one. Rush out and get yours now!!

We don't have one of these:


but it looks just as useful. Ellen seems to like hers:



Awesome.

UTA Fun!!

I was almost stuck on this exact train this morning:


I waited about 20 minutes for it at the Clearfield station, then gave up and just drove to work instead. After seeing this story, I'm especially glad I did, because if I'd waited for the train, I would have been stuck in Woods Cross for an additional 1.5 hours and not made it to work until after 10:30.

The Office

In honor of The Office (which premiers tomorrow night) and our recent subscription to Netflix, which allows me to watch just about anything (including past seasons of The Office) online and on demand, I'm posting what remains one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life:

Rachel's Babies

Rachel got "creative" with her dolls today:
If she turns out to be a serial killer, this will probably have been the first sign.

NPR Cutbacks...

Saw this on The Onion this morning.
Unless you're an avid NPR listener, this probably won't make a lot of sense, bit it's funny nonetheless:

Cash-Strapped NPR Launches 'A Couple Things Considered'

WASHINGTON—Facing major cutbacks, National Public Radio has been forced to retool and relaunch its popular program All Things Considered as a truncated newscast that now only considers a couple, maybe three things per show. "We'd love to consider all things, but the reality is we no longer have the resources necessary to do so," host Michele Norris said following the new show's first broadcast, in which rising gas prices and jazz legend Wynton Marsalis were considered. "We'll still be able to mention six or seven things, gloss over four, and reference five, but we cannot afford to give every single thing our full consideration. Perhaps we were biting off more than we could chew in the first place." A Couple Things Considered is just one of many new shows brought about by budget constraints, along with NPR's recently launched Bicycle Talk and Public Radio International's This Tri-State Area Life.

Food Storage Saturday

Bought a bunch of stuff from Winegar's case lot sale to replenish our food storage closet:

Bought, trimmed fat from and repackaged for freezing 80 pound of chicken breasts:

Next time you meet a boneless skinless chicken breast, realize that this in not the way it came off the chicken and someone did a lot of work to get it this way:

Bought more water:
Re-stocked the freezer with frozen veggies (pre-chicken):
Went to the garden and picked another load of tomatoes and peppers while Rachel played in the dirt. She is a mess here, but the picture doesn't really show it.

New Toys:

Laundry helper

Rachel loves to "help" do the laundry:

While bored at work today, I noticed that our blog needed updating, so I figured I'd favor you all with a classic commercial from SNL:

Eleven Wal-Mart bags full of tomatoes from the garden: zero dollars
9+ Hours of blanching, peeling, cutting, straining and bottling: zero dollars
Dozens of bottles of tomatoes, salsa and pizza sauce that we an use all winter and know that we grew ourselves: Priceless.

Rachel Singing

While we were trying to get her ready for church this morning, Rachel performed a free concert for us in the office:

She must be picking something up from all of the time that she spends running around in the pews when she goes with us to choir practice.

Huntsville 1/2 Marathon

Tori ran in the Huntsville Half-Marathon yesterday. It was a cold and beautiful day. Here she is coming across the finish line:

Her knee was given her problems. She fashioned a knee brace out of a rag from a random guy along the route and finished the race. She didn't beat her time from the Ogden Half, but she finished in good time concidering her injury.

Way to go Tori!!!

Back home

We got home from Arkansas this afternoon.
On the way from Little Rock to Houston, the pilot announced that we were flying over hurricane Gustav:
The cell phone camera doesn't do it justice at all, but it looked pretty cool from above:

Rachel Swinging

Rachel has been having a blast playing with her cousins here in Arkansas. She especially likes playing in their yard:

We only caught the last little bit on camera before she noticed us, but we found her playing by herself on the swing this afternoon. This girl seriously needs a backyard of her own to explore. The balcony of our condo back home somehow just isn't as magical.