Spot Nike : Just do it - Bottled courage (for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games)

These photos were taken this past weekend in Canada. I love that Rose and Daisy look as though they are enjoying one another.

Peach Fesival at NIagara On the Lake

time for a new post from me, devon.

today as part of my externship i assisted/shadowed oral surgeon docs and residents on a few different surgeries. first thing - a motorcycle accident patient - when i came in the resident was showing me how the laceration on the patient's face went through to his mouth - basically he was sticking his finger through the hole on the patients face and coming out through his mouth. kind of wild i guess. then i got to see mandibular fracture repaired with metal plates and then a cheek bone fracture on an elderly man who also had a sinus fracture - in the middle of that last surgery i was called to run up to the school where i was supposed to be to extract some teeth. after calling michelle and having her pick me up from the hospital and drop me off at school, i then found out that they didn't really need me at the school. the attending doc took care of all the cases that had been assigned to me. no biggy. the attending doc then explained to me that he was having a difficult time watering his 3 acre lot of land with a sprinkler attached to a garden hose. apparently he had low water pressure, so he could only do a small section at a time and he had to keep moving the hose. i told him he should get one of those sprinklers that has wheels and moves along the path of the hose (water tractor). we looked it up on the web and he decided to buy one at sears.
i just listened to black sabbath - killing yourself to live. it reminded me of this time on my mission while i was living in caboolture. my companion was elder mark moore. we had tracted into this guy who seemed really interested in talking to us. anyway he mentioned the song "killing yourself to live" and kind of said some thing like "it's about drug addiction and how you have to take the drugs to live...do you get it man?" i guess i got it. anyway the last thing that i remember talking to that guy about is he when we asked him to pray to ask if the book of mormon was true he got really offended and said something like "where in the bible does it say that you have to pray?" honestly, i couldn't think of a place where it said that, so i just said "well, didn't jesus pray, we could follow his example?" then he got all offended and started to yell and scream at us "how dare you insult my intelligence...." and on and on he went screaming and yelling, we couldn't get a word in after that so we just left as he kept on screaming at us. i remember seeing this long haired dude screaming at us from a distance. it was kind of scary, i didn't know if he was going to come and get us or what.

enough said

Sahlen's best natural sheep casing hot dogs are the kind that Ted's uses. If your from Buffalo, you Know what we mean.

Allen Town and Beaver Island

Have you ever heard of Sahlen's Hot Dogs? They are only the best hot dogs ever made. People love them out here!

I loved watching these lovely Muslim girls enjoying themselves in the water

...and how 'bout these lovely Christian girls in the sand? (devon's comment)

Niagara on the Lake

The photo on the bottom is two years old, it was the first time we went to Niagara on the Lake and it happened to be their peach festival. We stuffed ourselves on fresh peach ice cream and pastries from a British bakery, finally a place that sells meat pies, sausage rolls, and of course peach scones!

Dylan

My nephew Dylan is on this clip for 2 seconds (see clip at 3:12-3:10) I hear that he is in this film as well. A family friend worked on this film (Chris Cutri). Cool guy.

Anyway, nice to see Dylan. I miss him. Come out to Buffalo Dylan!

Happy Birthday Rose!

TODAY IS ROSE'S 4TH BIRTHDAY!!
We really don't have much planned for the Day just some fun family things. Last night Devon and I were looking at old photos and videos of Rose when we first came out here to New York three years ago. Rose was only 14 months and could barely talk. She has grown so much and makes us smile and reflect on what a wonderful person and gift she is to us. I love the above photo of her, it is pure Rose. We go on walks after dinner sometimes and Rose is always collecting flowers, rocks, twigs -anything to add to her "collection". We love to see her explore and become herself.
We love you Rose!

rose call

rose typed in her name for this title.

i'm proud of her keyboarding abilities. great job rose.

The Slap

Spring Break 2005
we thought this was funny.

testing the limits of the world wide web here.

Rose's 4th Birthday

Can't believe she is 4. Happy Birthday Rose!

Michelle and I threw this little invite together Sunday afternoon.
(Michelle's design combined with my computer skills, she's got the brains and the looks)

Beth on the radio NPR TOTN

Talk of The Nation and Beth.
Tuesday May 1st, 2007


Beth in Canada. Beth after my mission. Beth in 2001 . Beth just after birth of her second son (and still looking great). Photos hardly do this girl justice. I think she is a gorgeous gal.

I'm so proud of my sister. She was on Talk of The Nation the other day.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9942914
Fast forward to about 16 minutes and 40 seconds into the recording to hear this gal speak.

I liked what she had to say. It made me chuckle when I heard her kids start to do their thing in the background. Her kids are the coolest. We miss them very much. Can't wait to see them again this summer.

Rose and her hair

Rose is the coolest. This is a photo from last summer at my parents. Rose had her hair in pig tails for most of the day. We took the pig tails out that evening and voila!

Salsa Experiment

I just finished my third of 10 exams that I have to take this week. I met up with Rose and Michelle at Rose's school and then drove home with Rose while Michelle went to pick up Daisy from the Tingey's. Against my better judgement I decided to take the time to make a fresh batch of my salsa. I usually make it to taste without keeping track of the exact amounts of ingredients that I add. This time I wrote down how much I added of each ingredient. I was thinking of my sister Beth. She mentioned that she wanted my "recipe."

Here is the recipe.

Salsa experiment.

I created this recipe base on a conversation that I had with a woman on the phone from the Casa Lupe restaurant and store in Gridley, CA.
She told me to add a little of this and a little of that to taste. I really wanted the recipe to their salsa and this is what I got. My salsa doesn’t taste like theirs, I think theirs is better. Maybe things just taste better when you have someone else make it for you. This is pretty good salsa just the same. I like it better than almost every other salsa that I’ve had anywhere else except for the salsa at Casa Lupe. I think they put gunpowder in theirs. I don’t have any of that lying around the house.


8 tomatoes
4 sticks celery (I like to add a little bit more of the celery, Michelle likes it with less)
1 ½ cup cilantro
Half of a white onion
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes (sounds like blah canned food, but it does the job)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper (may want to add more to give it a little more kick)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (more (1/4 tsp) or less to taste)
2 tblsp chili powder (maybe three, try with two first)
2 tblsp garlic powder (not garlic salt) - to prevent bad breath only add 1 tblsp of garlic powder
1 tsp cumin

dice up every thing to sizes that seem manageable. I like to have the tomatoes largest, then the celery, then the cilantro, then the onions I dice up into the smallest pieces because I don’t like onions that much. . Sometimes I take about a cup and a half or two cups of the salsa and puree it.
If you have a mortar and pestle it might be best to use that instead of a food processor for pureeing.

Mix it all up evenly and you are done. I think that it tastes better after a night in the refrigerator. May want to add limejuice from one lime, but you don’t have to.

compliments of chef devon

after i finished making this i ate a few bites of it. michelle says that my breath stinks now. must have been all that garlic powder.

It's Spring again!

It's Spring again!

Sorry folks no recent sunny photos. This is from last year

Finally the sun came out this weekend and Buffalo couldn't be more beautiful than it is now. We live right across the street from the city zoo and park so most of our time was spent there. I made a promise to myself that I would take a break from posts during the weekend, but something so unexpected happened. Our gas guzzler, eco enemy Ford Explorer sounded awful this weekend. We were dropping a friend home from church and sure enough the car died two blocks away from his home. Thank goodness we were in a neighborhood verses the freeway that we just got off. The old Michelle would have been very frustrated that Devon didn't help maintain the cars performance, but the new Michelle thought it was very funny. We were about two plus miles away from home and lucky for us we had our stroller to put sleepy Daisy in. It turned out to be the best walk in my life. The weather was LOVELY and most important, I fortunately wore flats. We strolled down millionaire mile and felt completely content with our humble circumstance. It feels good to be content.
Which brings me to the subject of the whole blog thing. I consider my self a bit of a Luddite. I have detested daily reliance on the cell phone, cable tv, and high-speed internet(dial up is ok, I'm quirky not crazy.). I still somewhat feel this way. My husband suggested starting a blog to keep in touch with family and friends as well as having a personal outlet. I am still a little skeptical, it's just that I consider myself more a people person and this medium feels impersonal. On the other hand I really appreciate the very few blogs that I've read. So finally here's my point on being content. Reading blogs, at least for me, should come with some kind of warning. Like- warning may be harmful to overall happiness, or warning- may leave you with an unquenched desire for things you can not afford or even need, and finally worst of all warning -may make you feel like your life is lacking or you are lacking in full self acceptance. Mind you I am not ready to give up my favorite blogs (the satorialist, or design mom), but I do think I should know when to turn it all off and remember how content I feel about my life just as it is.

Posted by Michelle at 7:00 PM

rsoe
rose marie callllllll

this is rose typing on the computer with me.

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where to live?

(this is a place i stayed at in cairns, australia with my parents)

just thinking today about where to live after we finish school. michelle has her ideas about the ideal place to be and i have mine. it seems that i come up with a new place to move to about every other month. my list of places to live includes; st. george, las vegas, colorado, alaska, arizona, hawaii, u.s. virgin islands, mexico, australia, san diego, san luis obispo, huntington beach, laguna beach, saratoga, florida, south carolilna, spain, italy, puerto rico, ireland, washington, oregon, idaho, western new york, aneheim., and zuma beach...and i think that is about it for my list. yeah, i think that it would be cool to live in a different country, but i don't think that is likely. really i just want to get away from the snow. i think that i could handle hot summers much better than really cold winters. buffalo has really long cold winters. on the other hand buffalo, at least out side of the city, is very pretty in the summer. our weekend excursions have been great. we have discovered some really beautiful places here in the past three years. st. george sounds nice. it think that place is beautiful. the desert there is pretty. it is close to family too. that is a good thing too.las vegas i don't really like. it is just too crowded and doesn't seem to have enough to offer other than employment opportunities there. i guess i know a lot of really nice people that live there to, so that makes the place cool too. and they have the big top at the stratosphere. i like that too.southern california in general looks great. the temperature is nice and the ocean is there. it is way crowded, but i figure if you lived close to the beach and work then the crowds wouldn't be such an issue. it is way too expensive though. if i had the means though, i'd be there. i'd like to be that beach bum who spends most of his free time on the beach collecting cans. (my bro anson just called.) stop here - maybe i'll add to this in the futuregood question... where is the best place to live? i mean the best over all, and you can't just say close to your family, cause that is a given, then again maybe being next to or too close to family wouldn't be that great. where is the best place to live? ( i don't think that new york city is the best place to live. it is cool, very cool, and i would love living there, but... i don't know, it just doesn't sound as cool as living in the bahamas maybe. a matter of opinion i guess. more later.

my tooth is tender

today i let one of my classmates adjust a restoration in my mouth that was giving me pain because it was too high. as she was adjusting the restoration i felt a lot of pain (i didn't have any anesthesia). it turns out that i had a bit of exposed dentin next to the high restoration on my tooth. she grazed that part with the carbide bur. my tooth isn't feeling the same. i think it is feeling a little bit worse than it did before let her place that bur on my tooth. she did place some duraphat (a fluoridated varnish) on the exposed dentin. i have been clenching my jaw a lot since i began dental school. this is likely the cause of the dentin exposure. my tooth is still a bit tender.

Rose in the office

Daisy and Easter Candy

We love Vulcano. Just after I decided to go back to school Michelle and I decided we should take a vacation. My brother Jason mentioned that the Aeolian islands were great. These islands are just off of the north coast of Sicily. We only went to Vulcano. This scooter was our transportation on the island. Black sand beaches all to yourself, a volcano, a tiny little farming village at the top of the old volcano and great Italian food. We definitely plan on heading back this way.

Our first family blog.

We were kind of bummed to hear that this guy passed away.

I think it is appropriate that we started our blog on this day. We feel we can relate to so much of what Kurt Vonnegut had to say about life. We are constantly reminding ourselves to enjoy this short life, despite all the catastrophes around us. Devon and I watched an interview with Kurt Vonnegut last year and it was such a great summation of who he was.

The whole reason for starting this blog is to share our passion for ideas with friends and family. We look forward to future postings, we will try to keep things as clean and crass as we can!


family photos, news, stories, and advice soon to come. stay posted.