salsa

Salsa is sort of a tradition in the Asay family. They love to eat it on lots of foods and their awesome mom, Jan, loves to make it for them. She plants some 80 tomato plants every year so that there's plenty of salsa to go around, so it seemed only fair that Michael and I learn how to make it and I thought we'd better include the recipe for future generations.


16 ripe tomatoes
4 medium onions
10 lg hot green peppers (jal)
1 pint vinegar (2 cups)
1 T brown sugar
2 t canning salt
10 yellow wax peppers
6 red or green bell peppers

grind all but tomatoes

cook approx 1 hr.

process 15 min in water bath

we couldn't have done it without lots of help from Janelley :)

dentist

Dear Stetson,

Today you and I had a date to the dentist. I knew it was coming up so I tried to get you ready by taking you to the library to get little kid books on going to the dentist, and by talking to you about it a lot, but I'd forgotten that your dad took you about 6 months ago and that you're already a pro!! Dad said you sat on his lap and did a really good job, but still, it was 6 months ago so I was still a little worried, but I didn't need to be.

You sat in a little "Rolly" chair while I got my teeth cleaned. You were very friendly with the dental hygenist--asking her questions and showing her your Dora book about going to the dentist. You laughed every time the big tube thing sucked up my spit. You kept asking, "is it my turn?" "Are you done yet?" Not a moment too soon, it was your turn and you climbed right up in your chair. You were SO very excited. You asked if you had to take your shoes off. You got a little antsy when she scraped the tartar off with the hook shaped one, but I held your hand (not that you needed it) and told you that you were doing awesome, because you were.

After Dr. Welch checked your your teeth, you went to the treasure chest to pick your prize and were ecstatic to choose a rubbery snake. You carried your goodies (new toothbrush, paste, timer, etc.) all the way home and wouldn't put them down for most of the day.

Just want you to know how much I love you and how proud I am to be your mom.

Love you forever,
MOM

Yellowstone

Me and some of my roommates were supposed to meet up in Yellowstone last weekend, so I'd decided we'd make a little mini vacation out of it, get a room and the old faithful inn and take the whole fam. Well the roommate reunion part fell through, but we still had fun. We left Fri morning and made a stop at wal-mart in Cody for some snacks to take along the way-it rained most of the way there, but we stopped at Yellowstone lake and made our sandwiches and Michael took the kids to throw rocks in the lake for a little while. We got to the old faithful Inn late afternoon and looked around--we didn't get to do exactly all the things we'd wanted to because I'd have to stop and feed Janelle when she needed to be fed, but Michael was good about being flexible and entertaining the kids. The old faithful inn is a spectacular building. It was built in the winter of 1903 by Robert Reamer, a San Diego architect. I read on a biography thing that his daughter Jane said he "Lived for the pure joy of creating." This was evident in the unique "ness" of the building for sure. The building materials are native of yellewstone (Rocks, logs, etc.). There's stairs that go way to the top that we wanted to climb up but its not safe anymore because of an earthquake from '59 I believe. An orchestra used to play in the "Crow's nest" and guests would dance on the floors below. There was no orchestra there, but there was a lady there that night playing the chello and later the piano. That might have been my favorite moment--Michael was getting the kids to bed and I sat in the lobby rocking my baby listening to the beautiful music (and doing lots of people watching:). It was a special moment--just to do something different and get to rock my baby to beautiful music.

That night we ate at restaraunt at the inn. Everything way way expensive so we got the cheapest thing, which were $14 elk burgers and the kids split some chicken tenders and fries. It was really exhausting chasing/wresting the kids around the inn, but thats what we signed up for when we decided to have kids, I guess. :) We were one of very few young families there at the hotel. It was mostly older, retired couples. Lots of people would stop us and comment on our cute baby and ask how old she was. Janelle definitely won the popularity contest.

We slept in a room with 2 queen beds, the bathroom was down the hall which wasn't so bad. We had breakfast in our hotel room, which consisted of bananas, gogurts and donuts we bought at wal-mart the day before. After that we took a walk around the geyers, checked out the visitor's center and headed home. We wanted to check out the falls and artisans (sp) peak, but we were limited on time and driving with our 3 kids in the car can be less than pleasant.

We stopped at the Powell hospital on the way home to meet the newest member of the Asay family, Daniel & Kasi's sweet boy, and that was special.

I hope at least Stetson will remember our trip to Yellowstone and the fun memories we made.

Our pictures we took make me laugh. I love taking pictures and thougt this weekend would be the perfect chance to get some really good ones, but between restless toddlers and dying batteries, our pictures were not so great.
The last time Michael and I drove through yellowstone was when we took my dad's '96 taurus to Rexburg so I could take my music praxis test. We stayed the night at one of my friend's apts, I got up the next morning early to take my test and we drove home after that. That trip 5 years ago was a lot easier than this one. :-)