How To Host A Murder

We had the greatest time at my parents house last night playing "How To Host A Murder." Look at the pictures and see for yourself:

P'Elvis Swagarin (AKA Rex) His costume was great- chaps, vest, holster, gun, bandanna, huge belt buckle, spurs, cowboy boots and a hat (and he hadn't even shaved!)

I love this picture.

De Adela Muerte (AKA me!) I'm supposed to be a Mexican beauty in mourning.


Ashtyn: she loved dressing up.

Tayla: what a show off.

Helena Handcart (AKA my Mom)

Chief Breaking Wind (AKA my Dad) I thought his name was hilarious!

Butch Chastity (AKA my sister Shanda)

Elias Truist-Heath (AKA my Bro-In-Law Jade) I'm not sure I would've recognized Jade dressed like this if I had passed him on the street.

Elvira-Lynn Fekshin (AKA my sister Kylie) What a costume!

Wyatt Hertz (AKA my Bro-In-Law William)

At the dinner table

Kylie after being accused of murder....

Jade twirling his pistols.

We had so much fun. For those of you who have never been to a "How To Host A Murder" party, everyone is assigned a part and you are supposed to dress up. Then there is a dinner and as you eat, you get a booklet that tells you what you can say and not say. Then you try and figure out who the murderer is. It was way fun. Try saying some of the names fast- that's what makes them so funny. Also, the story behind each individual is pretty hilarious too. I'm not going to go into all those details now but I do highly recommend playing this game. We had a blast!

I went to Red Robin on Saturday. Rex's mom takes us out to eat for our birthday each year and this year we tried Red Robin. I am totally and completely in love with their Campfire sauce for the french fries. In fact, I am craving it right now....

Rex is Old(er)!

What a busy week the middle of February turns out to be for us.....

Of course, our biggest event was Rex's birthday on the 12th. After going to storytime with the girls and running some errands, we made a trip to Blackfoot to see Rex at work and to take him some presents and some cookies. The girls had picked out something at the dollar store to give him (ceramic horse and puppy to "help" him paint) and we had made sugar cookies the day before. Later that night, we made him Linguini and Clam Sauce (his favorite thing to eat in the whole entire world.... see the recipe below. He would lick the pan if I would let him) and we had cake and ice cream. We hope he had a great day!

Linguini and Clam Sauce

• 4 green onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 C chopped parsley
• 1 can minced clams
• 1/2 C clam juice (I actually just use the juice from the clams themselves)
• 1/2 C cooking wine (if you are opposed to cooking with wine, use 1/4 C lemon juice instead)
• sprinkle of crushed red pepper
• small container of shredded Parmesan cheese
• linguini noodle

Cover the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil and on medium heat add the onions and garlic to cook until the onions are a light color. Add the clam juice, parsley and red peppers. Start the noodles. After 5 minutes, add the wine and boil for 3 minutes. Add the clams and let cook for 5 minutes before slowly stirring in the shredded Parmesan cheese. Serve over top of noodles. Great with Texas toast and salad. (I always double the sauce ingredients so we have more of the topping on our noodles.)

There is a warehouse in Idaho Falls that sells great soup for really cheap and my Mom and I wanted some for our food storage. So, we went there and let me tell you, that was enough of an adventure to last me for the rest of the year. I was sure we were going to get arrested for trespassing. You go to their warehouse and there is no readily available office (much less a front door), so you go in through their shipping docks, through all this equipment and supplies, up some rickety old stairs and finally come to some kind of office. All of the office staff looks at you funny when you walk in as if to say "how did you know we were up here?" Seriously good soup though, even if I ever do get arrested for trespassing to get it.

I watched a couple of movies this week- Iron Man and Dark Knight. (Yes, I know they have been out for awhile. I am way behind on movie watching.) I really liked them both, especially Christian Bale, er, I mean Dark Knight..... :)

Our Valentines Day was nice and relaxing. Rex made me breakfast and gave me a box of chocolate candy. Yummy! On Sunday was my sister's birthday and so we went to Rexburg for her cake and ice cream. (A delicious ice cream cake by the way!)

In honor of Rex's birthday and Valentines Day, my favorite's list this week is :

Things I admire about Rex:

• His integrity- Rex his very honest in all of his doings. His work, his personal life, his church callings all benefit from his honesty. He strives to do right with other people. He does the best in all that he can do and puts in an honest days work.
  
• His work ethic- Rex is a very hard worker. He not only works full time at Bingham Memorial Hospital in the marketing department doing a heck of a lot of stuff there, but he then comes home and works for at least a couple of hours for his own clients for his own company, ADvantageous Design. Not only that, but he is the ward clerk and the building scheduler, is a husband and father, and helps many, many people in our family and in our ward with computer problems.
  
• Charitable- Rex is always concerned about other people. He is always thinking of ways to help other people.
• Funny- Rex is funny. Many of you may not know this but he really has a sense of humor. He makes up funny songs and keeps us laughing frequently.

We love you!

The last few weeks

I read other people's blogs and feel bad that I don't have anything terribly exciting to talk about. I also used to think that I took quite a few pictures of my girls but yet, I don't really have a lot to post on here. Oh well, here goes nothing.

I went up to Mackay with my Mom a few weeks ago to spend time with my Grandpa. We did a little bit of house cleaning and then I tried to take the girls sledding. I have fond memories of going sledding by the cow trough. The trough would spill over and then freeze up and it made a great sledding hill. But, I took the girls up on the mine hill this time but the snow wasn't good. And, we didn't have sleds and were trying to use trash bags. That didn't work at all and so they rolled down the hill while I took pictures. The pictures aren't of the girls but of scenes from around Grandma and Grandpa's farm. It is the first time I had been back to Mackay since my Grandma died in October. It was obvious something was missing there and I can see why Grandpa gets lonely there. It is funny how much someone fills your life with light and you don't notice it until they are gone.

Grandma and Grandpa's house

Scenery from Grandma and Grandpa's
Chimney where we used to "bake" our mud pies.

I would post a lot more but these pictures are taking a long time to load so I'll just keep the rest to myself. But I did get some nice pictures and it was a fun walk through memory lane.

I have been busy with Primary stuff for the last few weeks. We had a Primary Activity on Saturday which went really well. We filmed the kids doing a talent and then they decorated boxes to look like cars. They decorated heart shaped sugar cookies and they watched their talents on the TV in their "drive-in" cars. It was cute and we had a good turnout.

I had to teach the Senior Primary boys how to sing "How Firm A Foundation" today. That was a heck of an experience. I have a greater respect for Primary Chorister and there is one 10 year old boy in our ward who is lucky I didn't smack him on the head a few dozen times.

I also got to attend Achievement Days for their Mother/ Daughter party. We have some great A.D leaders and I am grateful for all they do.


We had Elder Ballard come to our Stake Conference last week. That was a really neat experience. He told a neat story in the Adult Session about the power of the Priesthood and the power of family. It was really neat.



My girls have been really sick the last 2 weeks with really awful colds. Tayla usually suffers through a cold pretty well but this time it kept her up at night coughing. And when she doesn't get enough sleep, everyone suffers. And of course, Ashtyn is miserable when she gets sick. I bet you she has asthma and she really coughs a lot when she gets sick. Poor kids. (And of course I have a cold now too. It was inevitable I guess.)

My list of favorites this week are Favorite Websites:

• Check out www.topsecretrecipes.com. This guy duplicates restaurant recipes and they taste so good. Some have weird ingredients but for the most part they use common items. I love the recipes from the Macaroni Grill and the Reses Peanut Butter Cups. This is such a fun site. You can also sign up for an email to be sent to you once a week that has a free recipe. It is a great resource for great food.
• Need help in almost every church calling? Check out www. sugardoodle.net. This has fantastic sharing ideas, singing time ideas, visiting teaching ideas, YW ideas, etc, etc. There are also links from here to other sites that also have great ideas. This is a wealth of information.
  
• Hate cleaning your house? Try www.flylady.net. She presents house cleaning in a whole new way. I have adapted this method and I love it. I will admit that I don't do EVERYTHING that she says like getting dressed to the shoes and I have yet to become a dishwasher Nazi; but I do take 15 minutes a day to do some deep cleaning. I really feel like I stay on top of things that way. I love this method.
  

Anyhow, I hope you find some of those useful. Until next time.....