Nicn and Noah in argentina

Hola familia,hola amor
Aca hay algunas fotos de los chiquitos,

Free $10 gift card

Go to this website and see if any of your local malls are participating in this. I was just able to print a voucher for a free $10 gift card for one of my local malls. You have to go to the mall and pick it up on the day the 18th or 19th of September, but it's free. Let me know if this works for any of you.

There are only 500 vouchers available for each participating mall, but the mall near me still has 365 left. There is a $10 off $75 card and just a free $10 card. Make sure you click on the free card link. Happy shopping!

http://www.shopsmartlookfab.com/GiftCards

We Finished!!!

I know I already posted, but this is a big deal, worthy of two posts in one day. WE FINALLY FINISHED THE BOOK OF MORMON!!! I can't say for sure, but I think it has been about 4 years of reading a chapter a night, then down to 4 verses, one for each of us, having the kids repeat after we read the verse, then up to 5 verses a night, with Mikayla reading her own and Mike reading for Tyson and helping Braden read his. Now three of us read a verse, Braden and Tyson repeat theirs after Mike and Jacob climbs all over the kitchen while we read. Mikayla is just disgusted that we have to start over again. She must have thought when we finished that we would never have to read again!

By the way, today during FHE, disaster child, also known as Jacob, pulled a shelf full of books onto himself, hitting his glued up forehead in the process. No blood this time, just tears. This is a bookcase we have had since Mikayla was a baby. No other child has attempted to climb it or pull a shelf out. I truly fear for this little boys safety!! What is he going to do next?!?!

Books for Kids

Dolly Parton has teamed up with the United Way to offer free books to children under the age of 5. Since you all have at least one of those, I thought I'd pass on the information. My two boys each got The Little Engine That Could in the mail this month and were very happy!
Click here http://www.dollysimaginationlibrary.com/firsttime.php to see if it's available in your area.

Steven Earned his Life Scout

Steven earned his Life Scout after attending Scout Camp last week. Now he has to earn 6 more merit badges and his Eagle Project and he will have his Eagle Scout. Our Scout Leader and our Young Mens leaders have done a great job helping and encouraging the boys to succeed in moving along in the scouting program.

Right now they are at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington at the Washington Jamboree, I think that he will have a great time. Ralph is going to go down tomorrow and spend the night until Sunday. They are going to have a special speaker and Sabbath program for all of the LDS troops down there. It sounds pretty neat!

Let's talk about... FOOD!!

I thought the mention of food might get your attention! Did it work? I would like to start a project of putting together a family cookbook. What I mean by this is a collection of favorite recipes we had while growing up. Things that Mom made for us. Then, Mom, if you could help to tell us if they were family recipes and also help to name recipes that we might not have thought of and ones passed down from both our grandmas. If you all help me collect them, I think we could get a nice little booklet out of it. It would be fun if anyone had a memory to go with it, or wanted to say it was a favorite and if they make it in their own homes, etc.
Does that all make sense? You could leave comments here or email me any suggestions you have.
Thanks in advance, I know you will help out when it comes to thinking about food.
By the way, Mom, this project would fall under a YW value project if you would like to work on it with me....

Food Storage

I just found this cool calculator to help figure out food storage for a year. Now I have to go figure out what we have and what we need. Some friends of ours just got their years worth of food, so I know it is possible. I am trying to get ours, but it is quite a project as you all know. I will learn how to use our wards canner tomorrow. We bought several bags of wheat and some cans a few months ago that we need to put to use.
Our garden is doing pretty well. We are hoping to get somethings canned and in the freezer for later usage. I'll let you know how that goes.
What are you all working on?

A little FYI

For those of you with 7-11's near by:

In celebration of 82 years in business, 7-11 will be offering FREE 7.11-ounce Slurpees at participating 7-11 stores on July 11th (get it? 7/11? heh heh!) between 7:00am and 11:00pm.
More details here
(like many other places, 7-11 stores are independently owned & operated. It might be a good idea to call your local store to ensure that they are participating before making a special trip!)

For those who live by a Chick Fil'A:

Just a reminder that tomorrow (Friday, July 10th) is Cow Appreciation Day!
Stop in on July 10th to any participating Chick Fil’A dressed as a cow and get a FREE meal! Need some ideas for your costume? Click here for the Chick Fil’A “starter kit”.

Don’t want to go out in public in a full cow costume? Simply wear a “cow accessory” (don’t we all have those?) and you will still get a free entree item!

We don't have either of these near us, but I know some of you do so I thought I'd pass it along.

More Mom Birthday Pictures

Happy Birthday to you!

Did Dad just tell Mom how much that necklace cost?

For some reason my computer wouldn't work to put these pictures with the other post...but here they are!

Mom's Birthday

Austin was trying Grandma and Grandpa's present!

Mom and Dad in front of their edible arrangements present.

The surprise birthday dinner for mom. She thought they were just coming over to look at the basement and then we were going to go out. That didn't sound like fun to me, five kids in a restaurant...so we planned a surprise at our house! I think she was surprised!

Mike's chewing habits

Tonight we had Fajitas. I ate 5.3 ounces of fajita stuff (meat, peppers, onions), one tortilla and some sauteed zucchini and mushrooms. All of this equalled 310 calories. That makes 1000 calories exactly for me today.

The boys and Mike also had Fajitas. Will made a comment that his food wasn't going down his throat very well and it hurt. I told him he needed to follow Mike's example and chew his food more. So we decided to count how many times Mike chewed one piece of meat: 79 times!!

That is why he is skinny and I am not.

"Richards Family Renuion"

So, while Adrianne and I were sitting here talking, she looked down at the table and gasped like she doest when she sees a big spider. I waited, like I do when she makes that noise, to find out why she was making it. She said, "Seriously?!?" And then she picked upt the photo book of our family reunion and pointed to the title, "The Richards family Renuion." Nice that we've had that for over a year, shown it tons of people, and never noticed that it doesn't say "reunion"...what is a renuion, anyway? How many of you noticed this, and were too nice to point it out to us?

I can imagine Dad noticing it right away and having to pretend like it was fine every time he looked at it...

Oh well. Soryy.

Trip Pics

So, here are some pics from the trip we took a month ago... I know I am a slow poke in the blog area, but enjoy them anyway, who knows when you will get new pics. This is Braden and his cousin Mason at the Pirate party we had in Calgary. We celebrated Mason's bday, Mike's Mom Barb's bday and Grandma Rolfson's bday. Lots of fun. Lots of cake!
Mikayla and her cousin Katie were flower girls at Tara's (Mike's sister) wedding in Calgary. So beautiful!

At the pirate party...

At the Calgary zoo... lots of behinds.

The kids in a kangaroo pouch, not real obviously, at the Calgary zoo.

New post

Please see my blog...

A fine post from Adrianne (title by Mike)

This is Isaac's first drawing of a person. I just love it.

Isaac drew lines for Mike.

Will was very excited about his picture. He said, "Look Mom! I can draw fingers!" So cute.

Their flowers. Will's is red and Isaac's is blue.

My sister recently posted something on my family blog about how her husband always answers "fine" to questions. I totally know what she is talking about. Actually, we recently (Mike and I that is) just got in a little tiff about that very thing. When I ask him if my hair is nice, he is supposed to say, "It's beautiful" not, "it's fine." You get the gist of it. Anyway, today we made little pictures. We aren't painting in this house because we won't really be here long enough so I wanted to paint a mural but haven't quite made up my mind so I painted a little dinosaur painting and will paint another dinosaur. Then I will probably do a mural of a plane in Eli's room. The boys made flowers because Will wants to plant something and so we had a follow on FHE tonight about The Creation and then went and bought plants. They also drew pictures. Above is our artwork. The boys were very excited to show Mike. Isaac said, "Daddy will say it's so beautiful." and then Will responded, "Daddy doesn't say, "it's so beautiful. Only Mommy says that." So when Mike got home I showed him my dinosaur and he said it looked "great." I said "does it look fantastic?" And he said, "No. It's a picture of a dinosaur that is supposed to look like a cartoon." What?! Doesn't he know he's supposed to say, "It looks freaking fantastic." At least he told the truth and didn't give me a non-answer like "fine." And, to his credit, when the boys showed him their artwork he said, "Oh, it looks so pretty." Way to prove Will wrong.

Blog statistics and weather

After next month, the year will be half way over. Has any one else noticed the difference in the number of posts that we've made this year? Look over to the left side of the screen under links at the archive. Just thought I'd draw attention to it.
Is everyone having a fun spring? It's already in the low hundreds here, but it doesn't bother me as much now as it did when I was a missionary. Maybe it was the dark pants and ties. Or maybe the AC I have here...

Estoy re feliz

pase mi examen de manejo, me siento re orgullosa de mi misma y estoy re agradecida po andy grandma carol que me ayudaron y me apollaron. I am so happy that today I passed my driving test and I have a permit. I feel so proud and I'm so grateful for Grandma and Andy who pushed me to do this, and Grandpa who paid for the driving school. I went to school for 3 weeks and the other teenagers thought I was their age too. Grandma says I should be happy they think I'm young. The picture looks funny like always on ID cards. Now I need to drive at school and with Grandma. I have never driven an automatic before, only a standard shift. Grandpa says it will be very easy but I am still scared.

More funny things from the scriptures

We've previously shared some funny things from scripture time in our family. Our scriptures are hiding somewhere among our stuff--imagine trying to fit all the stuff from the van with a car-top carrier and the car down to just the van. So, for family scripture study, we have just been trying to do stuff from our memories. Today we reviewed the first article of faith. Will's version included this phrase, "We believe in God, the eternal lover." Interesting thought.