Dawn's Bowtie Citrus Chicken Salad

I was dabbling in the kitchen this morning trying to make a unique salad for the July 4th party we are attending later today,  surprisingly it turned out!  So I am putting it here on the blog as to not forget what I did!

 

3 cups cooked bow tie pasta
1/3 c orange juice
1/4 c lime juice
2 TB oil
2 TB honey mustard
2 TB sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/1/2 tsp vinegar
2 cups celery
1 can mandarin oranges
1/2 cup chives
2 TB dried parsley
1 cup diced rotisserie chicken
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese

I combined all the wet ingredients with the herbs and whisked together.  Then poured over the pasta, celery and oranges.  I added the cheese last.  Refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. Yummy!!

Mother ~ Daughter Vacation Time !

Kylee and I have planned our second Mother ~ Daughter trip!  Last year we went together to see Wicked in Oregon. We had so much fun!  This year we are going to fly to Orlando and do Disneyworld and Universal !  We leave in two weeks!  Whoot! Whoot! 

I am so excited to try real Butter Beer at the Harry Potter exhibit!

Kylee told me we are going to dress up and hit the town each night...I might need a supply of energy drinks to keep up with her :)

Jeff is so sweet, he is going to work from home and watch Faith so Kylee and I can go play.  I am so lucky to have such a supportive husband!

Going Someplace!

We have our first trip planned for 2012 and I am so excited! It's our 20th anniversary!  I can't wait to get away with my sweetie pie Jeff!

We will get to visit here

From a little boat ride on this...


And sleep in this fancy place or should I say Palace...hmmm?

(The Palace Hotel)

and sight see in this little yellow ride...have you guessed where?

Mother's Day Hooray!

I am a little behind on the ol'blog.  But I did capture a few pictures from our busy events that I will get around to...eventually. 
I just love being a mom.  Over the last few weeks I have been in full mom mode, with two birthdays ( Dallin and Spencer), Mother's Day, six gifts to buy, volunteering and root beer float making, planning Kylee's high school graduation day and party, doctors' and dentist appointments, spring cleaning, two photoshoots, enrolling Faith in pre-school, getting Spencer to Utah for a funeral, along with helping him job hunt, coaching Kylee's church basketball team , going to regionals and taking 1st place ( yes I am proud of that ) etc. etc. etc.  Those are all the extra things I do besides the normal cooking, shopping and cleaning for 7.
I was talking to a friend the other day about family life and I realized that I have 5 children in 5 different schools.  Talk about a scheduling nightmare?  And yet...I love it!  I love being busy, I love being involved and I love having a life. 

I called my mom last week when I literally had 10 minutes to talk.  She told me the story of when I was born.  She said , I was so eager to be alive,  I didn't cry but just took everything in.  Looked at the lights, the doctor, her , the nurses.  I was ready to be here and live my life! 
Thank you mom for sacrificing so much to bring me into the world, thank you mom for always telling me I could do anything I set my mind to, for allowing me to dream big.  Growing up my mom always believed in me and encouraged me.  I really felt I could conquer the world when I graduated high school.  I obviously didn't, but her early confidence in me helped me weather my failures and press forward with a can do attitude.

I am also blessed with a wonderful mother in law who constantly shows support and encouragement to us.  She is fun to be around and has a wonderful laugh.  She is talented and crafty.  If you want to learn a homemaking skill she's your gal.  She is easygoing, a good listener and slow to anger.  She is amazing.  I see many of these same wonderful qualities in my dear husband Jeff and I thank her for raising a responsible and righteous son.

Being a daughter was effortless, I didn't really have anything to do with it, but becoming a mom is a different story.  Motherhood to me is amazing, rewarding, exhausting, heartbreaking, intimidating and quite the roller coaster ride.  I don't think I can even effectively put into words the emotions attached to motherhood.  If someone had told me before I was a mother that every success and failure experienced by my children would equally effect me I wouldn't have believed it possible.  When they have a success my heart sores, and when they hurt or have a failure my heart aches. 

Each one of our children have brought joy and a unique personality.  Spencer for his trust and obedience, Kylee for her attention to detail and her awareness, Jensen for his quick wit and his easy going ways, Dallin for his hard work ethic and his curiosity, and Faith for her imagination and her pure heart.   As a parent I knew how much joy another child would bring to us.  What I didn't realize is that our older children would experience that same joy when we adopted Faith.  They just surround her with love and affection.

My sweet children when they were younger...

Faith bringing joy and laughter to our home by putting both her feet in Dallin's one shoe and hopping around the house as a baby mermaid.

I am blessed.

More Victoria BC

The queen

Our Hotel

another quality self portrait...

our final attempt at a couple picture

Anniversary and our trip to Victoria B.C.

We attempted to get a few different pictures of us together without asking someone to take them...still perfecting the mirror shot...obviously:)

For our anniversary Jeff surprised me with a weekend in Victoria B.C. via the Victoria Clipper! I have always wanted to travel there, and it seems after living just across the pond for some 15 years we finally made it. Thanks Jeff for being so thoughtful by continuing to surprise me year after year with wonderful personalized gifts. April 9th marked our 19th anniversary. One part of me feels like we have been married forever, which is a cozy and comfortable place to be in a relationship. However my heart still flutters every day when I hear his car drive up, or his keys clatter at the front door when he gets home from work. I am still so in love with my man.  Not that everything is perfect, we are complete opposites in so many things, but when it comes to the things that matter most, religion, family, children, politics, health , finances, future plans...we are in sync.

 Here is an example of our relationship.  While walking on the streets of Victoria a group of young adult women passed by us.  We overheard PART of a conversation one woman was telling another, " I am really beginning to hit my _____."  but they walked out of earshot before we could hear her ending.  Jeff jumped in and completed the end of her sentence and so did I.  Jeff filled in the blank with " WALL."  I filled in the blank with "STRIDE."   We both had a good laugh and realized that kind of summed up our marriage.  Optimist and a Pessimist.   Our Life is good, and I am grateful for the last 19 years.  Jeff makes me grow and stretch, and I know I am a better person because of him.    I could not get enough pictures of Victoria, it is a beautiful, quaint island.

It will take me a while to get them all together and loaded, so this is just a teaser...

Butchart Gardens

Ok, Mrs. Butchart was an amazing woman.  She lived 100 years ago; was a chemist ( which is an amazing task for a woman that long ago)  but what really inspired me was her garden.  And it is now a national landmark.   You can check out their website here - Butchart Gardens

The garden was originally a rock quarry, and she had such vision!  Mr. Butchart exhausted the limestone in the quarry near their house, his enterprising wife, Jennie, conceived an unprecedented plan for refurbishing the bleak pit.  She was a workhorse.  To transform the quarry into a sunken garden, she had a large metal bucket with a chain, and would climb into the bucket, lower herself along the rock wall and plant all kinds of vegetation in the cracks of the rock wall.  Really, who hangs from a bucket to make a garden? 

By 1908, reflecting their world travels, the Butcharts had created a Japanese Garden on the sea-side of their home. Later an Italian Garden was created on the site of their former tennis court, and a fine Rose Garden replaced a large kitchen vegetable patch in 1929.

Looking forward to our Anniversary trip!!!!

Jeff is very thoughtful when gift giving.  This year he surprised me with a Victoria Clipper Vacation.  Here is the hotel we will get to stay at!   We haven't had a weekend get away since we brought Faith home a year ago.  I can't wait! 

A work in ProgreSS!

I have a new photography website!  I have been building it for sometime now and am enjoying it so much!  You can check it out here at I Love Your MuG Photography 

Do the Puyallup!

Our local fair is the 8th largest in the world; we along with the rest of the state's population, decided to attend the fair on Saturday.  Despite the crowd we still enjoyed our time together.  This was Faith's first time to the fair, and she enjoyed all the many animals.  She did however sleep through most of it.  The boys enjoyed the rides.  And Dallin got a souvenir he is so excited about! ( see the last few pictures)

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