you have a giant hole in your life.

let me let you in on a little secret. i recently discovered that a part of my life has been missing, and being the sharing person that i am....i will share my secret with you so you will not have a giant hole in your own life, as i did merely weeks prior to this blog.

eclairs. over. the. fire.

WHAT? you say?

i repeat: eclairs. over. the. fire.

OH BABY! heaven in your mouth and down your chin, and possibly on your shirt.
seriously. so. delish.

here are the instructions:

HOW TO FILL THE GIANT HOLE IN YOUR LIFE/COOKING AN ECLAIR OVER THE FIRE

STEP 1:
go to home depot and buy a wooden dowel that is approx an inch in diameter.....if you ask them if they have them, they will ask you "what for?", and you will tell them that it is a mere piece of lumbar that will complete your life.....ok, seriously though, the lady asked me what i wanted it for, and i told her it was to cook a biscuit over the fire and she looked at me like i was CA-RAZY....whatev...i get that look all the time from family and friends ALL the time....didn't faze me. anyway....purchase a dowel. its about 3 bucks....you might want to get more if there are more people partaking of the goodness.

STEP 2:
go to your local market and purchase chocolate frosting, vanilla pudding (i got the fun snack packs) and those crazy shot gun biscuits....i don't know what they are really called.....the biscuits in the roll that you open and it sounds like a shot gun and it makes you want to scream everytime you open them......ya, you want those.

STEP 3:
build a fire. cook some hot dogs and let it die down to smoldering coals.....














STEP 4:
rather than explain in words, here is a video that shows you how.

STEP 5:
cook slowly over a fire--BE PATIENT....didn't your mom ever tell you good things come to those who wait? it is true in this instance....yes, she was right, cook until the biscuit comes off easily from dowel














STEP 6:
fill hole with approx 1/2 snack pack pudding. this is symbolic of the hole that has been present in your life without ever partaking of an eclair. then frost the top or side or a portion of the filled eclair.

STEP 7:
eat. now you can die happy....














dan....you have a piece of heaven on your chin....


also, we did sparklers last night with nova. she loved them....and apparently so did dan from the look on his face right here.

skittle a rink a dink a dink....

i won't even bother playing catch up. we have been reunion-izing, girls camping, celebrating birthdays and trying to recover from the weeks of being gone. here are some pics and video of the last month of enjoying the summer. (the pics are in no particular order.....whatever though right?)

this picture is dan braiding my hair before girls camp.....what a man huh?















here is nova before our hike at the hope family reunion.














here is nova during the hike.....














and here is nova right before we got home....she was WIPED!















here is nova on her birthday before church....we were going to take some more pics after church, but we raced off to a reunion...so this is what we've got. happy birthday novs!














here are pics form our second trip to the zoo this summer. we went with elisa and also met up with our old neighbors the bennions.



















here is nova and i after the 5k....she is sporting my groovy glasses















to preface the 5K---i convinced 2 girls in our ward in the young women to run a local 5K with me the end of june. we decided that we would have matching sunglasses and socks to intimidate the competition......even though you can't see our socks in the picture....oh, well














the day of the race was a local celebration for founders day. they have fireworks at night and here is the picture of the fam before we went outside. by the time they started nova was WAY to tired to be interested.
















this picture takes us back to half-mas day. the glasses were part of the ornaments on the half-mas pine tree in our back yard.














here is nova with crazy hair on half-mas day...what a ham!














here is nova eating her cake and blowing out her candles....low protein cupcakes.....weren't necessarily her fav.















here is nova blowing out her candle. we have practiced the last few weeks and i think she did a really good job....what you don't see on the video is that we did the whole candle thing again in another cupcake......and she burnt herself.....