more pics

Playing "ring around the rosie" with Peyton at our pool and playing at the water park near our apt.

and other thoughts...

So it's officially June! Let the season begin! Austin has proven great for alarm sales, so that is wonderful. They have been working in Kileen (I think that is how you spell it.)

We love the library here in Cedar Park and go pretty regularly. Great childrens programs and next week starts the summer reading program that Rach is looking forward to.

I have been checking out all kinds of books on canning and preserving. Our ward here has a berry order from a farm in Oregon and so I am going to attempt to make blackberry and maybe another kind of berry like loganberry, jam. I already made refridgerator pickles and they were a recipe from a magazine, and they are the sweet kind. Not bad because I needed extra brine so I didn't add as much sugar, so they aren't as sweet as they could be, and since we all prefer dill, they are still good. I found some dill recipes so I am going to try dill next.

We also get to order tomatoes and other veggies, so I am going to order tomatoes and see if I can do my own diced tomatoes and such and jar those. That would save so much money as I am always cooking with stewed tomatoes. (chicken curry, anyone?)

I have also decided (not crazily) but we are gonna go non-dairy. My friend here has a sister that they own a cow because they have six kids and wanted to save on milk costs. So I started researching about owning our own cow and how cows produce milk, etc. So I got on some sites and basically you have to keep your cow continally having babies to keep producing milk, and all these other horrible things that I was like, ya know, we don't need to drink milk. Or eat cheese. (sob!) but yeah, it was talking about how many people have allergies to milk, that we are the only species that drink milk of another species and into adulthood, etc. I began thinking that I don't want to harm cows and I want us to be healthy, and soy is good for us. We've already been drinking soy milk (Silk) along with regular milk, but I never made the full fledge switch because I wondered how it would be with cereal, etc. Well, it works just fine. The only thing I am not sure of is with baking. But I do have powdered milk... which still comes from cows. I also looked into using margarine more so that I don't need butter. And I'm gonna have to try some soy cheese pretty soon.

But like I said, our family isn't going crazy over it. It's not like if we go to someone's house we're gonna be like, we can't eat that. No prob (unless after not eating it we get sick when we DO eat it or something), but yeah, I'm not gonna get all crazy, I just want to do my part to help out out there.

With my research on margarine, I wiki'd it and saw that it was banned in the US and other places for YEARS because of the Dairy industry because they didn't want it to affect them. I learned a lot about that in my marketing classes, how certain foods or products are used or not used because of people/groups lobbying, etc. It's kinda scary how much power is out there to affect what we can or cannot have. Anyway, now margarine is back (basically thanks to the wars, because of rationing dairy) and so here it is.

So we'll see how this goes. :)

The pictures I posted are Kev cooking in our new apt here in Cedar Park, Tx. and then our new black kitten, Romeo, cuddling to Big Fluff. They totally get along, which is a shock because Big Fluff didn't get along with Jackson. It's cute to watch them lick each other, etc. It's fun to have a kitten in the house again. He's about 6 months now. We also have our family pic at Disneyworld, which was tons of fun right before we moved here, and Kev and Gabs snuggling on the couch.