One Lovely Blog Award!

Thank you so much to my wife for this great award! I am sure that I got this award because I am her husband! lol, but I will take it non the less! I wanted to send this award out to so many other people, however this has made it's way around and all of the people who follow me also follow Kat at Heart 2 Heart. I am pretty sure she gave this to everyone I already had on my list.

Rules of this award.

The only thing you need to do to receive this award is to pass it along to other fellow blogger's and let them know! So here goes in no particular order:

Kristin at Another Gray Day

She just has some funny excerpts on her post and I like her writing style. She has a great family and a couple of cool Blogs! I liked the one about the dancing wedding party. Visit her when you get a chance!

Sandra at Full Bellies, Happy Kids

I really need to try some of her recipes! It is always nice to find something new to make and see if it becomes a Smith family recipe! The bacon wrapped chicken looks awesome! So go check out her site for some great new foods to try!

Greg at Greg's General Store

He just posted a funny blog about Mr. Peabody & Sherman and their time travel machine. You have to like anyone who has old cartoons on their blog. (Especially when it comes to Bullwinkle!) It was a cartoon way before it's time and would love to see it come back. Stop on by and say hi to Greg when you get a chance.

Oh we share something else in common, we have the same Birthday!

Everyone over at Fellowship of the Traveling Smarty Pants

They just have some hilarious videos and posts which will lighten your day when you are feeling blue! Take time to go see what they have posted for today!

Warren at Family Fountain

He always has an inspirational word for you when you are feeling down and has a great Blog site! I really like his Blog from a while ago about having a wife, means receiving favor from the Lord. I have been blessed with a wonderful Wife for 11 years and I still don't know what she sees in Me! I need to give her a shout out and let her know how much I love her!

Thank you Warren!

And Last, but never least, my wife Kat at Heart 2 Heart!

She is the most amazing woman I know and I Love Her with all of my Heart and Soul! I thank God every day for giving me such an amazing woman. She is funny, smart, beautiful, sexy, selfless, compassionate, giving and the most caring woman I know. Thank you for being my wife, Best friend, soul mate and everything else wrapped into one!

She also started me on this Blog site!

Pop on over to her site and comment on her picture for Friday Funnies when you get a chance!

Alaskan Salmon on the Barbie

BBQ Alaskan Salmon

I know you are asking yourself Salmon on the Barbecue? And that is what I first Thought too. The truth is you can't cook fish any better than this!

We have tried several different fish on our Barbecue and actually found that frozen Salmon found at Costco is the best we have tasted! We have tried fresh fish from our local Stater Bros., Albertson's, Von's, you name it and have found that the Frozen Salmon at Costco is the best.

You will need foil, fish of course salmon is preferred but you can use Mahi Mahi or any other fish you might like, Lemons, Garlic Salt, and any other seasoning you might want to try. Lat bu not least your Barbecue.

Directions:

Thaw out the salmon, it takes about 3-4 hours depending on how warm your house is.

Pull out 3-4 pieces which feeds a family of 4.

1 piece can feed either 1 or 2 people depending on how hungry you are.

• Pull out a piece of aluminum foil approx 16 inches long.
• Put a small dab of butter on the foil along with some garlic salt and any other of your favorite seasonings.
• Place each salmon on top of the butter and seasonings.
• Place another small dab of butter on top of salmon along with some lemon juice and other seasonings of your choice.
• Heat up your Barbecue to medium to medium low.
• Once you have done all of this fold the foil over the part where the salmon is, fold it over one more time.
• Fold the sides in, then continue to fold up the foil with the fish in it until it is wrapped up good and tight!
• Place your pieces of fish on the Barbecue and set your timer for 7 minutes.
• After 7 minutes, turn over fish and continue to cook for 8 minutes.
• After 8 minutes, turn fish over one more time for 7 more minutes.

Once timer goes off your fish should be cooked through, nice and flaky!

We usually fix wild rice or some other type of rice dish with it.

Well hope you like our way of cooking Salmon on the Barbecue!

Don't forget to visit Sandra at Diary of a stay at home Mom for some other recipes that she has gathered up!

Enjoy!

"The Greatest American Hero!"

How do I start to comment on what my Wife Kat had said about me on her Heart 2 Heart Blog today. I Love Her so much and had to laugh at what she said about me. I guess Men are useful in that manner, I mean who else is going to clean out drains, pick Horn Worms off of tomato plants, scrape mold off of paint, repair Air Conditioning drain valves full of rust...

Well, you get the point. I mean women are so great at multi tasking that us men have to be good at something right?

That is why God gave us Tools!!!!!!!

It reminded me of an old T.V. Show that I loved watching when I was a young teenager. Kat said that I am her hero for doing all of the "Dirty Jobs" as Mike Rowe does on his show. But this blog is not about Dirty Jobs, no, this blog is about being The Greatest American Hero as all or most husbands are.




I wanted to add this old T.V. Show on my Blog because if we are to be recognized as heroes, then this would be the kind of Hero I would be. Clumsy, tall, worrisome, inept, nervous, rough around the edges, clumsy (did I mention that already?)If you have never seen the show before I have an old clip of it for your viewing enjoyment. But be very careful as the song is catchy and you will find yourself singing it at 1 am in the morning not knowing why!




So thank you to my wife whom without her I am just an ordinary average Joe!

T.V. Shows now are so serious or full of too much content which just seems to bore me anymore. I am tired of Quote Reality Shows that End Quote that sometimes I long for the old shows like The A-Team, Knight Rider, Hogans Heroes, M.A.S.H., ALF, Mork n Mindy, the list could go on and on.


If any of you remember this show, please feel free to comment whether bad or good!

My wife hated this show, but I liked it.

Fun In The Sun!

Family decision to go to the mountains and have some fun at Lake Gregory!

The last time I had blogged about where we were going to get out of the heatwave we have been having for several weeks in a row. We decided to go to a new place that the kids had never been to! Lake Gregory near Crestline is a wonderful little community that is between Lake Silverwood and Crestline in California. It is only about 4,500 ft. above sea level and was closer to home than we thought! This little lakeside town must be a well kept secret as we went on a Friday afternoon and there couldn't have been more than a hundred people in the water park area.

Here are a few pictures of our kids having a blast on the water slides. Our oldest, brought a friend to come hang out with her. The first picture below is our youngest who loves being in water of any kind!

I definitely think that we will be back in the near future. This was a nice place to relax and get out of the high heat in our hometown. The temperature was only about 85 degrees and was quite comfortable in the shade of the tall whispering Pine Trees. My wife and I just sat and watched the scenery change as the clouds built into a pillow like white cotton ball just north of the lake. It was a very peaceful place to be, as if all of your troubles just seemed to drift away with the clouds leaving tranquil thoughts of not having a care in the world.

We saw a beautiful Log Cabin up in the hills across from where we were sitting and just wondered how nice it would be to live in a home like that. I sat there and pondered how much it would be to buy a home up here and just move away from it all! It would be a blast to even rent a cabin up here in the late Summer/Early Fall to see the changing colors of the trees. I am definitely finding myself moving to a mountain community when I can retire with my beautiful Wife Kat.

The drive time to get here took much less than we thought as well. My GPS which gave me a new way to drive by Lake Silverwood through some windy turns (not bad though if you drove slow.) into the back way to Lake Gregory. I spoke to my Mom and Dad yesterday and had told them where we went, they said that they had taken the whole family up there several times when I was very young.

So....

We had a great time and have put this place on our map to come back, enjoy the lake and all of it's surroundings.

Thank you Lake Gregory for sharing your scenery!

See you soon!

Places to go and see!

Looking forward to the Weekend!

Well I can't wait for the weekend to come about. The feeling of having time off just seems to sooth my soul and hopefully get some much needed sleep before the new week starts again on Monday. Even though we are still in a massive heatwave that zaps us the second we walk out the door I am looking forward to possibly going to the beach or mountains this weekend.

The high temps at our house have been reaching an avg. of 104-107 degrees Fahrenheit so needless to say we are desperately trying anyway we can to avoid the heat. Our beaches have been averaging the high 70's to the low 80's and have been tame compared to everywhere else. The beach sounds good as long as we can stay out of the sun, of course having a 10 year old girl will undoubtedly mean that I will be forced to go out and make sure she is okay in the water. She is definitely a handful! I love her more than words could say though. My 16 year old step-daughter will more than likely tanning and talking on the phone at the same time not even caring about anything else but her own personal issues. (Can you say oops I dropped her phone in the salt water!)

Newport Beach has some beautiful places to visit and go to if we decide that is the location we are going to. From taking a Ferry where we can actually park our car on the Ferry and take a ride across the bay over to Balboa. To going on a bike ride down by the beach along the walkway sounds great! You can even rent Jet Skis in the bay to ride or even take a Gondola ride along the canals of the rich and famous homes around the bay. Newport Beach sounds like fun!

I am sure we would have a good time together just hanging out with my wife and watching the scenery go by. That is becoming our favorite past time lately. Just being together and enjoying our time with one another. It does not have to be anything fancy, just as long as we are together having a peaceful, joyous time.

Of course heading to the mountains and getting into some shade beneath the tall Pine Trees listening to them whistle from the wind sounds very tranquil as well. We have been yearning for some small road trip to just let our worries melt away with every mile we put behind us. It would be great to take a picnic basket, a red and white checkered tablecloth and some food and snacks next to a wooded lake just sounds like Heaven! Of course Heaven is much more nicer and cooler!

It would also be nice to spend the night up in some old rustic cabin by a lake too! Man my aches and pains of everyday work and life seem better already just thinking of it. Waking up to cool breezes from the lake and having a great lunch at the shore just sounds what I need! So now that I have two choices, what should I do? Where should we go this weekend? I think I shall talk to my lovely wife and decide together where we should go.

Well I think we shall go to.....

Tune in next time to find out where we went over the weekend!

"Were having a Heat Wave!"

Summer has hit and hit hard!

It is funny that so far the temperatures are not as hot as last year, although we are not really into the middle of summer yet. It just seems like the minute you walk outside you suddenly have all of your energy drained from you as if you have a water spigot on the top of your head that is open and all of the water has poured out all over the sidewalk!

It has just been that kind of week. I don't want to get up early and water the yard, but I know that if it is not done by 6am then we are doomed to stay out in the heat to water. I know certain counties near us are already doing water rationing days where you can only water your yard on Tuesdays and Thursdays I believe. I know that as a whole, we need to do better at conserving water.

Putting on water flow saving devices on all spigots and faucets.

Lower the time we water down by a minute on each valve.

Shower one or two minutes less each day.

Only wash our cars unless it is absolutely necessary!

Small steps like these per family households can add up to tens of thousands of gallons saved each year.

We try as much as we can to save on our water as we live in the desert, but there is only so much that can be done. I can't really afford to rip out my front lawn to put in drought tolerant desert plants. I am sure in the long run it would be beneficial to do so, but my family does not want to live in the desert for much longer. We are looking for more of an environment where we get rain, snow and have 4 seasons. Not just HOT or COLD.

So for now we are just as they say "Dealing with it!" and watering our lawn enough to where it does not look brown and not too much where like our neighbor does not care if his lawn is watered three times a day and has several sprinkler leaks!

"Okay don't even get me started on that!"

So for now we are just trying to escape and/or survive the heat by staying inside.

So, anyway hope everyone has better climates than we do!

Have a great summer!

Roller Skating

I lay here in bed, wishing the pain would subside without having to take massive amounts of pain pills to avoid my right ankle and knee from hurting so much. I had so much fun on Saturday skating, but now have to pay the price for not having skated for ooh a good 8 years. My wife and I decided to break out our old skates " in line for me and 4 wheel for her" and try to skate for a couple of hours with our children.

I have to go back a few months ago to really tell the story well. My wife was standing out in front of our house watering the lawn when she met two girls she had never seen before. They preceded to ask if she had seen a little Chihuahua and a larger black dog, they had apparently gotten loose and ran away. Kathy had said that she had not seen them and asked if the girls were new to the neighborhood. The girls said that they had just moved in about 5 houses down, she then said that they should meet our youngest daughter who is 10 years old. Our other daughter was still in Rhode Island on her summer vacation seeing her Dad who lives with his wife back east.

Our daughter came out and was introduced to them and wanted to know if she could play with them. As long as we met the parents Kathy replied and they said no problem. I had now come into the picture to go over and meet the parents along with Kathy and Kailee who seemed very nice and trusting. We talked for a while and found out that the Dad was the manager for the local Roller Skating rink "only roller skating rink really" and that our daughter should go skating with the other girls. Well normally we don't allow that since we had only met them just a few hours earlier. We decided to let her go skate for a little while while we watched and found out that she picked up to skating very fast!

Her first time skating she was getting the hang of it so fast that she was not even falling that much and pretty much keeping up with most of the kids there. Well, the rest is history as we would say and she is now in skating lessons. She is skating about 3-4 times a week and if she had it her way it would be everyday.

So this brings us full circle to the beginning of the story about skating this last Saturday and all of the pain my wife and I are in. We thought it would be fun since the kids are skating all of the time that we try it as well. We had so much fun that we will probably keep skating every Saturday, however, it also depends on how much pain we are in before we go. It is now Monday and I can honestly say that I had so much fun skating with my wife and kids that I can forgo the pain just to see the smiles on every one's face when I fall or almost fall. The kids love the fact that we can do this one thing as a family and it has started to bring us closer together after being gone so much the last several months.

I am going to try regular skates this next time as my wife says that it is easier than Rollerblades and I believe her! It seems that trying to balance on blades is very difficult when you have not done it in almost a decade. My right ankle seems to have a mind of it's own when I want to go right it goes left! When I want to go left it goes.....well you get the picture.

So once again back to taking 4 Advil to see if that helps the pain I am feeling in my right leg down to my toes. Was it worth it?

I guess I would have to quote the MasterCard commercials.

Buying skates for my kids to learn skating.

$65.00

Paying for lessons for them to get better.

$35.00

Seeing the biggest smile from your kids watching you go through all of the pain you feel just to skate with them for the first time and seeing you wipe out and fall.

Priceless!

See you all soon!

Hopefully not from a hospital bed!

COFFEE!!!!!!!!

ONE WORD COFFEE!!!!

Thank you God for creating such a wonderful gift to mankind of which World Countries would fall and we would not survive the day without it.

I am sitting in my chair drinking my first cup of coffee for the day thanking God once more for allowing us to taste such wonderful flavors and smell the tranquil aroma. I know this seems petty, but how many of us drink coffee? I am not talking about that crud in a cup you call Starbucks, but actual coffee! My wife and I every morning faithfully for years have made coffee to start our day. "Some days better than others"

We have tried several brands and flavors, and have come to a few flavors that we love and drink everyday. Folgers Gourmet Chocolate Truffle or Caramel Drizzle believe it or not is our favorite and can be found at Target for only $4.99 a bag. "Can't believe how affordable it is!"

Sounds like a commercial doesn't it? Well I just wanted to share with you our morning ritual of having a great cup of coffee every morning to wake up to. Sometimes, when we actually pre-make the coffee and have the timer setup for the next morning is just wonderful when you wake up to that wonderful smell. You know that it is going to be a better day just for that. So thank you God once more for giving us that one wonderful word.

So whether you like it black, black with two sugars, cream only, or cream and sugar, just enjoy every drop. Take the time to look around and see the morning sunrise, water your garden and just enjoy the day!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and have a great cup of you know what!

Coffee...

Happy Independence Day!!!!

Happy Independence Day!!!

Just wanted to take time out to say that I believe in saying Independence day rather than Happy 4th of July.

"Happy Independence Day!" has real meaning and a sense of belonging to the past, present and future of this great country we live in. I feel closer to the men and women who served our country and fought for our right of freedom of Religion, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Just thinking about these three words "Pursuit of Happiness". This has a profound meaning for every human being not only in our wonderful country, but around the world. Notice how it is not just Happiness, but the Pursuit of Happiness is how it is written. We have to be diligent on pursuing happiness. It is earned rather than expected. It means we have to work hard to earn happiness in this life and not expect other's to give it to you.

"Happy 4th of July" is just a date that kids like to hear because they get to watch fireworks and light sparklers. Don't even get me started on Sparklers. What happened to the real Sparklers we used to have that actually lit and stayed lit for minutes while we played with them. Okay Off Point, sorry.

Anyway, I want to wish everyone a very Happy Independence Day to you and your family wherever you are! May you really feel like we live in the greatest country in the world!