Fresh Flour Pancake Recipe

2 c. fresh ground flour from soft white wheat berries
4 tsp baking powder
4T sugar (You can cut this in half)
1 tsp salt
1 1/8 c. milk
1/8 c. vinegar (or lemon juice or use 1 1/4 cup buttermilk instead of milk and acid)
2 eggs
3T real butter (substitute olive or coconut oil)
1T vanilla


Spread some real butter and drizzle real maple syrup on finished pancakes. It is the best fresh flour pancake recipe I have ever made. Enjoy!

Cool Dude

This kid loves to put on a show. So if you get excited about him wearing sunglasses, he will be excited about it. He's a fun kid.

New couches!

Here are the old couches that we bought from Goodwill for $60 before we were married. They lasted us a long time, through many sick kids. But they have seen their day and too many cotton parties (where the kids pull out the stuffing and throw it around the room). We are loving our new couches that fill up the room a lot better and will better accommodate our growing family. Plus, they are sooooo comfortable!

The Nothing

In Arizona, dust storms can come rolling upon you in a hurry. One day we had just finished watching "Neverending Story" with the kids. Yes, that awesome version that we watched as kids growing up. We thought our kids needed to be exposed to Atreyu and the Nothing. Right after we finished watching we started getting dinner ready. I looked out the back window and saw a dust storm approaching. It looked just like the Nothing from the movie. We definitely got the kids hyped up about the Nothing coming to destroy us. Too fun.

Eating beans

This kid loves to eat beans, and make a mess while doing it!

Happy 1st Birthday, Masen!

My sweet little guy turned one today. This kid is full of personality and can be as charming as can be, or a little devil. He fills our home with fun and mischief and we love him. Happy birthday, little guy!

Bread

I have to post this recipe so I have it somewhere. Everyone keeps asking for it so here it is:

 

Whole Wheat Honey Oat Bread:
2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats, uncooked
Pour boiling water over oats. Let stand until thoroughly softened.
2/3 cup warm water
1 Tbsp salt
1/2 cup honey
2 Tbsp oil (or butter, melted and cooled)
Add the water, salt, honey and oil or butter to oats when they are lukewarm.
3 cups whole wheat flour.
Add the whole what to the oat mixture and mix.
1 Tbsp instant yeast
2-3 cups unbleached flour
Add the yeast to the mixture. Add flour until the dough starts to pull away from sides of the bowl. Knead for 5 minutes. Put dough into lightly oiled bowl turning it to coat dough on all sides. Cover with a cloth and let rise for one hour. Punch down the risen bread dough and cut in half. Knead each half briefly and shape into loaves. Brush top of each loaf with warm honey and sprinkle with oats. Place in greased bread pans. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes @ 350.

Easter 2012

The Strong family has a tradition of having an Easter egg hunt on a day around Easter that is most convenient for all the cousins to attend. Somehow the Easter Bunny just knows this and comes on that day. He is just awesome like that. Each of the grandkids is assigned a specific color of egg that they are supposed to look for. The older kids have more difficult eggs to find. The kids ended up with some pretty good loot this year!

Happy Birthday, Aunt Jenny!

Jeremy's sister, Jenny, has the fortunate experience of having her birthday on April Fool's Day. We drove down to Casa Grande to visit her for her birthday. She has lupus and so she spends a lot of time in bed so when she was worn out and went into her bed, we decided to move the party to her bed! It was a fun time.

Pioneer Day Parade

Here in rural Buckeye, the Pioneer Days parade is full of rodeo horses, and tractors. I don't think there was much of anything else besides the 2 high school marching bands and maybe a couple of elementary bands. Oh, and a few mini cars. Not much to get excited about, but a parade is a parade, right?

Plankin' it

Before learning how to crawl, Masen loved to strengthen his core by doing the plank pose all around. Here he is doing the plank at the park.

Home Teaching

Jumpstreet

While as Young Women president of my ward we were looking for a way to get the girls excited about missionary work. We came up with a bean jar. For every act of missionary work, the girls got to put a bean in the jar. Some acts, like inviting someone to an activity or church, or giving away a Book of Mormon, earned more beans. After they filled the jar we had to decide on a reward. We ended up going to a popular trampoline arena called "Jumpstreet." It has several long trampolines lined up next to each other in which you can practice gymnastics and cheer tricks. The girls loved it and it wore me out. I definitely had to go to the chiropractor the next day. But it was a blast.