Gap Christmas Commercials

Gap has done some great Christmas commercials with celebrities this year. They are so funny! You just have to watch them.

(I had to take out the video that was here because it kept playing on its own.)

Here's a direct link to that video and to another one of my favorites:

Gap's "Baby It's Cold Outside" commercial starring Selma Blair & Rainn Wilson

Gap's "Jingle Bells" commercial starring the Gap Holiday Cast

Crazy old Diego, he's always good for a laugh

We recently got one of those little hand-held back massager things that vibrates and much to our surprise, after massaging Jeran's legs for a few minutes, Diego got curious and we tried it out on him. At first he was a little shocked but soon after that, you could hardly get a minute to use it on your own sore muscles. Crazy cat... (I do have to warn you, this may be a little anti-climactic if you're expecting much - it's just to show how strange he is.)

Also we had to put a video of Diego being weird on our blog to be fair to Toby.

Cooking with Mindy

So I've made a few good things for dinner recently (nothing new or exciting, but still delicious).

We have the old family classic Cheesy Vegetable Soup and Breadsticks. I have not been a very successful breadmaker in my life but this batch of breadsticks that I made was probably the best I have ever made! They were so light and fluffy and delicious. Yumm. I made the dough in the bread maker using the recipe from Grandma Hatch's cookbook. For seasoning I did some with just butter, some with Garlic salt, and some with Garlic salt and Parmesan and/or Romano cheese.

I also made some really good Stir-fry. Almost ever since we first moved here, I have not been able to find water chestnuts in the grocery store. Finally I found some at this store that I never shop at. Woohoo! Stir-fry time! I found a good and easy recipe for some stir-fry sauce online (I can't remember where, but it was probably Allrecipes.com). You simply stir-fry your vegetables (carrots, onions, peppers, broccoli, sugar peas, water chestnuts, etc.) and meat if you want it (the veggies are so good the meat is not necessary in the least) and then mix this sauce through. Serve over hot rice. DE-licious!

Stir Fry Sauce

1/2 cup chicken broth
3 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp distilled white vinegar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 1 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp peanut oil (I use sesame again)
3 Tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

1) In a small bowl, combine the stock with the soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch slurry, vinegar and sesame oil. Stir to dissolve the sugar.

2) In a medium saucepan, heat the peanut oil until shimmering. Add the ginger and crushed red pepper and cook over high heat, stirring, until fragrant and golden. Add the stock mixture and boil over high heat until thickened and glossy, about 1 minute.

Suggestion: Can add some garlic and some fresh orange juice instead of all that stock and 1/4 tsp salt.

Hiking in lovely North Carolina

We have recently been hiking in two of the North Carolina piedmont State Parks, Eno River State Park (pictured above) and William B. Umstead State Park. They are very lovely places, secluded forests tucked into a busy metropolitan area offering miles and miles of hiking, biking, and bridle trails. One of the nice surprises about the area is that a moderate difficulty trail (which I would probably have classified the Wind Caves hike as) is not moderate in the least. There is very little elevation change so every "moderate" trail we have been on could be classified in two ways: "North Carolina moderate" or "Utah nature walk". Pretty accurate. The only difficult part is to watch for tree roots making the trail bumpy. I am definitely NOT complaining, just noting the difference because I find it humorous.


The leaves had mostly turned brown and fallen by this time but here and there were some nice splashes of color. At Umstead State Park, there were tons of big mushrooms. There were all sorts of shapes and colors. Here are some samples (don't worry we didn't eat any):

One Minute Writer

I happened upon a cool blog today that I may occasionally incorporate into my blog. It is http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com and it gives you a prompt every day for something to write about. It is just like those journal jars that have the little strips of paper in it with ideas of topics to write on. So for days when I feel like I should update my blog but I can't think of what to write, I may pull up one of those questions and just start writing. To start us off today, drumrolllllllll........

Describe the first pet you remember having. (If you haven't had a pet, would you like one? What kind?)

This question has many possible answers based on how you look at it. When I was about 6 we almost had a pet mouse but it died before we could catch it. I did manage to save its life by setting off all the mousetraps hidden behind the couch with a broom. His name was Rascal and we buried him in the garden (as a kind of gross side-note, years later we tried to remember where he was buried so we could dig it up and find him; perhaps we thought we just imagined his existence. I don't remember if we did ever dig him up or not).

Since a mouse in the house doesn't truly qualify as a real pet, next I got a fishtank with some fishes in it. I don't remember the details too clearly but I know I had a fire-belly newt and a little frog and some other little fishes in there. I can't claim all the fishes as my own PERSONAL pet, so I will tell about the pet that I actually feel was my first pet.

Carmel was a golden retreiver-cocker spaniel mix. She was an adorable puppy and a surprise present for me when I was 10 or so. Carmel was very smart and easy to train, except when I had to chase her all over the neighborhood. We took a dog-training class together up the road from our house and I often had to run home to retreive her because when I would take her off the leash to practice stay or come, she always went running off towards home. Eventually we got some of those lessons down and she even learned some signed commands like sit, shake, speak, etc. I remember the days of rollerblading around the school block with her, waiting patiently while she wallowed in the gutters full of irrigation water, and picking hundreds of cockleburs out of her fur after hiking. Ahhh, good times. Here's to Carmel, #1 pet!

Blog backgrounds

I have recently been playing around with creating my own blog backgrounds! Hooray! It is fun and not too hard! I have made a cat one and a Thanksgiving one so far (which I am using at the time that I post this). There is a site that provides free blog templates to use and instructions to do so, and also instructions on how to make your own if you want to! It is: The Cutest Blog on the Block. Check it out!

Also, today is election day so Vote, Vote, Vote! We have heard so much about this election for so long and now it is finally here (finally)!

Sports and fun

Now that fall is officially here, we have been so busy! It seems like every evening we have stuff and more stuff that we need to get done (like homework, Seminary lesson, YW, dinner, going to sleep early...) so we don't get nearly enough time having fun.

Fortunately we have something to do on a lot of the evenings that we DO have free. Since it is dark and usually cold in the evenings now, we switched from playing tennis to playing racquetball. It is kind of a hard switch to make but I've heard its a lot harder to move the other direction. I guess we'll find out come spring when we move back outside. We play these sports with some friends of ours and have a great time and get in some exercise while we're at it. The other day while playing r-ball I served the ball and turned around to see where it was going when WHAM the ball hit me - hard - in the forehead. It stung a bit and I got all teary but I was mostly just in shock. It was a hard hit! But I recovered after a minute and we continued playing. It is a lot of fun and is better exercise than tennis and a lot less precision is required (which is good for me if you catch my drift).

However, yesterday was a very warm lovely day so we headed back out to the tennis courts for one of the last games of the season (boo). It was great - perfect weather, good courts, fun, blah blah blah. My serve, which was okay in the spring then went severely downhill over the summer, is on the ups again so that makes it nice since I rarely did the dreaded double-fault. Even with that though, we lost again but it was close as usual.

We have also done some other fun outdoor activities recently. We went hiking at a nearby state with some friends from the ward. I had a really good time and want to go again! Hiking around where we live is so cool mostly because it isn't like hiking in Utah where you are tired out from all the elevation gains! Nope, we decided to go on the "Moderate difficulty" hike that was 2.75 miles long. I was worried because I'm not in great shape and was never a great hiker to start with but having been on it, I would say now that a Moderate hike here equals a Beginner hike in Utah. Or maybe more it's closer to an unpaved nature trail. So as a result, I now love hiking :) I hope we can go again soon while the weather is still good. Especially if the fall foliage is still around. Ooo-la-la!

Yesterday we played some good games of sand volleyball with 6 other couples from our ward. It was way fun! I haven't been crazy about volleyball previously either and I'd really only played in YW but is was great! we played a few sets, switching up the teams now and then, just really casual-like. Yay! I hope we do that again soon too!

It is really very ironic that now that the weather is cooling down to where it is often uncomfortable to be outside, I have found all these fun things that I want to go outside and do! We'll see how many of them I can fit in, but you can bet I will be ready next spring when it warms up again!