Whoo! Whoo!

Who in this great land of America has never been to a baseball game? Well, we found out a few weeks ago that Scott's cousin Jacob (22 years old) had never EVER seen a baseball game. So we took him to his first game a couple of weeks ago--an Owlz game. It was strange but fun to teach him the rules of baseball. And Jacob was a great sport and sat through all 9 innings with us. He even said that it was fun, although he admitted that the company was the best part. What can I say? Scott and I are pretty darn fun. :)

Scott and Jacob enjoying the game.

While I'm on the subject of baseball, I just have to say how much I love Owlz games. I was curious and just counted in my planner that I have been to 17 Owlz games this summer, and their season didn't start until the end of June and ended last week. For those of you who don't know, the Owlz are the rookie league affiliate of the Anaheim Angels (that's lower than single A). They play at UVU, and they have some pretty good concessions (minus the raw polish sausages we once started eating). We especially love how close to home they are. They are super cheap games, and let's just say that Scott and I are creative and haven't had to pay for parking all season. We also didn't have to pay for several of the games because we sometimes went really late after I got home from running my evening groups. The ticket office usually closes at 8:30pm, so we would get in free to see the 2nd half of the game. One time we got there at like 8:45pm, and the ticket office still wasn't closed. We waited around for nearly 15 minutes for it to finally close, and we were just a little embarrassed when Scott's cousin and his family walked past and wondered why were weren't inside. Well, uh, it's because we're too cheap to pay $4 each for one hour of baseball. It's our little way of budgeting.
Here are some pictures of our Owlz fun this summer:

Nothing beats baseball with mountains in the background--except maybe baseball with Chicago in the background.

This water bottle saved us quite a bit of money on pop and water.

Three of my adorable nieces (and sister Melissa) at an Owlz game. I LOVE when Faith calls the Owlz mascots "ball-headed chickens!"

Four of my handsome, silly nephews at the same game (with Scott and my brother-in-law Braydon in the background--I guess they're handsome too).

Scott's sister Diana and her husband Sam attended several games with us this season.

And the icing on the cake? Last week we were at the last game of the season, and my RS president texted me to say that they were sitting behind Luis Gonzalez. He played for the Cubs back in 1995-96 and more recently for the Diamondbacks and Marlins. He was very nice and let me get a picture with him. I might have been a little nervous, and he noticed. He said, "You're shaking. You don't have to be nervous. I'm a normal guy." Kind of embarrassing, but what do you expect? HE PLAYED FOR THE CUBS, and he's not bad-looking.
Go Owlz!!

While the cat's away...

What does the average husband do while his wife is gone overnight? Eat, sleep, and watch sports, right?
What does my not-so-average husband do while I'm at a fabulous Relief Society retreat at Heber Valley Camp? He eats, sleeps, watches sports, AND cans tomatoes. I know, I know. You're all jealous that I have such a well-rounded husband. :)

21 quarts for Scott to work his cooking magic with this year.

And here's our most recent harvest of Topsy Turvy tomatoes. We've already used half of them to make salsa, and I think Scott will use the rest to make bruschetta this week. Yum!

Long Live Labor Day!

Yeah, yeah. I'm super late posting about Labor Day weekend. Scott and I went camping Friday night up American Fork Canyon with some friends. Highlights included: roasting wienies, eating fire-baked potatoes, doing Mad Libs (with some great potty humor), playing spoons (dangerous), watching Melissa caress the tent (see above picture), surviving a rainy morning in our newly almost-waterproofed tent, and making breakfast at Carla's place (out of the rain).

Me, Carla, and Emily posing with our cards. Carla's a cheater!

Yup, that's right. Scott LOVES hanging out with all us girls!

Labor Day we woke up early to have breakfast in the canyon with the Carters.

We also played a little softball in the beautiful canyon.

Scott and I then headed to Salem to have a BBQ lunch with my family. Afterward, I played baseball with my adorable nephews. This is cute Clay.

And this is cute Cole.

Later that day, Scott and I saw the movie "Julie and Julia" with my parents. I liked it. On the way home from the movie, my odometer hit 77,777 miles. I couldn't resist taking a picture. Lucky 7, right?

Fun List Sandy!

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)--I read 1 and found it to be the most boring thing I have ever come across, the movies are much better!
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x)-not cover to cover
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ()
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ( X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X) Great book you all should give Dickens a try.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ()
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (X)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (X)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (X) This book is great I highly recommend it
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (X)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X) My favorite Dickens novel!
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - (X)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( )
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne ( )
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ()
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( )
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (X)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (X)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (X)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (X)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (X)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (X) Possibly my favorite book ever.

As a side note many of these I have listened to. I work in the most boring job ever so in an effort not to go crazy I listen to books on tape. I count 35! I need to go to library with this list and see what they have on CD!

Canning, Concert, & Coldstone

This last Saturday was a busy day for me and Scott. We (Scott) slept in, and then we spent the afternoon canning pickles. This is the 3rd year that we have done pickles. We love them!

My adorable, domestic husband. He's one great cucumber srubber. And for those of you who may not know, Scott is amazing in the kitchen. Not only does he cook for me every night, he does it deliciously and from scratch. I love it!

We got 17 new quarts this year. I can't wait for them to be ready by Christmas! Notice all the yummy garlic we put in them. Wow, I'm seriously drooling right now.

Saturday night, Scott and I went up to the Homestead in Midway with Scott's dad and our friend Jen to see my cousin April Meservy in concert. I may be a little biased, but I think April is absolutely amazing! I love her unique, gorgeous voice, and the songs she writes and sings speak directly to my soul. I love April!

After the concert, we took Jen to Coldstone to celebrate her birthday. I'm not a huge fan of Coldstone or really any ice cream place (Red Mango frozen yogurt is my addiction), but I did enjoy my creation (as well as the hot fries we got at Wendy's). I must say that I was very impressed with Jen's ability to finish the Gotta Have It size! Happy Birthday!!