Finally, A Bit of Snow!!!

So we finally got some snow around here that is worth mentioning. It wasn't much, somewhere between 1-2 inches...enough to cover the dead leaves and grass in the yard...and make cars slip and slide everywhere. Because, as Missouri winters go, we always seem to get lots of rain first. It had rained all day Tuesday while we were at the temple and it changed over to snow after dark, shortly after we got home.
As soon as we get the pictures downloaded from Ryan's phone we'll put some up here of both the snow and our Christmas lights :)

Quicky Update

Not much happening around here lately. Spent yesterday and today cleaning out our basement and taking the trash from it to the dump. It was one of those nagging projects that we have been meaning to get done and finally had some time and a nice day to do it yesterday. Today, not so much got a little chilly. Starting to feel more like fall/winter time. But we got all the junk out of the basement, sprayed for spiders and other nasty bugs again too while we had stuff away from the walls and ceiling down there. Forgot how much junk we had. Luckly most of the nicer things that we forgot were down there didnt get too moldy or beyond repair.

It was nice to get that out of the way. Other than that nothing much going on here at the Rosenlund hut.

FHE: Carving the Pumpkin

Tonight for our fhe(family home evening), we carved the pumpkin that we got at Aldi's for $2.50! Its a big one too...and Ryan did a great job carving it out. We think it turned out pretty darn cool looking. Can you believe neither one of us has done this in years!

Carving out the lid/top of the pumpkin....

Cleaning up the lid of our pumpkin....

Curiousity is getting the the cat...she just had to see what was going on

Gutting out the pumpkin....

Shade and Evie both enjoying the show for a minute...

Carving out the eyes....

Carving out the mouth and fangs...

Alli's job was to sort out, clean up and bake the pumpkin seeds.

Putting the candle in the pumpkin...

And the final pumpkin, in its debut on the front porch!

How scary is our pumpkin! :)

Sealing Pictures

Check out this link for some of the pictures of our sealing at the Manti, Utah Temple

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=321121&id=695905219&l=2b9b2c092f

Pledge of Alligence

This is something that Ryan receive in an email today. I thought it would be very appropriate to share with everyone today.

Red Skelton's Pledge of Allegiance. It was first introduced on his television show "The Red Skelton Show" on CBS Jan 14, 1969. Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPbIls0iOnI

And here are the words, in case you didn't catch it all in the video

I—Me; an individual; a committee of one.
Pledge—Dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
Allegiance—My love and my devotion.
To the Flag—Our standard; Old Glory; a symbol of Freedom; wherever she waves there is respect, because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts, Freedom is everybody’s job.
United—That means that we have all come together.
States—Individual communities that have united into forty-eight great states. Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose. All divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose, and that is love for country.
And to the Republic—Republic—a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people; and it’s from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
For which it stands
One Nation—One Nation—meaning, so blessed by God.
Indivisible—Incapable of being divided.
With Liberty—Which is Freedom; the right of power to live one’s own life, without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation.
And Justice—The principle, or qualities, of dealing fairly with others.
For All—For All—which means, boys and girls, it’s as much your country as it is mine.

And now, boys and girls, let me hear you recite the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: “Under God.” Wouldn’t it be a pity if someone said that is a prayer, and that would be eliminated from schools, too?

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands; one nation, Under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Memories of 9-11-01

What we're we doing 8years ago on September 11, 2001.... Well, Ryan and I didn't know each other yet. So here are our separate stories.

Ryan was in the Marines, stationed in Okinawa, Japan. It was night-time and he was with his company. He heard one of the other guys in another room watching TV and heard him say holy s_ _ _ ... (and I'm paraphrasing this next part here cause i don't remember everything he told me that was said)
Ryan went in and saw what he was watching and asked: "Is that New York?"
"Yeah"
Ryan: "Where did you get this movie"
"Dude, this is for real"
Ryan: "your kidding. this is live?"
"Yeah"
Ryan turned to one of the other guys in the company that had followed him into the room, they tapped drinks and he said "lets go pack!"
Several months later down the road, he was off to Iraq with his company Fox 2/5 as part of the 1st wave invasion.

Allison, all I really remember is watching the news all afternoon, amazed and in shock of what had happened. I don't think it really affected me very much then, at the age of 15. I knew what it all meant, I just didn't see the whole picture like I am sure a lot of people did. I remember people talking about it for weeks and trying to figure out why and who and if they were planning another attack....besides the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It never even crossed my mind then that I would marry a man that had been in the military. I thought it would be too hard dealing with the guns and war stories and if he was currently serving I would be in panic everyday wondering if he was alright. I am truly grateful that my husband served his time in the military before I met him, so I didn't haft to deal with the consistent daily worry for his life. I know he lost a lot of the friends he had made when he was over in Iraq fighting with them. Being leader of a squad carries its burden. I am sure those men are on his mind today as they are with every patriotic holiday.


May Our Heavenly Father be with the families of those that were lost, those that have fought, and those that are fighting for our Freedom.

I Got Sunshine On A Cloudy Day....

For all who haven't heard the news already. Ryan and I are headed out to Baltimore, Maryland next Friday to help one of his aunts move to Utah. We will be flying to Baltimore Friday and leaving there Saturday in a U-haul. We are making a pit stop at home in Independence, MO that evening/early Sunday morning to catch a few hours of sleep and go to our sacrament meeting. Heading out to Utah after that, arriving sometime Monday. Well that's the plan anyway. Not sure which route we are taking from Independence to Utah....either the Northern (Nebraska,Wyoming, Utah) or the straight West route (Kansas,Colorado,Utah).

While we are out in Utah we will be getting sealed in the Manti Temple...that will happen on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 @ 12:15pm. Everyone who lives out that direction is more than welcome to come join us :) We will be doing an endowment session beforehand at 10:30am and taking pictures outside on the grounds after the sealing.

Have no idea when we are coming back home probably start heading back the following Monday though, staying in Utah to go to church Sunday. Who knows....we may decide to stay out there....hehehe. Well one can dream :)

River Walk (Aug 29)

Here's some pictures from a walk that we took by the Missouri River about 2 weeks ago. I forgot to post these. They are taken at a park in Sugar Creek, off 291 Hwy.







Sign telling people they can only bow hunt past this point...no guns


Vines across the path


My what's Ryan doing face...


Testing the vines


Guess the vines are strong enough....looks like fun, though i didn't try


Bamboo anyone....seriously that's what this is...in Missouri.


Thistle with a bumble bee


Little frog that was hopping across the path


Picture of me taking a picture


Ryan climbing some tower we found at mile marker 1.5

Shedding Tears of Joy

Ryan got some life changing news in the mail today....aka we did. Our temple sealing clearance letter from the First Presidency came in the mail today. Ryan surprised me with it when I came home from the bookstore earlier today.
We have been waiting for almost 2 months to get word on this and both broke down in tears at the news. And really you could say we having been waiting 1 year, 8 months, and 23 days :)
We haven't really planned much yet, besides that we want to get sealed in the Manti Utah Temple. Hopefully we will have the means soon to set a date and head out there. And do it before the weather starts getting cold and nasty out there. So any and all who would like to attend our sealing let us know, so we can let you know when the date is....not that we wont anyway :)

Birthday Girl!

Ok, so last Saturday was my 23rd birthday. Didn't do a whole lot that day besides go look at an explorer down in Overland Park, KS and then buy my favorite kind of ice-cream (Tin Roof Sundae...yummy)

About 2 weeks ago we picked up some abandoned kittens. They are only 5-7 weeks old...now 9ish. They are soo cute....i kinda considered that as my birthday present from Ryan cause I had been wanting a kitten for quite a while and when we made Emma an outdoor cat and AJ ran away. It left only one cat in the house, so he said I could start looking for one.. the reason behind grabbing two was because they are sisters. We have named them Shade and Peanut.
When we got them, they could fit in the palm of your hand....well Ryan's hand anyway....I have tiny hands :) Here are some cute pictures of them.


Shade (gray striped) and Peanut (brown(s), gray stripes)


Better picture to hopefully give you an idea how small they are....keep in mind I have tiny hands


Playing around Ryan's laptop....well more like exploring in this picture


Playing with the stack of receipts on the desk....they got a kick out of this and messed the pile up real good.


Shade chilling on the laptop....this was really funny to us for some reason. She had been walking around it and finally decided to walk on it for a minute then made herself comfortable.


They sleep all cuddled together and its funny because every time we look at them their in a different position. Usually its one on-top of the other in some way, shape or form.


Peanut just woke up and still snuggled into Shade.

They have both become extremely playful and energetic over the few weeks we have had them. They'll play with anything that moves, or that they think should move. Anything from our feet, legs, the window fan stands, coasters, and each others legs/tails/heads you name it they'll play with it....or at least try. They love climbing up our legs (when we've got pants instead of shorts on), sitting on our shoulders...and jumping/running everywhere. Shade has discovered that she can now jump from Ryan's briefcase that sits on the floor to his lap, when he's in his chair. She is a brave little stinker. Peanut is still trying to figure out how to get off the couch without landing on her head. She'll climb up stuff to sit on it, but then hasn't quite figured out how to get down. They are very entertaining and keep us laughing. So when we are in a bad mood, all we haft to do is see what the kittens are up to and soon enough they'll do something funny or really cute that makes us laugh.

Our other cat Squirt...well he still doesnt like them enough to let them snuggle with him, but he's at least tolerating them.

Alli's Attempts At Cooking

For those of you that don't know, I'm not big on the whole making dinner and cooking stuff. I'd rather bake bread and cookies. So I've been trying to get in the habit of cooking more often for us and so far my attempts have gone over well with Ryan.
Here's 2 of the recipes that I have tried and I included the picture from the recipe book or website, cause I didn't think to take pictures of my own completed creation. Besides, it never looks like it does in the cookbook, but gives you an idea anyway :)

Super-Easy Chicken Enchilada Skillet.....This was really, really yummy. And I think it looked a whole lot better than what this pictures shows. We also opted out on the salsa, because we didn't have any.

Here's the recipe.

Super-Easy Chicken Enchilada Skillet (from KraftFoods Magazine/ or online)
1 Tbsp. oil

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces

1 can (14-1/2 oz.) fat-free reduced-sodium chicken broth

1/4 cup KRAFT Ranch Dressing

2 Tbsp. flour

6 flour tortillas (6 inch), cut into small pieces

1 cup KRAFT Mexican Style Finely Shredded Four Cheese

1/2 cup TACO BELL® HOME ORIGINALS® Thick 'N Chunky Salsa

HEAT oil in large deep skillet on medium-high heat. Add chicken; cook 7 min. or until cooked through, stirring occasionally.

MIX broth, dressing and flour until well blended; gradually add to chicken, stirring constantly. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer 3 min. Stir in tortilla pieces.

SPRINKLE with cheese; cover. Simmer 3 to 5 min. or until cheese is melted. Top with salsa.

Green-Bean Casserole. This is in the oven right now. So we'll let you know how it turns out.


Recipe: Green Bean Casserole (from Betty Crocker Cookbook)

2	cans (14.5 oz each) Green Giant® French-style green beans, drained
1	can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/4	cup milk
1	can (2.8 oz) French-fried onions

	Print these coupons...
	About Concordance™

1.	Heat oven to 350°F. In 1 1/2-quart casserole or glass baking dish, mix green beans, soup and milk.
2.	Bake 20 to 25 minutes, topping with onions during last 5 minutes of baking, until bubbly.

Yummy

I just finished making some bread and the house smells really good. I think I am getting close to mastering the recipe that I have, in that I each time I make the bread its getting more moist and not so crumbly.....


Doesn't that just look so yummy?! Well dont worry we both think it is. As you can tell we've been picking off one loaf already....actually its over half gone already. We've been eating more of it since I took the picture.

Our Little Tomato Plant

This little tomato plant pretty much came up out of nowhere. We didn't planted it and we know it wasn't there last year. We're guessing there might have been some seeds in a bucket of transplant flowers that we got a couple months ago from my parents. But however it got here, we're grateful cause Ryan loves tomatoes! Here's a couple pictures of what it looks like and how its progressing.


I'm thinking there is more than one tomato plant there, but i haven't looked at it too well.


Here's a picture of the little yellow flowers it gets in order to produce the tomatoes. We were seeing a lot of these and no little tomatoes for quite a while, so we started to wonder if we would be getting any. Cause we haven't seen too many bugs around to pollinate the flowers


As doubtful as we were little tomatoes have appeared. There are only about 12 so far, but there are still a lot of yellow flowers, so we'll hopefully get more. Have know idea what kind of tomatoes these are though. Any ideas? They're looking a lot like roma's, but since they are still so little neither one of us can tell, despite that we both grew up with vegtable gardens around.

The Walls are Done!

Finally finished painting the living room walls and trim. Yeah! Well actually Ryan did while I was at work last Monday. It was sweet of him, cause he knew it was bothering me that half the room was still blue and the other half brown. I love my husband :)
Here are the pictures!


You can excuse the nasty tile floor. We are considering getting some floor paint to cover it until we can afford to put some carpet down and do a tile entry way.

Okay little tour: the front door is to your left in this picture. (and yes its still blue, but we ran out of white paint) We're going to go clockwise around the room. la la la la la...follow me :)


Gotta love the antennae. Its an eye-sore on top of the TV, but hey we can watch TV and movies now. We've decided though that we don' t like the DTV stuff, it gets a messed up during a storm and you can hardly get a signal or even see whats on the TV. Its worse than the ants across the screen like there use to be. Its more like a really bad picture that has been paused. Anyway, 'nough about our annoyance with the digital TV. Will say one good thing about it though, is that when we do have a clear signal its got great sound and picture quality.


The AC unit and destroyed blinds curtiousy of our cats that love sitting in the windows. Oh and notice the new light fixture that we put up too. It was the nicest, cheapest thing we could find without bumping our heads on it. The ceilings here are kinda low. We put one in the office and bedroom too.



My computer cabinet is now in the corner inside of along the wall by the kitchen. And yeah there's the ugly couch cover. Its a beautiful burgany colored couch, but we dont want it getting ruined by the cats, so we keep a bedsheet over it most of the time, unless we've got company or are watching TV. Also, you cant see it very well in these pictures but we got a new prayer table a couple months ago. A friend of ours gave it too us, because they didnt want to take it with them when they moved. So we got a really pretty table now. I'll try and get a better picture of it later to post up here.


Ta-dah. You like the new look. I do. We though it might make the room dark at first because the paint looked like dark chocolate in the bucket, but once we got it on the walls and it dried its a really rich chocolate brown. I absoultely love it! I'm gonna turn this wall into the picture wall. Trying to collect pictures of everyone in our family so I can do a family collage thingy. Right now all I have up there is the Family Proclamation, a picture of the Manti Temple and The Living Christ. Also put my little temple statues up on the wall shelve above the movie case that Ryan built. If you cant tell there are two temples (Manti and Nauvoo) there next to some green candles. Why those two? Well we both got our endowments out at Nauvoo and we'll be getting sealed at Manti later this year. Just waiting on paperwork.