Carnival Birthday

 The first Saturday we were there, my sister Amy planned a carnival birthday party for ALL the summer birthdays.  Her son Chad was baptized in the morning then after we went and played games and ate food.  Which reminds me, I NEED those delicious recipes.  So good.  I think fun=eating in my Rasmussen family.

 Here's the July birthdays: Jethro and Isabel.

 And the August birthdays.

 And the June birthdays.

 This picture is just random in here, but I thought it was so cute.  It's my three nephews, Wyatt, Oskar, and Will.  Nicolas is just 6 months or so older than them so he should be in this picture too, but we forgot.

 Ahhh...I bet that's the sweetest picture you've ever seen with someone wearing a clown nose and glasses disguise.

And Elena is awesome as always with her expressions.

The Hyrum Rodeo

After a very long break, here's the start of pictures from our trip to Utah. One of the first days we were there, we went to the Hyrum City Rodeo where Elena and Isabel rode sheep.  Elena loved it!  Isabel not so much, we spent a long time trying to calm her down after a pretty nasty fall.  

 Isabel being carried out of the arena, she was crying pretty hard.

 Elena hanging on to her sheep.

 Kayli and Brett's family look considerably more cowboyish than my family.  Cute, cute.

 Ana, Danica and Megan.

My sisters Megan and Kayli.

 My sister Lindsay and her husband Sterling.

 And my brother Ethan (in the blue hat) and niece Brynne.

 Yeehaw!

 Grandpa and Hazel.

Yes, my kids spent most of their time playing in the dirt.  Good times.

Welcome back to the hot humid South!!!!

 My welcome back committee to Houston!!!  A dead and rotting gecko on my fireplace.  Joy.

 And of course, our friendly neighbor the opossum who keeps living little brown presents for us in our garage.  Anyone have ideas to, well, get rid of vermin?

 I saw the little nasty opossum while taking cookies to my actual neighbors.  I had to bake bread today, and so I thought that scones would be perfect for dinner and since I was deep frying anyway, I thought I should try out my new kitchen gadget (I promise! That was my train of thought, not the reverse.) that I bought at Kitchen Kneads in Ogden Utah---seriously, it's the best store ever!  I simply couldn't resist this because they make pretty Scandinavian Rosette cookies.  What's not to love?  They're basically deep fried crepes with powdered sugar.  I am apparently incapable of taking pretty food pictures so here's one where I got the recipe I used.  http://pinchmysalt.com/scandinavian-rosettes-recipe/

I added 1/4 of tsp of cardamon too.  Just because cardamon is fun to say.

See my awesome new set!!  I mastered it!  Yes!  However, my bread between the scone-making and cookie-making was left forgotten, so it fell and then it got baked so long it's barely edible.  Oops.  Maybe multi-tasking has it's down sides.

In other news, Utah was amazing!!!  We had so much fun.  I will be posting tons of amazing pictures soon.  I promise.  But for now, goodnight.