Take Me Out to the Ball Game

One of Matthew's classes was cancelled yesterday so he played baseball with his classmates, but I had to drive over to Bayamon and take him all of his gear so he can play. Luckily one of my friends (Emily) was able to come over and watch the game with me. Her husband was playing as well so it worked out perfectly. After a while we started to get hungry so we left the game and got some good sanwhiches at a little deli by her house.

Here's Matthew at bat

Craving Something Sweet?

My buddie Rachel gave me this recipe a while back, when she was still living in Puerto Rico, and I just tried it yesterday. The recipe is Key Lime Squares and they are to die for. Here's the recipe if anyone is looking for something new to bake.

Key Lime Squares


Ingredients:
6 graham crackers (to make ¾ c crumbs)
2 cups pretzels, ground (to make ¾ c crumbs)
6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp sugar

1 cup sugar
3 tbsp flour
½ cup sweetened condensed milk
4 eggs

½ c fresh lime juice
Finely minced zest of 2 limes

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees; coat a 9 “ square baking pan with nonstick spray.

Process crackers in a food processor until fine; transfer to a mixing bowl. Pulverize pretzels, grinding until almost fine (some small pieces should remain). Add pretzels to crumbs, and mix well with butter and 2 tbsp sugar.

Sprinkle the mixture evenly into the prepared pan, using a measuring cup to “tamp” down the crust. Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until golden around the edges.

Whisk 1 cup sugar and flour together in a mixing bowl while crust bakes. Add condensed milk and eggs; whisk just until blended. Stir in lime juice and zest.

Pour filling over hot crust, and bake 20 minutes, or until filling is set and no longer jiggly in the center. Cool bars completely, then cover and chill until firm, at least four hours.

Optional white chocolate whipped cream

½ cup heavy cream
2 oz. white chocolate, chopped

Heat cream in a saucepan until bubbles form around the edge. Off heat, add chocolate, whisk until smooth, then chill until cold. Just before serving, whip cream to soft peaks. Cut cold bars into squares and transfer to a platter.

Garnish each bar with a rosette of whipped cream, or dollop some on each bar. Finish with a slice of lime.

Just painting away

It's been a little slow with school lately and yesterday it rained all day here in Hato Rey, plus I was stuck at home because it was Matthew's turn to drive to school...leaving me without a car, so I took out my painting supplies and painted one of my favorite tropical flowers I've seen here. Today I start a new semester though, so it was a good way to give myself a little break.

Home Studio

Like most of you know, Matthew has a great passion for music and this Saturday a buddy from school (Howard) came over to record a song with him. Well there was no way to record music with such loud noise comming from outside so Matthew made his own little recording studio in our pantry. I know hilarious, but if you lived here you'd know what I mean, specially cause we have shudders...no windows, you can hear everything that goes on outside and living on a busy street doesn't make it any better. So our pantry was the only "room" they could use. It's so funny, but so creative.
Here's Howard in Matthew's homemade studio.

I felt so bad for Howard, though, because it was so hot in there, he had to keep taking breaks to catch some fresh air. We didn't give him a fan because Matthew said it was too loud so he had to suffer, poor thing.

Matthew set up right outside our pantry and controlled the music from his computer. However, despite the lack of space and equipment the song came out really good. Very professional, I'm very proud of them.

The things we have to go through...

I was having such a dandy day today–I went to my friend Emily's house, we baked the yummiest banana-apple bread, we talked, and just had a nice time together. THENNNN...as I'm getting ready to leave, I step outside to hop in my car, when I see a white SUV parked SOOOO incredibly close to my car it was ridiculous. I'm not kidding the SUV was parked like 6 inches from my car. I could not even crawl through to open my door. I couldn't believe how much of a jerk that person was to do that. There was seriously like 20 parking spaces all around my car and they just had to pick the one right by my driver's door. Ugh, It ruined my whole day. So of course, I had to crawl through the passenger side to get in my car. I wish I would've taken a picture so you could've all witnessed it but I was so shocked that I completely forgot. So by the looks of it, I'm pretty sure that person did that on purpose. Why? I don't know, because this place is crazy, I guess. And those are the little things we have to go through everyday.

Finished Product

I just finished painting the San Diego Temple and I must say I think I like the pencil sketch better than the painting. It's hard to include fine details when painting. I think it'll look better once I put the matting on it and fram it.

My Painting Hobby

I was speaking to my mother this past weekend and she told me she really wanted a picture of both the San Diego and Los Angeles Temples because we were sealed as a family in the LA Temple and all my siblings have gotten married in the San Diego Temple. So I thought maybe I could paint them for her. My painting hobby began 2 1/2 years ago when we first arrived to Puerto Rico; I decided I needed things to keep me busy here. I bought myself an easel I saw at Cosco and began to experiement with different types of paint. I was not the best artist at first but then began to learn simple techniques by trial and error. I kept improving each time I painted something new. Anyway it's been a while since I've picked up a paint brush so I thought I could surprise my mother by painting her both temples. This is what I have so far.

Some of my other paintings

Horton Hears a Who!

I had been wanting to see this movie and so I dragged Matthew along to see it with me. Within the first few minutes he was glad he came to see it, plus we're big fans of Steve Carell. I MISS THE OFFICE!

Auguste Rodin

This weekend was supposed to be full of adventure but as we were on our way to explore the southern part of the island we received a call from the YMs President saying that we had inactive member visits in our ward that evening. As stake representatives, it is our responsibility to attend and support the ward. We decided to stay and just do something closer to home. We were pretty hungry so we stopped at the mall and ate lunch at Oriental Palace, as we walked out we noticed the Rodin museum advertisement. We decided to check it out and it ended up being a great way to spend our morning. Matthew actually studied Auguste Rodin's art at BYU and had the opportunity to see the actual sculptures in real life, after seeing them only in textbooks. I have a great appreciation for art and so I enjoyed it 100%. For those of you who don't know who Auguste Rodin was, he was a French artist, most famous as a sculptor. He was the preeminent French sculptor of his time, and remains one of the few sculptors widely recognized outside the visual arts community.

These are some of his most famous scultures.

"The Thinker"

Youth Confrence 2008-Day 3

The last day of youth confrence was spent with the 12 and 13 year olds. As the kids arrived, they ate breakfast and we got ready to play some fun games. We played a game called spider web where you had to team up and pass all your team mates through an opening on the spider web without touching the rope, trees, or crawling underneath the web. The last person to go through the spider web ran and then jumped as high as he could through one of the openings, with the rest of the youth on the other side of the spider web to catch him. All the teams were able to do this and get everyone through without toching the ropes.. It was a perfect get-to-know you activity because every group had kids from different wards and they had to work together and be creative to perform the task.







Another game played was this rock game. We told the youth to go find a rock, didn't matter what size or shape. So we had some come back with huge rocks and others with medium and also small rocks. Then you let them know that all the team members had to cross on each rock and you had to work as a team in order to balance people on the smaller rocks. It was tons of fun.



After these two games we had a speaker, Elder Lee, an area authority who actually spoke at our Stake Confrence.





While the speaker was going on, we set up for the water games. We played "Do you Love Your Neighbor?" but with a sprinkler in the middle of the circle so when the kids got up to switch chairs they had to run through it. We played some other games and then let them run loose with cups and hoses. We gave both the girls and the boys a trash can full of water so they can all take their cups and have a water fight. It turned out so much fun, they were going crazy and I just stood back to avoid getting wet.








After the water games the kids went home, ate, and then returned around 3:00pm to watch the slide show of all the accumilated pictures from the previous days, and we ended our confrence with a wonderful testimony meeting. The entire event was a great growth opportunity for all of us.