Alright, here's the news flashes I promised:

Well helloooooo there fellow blogger readers. I know, I know, I deserve a severe beating for the neglect of this poor blog. Indeed if it was a pet, it would have died and partially decomposed by now. But, I have an excuse. Ihave been doubled up on school work this last semster to make it well, my last semseter. I finished (at long last) my associates degree. I will be starting the bachelor's program in a few days, so I am sorry to report, I am still in the same blog neglecting boat as before. Funny thought, this blog was supposed to be updated by everyone here on this adventure. Lindsey and Chris have their own blog, and April is still trying to master the english language. Once she has that down, she'll move on to electric devices and keyboards. Yes that was a direct 'invitation' for all you to call her and request that she posts as well.



Ok here's an update so far (readers digest style):



We moved into the Kaneohe house on July 26th. There is a slide show of the place we've lived in for a few months now. The paint drawn picture is NOT to scale nor is it close But you can kindof get the general idea. The second floor of the house is not over top of the first. It is up and behind. We live on a hillside, you get the idea. There is a small breezeway beneath the second floor, behind the bedrooms on the first floor. I also ran out of space to draw the lanai on the north side of the house, so i just squeezed it in. Now lets talk about the occupants and living quarters. Most of you know that Matt and Jenny Littlemore (jenny my sister) moved in with us a few weeks ago. They and their boy Ethan, are settled in. Matt landed a Big Shot job with Central Pacific Bank and jenny and I stay home with the kids. For now. She's going to get a part time job and I'm starting a handyman business. So we'll work our schedules around the kids. Go ahead, snicker and laugh all you like, we're doing our best. Lindsey and Chris have the downstair master bedroom and bathroom. Jenny and Matt use the east bedroom and Ethan is in the west bedroom. The upstairs master bedroom, well I say master because its a little bigger than the other one. Is where April and I sleep and Abbi has the other bedroom. We put a bed in the common area upstairs and that has become Hannah's room. The gray areas are closets and you should be able to make out the furniture from the pictures and bmp file. Now for those of you planning on staying with us, you will be using the common area upstairs as a bedroom. We'll have dividers for privacy. Since the upstairs common area isn't really a common area at all, it serves its purpose as a sixth bedroom nicely. We all share the kitchen, laundry room and dining room. Lindsey and Chris tend to use their bedroom as an all purpose studio and don't often use the activity rooms. Kind of like having live-in hermits. Now some of you are saying, 'wow, thats a lot of families to have in one house,' well Lana, it is, make no mistake of that. Its not always easy blending ideals and who uses and cleans the dishes etc. Jenny is a champ when it comes to organizing and planning and together we've devised a system that separates days and responsibilties. So far so good. For me its actually quite fun having everyone here. I am a social person as you've already figured out, and I enjoy having family around. As for everyone else's feelings, well, you'll have to take that up with them. Our current lease ends next July, so we hope to be here until then, there may be some disbanding before then due to financial reasons but I'll make everyone aware of that as it befalls us. We are very happy to be in this home. We looked at many houses in this price range and they were all frankly, pretty NASTY. Old dirty, bad neighborhoods etc. We have a very clean culdesac with stellar neighbors, and the best part WE HAVE ACCESS TO THE HOA POOL!! YAY! The house we live in is in the ahuimanu home owners association, so there is a large club house and pool here at our disposal. Cool huh. The pool is about the size of a standard Hotel pool, no slide but hey, fresh water swimming is a nice change! There is a small kiddy pool nearby and a club house a little bigger than mom's west wing. Not nearly as nice or equipped but functional for huge parties. Sometimes there are frogs in the pool which is pretty funny actually. Only one or two and they are small and don't bite (hard). The kids think its nice. We live in an area called Valley of the Temples. Its actually a very very large cemetary with different religion's 'temples' scattered through the trees. The valley is actually a valley surrounded by jungle encased mountains. There is a large peak at the northern most end of the valley that is all too similar to Ben Lomond peak. Actually it looks more like willard peak but its the lone monument that makes it stand out. Nights are very cool here. Makes for good sleeping. We got this house from an add in the paper and are working with a Real Estate agency called J L Realty. Our contact as it were, is James Ogawa. He is a gentleman and a scholar in all respects. Mid to late 30's clean cut, family man. Soft spoken and really genuine good guy. We recently found out that he is LDS too. Infact he came by one day to see some tile work I did on the upstairs bathroom and as we were walking the grounds looking at other work I want to do, he asks out of the blue 'how's your ward?' Because of my Utah background, I didn't hesitate at the question, and began to answer before I realized what he had asked. "It's good, really big, lots of nice folks and....hey, how did you know we're LDS?" He smiled and said, "well, you're from Utah and you had a copy of proclaim my gospel open upstairs, and you know, you can just tell when you meet someone that has been endowed." I slapped my sideand laughed. "April and I had the same conversation about you a day or two after we met!" He chuckled and followed me around to the front of the house. This is a excellent situation for us, because we now have the preferred 'ins' with the real estate guru. Cool too huh.
April is still working for the ER at tripler army medical hospital, and I am still a full time student and stay at home dad. For now....I am plotting my escape. I have a deepend respect for my own mother and I marvel that I wasn't murdered by age three. My kids are really good kids for the most part and some days I want to bury my head in a pillow and die. My hat is off to Mirj for raising a whole herd, and to my own Mom for raising four small kids alone. Sheesh. Lindsey is working at Castle Hospital and Chris is a Salesman for Fastenall. He's working his way up the ladder really quickly. I am still engaged in a 'project' or two. But that's another, um, story, for another day.

THE (nearly) GREATEST (ok they're not bad) THING TO DO WITH CHALUPA LEFT OVERS EVER (maybe not ever but certainly worth a try)

Ok, guys and gals, we've all settled into our new place. I will have pictures and the entire roller coaster story of what happened with our last residence soon. (Soon as I have more time to write a story that enfuriates me to the point where I have to get up and pace around the room. Luckily, mom has heard the brunt of this story already so for the rest of you who aren't satisfied with the readers digest version, ask mom. Whew, the buck has been passed.) As an official housewarming party we invited the Uncles over with their significant others, for a chalupa night. Now most of you don't know what a Chalupa is, it IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN GET AT TACO BELL. Ok well you can get something that doesn't even come close to a real chalupa at Taco Bell, and well, just think, you can get the runs as a free bonus too. *shudder*... A chalupa is like a small cooked taco. Think small corn torilla, special enchilada like sauce, shredded chicken or beef, mexican cheese, onions, mexican cheese, mexican cream and cheese and oooohhhh so good and ooooohhhh wheres the tums? Yeah they rock. Some of you may have been a participant of the chalupa night I did for Mom (Barker) years ago. For the rest of you, you can get the recipe from my biological mother (Foley, I think, my dad always told me they found me under a rock and thought I'd be a good chew toy for the dog). We actively participated in Foley Family Chalupa night on a monthly basis up until the exodus in June. Back to the story, we had a great time. Don brought rice and stuff for strawberry, banana, and cinnamon (weird I know, not bad though) smoothies. Bob and Joanna brought a salad, we made merry and feasted our good fortune. We stuffed the Unlces to the gills and after making fun of how many they had bested we realized we had enough leftovers to remake the meal all over again, literally. Don't get me wrong. I love my chalupas, but the acid reflux initiation meal is best served once a month. So with all the leftovers I decided to make enchiladas. Boy howdy did I ever. I even went above and beyond my culinary training and wrote down what I put in it (a day later, but belated is better than never eh) Heres the whopper:

Chalupa leftover Enchiladas:
2 lbs Leftover Chalupa meat
2 cups of red Chalupa Sauce
2 cups of green Chalupa Sauce
No cups of moldy Chalupa Sauce
(4 cups substitute for Chalupa Sauce with prepared powdered enchilada sauce in the red envelope thingy, you know what I mean.)
½ large onion well diced.
1 can of cream of chicken
1 can of cream of mushroom
1 can of diced chilies
1 Medium Tomato diced like the onions, unless you did a crappy job of dicing the onions, if so, do it better than the onions.
Crushed Red Pepper
Ground bay leaves if you got ‘em.
1 tsp chopped garlic or garlic salt, but don’t chop the garlic salt, its already small enough.
LOTS of queso fresco, (the not so secret ingredient) You can get it by the cream cheese at walmart, looks like a soft white hockey puck. (Ranchero or Noche Buena brand be sure is is queso fresco NOT cotija, you'll know if you go the right one because it will shred like very moist cottage cheese pressed into a puck shape, still can't figure it out? Call my mother she'll help you)
1 cup grated cheddar
Salt and pepper to taste

Take a large casserole dish spray with PAM, if she’s not around, use a no stick spray, coat the bottom of the dish with leftover chalupa sauce either red or green or half of each in separate sides. Don’t use all the sauce, maybe less than half of what you got.
Shred two pounds of whatever meat is left, chicken, beef, horse, dog in large bowl. Mix in one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom and about half your onions. Mix well. Add one small can of diced chilies. Mix well, add crushed red pepper, bay leaves, garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Then, yep, you guessed it, Mix well. Spread ½ cup of the mystery meat mixture into a tortilla, top with lots of queso fresco and, nope, don’t mix it, roll it up. Place it in the colorful casserole dish. Rinse repeat. Ok don’t rinse. Unless you are showering….now why would…nevermind. Repeat (no rinsing). Fill the dish with stuffed tortillas. Now top the tortillas with whipped cream, sprinkles and cherries. No silly, with the rest of the sauces, the cheddar cheese and the tomatoes. Sprinkle the top lightly with dried chives or oregano or something to make it look awl fancee laike. Bake at 325 for 30 minutes uncovered, at 30 min turn the heat up to 350 and bake for 15 minutes. This browns the cheese, remove and test for rabies. Ha ha, no, just check the insides of one to make sure its hot. Tadaa! You did it, now top it with the rest of the fresh onions and sour cream and eat it.

Feel free to modify to your liking, olives would be nice. April hates olives. Scallions, mmmm indeed, maybe even, dare I say........oooohhhhh I dare, RANCH DRESSING! MUHAHAHAHA (ok probably not)

NEWS FLASHES COMMING IN A FEW DAYS! :) Be ready they're good ones!