Loving Life in Idaho

With fall on the way, I thought I would do a quick update. Today is our last day of summer vacation, the kids go back to school tomorrow!!! Yikes! Summer just flew by! Today was a cool and rainy morning and it got me thinking about how many things I love about the fall season. One of my absolute favorite things is all the yummy soup recipes! I thought I would share with you my family's favorite Clam Chowder recipe. I guarantee you will love this if you love clam chowder. “Russ’” Clam Chowder Ingredients: (makes about 8 quarts) ½ lb chopped bacon ½ cup chopped Onion ½ cup chopped green bell peppers ½ cup chopped celery 5 large potatoes diced 1 12-15 ounce bag of frozen corn (or 3 cans niblets) 1 51 ounce can of chopped clams 1 51 ounce can of swanson chicken broth (or 8 tsp chicken bouillon in 51 oz. of water) 1 cube (1/4 lb) of real butter ¾ cup of flour 1 qt half and half 1 tsp salt ¼ tsp pepper ½ tsp thyme 2 cans Campbell’s cream of asparagus soup ...

October, 2009 Home in Fall I actually can't believe how quickly this year is flying past me! It is hard to believe that we are in November already! I haven't begun to Christmas shop and I used to be one of those people that was done in October!!! Wow, how times change! The older the kids get, the busier I get. We have recently been inundated with homework and Cassidy is now being homeschooled. That is going very well so far. I am trying to scrapbook again, but it is hard to get undivided time for it. I was sad to see that when I did a layout the other day, I could not find any other layouts from 2007, 2008 or 2009... ...I guess I will just catch up on the biggest events now :-) On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we will be going up into the mountains to cut down our Christmas tree. We take lots of food and drinks, music, snow gear and stuff to play with. We have done this past couple of years with the Camp family and it just gets better and better every year. The kids end up hav...

Back to School, 2009 Monday, August 31st, the kids go back to school. It is the first day that all of my children will be in school all day! There are now only Sanchez's in the elementary school, the Cagliero kids are all in middle and high school now. Wow, that revelation hit me hard! It is now, Tuesday, our second morning back to school. I have dealt with piles of back to school papers and forms, we are getting lunches made the night before and considering that there are 5 kids to get ready every morning, it is going remarkable well, very smooth and easy. Of course, they are good kids and most things tend to go easily and smoothly with them. So, what did I do yesterday? Well, I finished my "to-do" list for the first time in months :-) I got an incredible amount done, never turned on the TV and didn't even listen to music...much...I enjoyed the silence. I am very busy with my Arbonne business and that has been my main focus, especially since I had a booth at the job ...