Fun Family Day

This past Friday, the 21st, we attended the wedding at the Bountiful Temple of Chad's best friend and his bride, both members of our Young Single Adult Branch. That is certainly one of the highlights serving in a singles branch...attending temple weddings. I loved the gentleman who performed the sealing, he spoke from his heart with the Spirit and gave so much excellent counsel and gospel knowledge about just what a temple sealing entails and the covenants and blessings of it. It was so wonderful to see these two young people so happy because they made the right choice in their lives. We have four more temple weddings this year from the singles branch(that we know of!) and hope to be able to witness them all.
Dale and I loved being able to spend a day with Chad and Collette. We sat by Cameron and Mary and the kids at the Jerome Homecoming football game that evening. Fun, fun, fun. Dale helps announce Jerome football games on a local radio station so we sat just below the broadcaster's booth so we could keep making faces at him throughout the game.
Collette has posted this fun day on her blog, check it out with all the great pictures!

Check out Collette and my latest adventures on the Clark Family Blog!

34 Years...Then and Now

August 24th marked our 34th Wedding Anniversary. We were in Boise making our bbq sauce (see previous post) on that day and I didn't really think we would celebrate it. In fact, I offered to tend for Jef and Sarah that evening so they could have a chance to go out and we could spend more time with the boys.
I was informed that Jef and Sarah were taking us out for the evening and that Collette had offered to babysit (thanks again, Collette). I even got to pick the restaurant! I chose a favorite, a Tai place, we were all pretty hungry after a grueling day of making sauce
I was feeling pretty bold and ordered Pad Tai (I think that is what it is called) with about a 2 1/2 spice level. Man, was it good! I think the chef for the night was a little generous with the heat. Needless to say, we really "spiced" it up for our anniversary. We cooled down with some fancy ice cream and a fun shopping trip to Burlington Coat Factory. Thanks again, Jef and Sarah for a great evening.

I have been reflecting on the past 34 years of marriage with my sweetheart, Dale. As you can see, "John Denver" may have changed in appearance, but he has been the same solid, loving, supportive husband all these years. And he just gets better and better at making me feel important and special. We have had our ups and downs and he has stuck with me through it all. I could not have asked for a better husband and friend. He is a great father, much more patient than me and a wonderful, fun grandpa. His testimony of the church has never wavored and his commitment to service has been an inspiring example to me and our family. His whole life has been built around his family and they have been more important to him than any fame or fortune. The youth he has worked with over the years, his "other kids"... have also felt so much love and support from Dale in all they try to do. Words to a song that we liked by Captain and Teneille (which we also sang for Dennis and Katie's wedding breakfast) says "love...love will keep us together..." I know that love has kept us together these 34 years. Looking forward to many, many more!

"Sauced" in Caldwell, Idaho

A lot of people have asked about where we make our bbq sauce and how we make it. So here is the perfect place to post our last "sauce run" we did on August 24th. I took pictures of the process and will try to explain it best I can! We make our sauce in a Small Business Incubation Kitchen run by the Universary of Idaho located in Caldwell, Idaho, a town near Boise.

We rent the kitchen and depending on the kinds and quantity of sauce, we usually are there from 8am to 5pm. Sarah does most of the shopping for all the ingredients, Dale orders the pepper powder. At the beginning preparation stage, the girls do the honors of cutting up pounds and pounds of onions. Yes, it brings tears to our eyes, but not for long, compared the great aroma of the habenero peppers. As you can see from the picture, Collette and Sarah are such "cut ups" when we work! We used to sort and prepare the peppers, but have refined our recipe to using pepper powder. We have found that using real onions combined with powder keeps the substance of the sauce in tact.

Dale begins pouring the "secret" recipe ingredients in a big vat.

As you see from the pictures, we wear aprons, hairnets, and rubber gloves throughout the different stages of the process to keep the health department happy. I think Dale looks cute in a hairnet!

Next is a picture of Jefrey carefully measuring out the different powders we use. He listens to favorite tunes on his ipod, but I know he really misses the stimulating conversation that his Mother provides.

You can see one of the big vats that we use to cook our sauce in. Dale is making sure the sides and bottom get scraped well in the stirring process. There is alot more to making our sauce, like blending all the onions in a machine, cleaning out all the ingredient containers after use that can be recycled, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning to keep a sanitary environment. The time the sauce is cooking to perfection, another batch of a different kind has most likely started and we can usually eat the yummy lunch Sarah always provides for us in the break room.

The bottling stage is the busy stage. There are lots of things that need to get prepared. Bottles need to be sanitized in the big dishwasher. Lids are all laid out and sanitized, as the picture of Collette shows. Jefrey and Sarah get the label machine set up with our labels on (you can see their arms). Most important, Dale and Jef makes sure the sauce is exactly right in consistancy and then pours it into the funnel looking machine that is set to dispense just the right amount of sauce into a bottle.

When Dale gets each bottle filled, he hands them to Collette to put on the lids. We have to make sure that the machine pours out just the right amount for a single bottle. We don't want too little in the bottles and too much spills over. We adjust this level it seems a couple of times during this filling process. Collette is sporting a nice glove to prevent blisters that can appear from turning 750 caps! This comes from the voice of experience, as I have done that job myself!

The bottles are placed on a turn table that goes around to position the bottles for the labeler to pick up and place on the label machine.

Jefrey is our labeler, he runs that machine pretty slick and knows just when a tiny glitch needs to be adjusted so that the labels wrap around the bottles correctly.

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Sarah puts on the black shrink bands that go around the cap to seal the bottles. The bottles are then sent through the machine pictured on the left that heats the shrink bands. We place the bottles one by one on a turning belt that sends them through. A person takes them out and places them right in the boxes ready to go. When I do the shrink bands, Sarah receives the bottles and boxes them. This also includes labeling the boxes with the name of the right product and stacking them on a pallot for storage.

We are usually grateful for this stage when the bottles are done! Sarah always does a good job of keeping track of the numbers of bottles we did of each product for our inventory. Then comes the final clean up, which is another process in itself. We do keep the working stations clean as we go but there is the big job of cleaning the big vats and bottling machine. That's when it gets fun! When the cold water from the cleaning hoses hits the vats, the habenero sauce smell intensifies greatly.

I know that I have probably left out lots of details, but that is how we make our habby sauce...one bottle at a time. I actually enjoy doing this and Dale has said he loves making the sauce. I know it is because we get to spend time getting "sauced" with family!

Another Fun Weekend: Destination Pocatello - Logan - Jerome

On Friday, August 31st, Collette and I once again embarked on another road trip. A friend of Collette's and a dear young single adult from our Branch was getting married in the Logan Temple Saturday morning, so that gave us a good reason to travel to Pocatello and stay with Jeremy and Sarah. We could make the sealing session at 8am Saturday morning in the Logan Temple much easier from there. And because Dale and Chad were selling our sauce at the market in Idaho Falls on Saturday, we drove the pick-up full of Habby Too sauce, supplies, and equipment. We had to stop three times to secure the tarp but finally made it to Pokey with all safe and sound. Dale came up late Friday night after helping announce the Jerome High School football game.

I had my camera, but didn't take pictures, so I borrowed some from Collette. (can you tell?) It was fun to play with Isaak, he is really growing up fast and on the verge of walking. Jeremy is enjoying his grad work and being a TA for one of his professors and Sarah is doing well with her new CNA job.
We met up with Chad and his roommate, Matt, at McDonald's (love those student recommended dollar menu places) before we headed to the ISU Cinema (also love those student discounted movie theaters). We watched Pirates of the Caribbean III, which I hadn't seen yet. It was a kick to see Keith Richards as a pirate, probably didn't need very much make-up for that role! It was tons of fun and Isaak was a good boy at the movies.
Chad is settled in at school and way busy, joining a major-related club (he wants to be an Optometrist) and serving as Elder's Quorum President in his student ward. We got up way early on Saturday morning, around 5am, not completely knowing how long it would take to get to Logan. We found out that it only took about an hour and a half. It was a beautiful ceremony and we enjoyed a luncheon afterward with Aaron and Matt's family and friends.

This is a fun picture of Collette and friends, they are so "uplifting" to each other! (Collette is 3rd from the left)

We headed back to Jerome and were anxious to see Alisa and her family, they came the night before for the weekend. For those of you that have made that trip to Idaho, you know how hot and "scenic" it is, but we had our pop and music to get us through!

We were glad to see Grant, Alisa, and the kids and Zadyn kept telling everyone that there was Grandma...finally... as they stayed at our place the night before without us. After supper, we headed in for the wedding reception where Collette sang two songs and sounded beautiful. Later on, we all enjoyed root beer floats and taking crazy pictures with Grandpa!

Alisa and family spent most of the day on Sunday with the Orrs but we had fun again before bed with chocolate chip cookies (yes, I hit the gym pretty hard on Tuesday) and stories.After the kids were in bed, we played Encore, the game where you get a word or category and then come up with as many songs as you can think of. That is tons of fun and makes you realize just how many songs your brain can store. I think Collette was the ultimate winner (Uncle Dennis would be proud!).

Alisa and family headed home for Montana Monday morning. We will miss them and look forward to seeing them when they come back for Thanksgiving, weather permitting. We packed up and left for the traditional Labor Day trip to the Bruneu Sand Dunes which will be the next upcoming blog.