John & Becky Bunting

We went to Bakersfield to visit family on Saturday and had a great time. Grandma Bunting got a new printer so John set it up for her. She arranged to have dinner at David and Cherie’s and we really enjoyed the chicken enchiladas. Cherie was down at the temple, but Jocelyn & Oscar were there with their kids and Uncle Karl came over for dinner too. We stayed to visit for a little while and Mariah played her cello for grandma. Thanks so much for having us, we had a great time!

Here is the beach beans recipe…can I get the enchilada recipe?

Leo’s Beach Beans

6 ounces bacon, cut into 1/2″ pieces (6-8 slices)

3 jalapeño peppers, seeded & diced

6 ounces onion, diced

5 - 15 oz cans pork & beans

1 1/2 teaspoon dried mustard

1/2 cup ketchup

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoon liquid smoke

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1 ham hock, criss-cross ham (optional)

Cook bacon on medium heat until crisp. Drain fat. Saute onion and jalapenos until tender. Add pork & beans, dried mustard, ketchup, brown sugar, liquid smoke and cayenne.

If using hambone, crisscross the ham that is left on the bone and place in center of bean mixture.

Bake 350 degrees for 1 hours 10 minutes uncovered.

Becky here - I finished two books today. I started rereading the Harry Potter books about a month ago so I would be ready for the new book and movie. Mariah read them all in about a week so I figured I could do it. I was doing pretty good, I would read a book then we would all watch the movie. I didn’t get through #5 in time though. We saw the show last Friday and I finished the book today (Monday). I liked the movie better than the last one. I thought they did a good job of making it more entertaining and not just dark. They had a bunch of funny montages which made it more fun. When I go to Idaho next week I will take book 6 and read it for the first time. I will finally find out how Dumbledore dies.

I also finally finished reading the New Testament. I think it was about 2000 when I set up a schedule to finish the standard works by 2005. I had read the Book of Mormon and the D&C before, but never the Bible all the way through. Well, I’m not as fast as I planned. I did finish the New Testament today and now I have to go back and finish the Old Testament. I got stuck in Job. I think it was making me depressed.

I have never been a huge fan of Apple computers. However, lately they have been making some really cool products.

Check out this image of all the stuff they make. Its pretty neat. Wish I bought the first model.

Click to view >>

apple_evolution.jpg

I upgraded the site. Not that anyone can tell. The upgrade was all on the back end of things. We now have 300GB of bandwidth and storage. I used to work for the hosting company that we use and I still think they’re one of the best. Check out what Bluehost offers.

Back in the day; they had computers with 4.77 MHz processor. This was the first computer I had. It was made by IBM and called a PCjr. You could run dos and a few programs on disk. The fun part was typing in all the dos commands.

We had another odd job this week. We drove down to Santa Barbara last Saturday to pick up a friend (Jason) from EFY. Mariah and her BFF Brooke came along to keep him company so he wouldn’t have to spend the day with two boring adults. We realized that we are officially old. The three kids sat in the backseat and did not want to talk to us. Rather than walk around as a group, we walked in front and they followed behind us. On a positive note, we felt we had authority because they were obligated to follow us wherever we went and leave the stores when we decided it was time.

We had a great time visiting the Ty Warner Sea Center and learning about how we’re ruining life for all creatures in the sea. We went shopping on the pier and downtown. We spent about 2 hours in the bookstore, which we all loved except Jason. We also went shopping at American Apparel, a store with great t-shirts. And of course we had lunch at In-n-Out.