Tonight was Hannah's first orchestra concert of the year. They played 3 songs and did a great job. Hannah was very excited to be a first violin this year. She plays with confidence and enthusiasm and most importantly really, really, really likes her teacher Dr. Neves.

The kids enjoyed the concert also and Tessie clapped enthusiastically for each number.
Isaac was most excited to be able to take a pull-up with him.

Congratulations Hannah!! You had a great performance.

A good time was had by all.

I downloaded pictures from my camera today and, SURPRISE! there were about 20 pictures of Brittney eating ice cream. I thought to my self, self, I can't just let these go to waste so I am sharing them with you!

These cute kids plus two more who are not in these pictures are my reasons for living and breathing right now. I love them so much. Even at 1:30 in the morning, and 2:15, and 3 and 4:25, and 5:45, and 6:10.....
Help!! I have no clue how to fix this. (There, I fixed it for you)

Every afternoon Tess walks me out to the fruit trees for an afternoon snack. She loves the fruit right from the trees, or the ground, it doesn't matter which. Tess loves to act out 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, she does Ring Around the Rosies, and will beg for This Little Piggy Went to Market. She is stubborn and tough and sweet all at the same time. She goes to nursery with Isaac, Brittney, and Job. Isaac plays the big brother role well and will take on anyone who goes after her binky or bottle.

Isaac is growing up so fast. He is living in that limbo land of caught somewhere between a big kid and a little kid. I know that he would gladly trade Tess positions any day. On Friday he fell on the rocks by the front driveway and split the palm of his hand open on a rock. He was excited to go to the doctor until we pulled up to the wrong building. Then he was fine because they had cable and there were actually kids shows on at 9 at night. He didn't care much for the stitches and tried to pull them out as soon as they were in. He has finally started eating a little better. All of the magazines I read say to give the kid two options and let them choose what to eat. I have found that a mouthful of soap as the second option is always passed over for real food. Katie is a social bug. She is always talking and can't stand the thought of nothing exciting going on. Adrianna was so worried when we moved here that she wouldn't have any friends. On this street alone I count 5! She is doing well in school and is my biggest support. I can ask her to help with anything and I know that she can handle it. Hannah is in middle school and is really enjoying feeling a little older. She plays in the orchestra, loves science, and I am pretty sure that I caught a boy trying to flirt with her. Thankfully however, she is still naive and didn't have a clue as to what was going on.
They all miss their Daddy. Last year We would drop Dad off at the college. Now every time that we drive by SUU Isaac asks me if that is Hong Kong. I miss him too, and not just at 12:45, 1:30, 2:27, 3:52, 5, and 6:45 in the morning.

Last night I made my favorite easy Parmesan Chicken. I am going to share it with you . There is only one catch, I don't measure anything and I don't have a picture so yours may turn out slightly different than mine. That way you have creative rights to call it your very own.

1 bag of boneless skinless chicken tenders
2/3 cup of mayo
1 cup of Italian bread crumbs
1/2 to 1 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 425
coat the chicken with the mayo. You can use a pastry brush but it gets messy after a while so I like to just glop the mayo into a big bag and dump all of the chicken in. I squish it around to coat the chicken with mayo. Set it aside and mix the Italian bread crumbs with the shredded Parmesan cheese on a plate or in a bowl. Take the chicken out of the bag one piece at a time and roll it in the mixture to coat it and place it in a big glass baking dish. Glass or ceramic has worked better for me than metal. Bake it for 20 - 25 minutes.

I LOVE this recipe. It is fast and easy very versatile. You can serve it with pasta, potatoes or rice and even my pickiest eaters love it. The flavor is great. It doesn't need any salt or anything else. Try it!!!
You can obviously use a smaller portion of chicken but it is good as leftovers or you could make this when you are taking a meal to someone and you will have enough for two families.

For family home evening this week we took a picnic to the canyon park. There is now a trail which starts at the new ball parks on the north end of town and follows coal creek up past the old ball parks and up the canyon. Brittney and Job came with us and we followed the trail north and ended up on Highland Drive where this picture was taken probably pretty close to 35 years ago. There are a few of the older homes still there. The Jones', the Barlows, but mostly just a bunch of over priced double wides. I was amazed by the senses and memories and emotion that came rushing back. Walking to school along the creek, walking to the rock church over the old bridge, playing on the mountain side, stealing golf balls off the putting green, neighbors, friends, pets, mom riding the motorcycle through the sticker patch in a house coat and bare feet, Liesl sticking a tent peg through her chin, Julene breaking her arm while roller skating, Brian starting the hill on fire, Brenda taking us on a nighttime adventure to watch the drive-in movie for free from the hillside(I believe it was looking For Mr. Goodbar), playing the sound of music in the vacant lot next door, and me riding down that hill afraid to use the brakes on my bike so that i wouldn't fly over the handlebars, a dead cat, lots of puppies, sledding behind a Volkswagon, dad and mom setting up an obstacle course for the scouts. I could go on and on. Sometimes it is a good thing just to take time to remember.
We even found two golf balls, but i promise we didn't steal them from the putting green!

Sister Palmer will be released from her mission on October 16th.
Brenda and Brittney will fly in on the 17th to drive home with her.
We look forward to having you home with us, or is it us home with you?

Can you believe it? Mom will be home in a month! That is if she can find gas anywhere to get her out of the state of Alabama.

I just thought I would give all of
you a bit of insight as to who all
or most of my babies look like.

Taking an example from Chantel the blog trend setter,
we found out a few fun facts about our family names.

Out of 305,192,545 people in the U.S.;

*There are 107 Ryan Shepherds

*There are 299 Jennifer Shepherds

*There are 14 Hannah Shepherds

*There is only 1 Adrianna shepherd

*There are 36 Katie Shepherds

* There are 16 Isaac Shepherds

*There is only 1 Tess Shepherd

If you would like to find out if like Adrianna and Tess
that you too are 1 in over 300 million, check out HowManyOfMe.com

Katie is trying to catch the sun.


love summer nights in Cedar City. The colors of the whole valley are illuminated. The contrast of the green valley and the red mountains are spectacular. I couldn't quite capture it with my camera though.

As part of the sky fest the ballooners have a night glow where they fill the balloons and then light them. I hear it is amazing. The wind blew a little too hard to do that so we just played in the park and watched the flames shoot out of the tanks in the baskets.

We miss you and love you Daddy!!! Come home soon and play with us.

Trip to Macau

It is a big holiday weekend in China so schools are closed until Tuesday and most businesses are closed also. It is Mid-Autumn Festival which is one of the biggest holidays celebrated, it is also known as lantern festival. Families and friends get together on the first full moon in September and go to the park with their lanterns and hang out and eat moon-cake which is a traditional Chinese cake and watch the moon. Here is a link if you want to learn about Mid-Autumn Festival. Mid-Autumn Festival The celebration really starts a few days earlier with people shopping and hanging out with family and friends. Since we didn't get school work from our classes over the weekend and having Monday off from school we decided to take a road trip and go to Macau. Macau was a European settlement city being settled by the Portuguese in the 16th century. It is a Special Administrative Region like Hong Kong so it is somewhat autonomous from China. It is one of the larger tourist attractions in the area and all the locals told have told us it is a place we need to go to when we have a break from school so we decided to go. It has also turned into the Las Vegas of China with Casino's such as the Wynn, MGM Grand, the Venetian, and more. Most of the European's have never seen a casino so they were anxious, of course me growing up and living in Cedar City has killed any interest in gambling, we all know what local people call Las Vegas--"Lost Wages". The Europeans didn't get it until they tried playing blackjack and lost their shorts. I don't think they are as excited to go to Las Vegas someday. Here is a link explaining the history of Macau. It is claimed to be one of the richest cities in the world but after being there I have no Idea how that claim could be true because of all the poverty and the run down city. The main development there is more casinos so that must be were they are getting all their money. Here are a few of the pictures I took. Enjoy.

Preparing for Mid-Autumn Festival.

A view from the old Portuguese fort overlooking Macau.

Another view picture from the Fort.

A chinese worship house with burning inscense.

A giant lantern.


The old St. Pao Cathedral Ruins. There are a lot of Catholic Cathedral's in Macau because of it's Portuguese settlers.

View looking down from the Ruins.

Side Street.

This area was set up for people to gather and watch the olympics. I didn't get a picture but behind me is a 50 ft. giant TV screen that was used to show the olympics. The paraolympics are still going on and Macau is one of the venue cities hosting basketball and a few other sports. So there are a lot of people there still watching, in 100 degree weather with 90% humidity I might add.

I don't know if you will really notice but this picture shows how run down and almost in ruins most of the buildings are in Macau. I have traveled alot and been a lot of places but I have never been in an extremely poor area before. One of the exchange students with us is from Mexico and this reminded them of the worst areas in Mexico.

We decided there was more for us to see so we decided to spend the night and spend an extra day. This is a picture of the outside of the motel we stayed in. We put 4 of us per room to lower our expense, it was extremely expensive, $2 USD per person. If you saw the room you would be convinced that we overpaid.

Another Buddhist worship area in the middle of the slum.

A random instersection with all the miniature cars.

Picture of the boat ride back to Hong Kong. I was very glad to be back to a more modern civilized city.