Behold the Cuteness, Old School Edition

Tom Melin, 1950
Rosalie Melin, 1951

Last night we had a Family Home evening honoring Grandpa & Grandma Melin-- it was partly for Mother's Day (Mom Melin's gift last year was dinner and Family Home Evening with us the first Monday of every month for a year-- this would technically be the end of that gift, but we decided to keep up the tradition as long as we can) and partly for teachign our kids family history and learning more about Grandpa and Grandma.

With the help of Rich's far-flung siblings, we made a pretty little scrapbook of favortie memories with Grandma & Grandpa, including letters and photos and interviews with the grandkids (#11 was just born this week--eleven grandkids in less than 5-1/2 years!). Then I printed out some pictures of them as kids and had the kids guess who was in the pictures. When the kids figured out that we were talking about grandpa & grandma, we played a game. The kids drew cards that had statements on them like, "I was born on June 10 1947 in Lewistown, Montana" or "My dad's name was George" or "I married Rosalie Dotson on September 1, 1966" or "I love to eat popcorn!" They had to figure out who made the statement--grandpa or grandma. It was pretty cool. Addie actually remembers a lot of the facts.

Here's the game board--please note that their anniversary is wrong here--it's 9/1/66, and I totally know that--I don't know why I wrote the zero in my delirium!

The dinner was delicious! I made up a recipe for pork roast which I will now share cuz it rocked:

Pork Tenderloin Roast

olive oil

salt & pepper
1/2 yellow onion

1/2 apple, sliced in wedges

worcestershire sauce

Dorothy Lynch salad dressing
a little water

***

Spray your crock pot with PAM, throw in sliced onion. Grease up your roast with olive oil and cut 4 slits across the top deep and long enough to fit the apple wedges. Then sprinkle a few tablespoons of W. sauce over the roast and in slits, put apple wedges into slits. Pour about 1 cup of Dorothy Lynch dressing over the top of the roast, then salt and and pepper. Put on the lid and cook on low for 5 hours, adding water every two hours or so to keep moist.

The drippings made a tasty gravy over rice, and Angie made some delicious rolls. We also had Costco's Parisienne salad (with the feta, cranberries and candied nuts-- yum!) and mom's choclate chip cookies and ice cream bars for dessert. It was great fun and all the cousins had a great time together (but we missed Liana, Sariah, Jared, TJay, Summer, and Matthew!). I am so grateful to have such awesome in-laws! I love that my kids have such rich heritage on all branches of their family tree.