Christmas Day!

Our kids are now old enough that they let us sleep in until about 9:00 on Christmas morning. I like it! Ben told me at lunch on Thursday that Christmas just isn't as magical now as it was when he was younger. I agree! There's something about having young kids around, so excited for everything to happen that makes the time of year wonderful.
Nana, Papaw, and Richard got here just before 9:00 and we woke the kids up.
Tessa got a new bike and couldn't have been more excited. Savanah was surprised with...I don't know what, she pretty much knew everything she was getting. Ben was the same, except we got a tool box for his truck so he can store things back there without them getting wet in the rain. He didn't know about that.
After presents, we ate gingerbread pancakes with buttermilk syrup. (Thanks to Lori for the recipe, it was a hit!)


Then, we finished making a turkey dinner for a group of homeless people in Placerville and took it up the hill. Well, in reality, the family took it up the hill. I stayed home and finished our own turkey dinner. (No wonder I was tired at the end of the day! I fed 40 people on my own!)
The missionaries came for dinner at 2:00, then called their families. That was fun to be on the giving end of those phone calls. I loved being on the receiving end while Ben was in Mexico!
Tessa had friends to see and left at 1:30, so she missed dinner with the family. Someday, she'll need us....
It was a wonderful day! I did worry about Barbara, who had trouble breathing while she was here. Pleurisy? It's awful!

My True Christmas Present...

With the addition of new flooring, I was so happy I thought that would be my major present this year for Christmas. Au contrair! (I think that's how to spell it...)
The living and dining rooms were put back together on Wednesday, with the exception of my piano. I walked in after a shopping trip, and John, Savanah and Ben were sitting on the newly re-arranged living room furniture.
The armoire was added to the family room, and the entire front room felt much more spacious. I told John it looked great, but wondered where my piano was going to go. John said the floor needed one more day to dry before we moved it in. I'm good with that.
Thursday morning, I got up and got going on the last bit of shopping I had to do. I got home around noon thinking I really was hungry and Ben asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with him. I accepted and he took me out for sushi! (I love sushi!)
When we got home, I was met at the door by John who told me to close my eyes. I did and he turned me around, then told me to open them. There, in the living room by the door was a baby grand piano! I could hardly believe it! Apparently the entire family was in on the secret for the past few weeks.
That explains John's insistence on getting the floors finished before Christmas. Here I was thinking he wanted it to look good for his Mom and Jeff to come see us.
Wow! What a great surprise!

My Christmas Present...

Well, it probably isn't just for me, but with the addition of another puppy to the household, we had to do something with the carpet in the living/dining room.
The dogs in the house before we got here used it as a potty room, and our dogs have continued the tradition.
When it's raining outside, Roxy will get lazy and use the floor in there to do her business. It makes the carpet disgusting! I can't keep it clean because she still smells it and keeps using that room as her litter box.
So, John and I talked about putting hardwood floors in there. Actually, John suggested we put them in the whole house, but I kind of like the indestructibility of the tile we have in the rest of the house.
He picked up wood before we left town for a week, and while we were on vacation he suggested that he could do it on Tuesday. Hmmm....that's less that a week before Christmas. Okay! Let's do it!
I forgot how much stuff we have in that room, and that we'd have to put it throughout the rest of the house! (I should have taken pictures!) To make a long story short, he got it done in a day with the help of Ben, Savanah and me.
He was limping just a bit yesterday from his sore back, but the floor looks great and it's encouraged me to do some purging of old materials we will never use!
Merry Christmas to us!

Jelly Roll Quilts

Last time I went to Utah, Lori had a new book about Jelly Roll Quilting that was fascinating to look at.
When she and Mandy decided to come to California for a visit, we thought it might be fun to make quilts while they were here. We all chose fabric, cut it into 2 1/2" strips and were ready for the big quilting bee. (Okay, I know it wasn't a traditional quilting bee, but we were ready to make quilt tops together.)
We had three sewing machines and were busy as bees for 2 and a half days.
I think we all came to the conclusion that sewing for 12 hours at a time is not conducive to fun!
We did make great progress on the tops and we did have a good time together!

Hoarding

I've decided there is a fine line between being frugal and being a hoarder.
This conclusion was drawn after Ben requested huckleberry pie for Thanksgiving and I went to the garage and grabbed my last bottle of huckleberries. I glanced at the lid and it didn't really dawn on my until I got back to the kitchen that the date on the top was 1992!!!
Yup, I was waiting for the perfect time to make a lovely pie and I saved them until they became outdated. I believe that qualifies as hoarding.
The frugal part of my brain said, "Go ahead and use them; the lid was sealed just fine." But there was a slightly 'off' smell when I opened the jar, and as I poured the liquid through a strainer I realized that it was clear, not purple as it should be.
Gritting my teeth, I dumped the contents of the strainer down the disposal, and made a blueberry pie instead. It certainly isn't as good, and it's more blue than purple. (Maybe I should have added red food coloring?)
Anyway, next time I won't oversave the berries. We'll use them before they expire....And I really intend to go huckleberrying with my sisters next year; I need more berries!

Clanging Pots

Last night was a High Priest event for our Stake. I was asked to play the organ at the Mormon Center. Other organists used to complain about the organ there and I turned a deaf ear because it was 'my' organ. Now that I've been playing another organ for a couple of years, I understand their complaints!
Back to last night: I was on the organ bench and had just finished prelude. The Stake President was making announcements and I decided to adjust my bench a bit. I put my legs forward so I could push against the organ and my knee brushed the metal cover on the light for the pedals. It's usually pushed firmly onto the flourescent bulb but last night it was loose. It clanged onto the pedals, sounding like pots falling on tile floors.
I was mortified, but I tried to pick it up so it wouldn't be in my way for the opening song. I just made more noise! Then the cover settled under the pedals. It probably would have been okay, but I was worried about it hitting one of the pedals and not being able to play the note, so I got down on my hands and knees and gently pulled it out of the way.
While I was in that position (prone), I heard the Stake President thank the chorister and me (individually). I wanted to stay on the floor until attention was called away from us, but he announced the opening song and I had to get up to play.
One more 'organ adventure'! (Yes, there have been many.)

...And it lightly touched down!

I had just come home from dropping off some friends at the airport and was putting the trash cans behind the fence...thinking "This is not my job."...when I realized that the buzz I was hearing in my head was actually the rotors of a helicoptor flying very close to the earth!
It was hovering over the electric towers that run down the length of Oak Avenue Parkway a couple of blocks from our house. I caught a glimpse of it and paused to watch it, wondering what it was doing. As I pondered, it approached the tower that I could see beyond the houses across the street and it 'lightly touched down' on the top of the tower!
After I gazed on the spectacle for a few seconds, I pulled out my phone to take a picture. (Good thinking, huh?) Then the chopper lifted off again.
It's still buzzing around the neighborhood and I'll bet I could get a picture if I really tried, but I think you could imagine the spectacle pretty well without the picture. It wouldn't be spontaneous at this point anymore, would it?
...'Mr. Bojangles! Mr. Bojangles! Dance....'

Labor Day Really IS!

(A day for Labor, that is!)
Because we don't have family that lives close to us, we've been in the habit of inviting other people to share holidays and such with us. We usually end up having at least two pool parties during the summer. They are so much work, but the end result is getting to know a bunch of people on an informal basis (that is, other than a church setting.)
Today we had our first pool party of the year...pretty sad that we waited until September!
John worked like a dog on Saturday hauling trimmed limbs and garbage away, and bringing in two truckloads of bark. The yard looks great!
I made a general announcement in Relief Society yesterday, and then spent the day wondering if anyone was going to show up! I knew two families were coming for sure, but after everyone left, I sat down and counted: 42 people and about 10 families. Woo Hoo!
My feet are very tired after the shopping, cleaning and food prep. John is asleep on the couch after the running of errands for me and helping Ben buy a truck. (Yup, you read that right: Ben bought a truck today. He's got his bug up for sale on Craig's List and has had a few bites, but no buyers yet. John and he found a deal that they thought was too good to pass up...) He's always so good about cooking the meat and helping to clean up after the party is over.
Roxy is a lump. She spent the evening begging food off of everyone who fell for her 'poor puppy' routine. (That would be everyone but our family!) She can hardly move, she's so full of food.
These events always leave me thinking we should do them more often, but during the preparation, I wonder what in the world I've gotten myself into! Obviously, I've gotten myself into a lot of work and then fun! Wish I had pictures, but nope. I was too busy to take any. You'll have to take my word for it: a great time was had by all.

Moth Wars!

Six! Yells the voice in my head as I kill yet another one. Last night the tally was 32, the night before that it was 30.
I hate moths! Now that we've cleared that up...
The best way to get the little buggers is with the hose on my vacuum cleaner. There's no flailing around the room as you try to either swipe the elusive creatures out of the air with one hand (which I can do, by the way!), or slap you hands together in an attempt to smash the thing while it flutters unaware. You merely point and suck.
This war began about three years ago, and I learned that moth traps called 'Pantry Pest' are great at attracting and trapping moths. However, I've begun to wonder if they aren't too good at attracting them. Am I inviting a larger number of them indoors?
In the past few weeks, I've noticed a huge increase in the amount of them weaving through the air in my house. Not just in the kitchen anymore, but in the whole house including the garage!
The cupboards have been cleaned one at a time, but I can't get all of the little eggs that are laid in the nooks and crannies. So when evening rolls around, the war is on! I think the moths are hitchiking in bulk foods from WinCo. I hate to even say it because I love shopping there, but that seems to be how they are arriving in our house.
So, the options are: continue the war, which will definitely happen regardless; discontinue shopping at WinCo, which I cannot bring myself to do; or freeze everything from the bulk foods section after I bring it home. Hmmm. I vote option three at the moment.
Meanwhile, I'm back on duty!

Pears in pairs....

Our Relief Society President had a contact to buy pears from Oregon this year. They were $19 for 42 pounds. I don't know if that is a good price or a bad one, but I bought a box, figuring that it was high time I tried my hand at bottling fruit again.
Well, the pears came...from Marysville CA about 40 miles to the North of us. Apparently the Oregon grower ran into rain or cold problems, so the pear crop was not a bumper one. No problem! They'll still be delicious, right?
I had to wait for them to ripen. After a week, I decided I'd better get them preserved. Dehydrated pears sounded really good, so I went looking for a dehydrator. My friend has one, but had loaned it to someone else. No one else that I asked had one, so plan 'B' was to dehydrate them on cookie sheets at 120 degrees in my oven. Okay, I can do that!
The cookie sheets only held two pears per sheet. They stuck to the pans, but they sure were delicious! I finally went looking to buy a dehydrator for myself, but nothing I saw was what I wanted. Kohl's let me order one in the store and will ship it to me, but I won't get it until next Wednesday. All the pears would be rotten by then...
On to plan 'C': bottling them! This plan was fabulous except for a small problem; I couldn't find either my cold pack canner or my pressure cooker. Ho-boy! Now I'm on the phone looking for a dehydrator and a canner. Bingo on both counts.
The dehydrator works so much easier than the oven! The first batch of pears in the steamer I over-cooked, and broke two bottles. (What a waste!) The second batch I actually pulled off. Overall, 11 bottles sealed. A couple of them look like they leaked quite a bit before they sealed, but hey, who's being picky at this point?
I also made some fabulous pear butter with orange peel and nutmeg flavoring, and some fruit leather. I'm not sure how the leather is going to turn out yet. It's in the dehydrator as I type this.
I feel accomplished with my little pear bottles sitting on the island. Now the question is, will anyone eat them?!?

Cancun, Mexico

Earlier this year John decided that we all needed to go to Mexico for a vacation. So, we did!
We arrived in hot and humid Cancun on Sunday, June 6th and stayed in a condo just outside of Playa del Carmen.
It was a relaxing vacation with just a couple of trips to the tourist attractions, and lots of time spent walking from our rooms to the pool and back again.
We visited Xaret and floated down their underground river. I think the idea was that we would snorkel down the river, which we did some of, but it was more fun to be above water and listen to the kids laughing and teasing each other. We saw quail chicks hatch, went into a bat cave (which freaked Savanah out), watched dolphins play, saw sea turtles, a jaguar, leopard, and all sorts of animals.
The highlight of the day was a show that featured 'native' ball games being played. One of them was kind of like hockey with a flaming ball instead of a puck. The other was played on the same style of court you see in the ruins like Chichen Itza. The players in the second game could only use their hips to move the ball. It was very interesting to watch.
We also went to Chichen Itza to look at the ruins one day. It was miserably hot and muggy! (John and I had been there before, but there weren't vendors everywhere like there were this trip.) We also weren't allowed to climb the pyramid where we could before. Anyway, it is an incredible display of history. I would have liked to taken a tour and heard more about what the buildings were used for, but I don't think the rest of my family has the patience....
Great trip and as always, it felt wonderful to be on American soil. We arrived back home on June 13th, our 24th anniversary. Happy anniversary to the whole family!

Knitting: the Story for Another Day

I started knitting when Ben was about two...and stopped after my first project: a sweater for him. It was an adorable forest green and ecru striped number; long sleeves and a crew neck.

Three years ago I got the crazy idea to start knitting mittens. They were made of wool and I felted (or shrank) them to make them a little more weather resistant. Not being one to do anything half-hearted, I made them for friends for Christmas (about12 pairs - One of my friends uses them as hotpads. That works!), Missionaries (3), and family members (5). Yup, three years later I'm still 'Mitting Nittens'! If you have not been a recipient and would like to be, please email me...

Fast forward to Girls Camp (this will be year 17 for me, not including my five years as a youth). This year I'll be hiking with the fourth level girls for three days and two nights. At our regular camp we thought we'd have to be sleeping in tents because we have so many young women attending this year. The Stake Camp Director asked me to come up with a way to make it easier on the 4th level to have to sleep in tents, and I came up with a brilliant idea: knit hats for all of them. (I had a pattern I was dieing to try!)

The fact that there are 25 girls in this level this year was only a small negative: I'd get help! I enlisted four friends, three of whom didn't know how to knit. So, I taught them! Tracy was really motivated and made four hats. (She actually made one had twice because she was so unhappy with the finished product. She spent hours and hours working to get the stitches just right.) Julie was a natural and got four hats done quickly. Carol already knew how to knit and was going to treatment sessions with her husband every other day. I got a hat from her after each treatment; nine in total. Jessica picked things up pretty rapidly. I had to start her over a couple of times. She had enough yarn for twohats, although I tried to take the second ball from her because she was busy doing other things and not knitting...I ended up finishing the second hat this week; the week before camp!

I couldn't leave it at 25; one for each girl! We had to do one for each leader, including the certification leader (4), and one for each YCL (3), and two for the dad's who are hiking with us! Total: 35. (If you are counting, you'll notice there is one extra hat. What if we have another girl show up at the last minute?) Whew! I'm glad that project is finished!

Speaking of Pictures...

One last thought before I'm done for the day...

In my last post, I talked about the seemingly inherent ability of young people to shoot pictures of themselves. I asked someone to take pictures for me during our family dinner before Dad and Carol got married, and this is my favorite by far:

It's my favorite, because I've done the exact same thing before, so I can really relate to the picure-taker! Love you, Lori! =)

Mothering

During Spring Break, we were at a cabin in Utah with some friends. Savanah and I were laying on the floor one day just giggling together, and we started taking pictures of ourselves. I know that she (Savanah) and her friends have a great sense of how to aim the camera the get faces just right. I, unfortunately, don't have that same sense so it takes a bit for me to hit faces just right.

We were taking pictures of funny faces (yes, I'm going to publish one against my better judgement). After this one, Savanah told me that's the face I should use when I'm 'mothering' her. She's getting to the age that she doesn't want me to 'help' her with some things. I keep telling her that it's my job to mother her, and I can't stop after 13 years.

I am trying to relax a little and let her do for herself when she can. (Funny thing is, she wants the help when she's on the couch and doesn't want to get up. I'm usually dead-dog tired at those times!)

Okay, so here's the 'mothering ' face. It makes me laugh everytime I see it, and I thought I should let you see it too! Here's to faces!

Artichokes, four for $1.00

When I was little, (okay, we were living in Hyrum, so I must have been at least 9) I remember Uncle Lorin coming to our house and telling a joke about a headline that read 'Arti Chokes 4 for $1.00'. He found it so humorous that it left an impression on me.

To this day, I cannot see artichokes on sale without wondering when they were ever that cheap, and thinking about Uncle Lorin and his joke! I found some last week that were $.79 each and thought I'd found a deal!

Being the ever-experimenter that I am, a couple of years ago, I thought I'd try to grow my own artichokes! I planted a few plants and watched them die through the summer. As I was planting last Spring, I found one lone plant and transplanted it to an out-of-the-way bed. I watched it through the year as the lower leaves turned yellow and died, then new leaves would sprout and the whole process would start all over again.

Instead of pulling the whole plant out (as was my inclination) I cut off the old stuff and kept watering it. This Spring, it looked really good! I glanced at it last week on my way to the chicken coop and to my surprise, I found a very small artichoke growing at the top of the plant!

So, today I am documenting the event. Not only one, but three artichokes are growing! That's just one fruit for each year I've been trying...not good odds, and I wish I knew what the difference was this year. Maybe it was all the chicken sh... I've been spreading around the garden this winter? Who knows? I'll keep it up this next year and see what happens!

Friends

I've been doing a bunch of different things today: taught a friend to knit (that's a story for another time...I'll write something when it's over.), did a great workout, took Savanah to a babysitting job at the church tonight (14 Young Women are babysitting 42 kids tonight to earn money for camp!)

I just got home and found Ben and Michael swimming! It's been a beautiful sunny day amidst gray and rainy ones and the temperature is only 72, but there they were, in the pool. They said it was cold. (Yeah, I'll bet!) I guess they went long-boarding and got hot, so they thought they'd take a dip! I can't remember the last time I saw Ben swim in our pool.

Anyway, I thought I'd share...fond memories of young, active boys. Now they're young, active men! :)

My Cute Sisters!!!

Since I'm on a roll, I just have to say how much fun I had while I got to spend a week with my sisters preparing food for our Dad's wedding!

We not only made and decorated a wedding cake, and the food for the wedding breakfast, but we made jelly bean topiaries, went to the store several times, had two family dinners, and generally a good time.

I love being with them because I feel like I can tell them anything and they'll understand. They also share my sense of humor and are quick to laugh at just about anything!
So, when the wedding cake went from slightly tilted to the leaning tower of Pisa, to a crumbled mess, there was a little stress, but mostly a sense of 'What can we do now?' It ended up being two chocolate cheesecakes on the bottom, to party cakes for the middle layer and the top layer of the wedding cake on top. If you didn't know, you wouldn't have suspected anything!

Christmas

After going through some pictures, I decided that I needed to publish these pictures (since I figured Mandy would like to see them!)

We've got a picture pretty similar to this one for each Christmas we've lived in this house...since Ben was 5. That would make 17 pictures - two of them without Ben - of the kids in their jammies before they opened presents. I love to see their 'Christmas Jammies'. I hope they like to get them as much as I like to make them!

Remember when we opened presents one at a time, one person at a time? That method went out the window in our family about the third Christmas after we had kids. Now it's about a 10 minutes free-for-all! We can finally sleep in until about 8:00, instead of waking up at the crack of dawn, thank you Savanah! It does make it a little more complicated for Santa to come deliver all the gifts when the kids stay up until midnight.

After the gifts under the tree, we move to the stockings. This year, 'Santa' gave me some jewelry and John some screwdrivers. That was pretty funny...who was my Santa? (Me!) Who was John's Santa? (John!) Can you see the matching jammie bottoms for John and Ben? After I cut them out, Tessa saw the fabric and said she'd like some of the same. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough and she had to settle for pink hearts with black cross-bones.

Someone even saw fit to 'wrap' puppy in a ribbon. She didn't like it much, look at how she's cowering!

Anyway, a Merry Christmas it was! Hope yours was the same!