Gardens and Temples and Other Fun Springy Things

Spring is finally here and I am loving it!    Never mind that it snowed last week...this week the weather is beautiful and that's what I'm embracing today!   What does Spring mean for me?   It means increasing my mileage on my morning walks (30+ miles a week)...

thinking about summer endeavors, and, this year, finally thinking ahead to our garden.   As I've mentioned before, we are pretty lazy gardeners, so consider the next thing I tell you as somewhat miraculous!  

I STARTED SEEDLINGS THIS YEAR!

This is literally my first time ever starting our garden from seeds, so forgive me if I sound like I'm bragging a bit.  Because I am.   Neither of us are yard and garden people and any garden we've ever had before has been planted and kept alive (or not) by fits of inconsistent efforts and a good dose of  luck.   So please pat me on the back and tell me how amazing I am to not have to BUY starters from the store this year. 

I'm so excited about it that I even bought another tray and am going to plant more.   Go me.  Now all I have to do is keep them alive until planting time (which is about mid-May here in Utah), then keep them alive in the garden all summer.  

Wish me luck.  I need it. 

On a completely different note,  here are a few other random tidbits from the last couple weeks.  

The hockey season is ending soon and it finally worked for me to attend a game with Glen.   And Utah Hockey Club even won, so that made it extra fun. 

Adam ran into my cousin's daughters one Sunday when he was attending a different ward.  They hadn't seen each other in several years, but somehow recognized each other nonetheless!

We immediately invited them over for Sunday dinner at our house, so we could reconnect as well. 

Oh, and I like that we still share a camera roll with Emma and Adam...

Here Adam is with friends the Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork.

And a temple selfie...

And another temple selfie with Emma...

I know I mentioned it in my last blogpost, but Ellie recently attended the temple for the first time on her mission since the MTC, but since I already shared that picture of her,  here's another cute one of her from this past week.   She seems really happy.

 I know it was completely random, but that is all for my update today!  I hope you all have an amazing week and weekend!  

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Obsessed and Boring

 Hey there! 

Here's a boring little life update...

 I think I have discovered the yummiest cookies in the history of the universe.  They're brown butter maple pumpkin cookies.    I used gluten free flour and subbed some of the brown sugar with coconut sugar, but that didn't affect the deliciousness level one bit and I think I may be obsessed.

  I made them once in Saint George, then made them again because I couldn't stop thinking about them...this time with a healthy maple frosting (sweet potato based with maple syrup, a bit of maple extract, and a little coconut oil).   It sounds weird, but it was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good.   Have I mentioned that I'm obsessed?   

 

 Also, the garden harvest has been plentiful this year and I'm loving it, though I am kind of over all the giant zucchini....and I haven't checked yet, but it was 31-degrees when I woke up the other day, so it might all be dead now.  Boo.

I went on an 8 mile hike the other day in the fall perfection and my average mile was 15:18...it felt great!

Glen didn't come with me on the hike, because he was doing his annual fall fishing trip on Strawberry Reservoir with Alex and boys...

The next day, Glen smoked that very trout and we ate it for dinner, which was quite delicious.   The kale salad was from our garden, the bread was GF, and the sweet potato a nice touch.   We ended with the aforementioned cookies that I'm currently obsessed with, so I ate way too much and ended the day with a tummy ache....

I keep finding photos like this in my camera roll (which we share with the youngest 3 kids) and it makes me smile!   I think she's liking college life!  

I haven't seen Lucie, Cam, or Garrett since Labor Day weekend and I have been missing them extra lately (probably has something to do with the empty house).   Every picture (even when taken at a gas station)  I get makes me want to get on a plane right now...   

In the meantime, I am eagerly looking forward to Thanksgiving! 

Thanks for reading!  Have an amazing day!

Ten Things that Made Me Smile Recently

If you know me in real life or have been following along with this blog for long, you will probably not be surprised to hear that sometimes I struggle to see the bright side of things.  I came from a family of worriers and I think my brain's natural way to see the world is with wariness, lest anything bad is just about to happen. This is not my favorite part of my personality, but it is how I'm wired, so I have to work really hard to maneuver my way around these tendencies and keep from being a Debbie Downer all the time. 

One of the things I try to do regularly, though probably not regularly enough, is to record some things in my life that are going well and that are making me happy.   My favorite way to do this is to keep a daily gratitude journal where I can write one thing from each day that I'm grateful for.   I go in spurts with it, where I'm really good at it for a while, then I get out of routine and it takes me a while to get back to it.   Here are a couple of my daily logs from earlier this year that show you how random I am with it!  

I haven't kept up my daily gratitude journal in a few months, since it, like many of my other good habits I sometimes keep up, seem to fall by the wayside in the summertime.   Lately I've been feeling like it's time to start it back up again, but, first things first, I want to share a few happy things in my life here with all of you!    Blogging is good for my mental health and I like that what I share here gets preserved for future generations, as well as being an outlet for me to get down what's in my very muddled brain!  
 
TEN THINGS THAT ARE MAKING ME HAPPY

1.  We just returned from Labor Day weekend in Atlanta and got to spend time with everyone but Adam (on his mission) and Spencer (no luck finding care for Kiwi, his pit-pointer mix).   It was a wonderful weekend exploring,eating good food, and just savoring our time with Cami, Garrett, and Lucie who drove 2-hours to meet us there!  Family time makes me incredibly happy!  Stay tuned for a more detailed blogpost coming soon.

2.  I am grateful that our garden is starting to produce like crazy!   As mentioned in this post, gardening is something I'm not that great at, so I'm always extra happy (and honestly a bit surprised) when we start to reap the harvest in our overgrown and late-planted garden.  Yay for fresh fruits and veggies! 

3.  Speaking of gardening, I went out to do a little weeding the other day (the first time all summer) and I wore my pink overalls and listened to a good audiobook.   Every time I looked down at my happy pink outfit, I would think two things #1--how much I like pink, #2--I should probably just embrace my love of pink and  go see the Barbie movie

4.  On a recent walk, I found this big fancy house with a statue/fountain of Charlie Brown dressed as a Greek god.   It totally made me laugh out loud!  

5.  My 94-year-old grandmother just moved out of my parents' basement  to an assisted living center.  I think it was a very difficult move for her, but with her late-onset dementia and my Dad gone, it was definitely time for a new arrangement.  We stopped by to visit with her the other day and she was so happy to see us.   We brought her her favorite cookies and just chatted with her for a bit.   I am grateful that she has found a place that is nearby and that will meet her needs more fully! 

6.  I know it's a bit weird for me to have taken up sourdough bread baking again (since I can't eat it), but I was really proud of how this recent sourdough pizza crust came out.   The gluten eaters of the family very much approved and the bruschetta topping straight from our garden was absolutely delicious!   I had mine on a gluten free "cauliflower thin"! 😋

7.  I was introduced to the goofy .5 pictures by my niece, McKenzie, but it wasn't until my 2-1/2 weeks in Thailand with 21 young people that I realized how obsessed teens are with them! 😂 Here are a few Ellie recently took, though somehow she "forgot" to take one of herself, so the photo of her in the collage is from Thailand.  

8.  If you knew me from Virginia, you probably know that I'm mildly obsessed with making church programs.  It's an ongoing skill/passion of  mine that makes me laugh because of how utterly useless it is.   I'm not sure anyone  looks at them anyway, but it is a weird little thing that makes me incredibly  happy (and provides a creative outlet for me), so here I am doing them again!    Our ward here in Utah didn't do paper programs at all and refused my offer to make them several times before finally giving into my requests.  I was told, though, that it wasn't the paper program they were wanting, but something for the young women to do at church.  So I make them and the young women distribute them. Haha.  Someday I'll find something to do that matters, but in the meantime I'm happy to give the young women a job! 

Another thing that you probably know if you knew me in Virginia, is that I don't like to use any old art on the cover of the programs.  I like to get the ward members involved and use their original art.   In Virginia, I always had a steady stream of art being submitted to me and I only occasionally had to ask for it.   Here in Utah, however,  I have had a really hard time getting  people here on board with my vision.   I was putting my request in the program every week, sending notes to the primary president, asking people with lots of kids, etc. and getting almost nothing.  Finally, I had the great idea of bribery.   I started adding a note in the program that every person who gave me a picture for the program would get candy.  It took a few weeks to catch on, but I am now officially  the candy lady and I usually have a steady stream of kids bringing me their artwork after sacrament meeting--some of it usable and some not.   And I LOVE IT!   I'm happy to be the weird program making candy lady of the ward! 

9.  I know I mention this a lot, but I love that my body is strong and fit and can walk a million miles.  I've gained some weight since my hysterectomy in December, but it's not for lack of exercise!  My daily walks are a HUGE part of what keeps my mental health on the plus side and I'm thankful to live in a beautiful area that means even my neighborhood walks are scenic!  

10.  Speaking of beautiful morning walks, here are a few things I saw on my walk this morning.   A cute little wild turkey family crossing the road, an apple that fell off a tree inches from my face, a deer that totally froze until I was only a couple feet away from it, a horse that peed so loudly I turned around to see what was making all the noise, a cute baby deer just chilling in someone's yard, and fields of wild sunflowers.  

So there you have it...10 things that have made me smile recently!   Now time to get back to the daily gratitude log!   Have an amazing day! 

{Click here if you want to see some of my other gratitude posts from over the years}

The Garden of Neglect

Gardening is something I've always had a desire to do, but, for  multitudinous reasons, we were never very successful at it in Virginia. I'll blame it in equal parts on our hilly, shady backyard, the deer that frequented our front yard, and the five kids that kept me hopping.  In any case, we were very excited when we bought our house here in Utah, to discover that we would have a bunch of raised garden beds in our flat, sunny backyard, without us having to do anything to create them! 

Last year we were too absorbed by moving in and did nothing to maintain our gardens.  Much to our delight, though, we still got to  enjoy a few perennial items that just come back every year without expending effort.  We had plums, raspberries, eggs, and grapes.  

 Raspberries happen to be my favorite fruit in the universe and we were quite happy with our no-work garden yield, but definitely still daydreamed of bigger/better harvests in years to come.    

This year could have been the year, but things got a little derailed when our summer unexpectedly turned  out very differently than what we expected.    It wasn't until late-June/early-July {literally right before my Dad passed} before we finally planted anything.  As you might imagine, maintenance was minimal.  

Fast forward a few months of  zero weeding and the occasional watering, we're amazingly enough getting a harvest!   Apparently we planted the robust version of everything but the cucumbers and zucchini, which both withered and died shortly after planting.  Almost everything else is producing like crazy.  

This was our yield in just one day last week.    And we have lots more to come.   

We've made homemade tomato soup,

roasted veggie pasta sauce,

 fresh salsa, panzanella salad,

and Spence recently made us some delicious jalapeno poppers.   

That in addition to getting to put fresh tomatoes on everything and me eating the freshest tastiest raspberries around.

Was it as grand of a harvest as it could have been?  
Probably not. 
 
Will it be any better in future years?  
If I'm being honest, probably not. 

Have we thoroughly enjoyed fresh, organic produce right from our backyard! 
100%!

We are definitely calling the garden of 2022 a success and hope that future years will be as fruitful!    

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Letter to Cam

For today's blogpost, I've decided to just include excerpts from my letter to Cami:

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Dear Soeur G.,
Happy P-day!    So, first thing's first.   I am actually in town this Friday, which means that I can be much more responsive today than I've been the last two P-days.   It's my intention to keep the afternoon pretty open, so that if you need my response to anything, hopefully I can be on it pretty quickly.  

Second, why on earth is your cell phone not set to go automatically to "do not disturb" at night?    As you can imagine, almost nothing is happening with your cell phone currently.   It's used for Ellie's daily snapchats, taking pictures once in a while, and the occasional pokemon adventure (for Ellie), but generally it stays put away in the top of my closet the vast majority of the time.   So, imagine my surprise when last night your phone starts ringing in the middle of the night!  Dad and I have had our phones set to automatic do not disturb for quite a while now, so we're used to never even hearing a mail ping, yet alone a full blown ring.    It took quite a while to get to it at the top of the closet and of course we missed it (and we assume it was a wrong number anyway), but, man, it sure was hard to sleep again after that jolt of adrenaline.    It is now set to "do not disturb" and will stay that way for at least 18 months!

Random DC number that called on YOUR cell phone in the middle of the night.

It's your third p-day today, which means that you're almost half-way done with the MTC now!

The tomatoes are growing like crazy in our garden and we have been thoroughly enjoying them in all their fresh deliciousness.  I know I already told you this, but I'm totally obsessing about the panzanella I'm going to make for the missionaries for tomorrow night's dinner!    Hopefully there will be lots of great families in France that will feed you freshly grown produce straight from their gardens!    Or at least that there'll be lots of little markets where you can buy fresh produce and eat simple, healthful meals....like panzanella.  :)

Perfectly imperfect tomatoes from our garden.

Today we picked up a bushel of fresh peaches that we ordered straight from an orchard.  I was quite excited to dive into dehydrating and jam making tonight, but, alas, not a single one of them is ripe yet.   I am hoping that they don't all ripen this weekend, which will make it harder to give them the attention they need before they go bad...which happens far too quickly with peaches.

The bushel of peaches we ordered came in this cute basket.   Too bad none of them are ripe!

Random tidbit:  I was going through a box in the basement and came across my journal from my freshman year at BYU.   Some of it is pretty mortifying, but ask me nicely sometime in the future and I might let you read bits of it.  :)

My visiting teachers came over today and shared a message about strengthening families.  It's interesting that this has been the topic du jour lately, as it's the theme of our youth lessons for the month, as well as our sacrament meetings.    

“The home is to be God’s laboratory of love and service,” said President Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Our discussion really focused on the word, "laboratory" and how apt that seems for us as parents.    We're constantly trying to figure out what "chemical reactions" work and don't work with each kid and it's an ongoing process of experimenting---with every day things, like discipline and how to interact with each child, but also spiritual experimenting and learning how each child feels the spirit in their lives.     Anyways, it made me think of how imperfect we've been as parents and how impressive it is that you (and your siblings) are where you are, in spite of us!   How grateful I am for the atonement and forgiveness and for a lot of "lab notes" along the way--in the scriptures, from our leaders, from other people who've been down our path before, etc.  

And it made me think about how you're embarking onto a journey into a giant French speaking laboratory soon.    A place where you'll have the opportunity to experiment on His word and learn to do His work in your own way.   In a  way that only you can do.  

We love you and are so proud of you.   Have a wonderful week!  

Love,
Mom


PS  Here are a few other random pictures:

This is a lovely flower we found while out on one of our evening walks.

 

This is what Emma will wear in next week's production of the "Wizard of Oz".  
She is Auntie Em.  

This life-size poster at the library almost gave me a heart attack when I saw it out of the corner of my eye and for half-second thought that a group of people were glaring at me.    Ellie, of course, loved it!  

Day 138--Almost Harvest Time

The strawberries we planted three years ago are finally starting to really give us sweet juicy strawberries. We might even have enough for a batch or two of jam...that is if we can figure out a way to keep the animals (squirrels and birds in particular) from eating them all like they did last year.