The Conference Weekend and Easter Stretch

 Anyone who knows me in person or has been following along here on the blog for very long, knows that I'm a bit disorganized and pretty much the opposite of fancy.   I host a lot these days (between book group and YSA events), but I am definitely not someone who can host something and make it look put-together and effortless.  People come to our house and get a sense that it was a stretch for me to make it happen!   This Conference / Easter weekend was a case in point, with the struggle made  a bit worse than usual because Glen was in Denver visiting his parents all weekend long.  

On Saturday, Adam invited up a bunch of friends to watch Conference in our theater room and to eat all 3 meals at our home.  I had it all planned in advance and thought I was good to go, but somehow struggled even getting breakfast on the table.    I served cheddar cheese pancakes with fruit syrup, bacon (most of which I burned to an absolute char), scrambled eggs, and some fruit.   Besides the bacon, it actually turned out pretty well, but I ended not serving it until 10ish minutes before the first session began, so it felt rushed.  Conference was awesome (of course), and the other meals came together okay (croissant sandwiches for lunch and taco salad for dinner), with only minor omissions and mess-ups.   Most of the day we had about a dozen people there, with some trading places that happened along the way.   

On Conference Sunday, I very spontaneously opened up our theater room to our YSA ward for watching conference.   Over the course of the day we generally had 4-6 visitors there (not including Adam and Tia).  I fed lunch (croissant sandwiches again) to about 10-12 people.      

After all that came the hard part--trying to cook Easter dinner  by myself.  Normally Glen, Heather, and my Mom would make part of the meal as well, but, as previously mentioned, Glen was gone, Heather is still completely non-weightbearing on her broken ankle, and my Mom is struggling with stuff, so it was me.  Adam and Tia helped with some of it, but I was making things that other people normally make (like the potatoes, ham, and meat), so it was all only okay.   My Mom did set the table beautifully, which made me smile.  Neither Heather nor Spence felt up for joining us for dinner, so it just ended up being me, Adam, Tia, Mom, and my nephew, Andrew, so it felt very small.  

Here's a closer look at  what we ate:   Ham, roasted beef, glazed brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes, and Brazi bites.   I had also made some carrot cake (not shown) and a purchased Oreo ice cream cake was served for Andrew's birthday (which was also on Easter Sunday).  

We also got to talk to our missionary on Easter and on Monday!   She's finally doing a bit better after struggling with an increase in seizures over the last couple weeks.  It's been a rough couple weeks for our sweet girl and she still isn't 100%, but we are happy that there is some improvement at least!  I am getting so excited for her to come home in June!  

Also on Easter Monday, I got to go to Ashton Gardens for a YSA stake FHE night.  The weather was lovely that day and it was delightful to spend the evening with ward and stake members enjoying the beautiful flowers and amazing sculptures of Christ.  

I'll be honest...I was a bit exhausted after it was all over, but taking into account that I fed about 30 people five separate full meals (though never that many people all at once), I think I did okay.  It's fun living somewhere that we can host that many people and close enough that people actually come, even if it is a stretch for me!  

And I'll end with a quote from General Conference from Elder Bednar that really stuck with me: 

Enduring to the end is linked inextricably to the spiritual gift of charity. Enduring to the end is not merely a relentless determination to grit our teeth, hold on to the limits of our physical strength and mental capacity, and push through the challenges and adversities of mortal life; it is so much more than that.

Enduring to the end is the joyous quest of a lifetime—a pressing forward with faith in Jesus Christ in a gradual process of trusting in and receiving help from our Savior to become more like Him. As our love for Him grows ever stronger and deeper, we can be blessed to receive spiritual perspective, the Lord’s empowering grace, and exceedingly great and indescribable joy.


Life has felt a little heavy and hard lately and I needed this reminder about what enduring to the end is really all about.  I may not be crossing as many things off my own to-do list right now, but He's helping me to focus on what's most important.   💓

A Big Dinner!

  Entertaining is not something that comes naturally to me.  We've always hosted missionaries for dinner and  had an open door policy when it came to the kids' friends hanging out/eating with us,  but I've never been much of a party planner or big dinner party kind of person.  You can read some very hilarious (but entirely true) blogposts from past days (here and here (part d) being good samplings) when the kids basically planned their own parties and I just did my best to make their chaotic dreams come true.   Chaos is a good description of how I rolled, especially when the kids were younger.  

 It's been pretty quiet since moving to Utah.  I host  book group at our house every month, have hosted the college kids' friends several times for General Conference weekend, and have thrown the random cookie party (see part 3 of this post),  but,  except for when nieces, nephews, and grandkids come to visit, it's rather quiet here on a day-to-day basis.    

Now that we have 180 or so young adult kids, though, we find ourselves hosting a lot more than usual.  One of the regular items on our calendar is a monthly FHE dinner, when 1/3 of the ward at a time is invited to our home for dinner.  Thankfully, 1/3 of the ward doesn't actually show up every time, but we plan on serving about 50...just to be safe.

 This past Monday was the 4th such dinner we've hosted (the 3rd for our current ward).  We've kept the menu the same for each 1/3 of the ward and plan to switch it up for our next three dinners.  This round has  been taco salad, rocky road brownies, and fruit. Everything I make is gluten free, which is something that some people really appreciate and no one complains about, since I go to great lengths to make everything taste great anyway! 

 I make the taco meat, dressing, and brownies on Saturday, then chop everything and  pull together the rest of the details the day-of.     In the middle of getting ready, we talk to our missionary, since it's her p-day.  I always feel a little bad on these Mondays, because we are definitely more distracted than usual talking with her.  I can't wait until she can come join us for these dinners in about 7 months.  :) 

It was very fun to hear  about her first baptism this week!  She was so happy and told me that she'd for sure be extending her mission (scheduled to end in June) if she wasn't finishing up the same transfer as her mission president.  That little tidbit surprised me, but also made me happy to know that she's having a good enough experience on her mission that she'd even consider extending.  

We ended the phone call with Ellie at 6:55pm and quickly did our last-minute prep while awaiting for our guests to arrive at 7:00pm!   This  picture doesn't include the meat, but shows a glimpse of how we set things up for the taco salad menu.  

Our first dinner in this ward ended up being about 45 attendees and each dinner since then has gotten progressively less well attended.  This past Monday, it ended up being about 25 people.   Since we are about 40 minutes from BYU, it's not surprising that fewer people have come as the semester has gotten busier.  

We always start with a spiritual message, before getting to the food. I love the chance to talk with individual members and get to know them better while they are in our home.   And it seems that they enjoy being in a homey setting and eating home-cooked food.  

 
It's  fun to see who gets the most excited  about Denali too.  She generally gets pretty smothered with lots of affection during these evenings and we almost always get a few volunteers for dog-sitting.  She very much enjoys all the attention, though she remains as awkward as ever!  

Since starting to host these dinners regularly, we've invested in way more serving dishes and folding chairs.  It's fun to have a big enough space to actually have room to store them, as well as use them!  

We also have started stocking up on disposable containers from the Dollar Tree, so they can bring all the leftovers home at the end.   

 Our stress level, even outside this calling (mostly to do with Glen's job), has been very high lately, but all in all, serving in a YSA ward is stretching us in positive ways we've never expected.   We are often tired and feel some heaviness at some of the struggles the members face, but we feel it is a privilege to be able to love and serve in this way.  💗 

General Conference Weekend-April 2025

After raising a big family, it's still kind of weird being empty nesters.  I often get a little disconcerted when it's too quiet in the house,  and I'm glad our neighbors have kids who play outside a lot, because somehow that happy noise makes me feel a little more at home. And I do have to admit that I really enjoy living close enough to our college kids to get to see them on a regular basis.   Emma and Adam often come up for Sunday dinner and, unlike with our older two kids, we actually get to meet a lot of their college friends.   

 Adam started hosting friends here for General Conference weekend back when he was a freshman at BYU and I'm really happy that he's picked it back up after his mission. It was a lot of  work getting beds ready and bathrooms scrubbed for the big crowd to stay the weekend, but it's so fun once they get here, that we don't mind the work a bit! 

Over the course of the weekend, we had about 15 people who came and went, but there was a core group of about 6 that stayed the whole time.  I wish I'd thought to take pictures of everyone before they left, but there are several people not pictured here. 

During October General Conference, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen getting ready for meals with the group.  We wanted to try to  avoid that this year, so I did most of the kitchen prep in days leading up to their arrival.  That meant making several loaves of banana bread, making a few pans of honey-lime enchiladas, baking lots of cookies, and doing some chopping for another meal.   Everything ended up coming together very smoothly and we liked simplifying the work we did while everyone was here.  The food all got eaten up or sent home with people! 

I actually pulled myself together this year and created and printed a bunch of  General Conference activity packets for this conference.  I brought them around to several neighbors, but had a few left for the college kiddos to use if they so chose. 

A few of them were into them and several people tried my super hard word search...

I was really happy when my niece, McKenzie, and her roommate came up for one of the sessions.  She just got her mission call to Gilbert, Arizona, and we were really happy to see her again! 

Glen and I watched upstairs, so the youngsters could have their space in the theater room downstairs.  We didn't take many pics down there, but here's a glimpse...  It's a big room that can seat a lot of people and you can kind of see the side table full of snacks in the second picture.  Next time I'll get better pics!

After the last session, a few of them hiked up to Horsetail Falls and came back a bit muddy and wet.  

It was a full weekend.  A full house.  Full hearts.  Full tummies.   Full spirits.     Can't wait for October!  
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Click here to see General Conferences of years' past.   

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Relief Society Paint Night Activity

I've had a lot of callings in my life and I would say that the 2-1/2 years I've spent as Relief Society Activity Coordinator have not been my easiest. My early days in the calling were filled with misunderstandings, made worse by high stress in my life and some poor communication on someone else's part.  Dynamics with the new RS presidency (called about 1/2 way through me getting this calling and now)  have been MUCH more smooth and I'm happy to report, completely drama free.    Having said that though....I'm tired!   Planning activities for adults has stretched me waaaaaaaaaay  outside my comfort zone and, after doing it for a couple years,  the activities have been getting much harder for me to come up with and implement lately.  I just barely got released this past Sunday, so this post is all about the last activity I planned.   

This latest activity was one I'd had on my list to do almost since when I first got called back in the summer of 2022.   Every time we discussed it as a committee though, it seemed too complicated to implement.  We worried about the cost of materials, finding an expert willing to teach it, etc.   It just kept getting pushed back again and again.     Finally...I realized that, due to my own poor planning (thanks to laziness and  a whole lot of exciting things happening in my family in August/September), that I was essentially going to be on my own for planning and making the October activity happen.   So, why not do the activity that had been on my brain since the beginning?   That's how we (I) decided to have a Watercolor Paint Night!  

Invitation was designed with a template on Canva. 

All the  hurdles we kept worrying about turned out to be a nonissue.  We borrowed paints and brushes and the only cost was buying a few packs of watercolor paper (fairly cheap at Walmart), getting some styrofoam plates and cups for the paint/water, and getting some black and white copies made (also very inexpensive when providing my own paper).  Apparently you can print them at home too, but my printer is pretty wimpy with thick paper and I didn't want to fight it.  The inkjet ink can also bleed, which was another issue prevented with getting them professionally printed.  For 5 cents a copy, it was well worth it!   Also,  I decided to forego finding a painting expert and just give a quick non-expert's tutorial on using watercolor paints and let people channel their inner Bob Ross and just have at it.

  To decrease the intimidation level that some people might have felt with a blank canvas, I decided to copy simple outlines directly onto the watercolor paper, so they'd have a good place to start with their art.   I got the outlines from here (Christ)  and here (flowers & berries) and here (Mt. Timp temple).  I also cut up some 4x6 blank sheets of watercolor paper for people to test their colors on and to give them the opportunity to create their own design from scratch if desired. 

The biggest issue, by a mile, was the fact that I decided so late in the game what we were doing (and the fact that it was just after General Conference weekend)  that we ended up not having a Sunday to get it announced and advertised.     I emailed, texted, and delivered fliers to people's doors, but we still ended up with only about a dozen people in attendance or so, which is 1/3 to 1/4 of what we usually have.    Despite the disappointing turnout, however,  I think it was a fun activity for the dozen people that did come.  

It was the perfect kind of activity to be productive and social  at the same time, and I loved watching the conversations happening around the room throughout the night!

  Despite the poor attendance (which I view as my fault for planning it late), I consider the night a great success and I'd highly recommend it for anyone planning an evening for adult or teen girls!  

General Conference Weekend with the College Kids!

One of my favorite parts about living in Utah is that we are close to our college kids, which not only means seeing them far more often than if we lived across the country still, but also that we get to meet their friends!    It's been a while since we'd hosted anyone other than family and I was excited when Adam asked if he and some friends could come chill here for General Conference weekend (October 5-6).   

I weirdly didn't actually take a lot of photos while they were here, but here was the planning note Adam sent me to help me with logistics: 

 

 

And here is the menu I came up with...

 

 We tried to keep the menu pretty simple using mixes and store bought when possible, but I'll be honest, Glen and I spent most of the weekend watching/listening to Conference while working in the kitchen.  This was a glimpse of our Sunday morning breakfast...the only food photo I took the whole weekend.    Emma showed up Sunday morning and was the one who made the cinnamon rolls. 

Speaking of photos, this one with terrible lighting was literally the only picture I took of Adam's friends while they were here and it did not even include everyone.   The boys are Adam's roommates (minus the one who had left and plus the honorary roomie that actually attends BYU-Idaho, but comes to visit regularly).  The girls are in an apartment in their ward.  Emma was also there, but didn't join the picture. 

(from left to right:  Conner J, Adam, Zach C, Garet C, Garrett L., Ty L., Marcy, Savannah, and Renee)

 

 

All in all, it was a great weekend with lots of good food, great company, and being inspired  by the words of modern-day prophets!  

PS.  One random cool thing: One of the speakers in GC,  Karl Hirst,  was actually Glen's mission companion in the England London South Mission back in the day (approximately 32 years ago)!  You can read his talk here! 

 

 

 

Zion, Conference, Nerds, and Gala...Oh My!

It's a long story about how we ended up with a Saint George Outpost (a small townhome we're renting in SG while keeping our homebase in Alpine), but, for now, Glen is commuting down there every week and I am trying to figure out as much time with him as I can.     It's not ideal, but selling a house we just bought 2ish years ago isn't totally ideal either, so this is what we feel like is the right option for now.   Perhaps I'll go into more detail about it another time, but this post is for another purpose, so stay tuned! 

We spent our General Conference weekend (a twice yearly conference of our church where we watch messages broadcast at home, rather than at a church building) at the Outpost.   Here's a little recap of our weekend....

  We started the weekend (on Friday) with a trek to Zion National Park.  Glen had never been before and my last journey there was in 2015, so we were excited to be able to experience it together.  We didn't win the lottery for getting a permit to hike Angel's Landing, so we did two shorter hikes instead.  First we did the Canyon Overlook Trail, then Kayenta to the Emerald Pools.  Both were lovely! 

 

 Then on Saturday, we settled in at the Outpost to watch General Conference streamed from Glen's phone onto the television Glen never uses.  We opted not to get internet at the Outpost to save money, so it was just a matter of getting the right cords from Target to stream from his phone.  I imagine that the television will get used a bit more (especially for BYU sporting events) now that we've got cords! 

  It was weird watching Conference without having a houseful of people.   I wasn't really feeling baking a whole batch of cinnamon rolls or doughnuts with just the two of us.  If we'd been at home, I probably would have stopped by a gluten free bakery, but we couldn't find one in SG...

so  we had Nerds Clusters instead.    I'm not usually much of a candy eater, but I have been mildly obsessed with them since discovering them in Thailand.  I can easily eat a whole bag myself, so I was glad to have at least Glen to share them with.  

 On Saturday evening, we went to the Doctors' Volunteer Clinic Gala, representing Glen's workplace.   It was another big reason why we decided to stay in Saint George for the weekend.   It turned out to be a big giant money grab, but it was for a good cause, so it was fun to be there (especially since it was his work that did all the donating).  We did discover that we are pretty terrible at photo booth pics...

Sunday was World Postcard Day (betcha didn't know that was a thing!) and I celebrated between and after sessions by sending around 30 postcards--mostly to people I know and love and a few to some people in a postcard exchange I am a part of.  

All in all, it was a great weekend and I loved the extra time with Glen at the Outpost and being uplifted by the talks.  (I especially love this one, this one,  this one, and this one).   

Have an amazing week! 

Surefire Cure for Insomnia

Life update taken straight from a letter written to our missionary.  I like crossing two things off my list in one fell swoop, so it's a tradition I've kept up  since my first one left on a mission. 
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5/8/2023

Hello dear Missionary!  
How has your week gone?   Has Springtime arrived there in the great state of Oregon yet?    Does Springtime mean copious amounts of rain?   Or are you just basking in sunlight and flower blossoms?  Actually...HOLY MOLY...I just checked the weather app that said Portland will be up in the 90's by the end of the week!   What the heck?!    That's a whole lot warmer than here, but what's new?!   We've still got our heater on over here and I just checked and confirmed that Minnesota is, indeed, also warmer than here,  so I'm not imagining things. 😶 

Oh, FYI, I should probably let you know now that this week was exceedingly not exciting, which means that this letter will probably show up in future textbooks as the surefire cure for insomnia.   In fact, I've already put the two dogs to sleep and I'm yawning, so the effects are kicking in already.  😴

So....what was the super non-exciting happenings of the week here in the G. home?  

Emma ate dinner with some people. Who?   Probably people from her mission, but who knows? 

I challenged the girls to try to stump me with a topic for sending them postcards.   Cami was easy peasy with a request for "exotic animals"...

Ellie wanted "gremlin", so I found her the ugliest most gremliny card I have, put a stamp on it, and actually sent it to her in the mail (of course I did).

  I'll send you a picture of Emma's request and actual postcard once she receives it.  She is only one who came close to stumping me.     Do you have a postcard request?    I'm ready!

Then I saw some pretty trees today.   We are about 2 months behind the blossoming trees in Virginia, but they made me very happy.  

Ellie has a bloodshot eye for no apparent reason.  I think she'd really like you to see this picture.   Please make sure you tell her that I showed it to you. 

Also, Emma does her hair purty and takes selfies.  You should for sure mention this picture to her as well....

You'll be happy to know that Rocky is still kicking.   He may be 101 in dog years, but he's also still annoying as heck--barking for no reason, peeing/pooping on the floor randomly, and getting stuck in the laying position when he's on hardwood floors.  But he's still surviving for now.  

We found this place for Ellie to take her senior pics.  We just need to go back with her cap and gown and make it official. 

I decided to try my hand at sourdough bread again.   I took a class from my neighbor and learned some tips and tricks.  I didn't eat any myself, but reports are very enthusiastic from the gluten eating members of the family. 

The mountains looked really cool the other evening.  Also, check out the behemoth house behind us.   It's massive and not very attractive looking, but they hired some people to help build it and it's  made more progress in the last few months than they had in the previous 1-1/2 years since we moved in.  

You probably thought I forgot....or more appropriately....you probably HOPED I forgot, but I didn't.   Here's your dam humor for the week.   I love you. 

  

ON a less sleepy note, here's a spiritual thought that popped out to me this week from the most recent General Conference....

“...the pure love of Christ is the answer to the contention that ails us
today. Charity propels us “to bear one another’s burdens” rather than heap burdens upon each other. The pure love of Christ allows us “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things”—especially in tense
situations. Charity allows us to demonstrate how men and women of Christ speak and act—especially when under fire. .”

Russell M. Nelson, “Peacemakers Needed,” April 2023

 So, what do you think?   Are you sleeping yet?   Don't worry, I'll try and have a more exciting week next week.    I LOVE YOU LIKE CRAZY!!!!! 

Love,
Yo Momma
💗💗💗

PS  Here's a glimpse of our family phone call from his p-day last week: