Eating Our Way Around the World in 80 Hours.

On Monday I finished up tidying the parlor from our Christmas decor.

I found this great home for my cast iron garden fairy.  The first time I saw this was at Terry Kew's.  She has two and I fell in love, she has one in the house and one out in her garden ... so when I finally found one at an antique show, I made her mine.  Now she has a real home, though it does kind of remind me of Tinkerbelle's time in the lantern.

 Dad, however, got busy and painted the main floor bathroom.  He'd been doing prep work for a week.

He painted the door to the cabinet, which had never been done, as well as the back of the door, as shown below.

It was all pretty exhausting.

On Tuesday we spent the day working on cleaning up the basement.   I've been worried that we had lost two paintings we bought 10 years ago at Whitney Ekins' student art show at BYU.  We were thrilled to find them in a box of posters and paintings down there. We also brought up about 6 boxes of stuff for selling at the mall or taking to DI.  Later in the week Dad built a couple of  internal frames to mount the paintings. Whitney's is the one on the left.

On Wednesday I was off to work ... I decided to add some old wood items to my ironstone display ....

 Which evidently worked because I sold the most expensive piece, an 85 dollar pitcher, which you can just see the bottom of at the top here, later that day.

I took the last of my left over salmon soup, from Monday, along with some rye bread, so I enjoyed a nice Finnish lunch that day.

Dad took a big load to DI while I was at work that day and still had time to make me a nice spaghetti dinner, with garlic bread.  It was yummy.  I love it when he does that.

On Thursday I was off to work again, and Dad did his normal temple shift.  He also took the van in to get it lubed, and replaced the light switch in the back patio.  I came home and made chili that night, for some good solid American food.

On Friday we took Trevor out to lunch for his birthday ... all you can eat sushi.  Yum, here we are at the sushi place, having polished off a dozen rolls between us.

 That night we got together with the Kews to see the opening of a tiny art show at the Provo Library, but first Terry and I went up viewed the show going on in their gallery. They are usually one person shows.  Unfortunately it was uncredited, but I like this one.

I liked the display cases in the library hallway, since Dad and I are so into Harry Potter right now, listening to the books, and even watching the movies.  We just finished the fifth movie, though we are only half way through the fifth book. 

 These are the treats for the mini show, Dad was really the only one of us able to properly view the show, which are also one man/woman shows. (the napkins here are quarter size)

Here is Dad taking pictures of the show ...

There was even a tiny show program on a tiny table ...

Here I am with the artist.

 Afterward we had dinner at the Bombay House with the Kews, who thought they didn't like Indian Food, but they seemed to really enjoy it.  Thanks to Darby and Dallas for the gift certificate they gave us for Christmas ... yummy.

On Saturday Dad and I headed up to Darby's, picking up Davin and Bri's truck on the way, (Thanks you two!)  Dallas and Dad and Darby gathered all the crap left in the back shed and tore off a couple of small storage sheds on the side of the garage and loaded it all into our van, Dallas' truck and Davin and Bri's truck and hauled it all to the dump.  Since neither Paula or Mom start with D, I headed to DI and got some thrifting in.

 Afterwards it was a late lunch at Dallas' favorite Mexican place in Saratoga Springs, getting in just under the 80 hours since my Finnish lunch on Wednesday... Yep, we ate around the world in 80 hours, including Finnish, Italian, American, Japanese, Indian and Mexican food all in just over three days.

 This morning we were off to Lehi, near Becca's first house, to see Elder Smith's homecoming.  Here he is chatting with the Vests, the other couple who went out and came home with us from Finland.

Elder's Smith's Finnish was excellent, I wouldn't know, but I did recognize his thanks the Perkins and the Vests for coming in the middle of his final Finnish testimony.

Afterward we headed to Highland so we could deliver Reagan's birthday gifts on her sixth birthday.  That doesn't always work out, but its fun when we can manage it. Here she is with her birthday cake, wearing one of the tops we gave her,

Back at home we had dinner.  Here we see Dad eating his dessert, the Salted Nut Roll he got from the Summers for Christmas.  Then we watched a movie about Joseph Smith which is one of the Living Scriptures series on the Prophets that you kids watched growing up.  I loved it, and cried a lot.  The story is told from the point of view of WW Phelps.  It was interesting and there was stuff in it I didn't know.  I later read up on WW Phelps, who wrote Praise to the Man after Joseph's death (He read the poem at Joseph's memorial service.)  Do you know that he was excommunicated 3 different times? But the third time was just for two days, he went west with the Saints and lived to be 80.  I love reading about the early days of the church, the gospel was definitely not set down whole piece for the early saints, and yet they were so strong, at least Dad's and my ancestors were, which is why we both had the amazing opportunity to be born into the church.

So after the movie we did our Come Follow Me study, and some personal scripture study as well.  I am already loving the new arrangement for Sundays.