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.

From Idaho to Mexico.

The first week of the new year … here we go.  It started with saying good-bye to our Idaho family, and driving home.  Though it was New Years Eve, we got home around six, and hauled in our stuff, unpacked, then watched a movie and went to bed at 11:00, pretty pathetic really.

On New Years Day we made up for it.  We met Barb and Randy, and Donelle and her family for breakfast, before heading to TG point where we literally spent the rest of the day.  We started our 5 movie day with Mary Poppins ...

 Where strangely, we ran into these hooligans … what are the chances.  We also saw, Bumblebee, Second Act, Instant Family and Aqua Man.  We had dinner at Zupas. It was a great day, one we have always looked forward to, but now it will be three years before we do it again.

 On Wednesday we added the Pioneer Woman mixing bowls Dad gave me for Christmas to my shelves above the sink in the kitchen, completing the transition from white to colors. 

Then I made a huge fiber salad to take to work. I was on the same high fiber diet while Emily was on her mission, and lost the most weight I have since living in Payson.  I thought it would be a good thing, since just being Vegetarian and loosing 15 pounds since last June, has stalled for several months.  Whoa, I used my Melmac pioneer woman, small size, mixing bowl for it … it was actually really yummy, and the whole thing had 18 grams of fiber, though it took two sittings to eat.

Then I was off to work, while Dad subbed at the Temple.  The temple film changes were announced that day, but he and others who were not actually working the endowment rooms were unaware of the actual changes, and were told they'd need to do an endowment to see them.

If you are wondering where all the white ironstone went … here is some of it at the store.

After work that night Dad and I went to see the Stake President to 'turn in our papers'. We are turning them in early because President Aura said that Finland is taking up to 6 months to process senior couple visas these days, and we need to be there by mid August.

Early Thursday morning Dad was off to the temple to do an endowment session, since he couldn't stand to wait to see the changes.  I couldn't join him because I had my normal walking date at 7 with Carolyn. He then worked his normal shift there, while I went off to a normal day of work.

 That night we went to a wedding reception in Eagle Mountain.  Here we see Sister Katie Cooper (From West Mountain and a member of the family that boarded our horses when we first moved to Payson), is shown here with her fiancé.  Their wedding is later this month.

We made arrangements to meet up with the Londons there.  Here is Lynn London with Susie Carilli and Laurie Kehr.  Some of our favorite missionaries.

There were also a lot of elders there, not sure why I chose all sisters for my pictures, but it was very much a reunion.

 Elder Shryver Christian and Sister Ashlin Patterick are now Brother and Sister Christian.  We loved both of these missionaries, and they are the second set of our missionaries to marry. (the others are Sister Anna Wilson and Elder Cameron Brown)

On Friday it was time to take down Christmas … here is one of our newest décor items.  I made three of these gnome guys while babysitting for Brit and Spencer for her birthday.

This Santa, that my sister Julie made, is probably the oldest piece of Christmas décor still in use, and still my favorite.  Who knew that one day the guy with blue starred pants and a graphic red and white coat would be a perfect color match for my parlor.  I was tempted to leave him out all year, which I did do one year after I'd had had him a short time … in the end he was nestled in a bin of Christmas décor to not be seen until the Christmas of 2021, how crazy is that.

Saturday turned out to be the perfect day for us.  Dad spent the majority of the day setting up Darby's cable for TV and installing a dog door for Harley.  I, meanwhile, had driven up with him so we could listen to Harry Potter some more (we're listening to book number five now) and I got to go junking, while he and Darby bonded over her to-do list. We finished off our perfect day perfectly by eating a nice high fiber salad (double beans for me) at Café Rio.

We woke up bright and early for our first day of the minimized block meeting schedule, and enjoyed it tremendously, other than realizing that most everyone else had already read the preliminary stuff in Come Follow Me for the Sunday School lesson and we had not. Oops … We made up for it after the meeting though, by going through the multiple intros to Come Follow Me, and then by reading the preliminary stuff and discussing it after the fact.  We'll be prepared for our next Sunday School lesson.  We also adapted our missionary study, that we have striven to continue, to fit the new model of family study for Come Follow Me.  All this change is a bit hard for our old brains to wrap around, but we're doing our darnedest. 

That afternoon we gathered at Trevor's for a Café Rioish dinner, and an overview of their humanitarian trip to Mexican over Christmas, which was evidently amazing. (pictures at the end)  This is a picture of Titan and his Dad in a pair of his 101 plus socks from Christmas.  So much fun!

 We brought along Christmas gifts Emily had sent to us because they were for different families …  How fun are these custom shirts.  We also brought the gift basket for Trevor's family since they had been in Mexico on the 23rd when we gave them to other local families. (We took Britt's family's basket to her last week.) so that was the official end of Christmas for us … actually a day late for the 12 days of Christmas, but really, whose counting?

 Here we are singing to the January birthday people before blowing out the candles on the Birthday cheesecake … as we continue to find an alternative to cake, which none of us like. (Its often brownies)

Now for some pictures from Trevor and Nell and their family's trip to Mexico with about four other families.  Eva made crocheted toys, as did her Aunt Bugs, and Nell's mom made several of her amazing braided rugs.  I think the unicorn in the lower left of this photo is one of Bug's creations.

They attended church with a local ward on the Baja Peninsula, where they gave gifts and food to some members, but mostly to other members of the community that the ward members and missionaries helped them select and to whom they also gave two months worth of groceries. (amazingly for just forty American dollars each)  They had sought donations for this part, and happily several of our family member participated.  I love that Trevor said that several of the families who had received this gift of food in the past had used the money they didn't have to spend on food to enlarge or improve their impoverished housing. 

They also showed some pictures of family fun … this was my personal favorite of those.

So that was our first week of 2019.  We hope yours was full of amazingness too.