Happy Mothers Day!

This is my Mother with her "Mad Hatters Hat" I have helped her make this hat for a contest. I'm pleased to say that we got "Best in Show" award. We were happy about that.

In honor of Mothers I have found a quote by David O. Mckay.

A Mother's Heart is a Child's Class Room

The Noblest calling in the world is that of Mother.

True Motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence through out the ages long after painting shall have faded and books and statues shall have been destroyed. Deserves the highest honor that man can give .

~David O McKay~

Thank you so much for not "blowing your top" when while my brothers and I had a water fight in the kitchen when we were children.

Thank you for your understanding, love and support.

Happy Mothers Day! Love you!

Cheers Everyone!

A very surprise day!

Yey an updated blog post.

During choir practice the last couple of months the other choir members and I have been learning various Christmas songs. No matter what I have did I couldn't get into these songs. I would mess up the ASL on Silent Night, be out of tune, my heart would just not be into the songs. I was dreading today when we would perform the songs for the Christmas program. Two reasons I was dreading this day, one it's my birthday,(by-the-way I got tons of wonderfully awesome birthday wishes, thank you!), I don't do Christmas on my birthday. Reason is that I like to keep the two separate. The other big one was that I just couldn't get into the songs to do them justice. I worried over that. I fared that that what I was feeling would come out in the performance.

When I got to church this morning I was still concerned about my performance for these songs. During the first song something happen to me. I finely got into the songs. I was wondering about the change, what made the drastic change. All morning I was trying to remember that a lot of people forgets what Christmas is about. People forget Jesus birthday and why He came to earth. During this program I was finely able to forget my problems and focus on what I was doing. I wasn't just singing but I was singing praises to Jesus, thanking Him for coming down to earth to do the most important thing that one man could do; redeem mankind.

I remember back in 2006 I directed a play that was performed by special needs. It was the Nativity, special needs style. One special needs man was our angle in the play. What made the play so special was that this little special needs man kept kneeling down in front of baby Jesus during the performance and saying:

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Ever sense that performance night I have wondered if I did the same thing if I didn't then singing praises to Him I hope would be my thank you!

By-the-way I so got an awesome Happy Birthday song from some cool guys. What more could a girl ask for??

Cheers everyone and Happy Holidays!

Thanks Giving

This year for Thanksgiving, not everyone will be home. Some of my family members will be with their in-laws, one brother will be in Afghanistan. We still pray for his safe return home. All sorts of people have asked me what my family and I will do this Thanksgiving with one brother in a war zone. "Not all of your family will be their!" My question is:

"What are we supposed to do?"

We cant change the circumstances; we will still have family, not all of us will be there. We are however, still going to calibrate how the Pilgrims survived starvation, and gave us the first building blocks of America. In Plymouth on December 22 1820 they have started a tradition called the "Five Kernels of Corn."I have also found a poem called the Five kernels of Corn

This year we are not going to do the bird. Turkey will still be on the menu. We are going to do something that my family loves. We are going to barbecue (sp?) turkey wrapped in bacon. Very good. I know it is November and we are going to barbecue. :)

Turkey breast
Smoked bacon
grill
kabob skewers

Method:
Cut the Turkey breast into bite size pieces. Cut the Bacon horizontally. Wrap the bacon around the turkey. Put through a Kabob skewer. Place on top of grill cook until done.

All month I have seen and herd people saying how they are thankful, and what they are thankful for. For some it is to sleep in, days off, family, friends, to have a job....still, to have a home to be living in, religion, and etc. Me I am thankful when I hear from my brother, it means of course that he is still alive. So this year this Thanksgiving to me means different then past years.

Research

As some of you know I have been writing a musical about pre Utah, so of course that is Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers. Now if you don't mind I'm going to write a little bit about Utah's history. This is fascinating stuff.

In short the Salt Lake Valley was barren, barren, barren. I think that the only thing that grew here was Brine Shrimp and Sagebrush, along with wild Snap Dragons, and other obnoxious weeds. No one wanted this land, not even the Native Americans. There have been reports from people saying that:

"The Mormons will be lucky if they can grow wheat and corn."

How about this quote by Jim Brigder:

" It was imprudent to bring a large population into the Great Basin until they were sure grain could be grown"

The mountain man's pessimism was such that he offered a $1,000 for the first ear of corn raised in the valley "or the Utah Outlet" (which the Mormons would name the Jordan River). Here is a quote from Brigham Young about this land:

"Until the Latter-day Saint's came here, not a person among all the mountaineers and those who had traveled here, so far as we could learn, believed that an ear of corn would ripen in these valleys. We know that corn and wheat produce abundantly here, and we know that we have an excellent region wherein to rise cattle, horse, and every other kind of domestic animal that we need.......There never has been a land, from the days of Adam until now, that has been blessed more than this land has been blessed by our Farther in Heaven; and it will still be blessed more and more, if we are faithful and humble and thankful to God for the wheat and the corn, the oats, and the fruit, vegetables, the cattle a and everything he bestows upon us, and try to use them for the building up of his Kingdom on the earth." (DBY, pg 483-485)

You see if this Salt Lake Valley was so dry and barren that people believe that nothing could grow here, it would need to blessed by God. And it still is!

Brigham young also said this:

"We have faith, we live by faith; we came to these mountains by faith. We came here, I often say, though to the ears of some the expression my sound rather rude, naked and barefoot, and comparatively this is true." (DBY, pg 481)

This has been seriously fascinating. A long cry from the traditional stories we are told; and yet still the same, but told in a different way. I am however going to try and keep this musical as historically correct as possible. So yes I will need to do much more research, and this will take a lot of time.

Cheers Everyone!!

Road Show Up Date!

Things are working out with the Road Show. I will not change anything about the script. I have done enough of that already.

We will have a family photo done tomorrow. Thank you Rick for doing that before Seth leaves for Afghanistan. I know that it was such short notice.

Also thank you all for the love, support, and your prayers.

Changed background

For those of you who read this blog. Thank you by the way. But as you can see I have changed my background.

I HAVE SPRING FEVER LIKE CRAZY!!!

If you couldn't tell. I cant wait until the flowers come up and make things look pretty! I'm so tired of the cold. I want to soak up the sun.

Jasper and The Uncooked Yeast Rolls

I have no clue who wrote this, but it is a funny story.

Jasper and The Uncooked Yeast Rolls

We have a GREYHOUND by the name of Jasper. He came to us in the summer of 2005 from the Greyhound rescue program. For those of you, who are unfamiliar with this type of adoption, imagine taking in a 10 year old child whom you know nothing about and committing to doing your best to be a good parent.

Like a child, the dog came with his own idiosyncrasies. He will only sleep on the bed, on top of the covers, nuzzled as close to my face as he can get without actually performing a French kiss on me. Lest you think this is a bad case of 'no discipline,' I should tell you that Charlie and I tried every means to break him of this habit including locking him in a separate bedroom for several nights. The new door cost over $200. But I digress.

Five weeks ago we began remodeling our house. Although the cost of the project is downright obnoxious, it was 20 years overdue AND it got me out of cooking Thanksgiving for family, extended family and a lot of friends that I like more than family most of the time. I was however assigned the task of preparing 124 of my famous yeast dinner rolls for the two Thanks giving feasts we did attend. I am still cursing the electrician for getting the new oven hooked up so quickly. It was the only appliance in the whole darn house that worked, thus the assignment.

I made the decision to cook the rolls on Wednesday evening to reheat on Thursday morning. Since the kitchen was freshly painted you can imagine the odor. Not wanting the rolls to smell like Sherwin Williams latex paint #586, I put the rolls on baking sheets and set them in the living room to rise for 5 hours. After 3 hours, Perry and I decided to go out! to eat, returning in about an hour.

An hour later the rolls were ready to go in the oven. It was 8:30pm. When I went to the living room to retrieve the pans, much to my shock one whole pan of 12 rolls was empty. I called out to Jasper and my worst nightmare became a reality. He literally wobbled over to me. He looked like a combination of the Pillsbury dough boy and the Michelin Tire man wrapped up in fur. He groaned when he walked. I swear even his cheeks were bloated.

I ran to the phone and called our vet After a few seconds of uproarious laughter, he told me the dog would probably be OK, however, I needed to give him Pepto Bismol every 2 hours for the rest of the night. God only knows why I thought a dog would like Pepto Bismol any more than my kids did when they were sick. Suffice to say that by the time we went to bed the dog was black, white and pink. He was so bloated we had to lift him onto the bed for the night.

Naively thinking the dog would be all better by morning was very stupid on my part. We arose at 7:30 and as we always do first thing; put the dogs out to relieve themselves. Well, the dog was as drunk as a sailor on his first leave. He was running into walls, falling flat on his behind and most of the time when he was walking his front half was going one direction and the other half was either dragging the floor or headed 90 degrees in another direction. He couldn't lift his leg to pee, so he would just walk and pee at the same time. When he ran down the small incline in our back yard he couldn't stop himself and nearly ended up running into the fence. His pupils were dilated and he was as dizzy as a loon. I endured another few seconds of laughter from the vet (second call within 12 hours) before he explained that the yeast had fermented in his belly and that he was indeed drunk. He assured me that, not unlike most binges we humans go through, it would wear off after about 4 or 5 hours and to keep giving him Pepto Bismol.
Afraid to leave him by himself in the house, Charlie and I loaded him up and took him with us to my sister's house for the first Thanksgiving meal of the day. My sister lives outside of Muskogee on a ranch, (10 to 15 minute drive). Rolls firmly secured in the trunk (124 less 12) and drunk dog leaning from the back seat onto the console of the car between Charlie and I, we took off.

Now I know you probably don't believe that dogs burp, but believe me when I say that after eating a tray of risen unbaked yeast rolls, DOGS WILL BURP. These burps were pure Old Charter. They would have matched or beat any smell in a drunk tank at the police station. But that's not the worst of it. Now he was beginning to pass gas and it smelled like baked rolls. God strike me dead if I am not telling the truth! We endured this for the entire trip to Karee's, thankful she didn't live any further away than she did.

Once Jasper was firmly placed in my sister's garage with the door locked, we finally sat down to enjoy our first Thanksgiving meal of the day. The dog was the topic of conversation all morning long and everyone made trips to the garage to witness my drunk dog, each returning with a tale of Jasper's latest endeavor to walk without running into something.

Of course, as the old adage goes, "what goes in must come out" and Jasper was no exception. Granted if it had been me that had eaten 12 risen, unbaked yeast rolls, you might as well have put a concrete block up my behind, but alas a dog's digestive system is quite different from yours or mine. I discovered this was a mixed blessing when we prepared to leave Karee's house. Having discovered his "packages" on the garage floor, we loaded him up in the car so we could hose down the floor. This was another naive decision on our part.

The blast of water from the hose hit the poop on the floor and the poop on the floor withstood the blast from the hose. It was like Portland cement beginning to set up and cure. We finally tried to remove it with a shovel. I (obviously no one else was going to offer their services) had to get on my hands and knees with a coarse brush to get the remnants off of the floor. And as if this wasn't degrading enough, the dumb dog in his drunken state had walked through the poop and left paw prints all over the garage floor that had to be brushed too.

Well, by this time the dog was sobering up nicely so we took him home and dropped him off before we left for our second Thanksgiving dinner at Perry's sister's house. I am happy to report that as of today (Monday) the dog is back to normal both in size and temperament. He has had a bath and is no longer tricolor. None the worse for wear I presume I am also happy to report that just this evening I found 2 risen unbaked yeast rolls hidden inside my closet door. It appears he must have come to his senses after eating 10 of them but decided hiding 2 of them for later would not be a bad idea

Now, I'm doing research on the computer as to *How to clean unbaked dough from the Carpet*. ...

And how was your Day