The Earl of Sammich

First off, I'm baking tonight. SOMEbody decided to have his 50th birthday tomorrow. I still don't really have any great ideas for decorating his cake (no over the hill stuff--it's passe. Plus all that black frosting stains everything, especially my tongue) so if you have any brilliant ideas I would love for you to share them with me.

I realized this afternoon that Jim is lucky because he got to wait an extra day to turn 50. Normally his birthday is the day after Feb 28th but not this year. Someone squeezed a Leap day in here just so Jim could enjoy an extra day of being in his 40s.

In other news, Paul invented a new sandwich, which I had to share with you. In my opinion it is nasty, but he seemed to like it. I like the ingredients individually, but when he put them all together I felt a little queasy.

Picture:

The official recipe is as follows: one slice of bread, spread with Nutella, evenly space peanut butter m&ms on the Nutella. Nother slice of bread, spread peanut butter on it. Apply one side to the other, with spreads facing each other.

Plegh.

Valentine's day treasure hunt

I know Valentine's day has come and gone ages ago, but I have to post something or my posting skills get rusty after a week of no use. I spend so much time waiting for letters and emails from the missionary that I don't get my blogging done like I used to.

Around Feb 1st every year, I start wondering why I put myself through this stupid Valentine tradition. But then the morning of the 14th, as Hayley and I headed out to seminary, she said, "treasure hunt?" and I thought, "OK, I'm glad I did it."

 When the kids came home from school, they found this:

Three of the balloons had little pieces of paper with letters on them.

Matt tried this method of determining the letters in his balloon.  Hayley and Paul both popped their balloons. Unfortunately, that tended to send the little pieces of paper in all directions.

Here is Hayley unscrambling her letters so they read "Fork knife spoon."

Matt's unpopped balloon led him to the underside of the coffee table where he found a puzzle.

Hayley found her puzzle. She got a word find with words like "zddpsdat" and "fggua"

Paul got a movie quote quiz which yielded the solution "breakfast."  He looked in all kinds of breakfast type places. He looked in that box three times and finally I told him he wasn't looking hard enough. He had to pull the liner bag out of the box to get his treat.

Paul finally found his treat. 

 I had to keep telling the kids "You aren't looking hard enough." Matt's puzzle led him to the van and he searched it for nearly half an hour (making a huge mess all the while). I even went out and checked to make sure that I had put the treat out there (I had). He just wasn't looking hard enough. The treat was wedged between the back seat and the side of the van. Since it was in a plain paper bag, he had overlooked it in his search.

Paul had trouble finding his puzzle from his balloon letters. It spelled out "toilet paper" and he looked in every toilet paper roll location EXCEPT inside the roll on the dispenser in the downstairs bathroom.  And his breakfast search took a while too.

Hayley found hers quickly but she actually had to wait until the next day, because her word find, which yielded a coded message, led her to the seminary cabinet at church. So she had to wait until the next morning to get it.

Hayley had complained a bit about the difficulty of her puzzle while trying to solve her word find  and I replied, "You can learn life lessons from these Valentine's day treasure hunts: sometimes life is hard and you get very little reward." She thought that was funny.

The Blues

We'll be singing the Blues this summer--Cougar Blues. Paul was accepted to BYU Provo for summer semester.

He broke the news in typical Paul fashion:

He came home from work, walked into the basement while texting, grunted hello. Said work was sporadically busy and sporadically not busy, logged onto the computer, checked something out (I didn't know what at the time because I was engrossed in "Downton Abbey"), and then he mumbled, "oh, I got accepted to BYU for summer."

He was so low-key about it that I didn't know what he meant at first. And he didn't specify which BYU either, although I guessed Provo because I already knew that BYU I had accepted him.

We've just sent EJ away a week and a half ago, and now we are sending Paul away in 4 months.

I kind of feel like there's a brick wall somewhere, waiting to come smack me in the face. These kids and their growing up! How did they manage to do it so fast?

Mayonnaise and math

I dislike big school projects even more now that I'm not the one doing them. I'm usually asked to help at the precise moment when I can least spare the time and there are usually tears involved (although miraculously, not usually mine)

Matt had a project for math class due last week. It was called the Paul Bunyan project. They had to make a model of something and scale it to Paul Bunyan proportions (which I don't know the exact ratio). Hayley had to do the same thing two years ago, and she chose to do a dental floss container. 

Matt originally chose to do a CD, but the final size of the project would have been nearly 7 feet tall and wide. He finally settled on doing a mayonnaise packet--the kind you find in restaurants. 

I'm happy to report that Matt didn't leave the actual making of the project until the last minute. He worked on a little bit each day for over a week, so the last night before the project was due, all he had to do was fill the packet with newspaper and seal it shut.

Much as I hate these projects, I have to admit they are cool to look at.

Matt is holding the mayo packet that inspired him

Matt's name had to be somewhere on the project itself, so he put it in the list of ingredients.

Frank

Before I talk about Frank, I will give a quick update on life after EJ. We're doing fine. Of course we can't wait for the first letter, which probably won't arrive for another week yet. Our church pew seems very empty without EJ sitting on the end of it. But we're fine. And I've only teared up once, and that was during the opening prayer in church this morning when the person giving it (Elder W, one of the missionaries serving in our ward who EJ spent a lot of time with) said, "Bless Elder Evans in the MTC." I really wished I had a kleenex in my purse (they always disappear) so I could wipe away the stray droplets.

So to Frank.

I got to know Frank in high school during my sophomore year. I don't remember where we met (possibly in marching band.  He played the baritone) but I think we decided to be friends early on that year. He was sarcastic, which appealed to me. He also knew a lot about baseball and hockey, two new interests I had discovered. He would take me to North Stars games, Twins games, and Strikers games (soccer) and fostered my interest in sports. He would quiz me on team names and divisions. He took me to numerous movies, and we went to malls. Frank liked to shop. We even went to Homecoming together my junior year.

We were never a couple, just really good friends.  We remained friends even after high school. We wrote letters back and forth, and after I got married and moved to Portland, he caught up with us because his parents lived in Portland as well. He, Jim and I went out to lunch.

For a few years after that, Frank would call a couple times a year and we always spent an hour on the phone catching up.

I think the last time I talked to him on the phone was just after Matt was born, 13 years ago. And then we lost contact.

Along came facebook, and Frank and I reconnected. He would occasionally comment on my page and I on his. He remonstrated me once for posting a picture of myself with an Oakland As hat on (courtesy of Jim). Frank demanded I give the Twins equal fb exposure. I never did, but his request prompted me to actually go out and buy Jim a Twins cap. He didn't have one at the time.

Just this past week was Frank's birthday. I posted a happy birthday message to him, telling him that I wished we could go to a Twins game or a North Stars game and it would be like old times.

I got a message shortly after from one of his friends informing me that Frank had had a massive stroke just before Christmas and was now in a coma. This friend gave me another name who could possibly give me more information. This other name was of a woman with a name I recognized from high school, another one of Frank's very good friends, Julie.

Skip ahead to today--Julie set me up on a phone call to Frank. His parents have moved him to a care facility in San Jose where they live (Frank previously lived in DC). I spent half an hour talking to my old friend Frank. He couldn't talk back, but that was ok. I reminisced. I told him that when he was ready, I wanted him to call me back so we could talk baseball/hockey and when he was even more ready, he should come to MN and Jim and I would take him to see the new Twins outdoor stadium. I reminded him that he gave Katie a stuffed buffalo, a toy I thought was hilarious--this was before the beanie baby craze. Until that time, stuffed animals were mostly bears and cats, so a stuffed buffalo was radical.

Julie emailed me later, saying Frank was emotionally responsive to my call, and that before I got on the phone, he had been watching the clock, apparently waiting for my phone call. She had told him I would talk to him at 11 a.m. (CA time)

Frank, get better.

He's an Elder

EJ's first name is now Elder.

Some people EJ invited over for dinner his last night here. The guy on the left is a former missionary who served in our ward for 14 months. He was the first missionary that EJ really got to be good friends with. K is from Tonga and after his mission, he moved back here to our ward. He loves it here and we love him. He came to our house for dinner his first night in MN as a missionary, and I served pork loin and K said it made him feel happy. Pork is a celebratory food where he was from and it made him feel like he was celebrating.

Former missionary K, EJ, Elder McD, Elder W, and Bishop J (Travis, you ought to recognize this guy)

 

 

no crying yet from any of us

Just after EJ was set apart. Hayley and Matt didn't come because they had mucho homework.

These next two pictures are from nearly twelve years ago. 

I put those here because I just can't believe that those two boys are now these two boys:

They probably won't see each other for four years.

I cried during the setting apart. I sniffled and snuffled and dripped and dabbed. But all in a good way. The apron strings that I thought I had untied many years ago are still there. I don't consider myself an overly protective or overly sentimental mother, but I realized I still considered EJ my little boy. But with his setting apart as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he's not mine anymore. He belongs to God for two years, and after that he belongs to himself. The last bits of the little dark haired, big-eyed boy have done growed up.

Because you've heard enough about EJ getting ready for a mission

I'll post something non-EJ or church related.

How about crafts?
Or food?
Or both?

Yesterday was a refreshing day of few commitments. I made dinner but few people were at home to eat it.

Dave (not that you read this), I used some of the IQF* beef you are "storing" in my freezer for my chili last night. I learned that 20 lbs of IQF ground beef in a box does not come in smaller quantities when you open the box. Nope, I had to scoop out what I estimated I needed (2 lbs) out of this:

Yes, it looks like worms. It weirds me out every time I look at it. But we ate the chili anyway, those of us who were at home.

And now for my craft. I haven't crafted in ages. I have been meaning to do a craft for ages because I'm so often at home these days and I have lots of craft supplies. For the craft that I wanted to do, however, I needed vinyl letters and wooden blocks, neither of which I had. But I do have acquaintances who do. So I turned to them in my time of need and was supplied with both. And I made this:

I

It's a valentine's day decoration. In case you can't tell, each picture is Jim and me together. Sappy, I know, but each picture is a favorite of mine. I didn't use actual photographs; I scanned them (or already had them on the computer) and changed them to black and white and printed them on regular copy paper. I had heard not to do the craft with ink jet printed pictures because the ink will smear when coated with Mod Podge, but I found a suggestion online somewhere that if you spray ink jet pics with matte finishing spray, the ink won't run. I happened to have some of the spray on hand. So I tried it. And, joy of joys, the ink did not smear.

So I have a lovely personalized decorative item for Valentine's day.

*New acronym I've learned: IQF means Individually Quick Frozen.

Bread

A couple days ago, I got a hankering for really good bread. Not plain old sandwich bread that I buy at the store for $1.39, but stuff that I have to go to a bakery for and pay a few dollars more. I could just bake some myself, but with getting EJ ready for next Wednesday, work, and seminary prep, I frequently make excuses not to bake, let alone cook dinner.

I thought to myself, "I really want to go to a bakery to get some fancy bread. But I never leave my house anymore, except for seminary and that doesn't really count because...I don't know why it doesn't count, but it doesn't."

So I've been traipsing around the house for a few days thinking about bread and how and when to get some.

Then on my way to seminary this morning, I realized that there's a Great Harvest Bread Company within a mile of the church.

And I was pretty sure that since it's a bakery, they'd be open at 7 a.m.!  After seminary ended today, I cruised over to the GHB, and YES they were open! I bought some bread!  Finnish Pulla and Honey Whole Wheat!

I don't know why this is such a great thing that I should be blogging about it. I guess it's because I'm putting aside so many other things so I can work (which I need to do and I like my job) and teach seminary, I find very little time to get out of the house, even to go grocery shopping--my grocery store is only open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.  And so to find one place conveniently located to somewhere I go every day, where I can just stop in and get something yummy and to have enough time to do it, is a big thing.

Now if only there were a shoe store close by GHB that opened a 7 a.m., I'd never complain about not having the time to leave my house ever again.

Mists of Burnsville

Jim came in from moving the truck out of the driveway so I could drive to seminary, and he said, "It's foggy out."

I thought, yeah yeah. Fog. Whatever.

So I got in my van and started down the road to the church. I drove along and drove along (no that's not a typo, it's my love of fairy tales peeking through. As in whenever we told stories to each other, there was always and phrase, "she went along and went along" meaning she walked for a time) I did note that the fog was more foggy than usual. But I was seeing other cars and I could see stoplights so I was fine.

I drove for a bit more and saw a stoplight ahead. I thought to myself because no one else was in the car and I don't have to vocalize to talk to myself, "Ah. Here is the stoplight at county road 5. I will turn right here."

As I pulled up to the stoplight to turn, I looked around and I almost screamed. I was not at county road 5, I was a mile farther up the road. I saw the bank and the jewelry store which are right by the mall (which I couldn't see because of the fog), where I thought LA Fitness and the India Palace should have been. I had missed my turn COMPLETELY without realizing it. It was very unsettling.

I realized I have been reading too many sci-fi stories because my first thought was either I had somehow gone through a wormhole in space or traveled forward in time. Then I realized the fogginess had impaired my ability to judge distance and space and then I started thinking about creatures of the mist and scary things.

And then I calmed down and turned right past the mall and drove to church a different way.

But I'm still a little creeped out.