Q:How Many Designers Does it Take to Make Thanksgiving Dinner?

Doug and I flew into Seattle Thanksgiving morning and had an amazing whirlwind weekend with my sister's family (Doug could only stay one full day so we had to squeeze in as much as possible.)

So we did what anyone would do under the circumstances- we stuck to the things of highest priority.

I cooked all day Thursday creating a Pumpkin Hazelnut Cheesecake and an Apple Cranberry Pie (complete with a leaf cut-out top and braided crust) worthy to sit next to my sister's amazingly detailed Turkey Cookies

Delicious Thanksgiving desserts worthy of being on display?  Check.  On to Priority #2

Friday morning began with more preparations (we ate a day late because of our Thanksgiving Day flight).  I started a couple recipes while my sister began to set the beautiful table and dessert buffet.  

 Beautiful, picture worthy atmosphere?  Check.  On to priority #3.  We put the turkey in the oven, leave Ben home to watch it and take off to show Doug some of the sites before he has to leave tomorrow morning.

Doug and I in Olympia- notice the state capital building on the skyline

We watch the clock as we wander down the Olympia boardwalk seeing  lines of boats and hundreds of jelly fish.  We head home to check on the turkey and get there just in time.  It comes out perfectly.  We set it on the counter to rest, look around and realize we haven't actually finished making anything to go with the turkey except the dessert buffet.... Oops... Guess our priorities were a little off.

So how many designers does it take to make Thanksgiving dinner?  

Certainly more than two!

Luckily between all of us we were able to finish everything up before the turkey got too cold.  And seriously- you'd never know the turkey was cold looking at this picture and that's all that's important, right?!  (I obviously haven't learned my lesson yet...)

Gratitude

The past month or so I've been (very, very slowly) typing up my mission journal.  Missions are crazy!  Sometimes as I'm reading I just can't believe I volunteered to do these things.  Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to serve God on a mission and I wouldn't trade it for anything.  But it has been funny to see some of the things that have made my mental Gratitude List this Thanksgiving as I've relived some of my mission.  Here are a few-

• I don't have to eat over processed food in a cafeteria every day. 
• I don't have to spend every day in a tiny room full of stinky 19 year old boys (all of whom just consumed massive amounts of that over processed cafeteria food...) and a window that will not open to let in fresh air. 
• I get to wear pants whenever I want.
• I get to walk barefoot in my own house.  On carpet.  
• Whenever I want to talk to my family I can just call them.
• Every 6 weeks I don't have to wait to see if someone else will decide if I'm going to move, drag every one of my possessions through hundreds of miles of dirt roads and city trains (praying all the while that no one will steal them from me), and then settle into a whole new city where every single person including my roommate is a stranger and speaks a language I hardly know.  
• I don't have to wash my clothes in a bucket.
• We live in a home with six rooms.  SIX.  Three of them have running water and none of them have dirt floors.  It is a mansion in comparison to my friends in Argentina.

Life is really pretty good.  I am grateful for Thanksgiving for giving us time to sit down and think about all of the reasons why.

Clase de Espanol

You know how everyone always says to hold your tongue.  As if that's going to rid the world of all its problems?  Well, I'm pretty convinced that's just a big lie.

The past couple months Doug and I have been taking a Community Ed Spanish class.  It was a good class, our teacher was a native Spanish speaker so we got to learn great pronunciation and had a good review of some basic Spanish rules.  However this week was our last class and I have to admit, I am SO relieved.

I'm a bit past the beginners Spanish stage seeing as how I've lived in South America and all.  Not too big of a deal, it was going to be fun to take a class with Doug and I figured the class would be a good grammar review.  The first couple classes I kept pretty quiet, I had no intention of keeping my Spanish skills secret or anything, but my fellow classmates were working hard to learn basic things and I didn't want to sound like some know it all.

So by about the third class our classmates were getting a little discouraged (as all language students do) and our teacher decided to do a little exercise to lift our spirits.  She told us how, while it seemed we weren't learning anything we had all picked up a lot already.  She explained that little kids who are learning to talk can understand words before they can say them.  She said we were the same way and that, while we were having a hard time expressing ourselves in Spanish, we'd picked up a lot that we could listen to and comprehend.  So, to prove this point she'd randomly pick one of us out of the class (there were about 30 of us) to go in front of the class and listen to directions given in Spanish.  It would amaze us how much was understood.

She looks into the class to pick her example of what 3 days of Spanish class can do.  She, of course, randomly points to me, the fluent Spanish speaker in the class, and begins spouting out directions in Spanish.  What was I suppose to do?!  She was telling me to 'Go open the door' or 'jump up and down' etc.  Super easy words for me, but vocabulary the class hadn't yet learned.  Everyone was amazed!  How did this girl know what to do?  She got everything the teacher said right away!  And I was standing there dying thinking, 'I'm fluent in Spanish but I didn't say anything because I didn't want all of you to feel bad!'  I couldn't say that NOW, everyone was feeling so much better about our progress.

After we were done she asked me in English in front of everyone- "See!?  How did you know how to do all those things?"  I stood there completely dumbfounded while Doug is cracking up in the back of the classroom.    There was no way in that situation that I could possibly have said, 'Well, actually, I'm a Spanish speaking return missionary'.  So I just stood there.  Luckily after a moment of awkward silence she answered for me. "See class, she doesn't even know how she knows them!  She's just picked them up during class!  You are all doing so great!"

How embarrassing!  Then for the rest of the classes I felt like I had to pretend I didn't know Spanish.  So awkward!  I'm so glad that we're done with that class!

Grass

Doug really, really likes to work on making our grass super nice.  And I very much appreciate his efforts.  I love a yard full of barefoot grass (shoes in the summer time are not my favorite thing).  When we first moved in we had a big dead spot in the front along with lots of weeds and broken sprinklers etc, etc, etc.  Not the best.  I just have to brag for a second about how far he's come with this stuff.

The other day Doug was out mowing the lawn (this was a few weeks ago, so imagine it a little warmer) just like any other Saturday.  I was working on something inside and looked out the window to see Doug on his hands and knees searching for something in the grass.  I figured he'd lost a contact so I went out to help him find it. (nothing quite as sad as seeing a practically blind person searching for something that's made to look invisible)

I went out, crouched down beside him and asked, 'Lost  your contact?'  He looked at me and laughed.  'Nope, the sprinkler box.'  Wait, what?  'You mean that huge green pipe thing over in the corner?'(my sprinkler system vocabulary is clearly very sophisticated)  'Yup.'

So there we were, crouched on our hands and knees fingering through every inch of grass to look for an 8 inch in diameter box (see above picture) that we both knew the location of!  The grass had grown so thick all summer it had completely covered it.  How cool is that?  I couldn't stop laughing, we seriously could not find that thing! Eventually Doug had to put the lawn mower down as low as it would go and keep mowing until we finally found a corner of it.  I'm so proud of our grass!

Now, because I just spent all that time bragging I feel like I need to equal things out a bit.  Here's is a picture of our peas.  The second time we planted them this summer.  That's right, completely dead.  Again.  Know why?  Because we were too lazy to stake anything for them to climb up.  All we had to do was shove a couple sticks in there and tie some string!  But nope, we were too lazy.  Both times!  So don't be thinking we have this amazing yard or anything, just funny grass stories.

Are We 6 Year Olds or What?

Ok, so I feel like a 6 year old asking this....but.... have you seen our coat?

Doug went to grab his coat out of the closet a week or so ago and realized it wasn't there.  I swear I thought it was impossible to lose something as big as a coat as an adult, but here we are.  We've looked everywhere with no luck.  It seems weird that we didn't find it was missing until now.  He got it in the middle of winter last year and used it a lot- it seems like a weird coincidence that he happened to forget it somewhere on the very last day he'd need it until Fall came.

We traveled a bit last winter and had a LOT of visitors over the summer so I'm wondering if it maybe got bundled up in someone else's stuff.  Have you happened to notice an extra coat lying around your home?  It's a men's gray wool coat, made by J.Crew, cut a little longer than normal but not super long (it hits between your waist and knees) and it's practically new.  Sigh.

Anyone?  Please?

I just know as soon as we buy him another one we'll find it hanging in the closet in plain site...

Happy Halloween!

They're lions.  And yes, they are still mad at us...

Worth it!

 

Reunion: Fishing

Our house had this cute little fishing pond within walking distance.  I kid you not, the kids did not have to wait more than 2 minutes to get a bite.  It was great!

George Reunion: Harry Potter Dinner

Last week Doug's parents rented this great house in Heber and we all got together for a reunion.  It was such a great week!  Doug and I got to plan the first dinner together.  We wanted to start the week off with a bang so we planned a whole Harry Potter themed meal, including Butter Beer, a Potions Station and a little trip to Honeydukes.   Planning everything was so fun, it's almost embarrassing.  Is it ok to be an adult Harry Potter fan?  I'll just say we planned it for the kids... 

Easter Quilt!!!

I'm done!  Any of you who have seen me in the past 6 months or so will have seen this thing in some stage of its creation.  I've been working on it it for SOOOOO long, planning to enter it into the LDS International Art Competition, and have to turn in my entry in the next couple of days.  I just had to ask you guys a favor first!  

With my entry I get to send in a photo of my entire piece, plus 2 detail shots.  My quilt has a lot of symbolism and so I made a little chart to explain what everything meant, but I'm wondering if it's worth giving up one of my detail shots to send in the chart.  Here are my three shots plus my write up (which cannot be even 1 character longer so I can't add any more explanation). Here's my question to you- can you figure out what everything means with only the photo and write up? Could you leave a comment answering yes or no?   (the write up is ALL of the words below the photos including the list of symbolism.  The chart I made is a picture of the quilt with arrows pointing to what each part means.  I didn't put it on this post because I wanted to see if you could figure things out without it)  

If no one can figure it out I'll add the chart, if you can I'll go with the two detail shots.

THANKS!!!

He Lives: Christ’s Final Week

It is no easy task to visually represent Christ's wonderful works in the week of His Atonement. I prayerfully sought a way to, among the commercialism of Easter, catch the interest of my family and teach them of the events leading to Christ's ultimate sacrifice. This quilt, sewn completely by hand, visually represents the eight days surrounding the center event-or center of the quilt- The empty tomb.

Symbolisms include:

•Palms: Palm Sunday

•Cursed Fig Tree: Monday

•The Ten Virgins, The Great Commandment, Widow’s Mite, Marriage of the King’s Son: Tuesday & Wednesday

•Olive Branches of Gethsemane: Thursday

•Crown of Thorns: Friday

•Darkness: Saturday  

•The Empty Tomb: The Glorious Sunday Morning

Steph's Shower

One of my very best friends from college is getting married next month and this past week I got to throw her a shower! It was so fun to plan. I've helped with a lot of showers before, but have never been in charge of one. I have to admit, it was a lot more fun when I didn't have to work with someone else. (should I really be admitting that? Oh well, too late now) I just really like to over do things like shower themes and when I'm working with someone else I always know that if I let myself get into 'theme mode' they'll just get annoyed. So I always hold back which, in Jessica terms, means I stop having fun.

Anyway, the shower was great. It's been so fun to see Steph meet, date and get engaged to her fiance. I'm so happy for them!

Stacey Reunion

We just got back from a week with my family up in Heber. My parents rented this great house and everyone was able to make it. How fun to see everyone at the same time! The week was full of touch football games, sand volleyball, T shirt tie-dying, family pictures, practical jokes (gotta love that the nieces and nephews are getting to be teenagers now) delicious food, puppet shows, a talent show, fishing and so much more. (and that was just the days we spent at the house- there were two days when everyone out hiking and site seeing that I was way too sick to participate in.)

Now I just have to get over the fact that it will be so long until I see them again!

Stacey Reunion: Catapult Competition

My brother Nathan invented a competition for our reunion. We split into four teams, each team was given the same materials (a couple lengths of wood, two long pvc pipes, some pipe connectors, three bungee cords and the use of some basic tools) to build the best catapult.

So we set off working. After a while the kids wandered off. Then the women. But the guys were addited.By the end of the day each team had an amazing entry for the competition.




(You'll notice that Marika and I were both members of Team Pink did make sure to come back to put some amazing finishing touches on ours. )

We set up the target, aimed and fired!

and fired

and fired....and even turned our devices upside down to see if it would help...
but even after all that firing, I think only one water balloon hit the pinata. Oh well! At least my team won the prettiest award!
In the end we found that 4 year olds are much more efficient water balloon launchers than anything we could make!