Scene: A dark and lightningy night in Phoenix, on the way home from Grandma and Grandpa Livingstone's, no rain, just lightning.
Jeff: Why does it have to Monsoon? Why can't it Monlater?
Mom: What if it just Monsometimes?
Jeff: Well, I don't mind if it Monlater-ed, but if it Monsoon-ed then I might not be asleep yet and it will wake me up, but if it Monlaters I'll be asleep already and it won't wake me up.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Ode to a Solar Oven
Back in the beginning of May I ordered a Solar Oven and I was super giddy about that - I've wanted one for a long time and I did all the research and some begging to My Ryan and he told me I could get one! Shortly after I ordered it I found out that all the solar ovens had been sent to Haiti for relief there and I felt happy about that, those dear Haitians needed too cook their food. Well, the weeks went by and by and thru a series of misadventures and miscommunication and just a lot of annoying delays (meanwhile the sun was pouring down every day not cooking my food) the oven arrived on Tuesday! I was literally jumping up and down and giggling. The kids thought I'd finally lost it. I got it out of the box and into the sun to "pre-heat". I love that, to preheat it I just set it in the sun.
I made a rice and turkey dish with some leftover turkey I'd taken out of the freezer earlier in the day not knowing it would be cooking in my brand new solar oven! I also made some whole wheat bread. In the future I'll make smaller loaves, it turned out yummy but dense, I don't think it had enough space. . .
Yesterday for lunch the kids and I made mini pizzas. They had fun making them and going out to check on them every once in a while. They turned out really good, the crust got crispy and the cheese browned. Lovely. We also made nachos.
Today I was going to make a chicken for dinner and some veggies. . . but.
It is CLOUDY outside. Did you know that solar ovens only work if it's sunny out? They'll cook fine in the dead of winter as long as it is clear and sunny. What are the odds that we have a cloudy day in the Metro Phoenix area? We get 70ish cloudy days per year. The odds are 1:19. Argh.
You know? I never thought I'd begrudge a Haitian. . .
I made a rice and turkey dish with some leftover turkey I'd taken out of the freezer earlier in the day not knowing it would be cooking in my brand new solar oven! I also made some whole wheat bread. In the future I'll make smaller loaves, it turned out yummy but dense, I don't think it had enough space. . .
Yesterday for lunch the kids and I made mini pizzas. They had fun making them and going out to check on them every once in a while. They turned out really good, the crust got crispy and the cheese browned. Lovely. We also made nachos.
Today I was going to make a chicken for dinner and some veggies. . . but.
It is CLOUDY outside. Did you know that solar ovens only work if it's sunny out? They'll cook fine in the dead of winter as long as it is clear and sunny. What are the odds that we have a cloudy day in the Metro Phoenix area? We get 70ish cloudy days per year. The odds are 1:19. Argh.You know? I never thought I'd begrudge a Haitian. . .
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Montreal
The past week I was in Montreal visiting my parents who are serving a mission there. The Montreal mission is, of course, French speaking (everything in Quebec is French) however, Mom and Dad are serving in a Chinese branch so they get to learn a little Chinese along with their French. It is an interesting mix.
The first day we were there we went to Mont Royal (what Montreal was named for) and we went to a lovely park and rode around on paddle boats.
Then we went up to the observation area, from there you can see lots of Montreal. Yes, my shorts are wet because a water bottle spilled on me during the paddle boating but the weather there was VERY warm, about 93 with 90% humidity so I was also pretty sweaty, it was soggy times and the humidity plus my hair was an interesting combination as you will see from the following pictures. . .
Montreal has a very nice subway system so for the first three days we rode the subway pretty much everywhere we went. I believe this is the ride to Chinatown.
We shopped in Chinatown then we went to eat, it was yummy.
Amanda got this "Dragon Beard" candy and I foolishly popped the whole thing in my mouth. That was a huge mistake, it somehow expanded and gummed up the works quite a bit. It was difficult to chew and messy, but delicious!
The next day we went to La Ronde 6 Flags and rode on roller coasters and had lots more sweaty fun. I liked the rides where they squirted us with water a lot. La Ronde was really fun, they sure had some intense rides!
The next day Mom, Amanda and I went to the Botanical Gardens (or, as Oliver recently called them, the Mechanical Gardens). On the walk there after we got off the Metro we passed the Olympic Stadium and I only got third, I don't know how those two beat me!
As I said before, it was really hot so I hitched my skirt up over my shirt to let a little air flow to my legs. It was quite the fashion statement but it kept me cooler. There was a lot of sweatiness in those gardens! But they are super pretty.
That's funny if you look at those last two fast, it's like Amanda disappeared! As I said, it was hot and we thought a lot of things were really funny but that might've been the heat getting to our poor brains.
They had a sensory garden where we could touch and smell different plants, it was really cool but Amanda thought Mom and I showed off some of our best assets when we bent down to sniff the low lying plants. I really liked sniffing and feeling those plants.
The next day we went to New York for the Hill Cumorah Pageant and some sight seeing in Palmyra and Fayette. We brought a member of the Chinese branch, Cui Ke and her daughter Annie with us in our car. The border patrol didn't quite know what to do with us, we had five American citizens, one Canadian and one Chinese. And two of the Americans were living in Canada on Visas for a year. They let us stop and visit with them for a while and we had to promise to bring Cui Ke back to Canada with us and not leave her there. We were cool with that.
We went to Fayette, NY to the Whitmer Farm that first day and it was lovely, my pictures of it are currently unavailable but trust me, they rock. Then as we were leaving the farm on our way to Hill Cumorah it started to rain buckets and buckets of hard hard rain. So much rain. We went to the Hill determined to watch the Pageant as it was our only chance and it was very damp and rainy but we had faith that the show would go on. By around 7pm or so the rain let up quite a bit, the show was scheduled to begin at 9:15. It is an outdoor show so weather can be a bit of a damper. But Amanda and I sat in the rain under umbrellas to save seats for a few hours, we had fun. I climbed the hill earlier in the afternoon while it was still raining pretty hard, and I was glad I did, there wasn't anyone else going up so it was nice to have it all to myself. It was humbling to look around and think of all the terrible and great things that happened on that spot of ground. We didn't get another chance to climb the hill so I was grateful I took the opportunity when I did, even though I got soaked.
The pageant was AMAZING. I was soooo excited to see it, the rain slowed to a light drizzle thruout the show and we were able to put away our umbrellas and watch. The show has 700 performers and an enormous stage with water spraying out at times, fire shooting out, fog rolling. . . It was wonderful. I highly recommend it.
The next day we visited Palmyra, saw the Grandin Book Press where the first Book of Mormon was printed. The tour was very interesting, printing was surely labor intensive! In our tour group I saw Buffy Turley and her family (not Turley anymore but that's how I knew her). Her parents and sister are in our ward so it was neat to see a face I knew. Those Church History sites are surely a place to connect with people from all over!
Next we drove out to the Smith Family Farm and to the Palmyra Temple. The Temple was lovely, I loved the quote by President Hinkley about that temple, "I regard this temple as perhaps the most significant. . . in the entire Church." I tried to imagine what the Smith family would've thought if they had known that 100 years after they lived there people would come from all over the world to tour the site where they lived, and that there would be such a beautiful temple built within sight of their home, and within sight of the Sacred Grove. It is a miracle. Just one more of a long line of miracles. It is a very special place.
One more thing before the pictures, while we were touring the Smith Farm Amanda turned to me as we were leaving the first stop along our tour (there are about 30 people in each tour group and we go to a bunch of interesting stops along the way where the missionaries tell us about the place), well she turned to me and said, "Either that's Donny Osmond's brother or it's a dude that looks a lot like Donny Osmond." It took me a little while to discreetly look at the front of the dude's head, he was with his wife and a young teenagery looking kid. But eventually I got to see his face and sure enough. It was Donny Osmond! Going along on the tour with the rest of us sheep. It was pretty nifty.
That's a picture of Amanda in the upstairs of the "log cabin" and that little kid is Joshua, Donny's son. Ha-ha! They were very nice and chatted with us a bit as we went along on the tour.
The Sacred Grove was beautiful.
Such a pretty place.
After the Sacred Grove we got a bit separated from Mom and Dad for a while so the kids played in the grass and Amanda, Cui Ke and I laid in the shade to wait. We eventually found them.
The next day we went to St. Joseph's Cathedral in Montreal before church. That place is honkin huge. Click on the link to see a pretty picture of the front of it. We climbed up it, actually we kind of cheated and rode the escalators inside the church to get to the top. A church with escalators. . . lots of escalators!
It was pretty there. Then we went to church with the Chinese Branch, and with a lot of help from some very kind translators, were able to figure out what was going on. I love it that no matter where you are or what language is being spoken one can still feel the Spirit in the meeting and the principles taught are the same everywhere. Lovely.
Our trip was wonderful. I'm grateful for my parent's good example and for the wonderful work they do. They are great people and fantastic missionaries. Thanks for letting me come see you, and Thanks for bringing me Nunu!
The first day we were there we went to Mont Royal (what Montreal was named for) and we went to a lovely park and rode around on paddle boats.
Then we went up to the observation area, from there you can see lots of Montreal. Yes, my shorts are wet because a water bottle spilled on me during the paddle boating but the weather there was VERY warm, about 93 with 90% humidity so I was also pretty sweaty, it was soggy times and the humidity plus my hair was an interesting combination as you will see from the following pictures. . .
Montreal has a very nice subway system so for the first three days we rode the subway pretty much everywhere we went. I believe this is the ride to Chinatown.
We shopped in Chinatown then we went to eat, it was yummy.
Amanda got this "Dragon Beard" candy and I foolishly popped the whole thing in my mouth. That was a huge mistake, it somehow expanded and gummed up the works quite a bit. It was difficult to chew and messy, but delicious!
The next day we went to La Ronde 6 Flags and rode on roller coasters and had lots more sweaty fun. I liked the rides where they squirted us with water a lot. La Ronde was really fun, they sure had some intense rides!
The next day Mom, Amanda and I went to the Botanical Gardens (or, as Oliver recently called them, the Mechanical Gardens). On the walk there after we got off the Metro we passed the Olympic Stadium and I only got third, I don't know how those two beat me!
As I said before, it was really hot so I hitched my skirt up over my shirt to let a little air flow to my legs. It was quite the fashion statement but it kept me cooler. There was a lot of sweatiness in those gardens! But they are super pretty.
That's funny if you look at those last two fast, it's like Amanda disappeared! As I said, it was hot and we thought a lot of things were really funny but that might've been the heat getting to our poor brains.
They had a sensory garden where we could touch and smell different plants, it was really cool but Amanda thought Mom and I showed off some of our best assets when we bent down to sniff the low lying plants. I really liked sniffing and feeling those plants.
The next day we went to New York for the Hill Cumorah Pageant and some sight seeing in Palmyra and Fayette. We brought a member of the Chinese branch, Cui Ke and her daughter Annie with us in our car. The border patrol didn't quite know what to do with us, we had five American citizens, one Canadian and one Chinese. And two of the Americans were living in Canada on Visas for a year. They let us stop and visit with them for a while and we had to promise to bring Cui Ke back to Canada with us and not leave her there. We were cool with that.We went to Fayette, NY to the Whitmer Farm that first day and it was lovely, my pictures of it are currently unavailable but trust me, they rock. Then as we were leaving the farm on our way to Hill Cumorah it started to rain buckets and buckets of hard hard rain. So much rain. We went to the Hill determined to watch the Pageant as it was our only chance and it was very damp and rainy but we had faith that the show would go on. By around 7pm or so the rain let up quite a bit, the show was scheduled to begin at 9:15. It is an outdoor show so weather can be a bit of a damper. But Amanda and I sat in the rain under umbrellas to save seats for a few hours, we had fun. I climbed the hill earlier in the afternoon while it was still raining pretty hard, and I was glad I did, there wasn't anyone else going up so it was nice to have it all to myself. It was humbling to look around and think of all the terrible and great things that happened on that spot of ground. We didn't get another chance to climb the hill so I was grateful I took the opportunity when I did, even though I got soaked.
The pageant was AMAZING. I was soooo excited to see it, the rain slowed to a light drizzle thruout the show and we were able to put away our umbrellas and watch. The show has 700 performers and an enormous stage with water spraying out at times, fire shooting out, fog rolling. . . It was wonderful. I highly recommend it.
The next day we visited Palmyra, saw the Grandin Book Press where the first Book of Mormon was printed. The tour was very interesting, printing was surely labor intensive! In our tour group I saw Buffy Turley and her family (not Turley anymore but that's how I knew her). Her parents and sister are in our ward so it was neat to see a face I knew. Those Church History sites are surely a place to connect with people from all over!
Next we drove out to the Smith Family Farm and to the Palmyra Temple. The Temple was lovely, I loved the quote by President Hinkley about that temple, "I regard this temple as perhaps the most significant. . . in the entire Church." I tried to imagine what the Smith family would've thought if they had known that 100 years after they lived there people would come from all over the world to tour the site where they lived, and that there would be such a beautiful temple built within sight of their home, and within sight of the Sacred Grove. It is a miracle. Just one more of a long line of miracles. It is a very special place.One more thing before the pictures, while we were touring the Smith Farm Amanda turned to me as we were leaving the first stop along our tour (there are about 30 people in each tour group and we go to a bunch of interesting stops along the way where the missionaries tell us about the place), well she turned to me and said, "Either that's Donny Osmond's brother or it's a dude that looks a lot like Donny Osmond." It took me a little while to discreetly look at the front of the dude's head, he was with his wife and a young teenagery looking kid. But eventually I got to see his face and sure enough. It was Donny Osmond! Going along on the tour with the rest of us sheep. It was pretty nifty.
That's a picture of Amanda in the upstairs of the "log cabin" and that little kid is Joshua, Donny's son. Ha-ha! They were very nice and chatted with us a bit as we went along on the tour.
The Sacred Grove was beautiful.
Such a pretty place.
After the Sacred Grove we got a bit separated from Mom and Dad for a while so the kids played in the grass and Amanda, Cui Ke and I laid in the shade to wait. We eventually found them.
The next day we went to St. Joseph's Cathedral in Montreal before church. That place is honkin huge. Click on the link to see a pretty picture of the front of it. We climbed up it, actually we kind of cheated and rode the escalators inside the church to get to the top. A church with escalators. . . lots of escalators!
It was pretty there. Then we went to church with the Chinese Branch, and with a lot of help from some very kind translators, were able to figure out what was going on. I love it that no matter where you are or what language is being spoken one can still feel the Spirit in the meeting and the principles taught are the same everywhere. Lovely.Our trip was wonderful. I'm grateful for my parent's good example and for the wonderful work they do. They are great people and fantastic missionaries. Thanks for letting me come see you, and Thanks for bringing me Nunu!
Friday, July 2, 2010
A GG Update
I seriously love my Grandma.
I took the kids to see her yesterday. She is so beautiful and funny, her bruises are almost gone, there's just a little bit left around her cheekbones.
So I took these pictures with my digital camera and about 2 minutes later Grandma said, "Did you send the picture to Aunt Kitty?" I told her that my camera is just a plain old camera, it doesn't have internet abilities and I'd have to take it home and laboriously plug it into the computer and wait like 20 seconds while it transferred the digital photos to the computer before I'd be able to email them to my aunt in N.C. and my parents in Montreal. What a bummer! It is amazing to think about how the world has changed in my Grandmothers lifetime. She was born in 1924, she married Grandpa in 1941, almost 70 years ago!! How long would it have taken to get a picture to someone across the country 70 years ago? A month? Now we can take a picture with a cell phone and send it to someone on the other side of the planet in seconds! Crazy.
I wonder what kinds of changes and miracles those weird kids will see in their lifetimes. . .
I took the kids to see her yesterday. She is so beautiful and funny, her bruises are almost gone, there's just a little bit left around her cheekbones. So I took these pictures with my digital camera and about 2 minutes later Grandma said, "Did you send the picture to Aunt Kitty?" I told her that my camera is just a plain old camera, it doesn't have internet abilities and I'd have to take it home and laboriously plug it into the computer and wait like 20 seconds while it transferred the digital photos to the computer before I'd be able to email them to my aunt in N.C. and my parents in Montreal. What a bummer! It is amazing to think about how the world has changed in my Grandmothers lifetime. She was born in 1924, she married Grandpa in 1941, almost 70 years ago!! How long would it have taken to get a picture to someone across the country 70 years ago? A month? Now we can take a picture with a cell phone and send it to someone on the other side of the planet in seconds! Crazy.
I wonder what kinds of changes and miracles those weird kids will see in their lifetimes. . .
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The End of an Era
Peter can climb out of his crib. He is so very proud of himself! He thinks it's party time and that he can stay up as late as he wants and get up as early as he wants. We didn't let him have his usual nap today so that we could guarantee sleep tonight.
It totally worked. Chalk one up for the good guys!
It totally worked. Chalk one up for the good guys!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Trek
Last Thursday thru Saturday our Stake did a Pioneer Trek for all the Youth aged 14-18. It was a recreation of a Mormon Handcart Company crossing the plains. Both Ryan and I have ancestors who were involved in Handcart Companies. We found out that there was going to be a Trek about a year ago and I was immediately excited and I hoped that I could be involved somehow. My parents were very involved in their Chandler Stake's Trek last year so I knew a little bit about them, but mainly I wanted to GO. Since it is for youth aged 14-18 I wasn't going to get to go that way but they organize the youth in "families" and each family gets a "Ma and Pa", a married couple who are the kids "parents" on the trek. I really really wanted to be a Ma. Then about 6 months ago we were called in to meet with President Cathcart and Bishop Bennett and they asked us to be a Ma and Pa and we accepted, of course. They told us to keep it on the down low so that the youth wouldn't be speculating about which Ma and Pa they would get, as they were to be assigned and there would be no special requests. Ryan and I didn't even find out which youth we would have until a few minutes before our families were formed up at the trail head.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, we did a lot to prepare for the trek; there was a long list of equipment we had to gather, we also needed to get period clothing to wear, dress and bonnet for me, and sort of cowboy clothes for Ryan; a four mile "fun run" in under an hour to qualify to go (they had to make sure we could physically do it), and we did some research and planning of activities to do with our "family".
I don't have any pictures because my hands were full the whole time with my Ma duties, and there were "official" photographers there taking many many pictures of us all along the way. I think there were about 3,000 pictures taken and who knows how many hours of video tape. So it was well documented, we will be given pictures eventually and I'll post some of them.
This truly could be the longest post ever, I don't even know where to start writing about the experience. There were 6 families, each had their own hand cart. There were about 70 youth on the trek. Ryan and I had the best family, we got Becky and Andrew Maldonado to be our "Aunt and Uncle", they were wonderful to have along to help with our large family plus they are amazing dutch oven cookers. Our experience helped make me have a huge appreciation for food. And our youth. . . we had 7 boys and 4 girls. Three of them were from our ward so I knew them pretty well already, the others were fairly new to me.
*We walked 14 miles that first day, over very rough and hilly terrain. I remember we were stopped for a break at one point later in the day, we were way past the point where we sat and chatted happily with one another. The one orange we had to eat for the day was either already eaten and gone or it was being saved. Their faces were either expressionless or in pain. I sat next to Alex and I could tell that his mind was in a negative place. I didn't want to push him but I wanted to get him out of that thinking, so I said, "Alex, you are so lucky!" I could tell that he didn't really want to ask why he was so lucky but he did anyway and I said, "Because your Pa is by far the cutest Pa here." And he smiled.
*Our family was amazing at pushing the cart My Ryan had them turned into a finely tuned cart pulling machine, he had them switching positions often and we kept spraying them with the spray bottle when they were hot and tired and giving them drinks of water often during the day, even while we we were walking. We were actually very very good at pulling the cart which was great except that our Grace twisted her ankle on an especially rocky stretch of road when we probably should have been going a bit slower. She went on for several miles on a very painful ankle and kept saying she was fine but she just looked more and more miserable as we went. She finally couldn't go on anymore. We pulled off the trail and did some re packing to the hand cart and Pa and Uncle Andrew gave Sweet Grace a blessing. This was also late in the first day and the kids were exhausted, they just sat next to the trail. During the blessing the Cuthbert family went rolling by (hand carts are very noisy as the wheels are made of iron). It was quite an experience. I could easily imagine the real pioneers doing that, having to stop to help someone who was hurt or sick, worrying about the member of your family who was hurt (injuries were serious business), but feeling guiltily glad to get a break and be still for a minute but feeling that anxiety about not getting behind, knowing that every minute we weren't pulling we were just going to have to work that much harder to catch up. It was truly something. We lost Grace at that point, she was taken to the main camp, we got to camp with her that night but she had torn 4 ligaments in her ankle and she went home the next day.
*On the second day we rested and played games and were silly, I remember Shane shaking his booty to get all 8 ping pong balls out of the kleenex box belted onto his hiney. He was amazing! He got all of them out in like 5 seconds! I have no idea how he did it, I tried it and only got one out! It was really funny to watch :)
*After we finally arrived at camp that first night we gathered the family around in a circle and asked them what they thought of the first day. Steve immediately said, "It sucked butt." We asked him to please not sugar coat it for us, just tell us what he really thought, he said he was sugar coating it! We had a great time with Steve, among all our wonderful youth, he was among the first ones ready to pull again after a break, he responded immediately to any assignments or tasks and he became our best cart packer. Such a good boy.
*At one point that first day the US Army came to take our men away to fight in the Mexican-American War (that happened to the pioneers, they were without their men for over a year). And us girls got to pull our cart up a difficult and rocky hill without the benefit of our men. At this point in the day we had lost Grace so we were down to three young women, Aunt Becky and Me. I wasn't allowed to touch the cart to help (Pa and I were prohibited from pulling at all, it was the kids experience) I just got to hold our little sand bag baby, Persephone and kick rocks out of the way of the wheels and shout encouragement to those dear girls. We said a prayer before we started and I had been crying since the army man started talking. Our boys were at the top of the hill watching and shouting to us. We actually did very well pulling that 600 pound cart, we got half way up the hill and Makela went down. She said she couldn't do it, but she had to do it, the cart had to go forward or it would go backwards and on that hill that would have been bad. Makela, our youngest and tenderest little girl. She was in pain (her feet were killing her), she was hungry, tired, and emotionally raw. Both of her brothers were at the top of the hill and she could hear them yelling to her. She got back up again and some girls from other carts came and helped us up the last bit of the hill. It was something amazing to see. I don't think I'll ever forget that image of Makela on the ground on that hill.
*Daniel didn't want his picture taken. He was funny. He had his bandana tied around his face to keep the dust out, rather smart actually, and his hat low on his head. And whenever he saw someone with a camera he covered his face with his hat. The photographers caught onto this quickly and I'm pretty sure they made a goal to get as many shots of Daniel they could. He may turn out to be the most photographed kid on the trek :)
*Miss Clarcy had a best friend in the Cuthberts family and she enjoyed spending time with her, and we got to spend time looking for her :) After tracking her down one time on the trail and finding her three carts behind us I told her as we were hurrying to catch up that her Pa was going to "tan her hide!". I don't think she was scared. But we caught up to our family and sure enough Pa Livingstone said, "Clarcy Ann Livingstone! Where have you been?" To which she replied, "How did you know my middle name?" He didn't, it just sounded nice, she was amazed and after that she always asked permission before scampering off :)
*By the second day of the trek we had eaten so far an orange, a cup of hot chicken broth and a roll (we got the chicken broth and roll that first night, it was the most delicious meal ever), some runny oatmeal for breakfast, for lunch the second day an apple, a roll, and some yummy beef jerky (best lunch ever!). Well by that evening we were ready for something more. We were given the ingredients for dutch oven bread and stew and corn on the cob! We promised the kids full tummies for dinner. We had no trouble at all gathering the kids for dinner, they were actually there quite a while before it was officially done and there was excitement in the air. Especially when Uncle Andrew would take the lid off the dutch oven to stir it and the smell would waft over to us. . . Devin offered the prayer for the meal and I lost count but I'm pretty sure he was "Thankful for the food" about four times, and ever so grateful for the hands that prepared it :) It was goooooooood!!
*The corn on the cob took a little longer to boil so it was sort of our dessert, but by that time the kids were all full. We had a lot of corn on the cob and when Po Joe (we had two Joes) threw his de-corned corncob into the woods we noticed that he didn't hit any trees with it. We teased Po Joe a bit, they were woods after all. Well, GI Joe threw his corn cob into the woods and hit an impressive three trees. It was on. All the boys went back for corn on the cob over their protests of full bellies and they were eating corn as fast as they could and throwing corn cobs. But nobody beat GI Joe's impressive three tree corn cob throw!
*We did some good old fashioned pioneer activities that second day like muskett shooting, hair washing (aaahhhh!), hatchet throwing, and candle making. Wonderful Wendy was a handy hatchet chucker! She looked really impressive standing there throwing hatchets and she stuck a couple of them too. Not too shabby! She was such a fun girl to have around, we enjoyed our Wendy a lot.
*Lots of Po Joe stories involve GI Joe too, I'm not sure why but for some reason those two who didn't know each other before the trek were tossed together a lot. They were a team most of the time on the handcart, there were Joes in the back pushing, or Joes on the bar, or Joes in the front. They were both really hard workers and very pleasant the whole time. Po Joe was just so sweet to help GI Joe along (GI Joe was just baptized the week before and this was all very new to him!). He was a great "big brother" to him and we are so grateful that Po Joe was in our family :)
So, this post has finally come to an end. I wanted to share a little about each of our Amazing Youth. I feel like I'm leaving so much out but Ryan will have already rolled his eyes about 10 times reading thru this so I know I've gone way overboard. The trek was wonderful. I loved it. I loved watching my darling husband lead us (he was by far the best looking Pa there!), I loved the spiritual experiences I had, I loved how hard it was. I hated saying goodbye to my kids, I miss them a lot.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, we did a lot to prepare for the trek; there was a long list of equipment we had to gather, we also needed to get period clothing to wear, dress and bonnet for me, and sort of cowboy clothes for Ryan; a four mile "fun run" in under an hour to qualify to go (they had to make sure we could physically do it), and we did some research and planning of activities to do with our "family".
I don't have any pictures because my hands were full the whole time with my Ma duties, and there were "official" photographers there taking many many pictures of us all along the way. I think there were about 3,000 pictures taken and who knows how many hours of video tape. So it was well documented, we will be given pictures eventually and I'll post some of them.
This truly could be the longest post ever, I don't even know where to start writing about the experience. There were 6 families, each had their own hand cart. There were about 70 youth on the trek. Ryan and I had the best family, we got Becky and Andrew Maldonado to be our "Aunt and Uncle", they were wonderful to have along to help with our large family plus they are amazing dutch oven cookers. Our experience helped make me have a huge appreciation for food. And our youth. . . we had 7 boys and 4 girls. Three of them were from our ward so I knew them pretty well already, the others were fairly new to me.
*We walked 14 miles that first day, over very rough and hilly terrain. I remember we were stopped for a break at one point later in the day, we were way past the point where we sat and chatted happily with one another. The one orange we had to eat for the day was either already eaten and gone or it was being saved. Their faces were either expressionless or in pain. I sat next to Alex and I could tell that his mind was in a negative place. I didn't want to push him but I wanted to get him out of that thinking, so I said, "Alex, you are so lucky!" I could tell that he didn't really want to ask why he was so lucky but he did anyway and I said, "Because your Pa is by far the cutest Pa here." And he smiled.
*Our family was amazing at pushing the cart My Ryan had them turned into a finely tuned cart pulling machine, he had them switching positions often and we kept spraying them with the spray bottle when they were hot and tired and giving them drinks of water often during the day, even while we we were walking. We were actually very very good at pulling the cart which was great except that our Grace twisted her ankle on an especially rocky stretch of road when we probably should have been going a bit slower. She went on for several miles on a very painful ankle and kept saying she was fine but she just looked more and more miserable as we went. She finally couldn't go on anymore. We pulled off the trail and did some re packing to the hand cart and Pa and Uncle Andrew gave Sweet Grace a blessing. This was also late in the first day and the kids were exhausted, they just sat next to the trail. During the blessing the Cuthbert family went rolling by (hand carts are very noisy as the wheels are made of iron). It was quite an experience. I could easily imagine the real pioneers doing that, having to stop to help someone who was hurt or sick, worrying about the member of your family who was hurt (injuries were serious business), but feeling guiltily glad to get a break and be still for a minute but feeling that anxiety about not getting behind, knowing that every minute we weren't pulling we were just going to have to work that much harder to catch up. It was truly something. We lost Grace at that point, she was taken to the main camp, we got to camp with her that night but she had torn 4 ligaments in her ankle and she went home the next day.
*On the second day we rested and played games and were silly, I remember Shane shaking his booty to get all 8 ping pong balls out of the kleenex box belted onto his hiney. He was amazing! He got all of them out in like 5 seconds! I have no idea how he did it, I tried it and only got one out! It was really funny to watch :)
*After we finally arrived at camp that first night we gathered the family around in a circle and asked them what they thought of the first day. Steve immediately said, "It sucked butt." We asked him to please not sugar coat it for us, just tell us what he really thought, he said he was sugar coating it! We had a great time with Steve, among all our wonderful youth, he was among the first ones ready to pull again after a break, he responded immediately to any assignments or tasks and he became our best cart packer. Such a good boy.
*At one point that first day the US Army came to take our men away to fight in the Mexican-American War (that happened to the pioneers, they were without their men for over a year). And us girls got to pull our cart up a difficult and rocky hill without the benefit of our men. At this point in the day we had lost Grace so we were down to three young women, Aunt Becky and Me. I wasn't allowed to touch the cart to help (Pa and I were prohibited from pulling at all, it was the kids experience) I just got to hold our little sand bag baby, Persephone and kick rocks out of the way of the wheels and shout encouragement to those dear girls. We said a prayer before we started and I had been crying since the army man started talking. Our boys were at the top of the hill watching and shouting to us. We actually did very well pulling that 600 pound cart, we got half way up the hill and Makela went down. She said she couldn't do it, but she had to do it, the cart had to go forward or it would go backwards and on that hill that would have been bad. Makela, our youngest and tenderest little girl. She was in pain (her feet were killing her), she was hungry, tired, and emotionally raw. Both of her brothers were at the top of the hill and she could hear them yelling to her. She got back up again and some girls from other carts came and helped us up the last bit of the hill. It was something amazing to see. I don't think I'll ever forget that image of Makela on the ground on that hill.
*Daniel didn't want his picture taken. He was funny. He had his bandana tied around his face to keep the dust out, rather smart actually, and his hat low on his head. And whenever he saw someone with a camera he covered his face with his hat. The photographers caught onto this quickly and I'm pretty sure they made a goal to get as many shots of Daniel they could. He may turn out to be the most photographed kid on the trek :)
*Miss Clarcy had a best friend in the Cuthberts family and she enjoyed spending time with her, and we got to spend time looking for her :) After tracking her down one time on the trail and finding her three carts behind us I told her as we were hurrying to catch up that her Pa was going to "tan her hide!". I don't think she was scared. But we caught up to our family and sure enough Pa Livingstone said, "Clarcy Ann Livingstone! Where have you been?" To which she replied, "How did you know my middle name?" He didn't, it just sounded nice, she was amazed and after that she always asked permission before scampering off :)
*By the second day of the trek we had eaten so far an orange, a cup of hot chicken broth and a roll (we got the chicken broth and roll that first night, it was the most delicious meal ever), some runny oatmeal for breakfast, for lunch the second day an apple, a roll, and some yummy beef jerky (best lunch ever!). Well by that evening we were ready for something more. We were given the ingredients for dutch oven bread and stew and corn on the cob! We promised the kids full tummies for dinner. We had no trouble at all gathering the kids for dinner, they were actually there quite a while before it was officially done and there was excitement in the air. Especially when Uncle Andrew would take the lid off the dutch oven to stir it and the smell would waft over to us. . . Devin offered the prayer for the meal and I lost count but I'm pretty sure he was "Thankful for the food" about four times, and ever so grateful for the hands that prepared it :) It was goooooooood!!
*The corn on the cob took a little longer to boil so it was sort of our dessert, but by that time the kids were all full. We had a lot of corn on the cob and when Po Joe (we had two Joes) threw his de-corned corncob into the woods we noticed that he didn't hit any trees with it. We teased Po Joe a bit, they were woods after all. Well, GI Joe threw his corn cob into the woods and hit an impressive three trees. It was on. All the boys went back for corn on the cob over their protests of full bellies and they were eating corn as fast as they could and throwing corn cobs. But nobody beat GI Joe's impressive three tree corn cob throw!
*We did some good old fashioned pioneer activities that second day like muskett shooting, hair washing (aaahhhh!), hatchet throwing, and candle making. Wonderful Wendy was a handy hatchet chucker! She looked really impressive standing there throwing hatchets and she stuck a couple of them too. Not too shabby! She was such a fun girl to have around, we enjoyed our Wendy a lot.
*Lots of Po Joe stories involve GI Joe too, I'm not sure why but for some reason those two who didn't know each other before the trek were tossed together a lot. They were a team most of the time on the handcart, there were Joes in the back pushing, or Joes on the bar, or Joes in the front. They were both really hard workers and very pleasant the whole time. Po Joe was just so sweet to help GI Joe along (GI Joe was just baptized the week before and this was all very new to him!). He was a great "big brother" to him and we are so grateful that Po Joe was in our family :)
So, this post has finally come to an end. I wanted to share a little about each of our Amazing Youth. I feel like I'm leaving so much out but Ryan will have already rolled his eyes about 10 times reading thru this so I know I've gone way overboard. The trek was wonderful. I loved it. I loved watching my darling husband lead us (he was by far the best looking Pa there!), I loved the spiritual experiences I had, I loved how hard it was. I hated saying goodbye to my kids, I miss them a lot.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Bragging
Yes, Father's Day was yesterday and I do have an amazing, funny, fantastic father who I adore; plus I get to have My Ryan, the father of my darling children who is by far the cutest and bestest husband ever; and I have a kind and generous father-in-law who is fully invested in his family and their happiness and success. So why am I posting a tale about my mother-in-law today of all days? Well, it is because she won't do it and the story must be told.
So for the past year or so my parents-in-law have been replacing the wood shakes on their roof with asphalt shingles, they've been going section by section. I believe I've proven beyond a doubt that roofing is by far the funnest home improvement project (can you sense my sarcasm?). Well, roofing their house is fantastic because ripping off the wood shakes is such a joy, for decades the wood shakes were shaded and dripped on by the huge pine trees that lived there up until a couple of years ago so they are covered thickly in pine needles and dust so when you pry one up with a shovel or your hand a little explosion and puff of dirt and pine needles flies all over and goes up your nose and into your mouth and eyes. It is good times. Then you get to toss the piece of wood bristling with long rusty nails off the roof into a pile of it's brother and sister shingles. Then you get to haul that pile of shingles around to the front of the house and pile them up for bulk trash to take them away. It is a joy and a highly sought after job. Well, Arnon took it upon herself to peel off the last two sections of shakes AND drag them around to the front AND get the roof prepped and ready for shingling (pulling out nails, ripping off old nasty dirty tar paper, sweeping dust and debris up, etc). And since she will never tell you of this accomplishment, I will. So here are pictures of the mountain of shakes that is in front of their house.
The weather around here has been a balmy 100+ the last couple of weeks.
She rocks. As you can plainly see from this picture, the pile is approximately the size of a motor home :)
Later today or maybe tomorrow I will post a story about what Ryan and I did last week. It was an amazing experience and I'm still trying to figure out how to write about it, but I will, and soon.
So for the past year or so my parents-in-law have been replacing the wood shakes on their roof with asphalt shingles, they've been going section by section. I believe I've proven beyond a doubt that roofing is by far the funnest home improvement project (can you sense my sarcasm?). Well, roofing their house is fantastic because ripping off the wood shakes is such a joy, for decades the wood shakes were shaded and dripped on by the huge pine trees that lived there up until a couple of years ago so they are covered thickly in pine needles and dust so when you pry one up with a shovel or your hand a little explosion and puff of dirt and pine needles flies all over and goes up your nose and into your mouth and eyes. It is good times. Then you get to toss the piece of wood bristling with long rusty nails off the roof into a pile of it's brother and sister shingles. Then you get to haul that pile of shingles around to the front of the house and pile them up for bulk trash to take them away. It is a joy and a highly sought after job. Well, Arnon took it upon herself to peel off the last two sections of shakes AND drag them around to the front AND get the roof prepped and ready for shingling (pulling out nails, ripping off old nasty dirty tar paper, sweeping dust and debris up, etc). And since she will never tell you of this accomplishment, I will. So here are pictures of the mountain of shakes that is in front of their house.
The weather around here has been a balmy 100+ the last couple of weeks.
She rocks. As you can plainly see from this picture, the pile is approximately the size of a motor home :)Later today or maybe tomorrow I will post a story about what Ryan and I did last week. It was an amazing experience and I'm still trying to figure out how to write about it, but I will, and soon.
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