The Beauty Of Church Attendance

I'm constantly asked by coworkers why Holly and I go to church. Why do we take the time to go to church, when we could use that day for ourselves? I feel strongly that since our country was founded on religious freedoms, and also I believe strongly that God is the source of everything we have in this life. Because of this strong conviction, the least I can do is give of my time and talents to try and make the world a better place. We participate in a study group, and have so for almost eight years and we meet on a regular basis. This past weekend we studied an article from Eugene England, a retired professor from Brigham Young University and a former Dean of Academic Affairs at St. Olaf Liberal Arts College in Minnesota. In his eight page article we just studied, his following comment stuck the most out in my mind.

In his words, "Church involvement teaches us compassion and patience as well as courage and discipline. It makes us responsible for the personal and marital, the physical and spiritual welfare of people we may not already love, and may even heartily dislike, and thus we learn to love them. It stretches and challenges us, even when we are disappointed and exasperated, in ways we would not other wise choose to be stretched and challenged. Thus it gives us a chance to be made better than we may have chosen to be—but need and ultimately want to be."

I go to church to be less selfish, to offer up my time and talents, to learn from others, and to be challenged by humanity. I also try to go beyond church and actively help in the community to give better awareness for my faith. All of this is the refiners fire that makes us better human beings in the long run. Helping others, not just friends, but even strangers, I feel truly brings the highest level of happiness.

A New Junk Food Find

I'm a sucker for Wheat Thins brand crackers. I really like the crunch and flavor of these crackers. I'm also a sucker for good bread and cheese. While grocery shopping this weekend I tried one of these Artisan Vermont Cheddar Wheat Thins, and really liked them. I succumbed today and went to the grocery store to purchase a box, after going online for a coupon, so I could have something in my office to snack on from time to time. 15 crackers are only 140 calories. Can't beat that. A handful of these made a nice snack with my organic plum. Yum!

Seattle Sounders Grid Lock

The debut of the new Seattle Sounders FC professional Soccer team yesterday brought the city to a halt. Let's just say that I was NOT a happy camper dealing with traffic congestion in downtown Seattle. It took me over an hour to go the two miles from my office to Holly's office to pick her up to head home. This is another reason why sports ruins EVERYTHING!

Corned Beef & Cabbage Twist

The older I get and the more experienced I get in the kitchen, the more particular I’m becoming about the types of food I like to prepare at home, and taking on more advanced types of food preparation. Holly and I had an amazing St. Patrick’s Day meal at home. I toyed for a few days if I wanted to do the preparation of making corned beef at home, the traditional way, with brining for five to ten days prior. We ultimately opted for a chuck roast since we both have been overly busy with work these past few weeks.

I make my own fennel salt which consists of crushed fennel, celery seed, dried orange rind, dried garlic, finest quality sea salt, dried parsley and a little bit of crushed red pepper. I also add some bread crumbs to mellow some of the intense flavors, but still allowing them to come through without being overbearing. I generously seasoned the meat with my homemade mixture than let it roast in the crock pot all day. We came home to a very intense and aromatic smell in the house reminiscent of all those Sunday dinners of my childhood.

We accompanied the roast with roasted baby red potatoes and Brussels sprouts. When we traveled to France last autumn, I picked up a ton of custom olive oils when we visited Nice and other towns down on the French Mediterranean. I broke open the orange and lemon infused olive oil, and used this with the organic seasoning blend we use on all our roasted vegetables.

I received a comprehensive Cooks Illustrated / American’s Test Kitchen cook book for my Birthday from my mother-in-law. I’ve been making items out of this cook book weekly. For our holiday meal, I also decided to make an extremely flavorful traditional soda bread recipe to go with the roast and veggies. I enjoy making simple and flavorful meals with best quality ingredients.

I’m looking forward to finding a few more recipes to try this upcoming weekend.

Feeling a Little Crafty

For the past few years I've been making these cute onesies with embroidered flowers for the expectant moms in my life. I have fun putting them on the front or on the butt, adding the stem and little french knots for leaves. This set is for my sister in law (I think it's safe to show them here since she never reads our blog) and is by far my best work.




This particular one is my favorite.




I love the different colors of embroidery floss and frequently will spend a few minutes just staring at the rows of color in my box. I know, I'm weird like that but I LOVE color!

This one I took just to show off our cute little birdie we bought at Ravenna Gardens. I love him!

Another Week, Continued Perspective

Last week was a tad stressful on the work front. Holly's office reduced staff, all across the board. My company continues to reduce staff outside of our division. We're all wondering what the impact of the budget cuts will be to our division at the end of the month. It's all sort of surreal. I cooked a ton of things this weekend, as a way to alleviate work related stress. It did help for the most part and got my mind off of things I have no control over. Given the economy, now I feel the sense of urgency to keep stockpiling money in the bank to weather any unforeseen event that may be in our short term or long term future. Or subsequently, the future of a family member. There will probably be a time for all of us to need to step up to the plate and help a family member given the state of the economy around us. As nothing is secure from a secular standpoint, from a bigger picture standpoint this all stems back to what church leaders through inspiration from the lord have counseled us to do for decades. If you are prepared, ye need not worry. Holly and I have been working over the past several years to beef up our savings, beef up our rainy day funds, create comprehensive 72-hour kits, continue to supplement our 1+ year food storage and rotate food in and out of it. From my perspective, this is all sound advice for anyone in today's economy.

Ridiculously Wicked

I'm a little pissed that preliminary ticket prices for Wicked, coming to the Paramount Theatre in Seattle later this summer are ASTRONOMICAL! Nosebleed, 3rd tier seats are $115.00 and up. Decent seats down on the orchestra level are $215.00-$275.00 and up...PER PERSON! I'm hoping these are typos, and when tickets finally do go on sale via Ticketmaster, they won't be that much. No Broadway show is worth spending hundreds of dollars on. Good Grief! Maybe I'm just a super cheap tight wad?!

Hello Miss Dolly-Gallagher-Levi

For a birthday surprise, Holly took me to see Hello Dolly in the unexpected March snow storm. I thought Jennifer Lewis did a great job in this. Pat Cashman was OK. You can typically expect a few mishaps on opening night. I felt it made it all that more entertaining. The costumes had the most amazing colors. Traditional, period detail, but modern colors and fabric choices. I loved it! The sets were very cool too. One thing Holly and I love doing together is attending the performing arts. I'm pretty excited for the 2009-2010 5th Ave Theatre season. South Pacific is coming to Seattle, and we've never seen that. Also, Irving Berlin's White Christmas is coming back to Seattle this December. WE LOVED THAT IN 2006! We will be seeing that show again this holiday season. Thanks for the nice birthday experience honey.

Creative Recycling

While going through my regular blog routine this morning I ran across this cool article about an event last week at west elm celebrating the opening of its newest manhattan shop. They hosted a silent auction of one-of-a-kind furniture and objects created by david stark using recycled west elm packing materials. All of the proceeds went to the cooper hewitt and at the end of the night, david’s work was able to raise $8,000 for the museum. Since I love west elm and I love design I thought I'd share it with you.



I would have loved to see these in person.

The New Signature Club

We started going to our new gym, the LA Fitness Signature Club. This is a closer location to our house. The new gym is super nice and much larger with more state of the art equipment than our old location. We were hoping to get away from some of the Aurora crazies that we saw at each visit. Low and behold, our first day to the new facility yielded "the gym going serial killer," as well! I was hoping that we'd get away from this profusely sweating freak show who likes to show off his man boobs and ripped, tethered clothing. Oh well, the gym is an interesting place to people watch.

The Big 34...!

I had a wonderful birthday celebration this past Tuesday evening. Holly really spoiled me again. We both had a hectic day at work, but were able to finally leave and go enjoy a meal eating out. I was craving PF Changs Asian Bistro, particularly the pork lettuce cups and the crispy tempura green beans with wasabi. We had great food and plenty of left overs for lunch the next day.


The full spread on the dining room table. I decided I wanted a sampling of good cupcakes this year, since I had my traditional favorite German Chocolate Cake the night before at our weekly dinner group.


The loot prior to unwrapping. Holly coordinated all the blue and brown packaging and ribbon.


Cupcake Royale sampling. We had the best White Coconut, Red Velvet, Double Chocolate and Carrot Cream Cheese. All four of these did not fit on the plate.





Holly is treating me to Hello Dolly. It opens soon at Paramount Theatre. Look at her designed ticket.


Besides tickets to Hello Dolly, and a few things for the kitchen, I got an engraved iPod Shuffle. My older, bigger iPod is on the fritz. Being picky, I hate having the larger one at the gym. I just want to have something clipped to my neck line or sleeve line. I had a crash a burn a few weeks ago at the gym and the iPod came flying off the treadmill and smacked me in the head leaving a mark. If you are asking, yes I'm very graceful at multitasking on the treadmill.

A Month of Birthdays

Some of the best people I know are born in March. My husband, of course, quite a few friends, two nieces and today my mom. My mom is the greatest mom ever. She is caring, loving all the things you want in a mom. And she is the best example in my life of a person that is selfless, positive and strong. When we did our homestudy and had to describe our relationship with our parents our social worker kind of laughed at me saying I'd used an impressive amount of adjectives. But it got my point across. It's kind of hard to know how to describe a woman that makes friends in the bathroom on not one but many occasions with random strangers, or the woman who constantly sings 'you've gotta accentuate the positive' and the same woman who is not afraid to push people out of her way at Disneyland. I love her and think I'll keep her. Happy birthday mom!

DAN IS WRITING NOW:

Instead of making another post, I wanted to chime in about "Mom2" as she so often refers to herself as. My Mother in law has been an amazing friend, confident and source for advice the entire time I've been a part of Holly's family. Her laugh is infectious and makes you want to laugh with her. She loves playing games as much as I do. Words can't even describe the comfort and care she gave to me in the days, weeks and months after my Mother's death right along side Holly. I feel so very lucky to have two wonderful mothers in my life, and I owe to world to her and her husband who has also passed on, for an amazing daughter to share my life with. WE LOVE NANA!

Irrational Fears

We’ve been discussing people’s irrational fears today. Some things that people are afraid of are quite interesting! Take mine for example. I have a total and complete fear of being in my car, and being stuck under or close to a bridge, a freeway overpass or a pedestrian overpass for the following reasons.

1) You can not control idiotic drivers! And I know that one of these days; some intoxicated “hoochie” male or female will crash into the guard rail while s/he’s trying to talk on their cell phone. The car will rip through the guard rail and fall a few stories and land on top of my car, killing me instantly.

2) If I’m going to die in an earthquake, I don’t want to die by having a freeway bridge come crashing down on me, again snuffing out my life instantly. I’d rather die in my house with the roof caving in or something. What is the lesser of two horrible endings? Undecided at this point.

3) When it comes to pedestrian overpasses my rule of “assuming positive intent,” quickly turns into “assuming absolute worst intent.” I always get apprehensive driving close to a pedestrian bridge and seeing teenagers [a.k.a. Children of the Devil] more than likely up to absolutely no good! I always assume that some frozen turkey is going to be projected down onto my windshield, thus killing me instantly, or being the onset of a belaboring end to my life.

What are you irrational fears?

Celebrating Dan

Today is March 3rd. It is a special day because it is the day my sweetheart was born. I am indebted to his mother for choosing to have this 6th child, for raising him in the gospel, for teaching him how to cook and truly love it and for his sisters and brother who helped him to become a sensitive and understanding person. To his Dad for helping him understand the importance of family, hard work and living on a budget. I am very thankful for his mission call to Seattle where he came and fell in love with the trees which led him back to this beautiful place to live his life. I am most thankful to the Lord for leading us both to this area, for the miracles that transpired to lead us back to church activity and into each others lives. So honey, thanks for your laugh, your corny jokes, your cooking, your love, and for lighting up my life. Happy Birthday!!

Pool / Ping Pong Championship

Holly and I, and Patrick and Noelle headed out to Monroe this past Saturday evening to hang with Hyrum and Nicole. We had an excellent meal of homemade rolls and corn chowder, yummy salad and grilled pineapple with marscapone, nutella and toasted hazelnuts for dessert. After dinner we had a Pool, Foosball and Ping Pong championship. Let's just say that I'm not as good as I'd like to think I am when it comes to pool. I only have one sustained welt on my neck from a stray Ping Pong ball. Hyrum takes no mercy! I need more lessons from Patrick, or we need a rematch a few months out, back in Monroe. Bring It On...!