Part of a Moment in Church History!

What a great looking group!  What are they all dressed up for on a Saturday?

We are going to the ground breaking ceremony for the temple which was announced for Kansas City, MO!

It was a very chilly and very, very windy morning!

Unfortunately, the tickets we had didn't get us seats!!  But that was OK, because where we stood was right up with all of the action!

Sitting in the seats right in front (the couple with white hair) was general authority Elder Joe J. Christensen and his wife.  They have been visitors in our home before!  Can you imagine a general authority of the church calling up and asking if they could pay us a visit?  I never had imagined that before that happened!!  It was a lovely visit!  And so good to catch up with them when they visited the branch the next day!

The ceremony was certainly worth going to!  And we look forward to the temple's completion and dedication which, as announced, President Monson, our prophet, will be doing!

Sezchuan Chicken

A friend at church, a week ago, asked what she could do with cashews. I smiled and told her I had just the recipe for her!! This is a recipe that my sister-in-law, Dana, makes and it is so easy to make! In fact, it should be criminal to put so little into something and end up with such a 'wow!' when all is said and eaten!

This recipe serves 4-6. I have to double it because everyone is back for more before I have a chance to take a bite!

First, get your rice going. Your favorite kind will do. I have lots of favorites, medium grain rice and jasmine being at the top of my list!

Next, defrost two boneless skinless breasticles.

While those are defrosting, mix up the sauce.

Sauce:

2 tsp cornstarch

1/4 tsp ginger (i don't use fresh - but if you did, I'm sure it'd be just as yummy)

5 TA water

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 TA vinegar (I use white, but rice would probably be yummy too)

2 cloves garlic, minced

Now that the sauce is made, go back to your now defrosted breasticle and cut it into bite size pieces.

Chop a large bell pepper into bite size pieces. ( tonight I used celery - don't very often have bell peppers around since they don't digest well for the Apple Farmer. We also added green onion since the Apple Farmer wouldn't be joining us for dinner this evening.)

Now, its showtime!

Heat up two tablespoons of canola oil. Add 1/2 cup of dry roasted, unsalted peanuts or cashews. Put in 5 deseeded, red hot chile peppers. (If you are making a G rated meal and it must appeal to a general audience instead of adults only, use only 2 or 3 for a mild bite). Stir fry until heated and just barely starting to turn golden. At this point, start pulling peanuts and peppers out of oil with a slotted spoon. Do it quickly before they turn brown!

And Ooop! Mine got a little too brown! You really do have to work quickly with these babies!

In the remaining peanutty-spicey oil, toss in your chicken. Stir fry until just about done and then throw in your bell peppers. Stir fry a few minutes more. Grab that little bowl of sauce you mixed earlier. Give it a quick stir because the cornstarch will have settled a bit down to the bottom. Pour that over top of the chicken mixture and stir. It will become thick and bubbly. Grab those peanuts or cashews and stir into your sauce (don't put those red peppers back in). Serve on rice, which should be ready by now!

Ice, Ice Baby!

This morning I ran my best 5K time yet.

35 minutes and 32 seconds.

I'm hoping that I have cracked the 12 minute mile, too!

Still hurting, but I'm able to run without serious pain. I'm making sure I ice it really well throughout the day, and Ibuprofien is my best friend.

We Went Hunting!

The Lilacs are open!

The May Apples are poppin' up all over!

The toilet is dripping with condensation!

(No pictures of that one! I hate sweaty toilets - its a humidity thing!)

Yes! It is that time of the year again!

Time to go mushroom huntin'! And man was it ever a fun hunt this year! The Apple Farmer got to join us this time. Does that count as a date?

Welcome to our ditch!

Hunting isn't for the feeble hearted!
Shlop! Shlop! Shlop!
Its a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it!


One of the first sightings!
And after this, you could hear calls of sightings fairly consistently the rest of the time we hunted!

Time to dig up a new recipe that doesn't call for cracker crumbs!

And time to go home and clean up - lots of poison ivy in our happy little ditch!

Don't my boys look so excited? They ought to be! They accompanied me to a ladies' social club this afternoon!

I'll bet you already see that there is a story behind this!

There is! Hopefully I am remembering it correctly! At one time, the county extentions had women's clubs that met monthly. They met and socialized and discussed mainly matters of the home and community. They shared ideas, how-tos and learned new things. Eventually, many years ago, the county extentions stopped this program. But one little club never stopped meeting! What a lovely group of ladies! And so it was a great honor to be invited to join them this afternoon! We were asked to tell about our orchard and our family. So the boys and I told our story!

It was so fun to listen to the minutes from the previous meeting and to hear a thank-you letter read for the service they provided making bibs for hospitalized patients.

It was fun to hear the ladies talk about how their Hostas had just poked up out of the ground - they went on a field trip to a greenhouse that specializes in Hostas and each planted several last year. It was so exciting to learn that Marcella had just had her 90th birthday and had received 123 birthday cards!! And out of the 123, there were only 2 duplicates - they were lovely butterfly cards!

It was great to find out I was not the only one who caved and planted corn and beans! They all told me that I would need to watch for a cold snap around May 6th, but that if the frost got my beans I could always replant! One lady, I think she was a Mrs. Brown, always grows sweet potatoes in her garden.
We played Bingo! I won a geranium plant!!

And we all sang happy birthday to Marcella and enjoyed eating the beautiful birthday cake! And as a thankyou gift, they presented me with a beautiful geranium covered in pink blossoms!!

It was a wonderful afternoon. The boys came home bragging about three compliments they were paid for their good behavior, which means I owe them each suprises multiplied by three... I wish people would stop paying them compliments!! Its getting pretty expensive at our house to have well behaved children!

Lettuce, Peas, Beans and Corn - Oh My!

While I was playing and having the time of my life in Colorado, I took the President down the water slide with me at the rec. center that Doug and Teresa are members at. He wasn't planning on going down this great big slide. Leave it to his mother to have other ideas! He needed to try it once and then he could tell me "No" after that. So down we went. He may have had his fingers pinching his nose before we even finished rounding the first corner!

In retrospect. He loved the slide. He really hated landing in the water. I can't understand why. What is so bad about getting a little water splashed in your face? Well, apparently lots - I just have seemed to have forgotten that little tidbit as I've grown older. On a side note, his little sister went down four times and loved it! I, on the other hand, really didn't like hitting the water either. For me, it wasn't the water splashing in my face. It was all about how my feet hit the bottom of the pool and the ensuing pain as the rest of the day progressed. I don't seem to have good luck with water parks and slides. I broke my tail bone sliding down a kiddie slide with Human Resources in Roseville, CA, when the President was a little baby. At least nothing was broken this time. My knee gave me trouble at first and after the pain went away there, I realized that I still had some minor nagging pain left in my ankle. No biggie! So I decide to run on it. Except yesterday, my ankle really wasn't very happy about that! Ended up at the chiropractor yesterday evening and am feel a bit better today. Instead of running, I spent the day in the garden, man handling a beast of a tiller. I consider that a workout! I've worked up a new garden plot for the third and final time! I wish we would have tilled up this spot our first year here! The soil is beautiful! No more gardening in sticky clay! Wow, I'm so lucky!

The Attorney and Human Resources planting Sweet Sugar snow peas and Strike green beans. The green beans were my naughty for the day. I can't seem to manage to get through the day without doing SOMETHING naughty, and this is it. Our last day of frost for our growing zone is Mother's Day. I'm supposed to plant these after all danger of frost... but I didn't. Because I didn't, we likely will end up with a snow storm and a hard freeze and I can pretty much kiss our apple crop goodbye! I guess this beautiful warm weather got the best of me! We shall see, in a few weeks, how my gamble with the elements turns out.

This picture gives a pretty good idea what size the plot is. I fully intended to use the square foot garden method from here on out. And I am! In some of my other smaller beds near the front door. But I was needing soil and it was going to be too tedious to try and get the 4 foot by whatever foot beds all figured into my slightly slanted and uneven lawn! So the plot won out.

The President and Ms. Princess are playing with Lizzy, our sweet Araucana Hen. She lays green eggs. Seriously!

I had to add this one. Fitting because we finished planting our seed for the day and so we watered. But check out his expression! Sooo cute!!

A Picnic Under the Apple Blossoms

It happened! This morning, while everyone was snuggled into their pillows, the apple blossoms unfolded themselves and filled the morning air full of sweet fragrance! What a surprise to look out the window this morning and to be greeted with such an enthusiastic bloom!

It then only seemed appropriate to celebrate by enjoying an evening under the blossoms! We anxiously awaited for the Apple Farmer to arrive home to join us in eating dinner, or as the people in Missouri call it, supper!

It was a perfect evening! We enjoyed the sweetly scented air, and the music from the leaves in the lower wind break, gently rustling together. The dinner conversation was enjoyable as was listening to the chatter of the birds.

We chose to make one of our favorite pasta salads with a side of homemade french bread! The salad is full of our favorite veggies, olives, grated cheese and diced salami. We toss it with an Italian dressing made from a package mix. Yummy!