Winter Stuff

Hey all. Matt and I have had a pretty good winter so far.  We've mostly just hung out and rearranged our house.  A month or two ago we bought some new furniture and got rid of some of the hand-me-down furniture I've had for years.  So our house matches a little better now.  We've also gone snow-shoeing a couple times.  So far we've always gone to North Fork, in the Ogden Valley, behind Ben Lomond.  They have a county (I think?) park up there with really great trails groomed for skiing and snow shoeing.  It's always good to get up there out of the inversion and into the forests.
Besides that, we've taken the scooter out for a ride (40 degrees might seem warm in winter, but when you get going fast with the wind in your face, 40 degrees feels arctic!); we've been looking for a go-to pizza place after our favorite one closed. We might have found a winner in Marco's, which is a carry-out chain and has a store near us.  It's really good. We've started making plans for our spring/summer garden (it'll be good this year, but we can't figure out where to grow raspberries).  Like I said, a pretty good winter so far.

Matt's friend from Spokane came with us on one snow shoeing day.

There is a real pine forest there, but we were going for the view in these pictures.

HAWAII!!!!

Matt and I had a really great time in Hawaii.  We got married on November 16, and spent about a week in paradise.  We stayed on Kauai, which everybody tells me is the best island.  And I believe it.  It's pretty rural: we stayed in the biggest city (Lihue), and it had a Walmart and Costco and not much else.  It took about 5 minutes to drive from one end of town to the other.  The whole island is about 30 miles wide in either direction.  So we drove around most of the island a few times.  At church on Sunday, before the closing prayer the bishop announced that after the prayer, all the visitors should stay in their seats and the ward members would go to the front to sing us a song of Aloha.  I recognized a few people from our resort, so I knew we weren't the only visitors, but when the ward members went up to sing, the congregation was still pretty full.  At least half of the people were visitors!  They sang a really cool song in Hawaiian while the youth went around putting leis on all the visitors.  It was really neat.  In Sunday School, I'm pretty sure there were only a few people who were actual ward members.  I can't imagine trying to run a ward like that.  The members must have to speak all the time!  Sidenote- the Sunday School teacher came from a family of 26 kids, 1 mom. Yikes!
Hawaii is very much it's own place.  People are super laid back and just go with the flow.  On Friday night we had gotten a restaurant recommendation, so we went there and it was closed.  At 6:00 on Friday night! Luckily we found another restaurant that had been recommended (amazing fish tacos), and the guy who had recommended it to us was there!  Small island.
My favorite activity was canoe surfing.  We were in a 4-man outrigger canoe (it was just us and a guide), and we would go way out in the bay and then sit and wait for some waves.  When the waves got there, the guide told us to paddle with everything we had.  We'd get onto the waves and then went so fast and so high that we couldn't paddle.  We just rode the waves in to shore.  On our first ride, Matt told me to look behind me.  There was a huge wave towering over us, like you see in surfing pictures. It was really fun.
A couple things I didn't get a picture of: chickens in Kauai are like pigeons in New York.  They're EVERYWHERE!!!  Roosters, hens, chicks, everywhere you go.  And they don't always move out of the way of cars. We had to swerve several times to miss the chickens.
Our vacation package included the hotel's breakfast buffet every day, and it was awesome.  Really really awesome. My favorite food discovery was coconut syrup.  That stuff is like elixir from the gods. Every day there were pancakes, waffles, and/or french toast in different varieties, and I just put coconut syrup on all of it.  Matt's favorite (and one of my favorites) was what they called island fried rice.  Basically it was rice with seasonings and whatever else they wanted to throw in.  If the restaurant served pork roast the night before, the breakfast rice would have leftover pork roast.  We think we also saw cabbage, turkey, ham, bacon, and sausage in there.  It doesn't sound like much, but it was so very good.  One night at dinner we were still hungry after we ate, so we asked the waiter to just bring out a big bowl of fried rice.  I miss that stuff.
I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

This is the pool at our resort.  You can see the ocean behind the pool.  Made for some serious relaxation

This was a little garden at our resort.  

This is at Waimea Canyon on the west side of the island.  The ground was mostly dirt and volcanic rock, and it overlooked the ocean and a bunch of mountains.  It was really pretty.

We were driving back to the resort one afternoon and came across this 'little' fish pond just kind of out by itself. 

We went to a national botanical garden on the south side one day.  It showed native plants (I think they said only 1% of the plants in Kauai are native), canoe plants (the plants that have been brought in by settlers in canoes over thousands of years), poison plants (sap can cause 3rd degree burns) and spice plants (nutmeg, etc.)  I can't remember how many acres it was, but it was big, and we just wandered all over.  It was super rainy, but super pretty.  I think we saw at least a hundred varieties of palm trees.  Some have coconuts, some have really crazy pinecones,some have multiple types of leaves, etc.  There are coconuts all over the place in Kauai. They're kind of like acorns here.  

This is the view from the highway (the road in this picture is the main highway that goes around the island; like I said, Kauai is kind of rural)

This cave was just off the road at the end of the highway.  It was so big, we could have walked all the way to the back without hitting our heads.

This is Hanalei Beach.  Remember in the song, 'Puff the Magic Dragon', there's a line that says, 'in a land called Hanalei'?  Check out the mountain- it's shaped like a sleeping dragon.  The song was written about this beach. It might have been my favorite place.

More Hanalei Beach

Those are taro fields.  Taro grows like rice, in water, but looks more like really short palm trees.  I think we ate taro bread one morning, in the form of donut holes.  They were delicious!

This is the view from our hotel balcony.  Yeah, that's right.

Let's look at that view again

Just part of the resort.

And one engagement picture for good measure.

A New Face In Caroland

Last year I had an eHarmony date.  I've done enough eharmony dates to know that they aren't great.  But with this guy, we'd been emailing back and forth a lot for a few weeks, and he seemed pretty cool, fun, funny, etc.  So on a Saturday night I went downtown to meet him for dinner.  We were planning on meeting at Cedars of Lebanon.  I parked too far away and was running late, so when I got there, he was standing outside the restaurant waiting for me.  We said hello, shook hands, and went in and had dinner.  It was great.  A lot of fun.  After dinner we walked over to a little bakery a couple blocks away, Gourmandise, and got dessert.  We ended up sitting there talking for a few hours.  And then he walked me to my car, really far away.  I walked extra slowly so that the date would last longer.  And as I drove home, I smiled the whole way and was surprised that eHarmony had finally come through.  Fast forward several months.  We've only had a day or two that we haven't talked, emailed, texted, etc.  We have lots of fun together, he makes me smile, he makes me think about things in ways that I never had, I've become less stuck in my ways, more open to change, and I've even found out I
like bacon.
On Friday he asked me to meet him downtown for dinner after work.  He said his friend had told him about a new restaurant in the neighborhood of Cedars of Lebanon, so we could meet around there.  I drove down there, and as I drove past Cedars of Lebanon looking for parking, he was standing in the same spot as the first time I ever saw him, wearing the same outfit.  I smiled, found a parking spot, and then walked over to him.  He told me that there was no new restaurant his friend had recommended.  He just wanted me to come back to that spot.  Then he got down on his knee and asked me to marry him (he said some really nice things, but I'll keep those personal).  It was wonderful.  After we hugged and talked for a few minutes, we walked around the corner to Gourmandise and had dinner, then walked around Temple Square and City Creek for a couple hours.
So everybody (even though most of the people reading this have already met him), meet Matt.  He'll be a new face on this blog.

The New Me

Last week I had my one year follow-up to see how my eyes are doing since I had lasik last summer.  I see great, so I knew that it would be an easy appointment.  I would just walk in, read whatever charts my doctor wanted me to read from miles away, and walk out.  First my doctor tested my right eye, and it was great.  I easily read the bottom row of letters.  Next he tested my left eye.  Not so great.  I couldn't even read the top line.  I don't know what setting he had it on, so I don't know how bad it really was, but I could just see blurs.  So he went through the whole 'is the left or right image clearer' several times.  At one point after I answered he said, 'Really?', and I said 'I think so, was that the wrong answer?'. He said I was doing okay and we kept going.  Anyway, he said I've developed astigmatism in that eye.  It's not really bad yet, and since I hadn't even noticed that there was a problem, he gave me a choice to get correction or not.  I don't really want to be back in contacts so soon, specially in just one eye, so I chose no. For now.
The next day I went to the dentist.  I've always really like the dentist.  It's like a twice-yearly affirmation that I'm doing things right.  I think mild OCD really does well in a dentist's office.  I'm a rock star there.  They love that my cleanings are easy and that I always brush and floss.  But it's also always a little scary, with the threat of more gum surgery always a possibility.  This time around, my dentist said my gums are still receding, but he doesn't think it's a result of ovebrushing.  He said it's in places that would be really hard to overbrush, so I probably just have really soft gums.  So he told me I should get a bite guard to wear at night.
So now, after thousands of dollars in surgeries over the past few years, this is my new look:

This Year's Garden

Yep, it's time for the annual post about my garden.  I planted my tomatoes at the end of March, using water walls, and they're doing great.  A couple of the walls kept falling over (I think those tomatoes are on slanty parts of the garden, so the walls couldn't stay up when the wind came), so I took them down, and the plants have been fine.  I also have peas, spinach, one jalapeno plant, and basil.  I planted rosemary, but it hasn't sprouted.  And I've planted zucchini a few times, but I don't see that doing anything either.  It's the first year in a few years that I've tried zucchini because I kept getting squash bugs that would just destroy my plants.  I thought maybe after a few years of no squash, the bugs might have moved on.  Maybe I'll give up on planting from seed and buy some starters.  I've also planted cucumbers, but the space I put them in has been overrun by sunflowers.  I'll have to wait and see if any plants come up. Besides those, I have my regular strawberries, fennel, rhubarb, and arugula filling in all the blank spaces of my garden.  In my front yard I've got a columbine plant this year.  I bought it in the clearance section looking pretty bad last year, but it's really nice this year.  I've also planted a bunch of wild flower and poppy seeds. I always scatter them in among the leaves of my bulb flowers, hoping that they'll do something, but they never do, so by the time the bulb flowers have died back, I'm just left with an empty space and it's too late to plant anything else.  But I think I saw a few sprouts out there today.  Hopefully they're not just weeds.

I've had a terrible few weeks.  Maybe the worst ever.  And they're still going, with no signs of getting easier any time soon.  But I've seen a few little good things in these weeks, so I'm going to point those out here.
I've always known that my family loves me, but it's always kind of been in a general sense, like we have to love each other because we're family.  But they've been there for me unconditionally, and it's meant the world to me.  I've been able to call them for talks, visits, and priesthood blessings, and they've dropped everything and helped me. So thanks family.
I've also seen the real meaning of a ward family.  My ward is fantastic, and they've always been fantastic.  But the past couple of weeks, they've shown me how much they care.  I've had treats left on my doorstep, extra hugs at church, texts during the day, and one of my friends even let me know on Sunday that she was fasting for me.  I didn't ask for that- she just did it because she cares.
And I know the Lord is watching out for me.  One of my priesthood blessings promised me that Lord is aware of me and that He knows what I'm going through.  The next day, on which I was a complete wreck, I got a text from my visiting teacher.  She's a great visiting teacher.  She's really good about visiting every few months and dropping off a treat in the in-between months.  That's perfect for my schedule.  But on that day, she texted to say she'd been thinking about me all day and wanted to know if everything was all right.  That was all I needed to know that the Lord really was aware of what I was going through.
It still hurts, and I don't know how to live each day, but these little miracles have helped and I know I'm being cared for, so I guess that's something.

Sad News

It's with much regret that I write to inform you all of the passing of a much beloved family member. The Cuisinart that we all grew up with, and that had a part in so many of our meals, the very Cuisinart that Mom and Dad got as a wedding present 41 1/2 (?) years ago, that has blended countless cheesecakes, buttercreams, and doughs; chopped endless fruits and vegetables; and pureed plenty plus whatever else was asked of it, has had enough.  When Mom got her new Cuisinart several years ago, I adopted the old one with the understanding that it probably wouldn't last much longer.  In the years since, I've used it for everything we always used it for.  All of the pieces (except the base) have been gradually cracking.  The bowl has little cracks throughout, but none all the way through or big enough to be an issue.  The locking part on the top sometimes has to be forced down to lock and then held in place to keep the motor running.  In the last year or so, there's been a growing gap between the blade and the lid, so thicker and thicker chunks of vegetables get left behind.  And a year or two ago, I had to stop making frosting in it because the motor was too hot and was melting the butter.  So I've mostly just been using the Cuisinart to chop nuts and vegetables.
Last night I was grating some cheese to make The Christmas Cheeseball, and the blade piece got jammed on the motor shaft. So the motor was still running and trying to spin, but the blade wouldn't spin, so the plastic pieces were just grinding together.  By the time I realized what was happening, the blade was completely stuck on the shaft, which meant it was also stuck in the bowl, since the shaft sticks up in the bowl, and all the cheese I had grated was stuck under the blade.  With the help of my magic fingers, I got the cheese out, and then I pulled and pulled, and thought I got the blade off, but actually pulled the whole shaft off the base. And it's still all stuck in the bowl, since the bottom of the shaft is bigger than the hole in the bowl. So sad. So sad. I finished making the cheeseball in my Kitchenaid (it may not be as blended as we're used to since it was mixed with a paddle instead of a blade), and am mourning the loss of a trusted kitchen friend. Let's all have a moment of silence.

The base - the metal piece sticking up normally has a plastic shaft on it, which the blade pieces connect to through the bowl.

The blade, stuck in the bowl

The bottom of the blade piece, poking out through the bottom of the bowl, and clearly jammed and broken around the now-disconnected shaft. You'd think with a crack like that I could just wiggle it off the shaft, but it's not budging.

And happier thoughts- This was what Andrya's cake looked like before all the caramel dripped off and pooled around the edges of the plate (and my fridge).