Mormet

No, no, this title is not a typo for a small furry mammal you see occasionally in the Rockies.

I'm a marmot, people! BTW, aren't I just cute as the dickens?

Nor does this word rhyme with the Dallas Cowboys football sensation from the early 80's.

Check out me and my bad self! I'm Tony Dorsett.

This word is a smash up of Mormon and Gourmet, and should be pronounced accordingly. I saw this word coined in a Voice of Reason post about Mormon food. Or, more accurately, what Mormons consider food. The copious number of comments were all about the weirdest-thing-found-in-my-ward-cookbook. (You know, "Sister Smith's Spamalicious Food Storage Loaf" that is made with margarine, canned beets and spam held together with store-brand cream of mushroom soup and American cheese.) It was both disgusting and illuminating.

Hopefully the next few ideas will keep you from dinner drudgery. It has been a very good food week at our house. I realize that the new recipes I'm trying and posting aren't necessarily simple, but now and then it is fun to really channel your inner domestic goddess and create something fantastic. Yesterday was just such a day: it was amazing how much I was able to accomplish during a self-imposed no screen day. I'm not off to such an auspicious start today.


Rosemary-Lemon Artisan Bread

This recipe basically came from a Williams-Sonoma catalogue, but I added my own twist to speed it up a bit. The original proof time is 12-18 hours. Not happening. I didn't really make this as part of a meal, but it will go so well with my tomato soup at lunch time


3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp rosemary (I used dry)
2 tsp chopped lemon zest
1 3/4 cups very warm water
cornmeal


Combine well all dry ingredients except cornmeal. Add water and stir until the dough is shaggy and stick. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rest about six hours (if you do the full 12 hour proof here, reduce yeast to 1/4 tsp; it will be more of a sourdough type bread then). Place on lightly floured surface and turn a few times, allow some of the air to settle out and then loosely shape it into a ball on a cookie sheet or in a dutch oven and dust it with cornmeal. (I shaped mine in a snake because I wanted to bake it in a bundt pan.) Cover. Raise two more hours. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes, or 25 minutes if you use the bundt. Outside will be dark golden brown, inside will be soft and spongy.

This bread was great because it mixed together in about five minutes and doesn't have to be kneaded. You just need to give it time.


Plantboy's Yukon Gold Potato Wedges: Eureka!


8 Yukon Gold Potatoes
1 TBSP butter
2 TBSP olive oil
Salt
Pepper
3 TBSP sprinkle Parmesan
2 TBSP chopped fresh herbs (your choice--basil, cilantro, parsley or oregano are probably your best bets.)

Plantboy washed (not peeled) the potatoes and cut them into steak fry sized wedges. If you haven't used YG's before, they have fantastic texture and lovely color. They are also slightly sweeter than a regular russet. He boiled them for three minutes and then shook them in a bag with the melted butter and olive oil, salt and pepper, cheese and half the herbs. Once shaken so everything is coated, transfer them to a med-high frying pan. Don't stir them too often, it will make them fall apart and keep them from browning nicely. When they are close to being quite crispy and brown on at least two sides, throw in the rest of the herbs and cook for just another minute or two. Not fancy, no, but oh. So. Good. This will serve four if you are all very polite and well-mannered. Otherwise, you might finish the pan on your own and then lick your fingers and the bottom of the dish too.


Greek-Style Gyros

Plantboy made Greek food for Mother's Day and I had a container full of leftover tanziki sauce I wanted to use up. Usually I make way to much of this yogurty goodness and end up throwing a bunch a way. This week is officially "sandwich week" at House Jedi and so I decided to try something new. (Incidentally, this totally defeats the purpose sandwich week, which is to simplify and save money. Oh well.) This recipe is general. I just winged it. So just make how much ever you want for how many people you are feeding. How is that?

Our version of gyros had Plantboy drooling so hard that I don't think he could have been any happier even if it had been THIS woman serving up the Grecian goodness.

Does anybody else think I have an unnaturally large head? What do you mean nobody looks at my head? And while you are at it, PLEASE find me a doctor, for the love. Apparently bleeding out is the new sexy. Wait, tomato sauce? Are you sure? Oh, yummy.

Olive Oil
Lemon
Oregano
Garlic Powder
Chicken
Red Pepper
Pita Bread
Olives (we like the really low-brow canned kind. If you want to get all fancy and go for the super bitter or salty olive bar variety, be my guest.)
Cucumber
Red Onion
Tanziki Sauce (see below)
Fresh Mozzarella Marinade (see below)

Mix first four ingredients together with salt and pepper to taste and marinate chicken. I used chicken breasts and sliced them first (they were partially frozen.) Lemon juice is a fantastic addition to marinade because its acids help to tenderize the meat. Let it sit for at least two hours.
Cook marinated chicken however you want--bake, grill, fry pan. I fried my pieces because they were already small. Ideally I think grilling would be best, but not having a grill makes this difficult (not to mention it sends Plantboy into spasms of desire when he smells the heady aroma of mesquite rising from our neighbors' back yards.) When cooked, if you didn't do it before, thinly slice the meat.

Roast the red pepper. You do this by cutting a large red pepper in thirds and low broiling it a few inches away from the heating element until you start to see blisters form on the skin. Remove from oven and let them sit until they cool slightly. Peel the chewy skin away from the sweet, soft red goodness.

On the table of sammy fixin's, set warm pita bread, chopped olives, sliced cucumber and red onion, tanziki sauce, meat and mozzarella. If you don't have the patience or interest to do the mozzarella, you can skip it and do feta instead. I also think spinach would be fantastic in them, but I didn't have any. Layer the ingredients you like in any order on your pita bread, fold and enjoy. Bring a napkin.

Tanziki Sauce

1 cup plain yogurt
Juice of one lemon and 1/4 tsp zest if you like
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 cucumber finely diced
Black pepper
Salt

Combine all ingredients--delicious on pita bread or with chicken.

Marinated Mozzarella

Fresh Mozzarella
2 TBSP fresh basil, chopped finely
2 tsp Balsamic vinegar
1 TBSP olive oil

Thinly slice mozzarella and layer on a plate. Sprinkle with basil and then drizzle with vinegar and oil. Cover with plastic and let it sit for at least an hour before serving. It is, incidentally, really yummy melted onto a piece of the lemon rosemary bread for breakfast.

Pumpkin Spice Cake With Ganache

This was my birthday cake this year because Plantboy's time was rather limited and I was not going to make a cake for myself. This cake is decadent and easy; there are very few ingredients (though they aren't cheap ingredients) and you don't have to wait for it to cool in order to frost it. I made two of these for the spaghetti auction and between the two they pulled in about 70 dollars. Are they worth $35 apiece? No way. But it is safe to say that whomever took these home and least got a fantastic dessert for their devotion to the Scouting program. My kids like it because when it is finished it looks like a huge chocolate donut.

1 spice cake mix
1 small can packed pumpkin (or half a large can)
1 egg
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups semi or bittersweet chocolate chips

Mix first three ingredients until well blended. Batter will be VERY thick. Spread into a greased bundt pan and cook according to package directions for bundt pans, following the lowest cook time. Turn out cake onto large platter.

Heat heavy cream over low-medium heat, stirring continuously, until it is steaming a lot but not boiling (I'm sure there is either a term or a temperature for that, but what do you think I am? Paula Dean?) Turn off heat and immediately stir in chips. Stir and stir until it is all blended (you don't think it will work at first) and there are no lumps. Drizzle all but about 1/4 cup over warm cake. This cake is fantastic warm, but also very nice the next day for breakfast. Wait, did I just say that out loud?

It isn't my beloved red velvet cake that is my usual birthday special, but I am so grateful I didn't have to make it myself. Thanks Plantboy! And thanks to everyone who wished me a happy day a la Facebook. I haven't felt so loved in a long time.

Happy cooking.

Oh, if you are wondering, that extra 1/4 cup of ganache is for the strawberries you all having lurking in your fridge this time of year.

It Isn't a Youth Problem . . .

Tamathy is our excellent Sunday School teacher, so when I praise the lesson her substitute gave last week, please know that Tamathy is always fabulous, but my thoughts are specific to the topic from a couple of weeks ago.

Do you remember this lesson? It was on keeping the Sabbath Day and Reverence. Our teacher, a former stake president, gave a fantastic lesson. His take was that, as LDS people, the reverence area is one where we fall down a little bit. Many anecdotes were shared. The class discussion was helpful and interesting. I wrote two things in the margin of my scriptures in Chapter 59.

1--When the Lord says to rest from "our labor" he didn't meant that we should rest from "His labor."

2--Light-mindedness is the opposite of reverence.

The first is interesting--Sunday was hard for me on my mission. You would be together, feeling the love and fellowship of the Saints and then church was over and all of these loving families would go home together. We would just go back to work. Because, for that short span in my life, my labor was "His labor."

But it is not the first comment in my scriptures I want to talk about. It is the second. President **** talked a lot about the sabbath being a covenant between the Lord and his people from the beginning. A collective covenant. This idea of covenants got me to thinking about the temple and the nature of my individual covenants. We also discussed reverence not just being a collection of actions--though they are an important part of reverence--but an entire attitude of respect and awe for our Father in Heaven. It isn't what you do so much as how you think. Indeed, the opposite of light-mindedness. No wonder the Lord is so clear about the need to avoid light-mindedness.

In a culture of sarcasm, mockery, skepticism and the carefully delivered joke being the ultimate indicator of intelligence, keeping our minds away from indifference toward sacred things takes an active effort. Does this mean that humor is a problem? Of course not. But humor that depends on the disdain of others and a casual view of Diety is a major problem.

Yeah. I've got a ways to go.

The discussion took another turn in the class with a story shared by President ****. I don't know if he was referencing our last Stake Conference or one from a year or two ago, but he was asked to shuttle the visiting area authority to the airport. On the way, President **** took opportunity to ask for some advice saying, "there is such a youth problem in [the] stake . . . . "

The area authority shook his head solemnly and said, "You don't have a youth problem in your stake. You have a parenting problem." President **** backpedaled a bit on his unexpected response as the wise area authority added, "You might begin by teaching them some reverence."

Arriving just minutes later at the airport, that was basically the end of the conversation, but this good brother went home and gave it some serious thought. His perception was that the youth weren't all that noisy in the meetings (he obviously wasn't sitting in the back!), at least no noisier than the young children, but after some reflection he began to understand what the area authority meant:

That the youth were not being taught proper respect for their Heavenly Father. That their sloppy manners, sloppy dress and sloppy attitudes were spilling over into their spiritual lives.

And now I'm a youth leader and I see it too. But there is a fine line to walk, and for all that that most of these young women are old enough to make their own choices, I think many of them have been given too much freedom before they had the maturity in place to understand about the consequences of unfettered agency.

* Are most 14 year-old girls responsible enough/mature enough/wise enough to own their own cell phones? When we have 14 year-olds who spend their time text-messaging during their hour in YW, is this a youth problem or a parent problem? And, as leaders, when we set down a rule about no cell-phone use, but the parents don't make any effort to stop them from coming to church in the enormous scripture cases (also filled with goodies and distractions), how do we approach the girls firmly and with love, without undermining their parents?

* If we show a church movie circa 1980 to the girls and then get mad when they don't pay attention, haven't we set them up to fail? And if their lack of attention involves drawing in their notebooks then why is it okay for them to have a notebook in the class? Do we just keep staring at the kids, getting more and more bugged, when they may not even realize that they are demonstrating disrespectful and/or irreverant behavior? And if we afraid to call them on this behavior for fear of parents calling and getting after us, then how can we help to mold them?

* If we are bugged that our girls at church are constantly asking for treats, then whose fault is it? If they have come to expect to be fed junk food at church, it can only be because their teachers have given it to them. And if we bring two dozen of whatever treat is prepared and then continue to be surprised when everything is eaten and the girls are gaining weight, is that a kid problem or an adult problem?

* While shadow leadership is the ideal instructional tool for teaching our kids, if new Deacons and Beehives come in and have NEVER seen an adult conduct a meeting, then how will they learn the proper and yes, dignified way to do it?

*If we have a 30% attendance rate in Young Women among parents who are fairly active and ALL of these girls are under age 16, where do changes need to be made? And if a mother goes home each week after Sacrament Meeting, what does her daughter think when she gets chewed out about not wanting to go to Sunday School or Young Women's?

* Is it really love to allow kids to get away with whatever they want over the fear that they "might stop coming to church" even if it means that a sixteen year old boy is not even asked to stop laying underneath the bench in the foyer though his parents, the young men's president and the Bishop have all seen him there?

* At what age do you stop saying to your kids, "Going to church is what our family does. This isn't optional."? In a conversation I had with a friend this morning about this and related topics she quoted President Hinckley as saying that parents needed to be careful not to force their children--and that his own good and loving parents had never made him do anything when it came to Church. But as inspiring as this story is, I can't help but wonder how young Gordon's parents would have reacted if Gordon had shown any inkling to be rebellious. Every parenting and leadership method works on kids who want to basically toe the line.

I honestly don't mean for this post to sound like I have all the answers, and much of what I shared above is anecdotal and not all recent. I promise, I'm not taking notes in church each week of what everyone else is doing wrong. For all my observations of young people over the last 10 years, and my very close observations these last couple of months, I can say that I have as many questions as I do answers.

My heart aches and unpleasant memories are brought to the forefront when I see the funny teenage mixture of fear and faith in their eyes. They shoot in the dark "knowing" they have all the answers, but also attempting to diguise their terrible ignorance. They want to be grown up and they want to be children. They want too much independence, but at the same time, curiously, not enough. And just because a 13 year-old acts a certain way on Sunday, doesn't mean you have any clue how she'll be on Wednesday.

As I've thought more and more about Brother ****'s anecdote about youth problems being parenting problems, I've looked more carefully at my little brood. When they act in certain ways I'm trying harder to say, "what can I do differently" while still trying to remember that I cannot control each outcome. Kim Blue once said that parenting was the fine art of hanging on and letting go.

These thoughts about parenting problems have also given me another dilemma, one in which I need some advice. ALL of the sisters on my visiting teaching route are also women I see regularly because of Young Women's: either because I serve with them or I have their daughters in classes. Having had this same route for many, many months, I know these women fairly well. Like all sisters, they each have their own unique set of challenges and trials, some of which affect their ability to parent as well as each would probably like. As I come to know their daughters and see their challenges too, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me not to feel judgmental toward some very real parenting problems. (But even THAT phrase is probably judgmental! But how will I know how to be a parent if I don't try to learn from others' mistakes as well as my own?)

This judging thing is the great battle of my life anyway (along with my big mouth), but I feel like I'm in a very difficult place when I'm wearing so many hats in the lives of these families. It is hard to serve appropriately and meet everybody's needs when I feel the way I do. So do I just keep getting on my knees and praying like crazy that I'll work this out, or do I contact our wonderful Relief Society President and say "Please assign me to four old widows who haven't had contact with the YW program since the Carter Administration" in the hopes that I can better serve those I've committed to serve? And if the answer is the former, then give me some advice on maintaining my objectivity in this situation so that I don't go mad.

Lilacs in the Rain Just Before Dawn

Perhaps because of my discovery of Facebook some time ago, I've spent the last few months thinking a lot about memories and how they help create who we become. I've made some marvelous connections with old, cherished friends who helped mold me into the person I am; friends whose ideas, laughter, borrowed courage, and love are still a part of me. I've been able to send some long overdue thankyous to a few of these important people. Such connections have given me roots, even though I've spent much of the last fifteen years feeling like a perpetual transplant.

Very early this morning, I had a memory that sprang from a smell rather than a person. A smell that I only enjoy for a week or two each spring, but it is a smell that whispers the promise of warmer weather, birthday gifts and change: the heady scent of lilac caught me in full force as I delivered a newspaper to somebody's porch. It had been raining, so the scent was particularly pronounced, and sure enough, just a few feet to my right was an enormous tree in full blossom. How lovely and surprising to smell it before I could even see it.

There is a lot of scientific research about the connection between memories and smells, but there is still much about the mechanism of the linking that remains unknown. Like most things to do with the brain, neurologists have barely scratched the surface for how it all works. I'm just glad that it does. Lilacs remind me of growing up in Utah because there was an enormous hedge of them on the border between our house and our neighbor's house when I was a child. They bloomed every spring right around the time of my birthday and mother's day. Their lovely scent makes me think of old-fashioned things, a grandfather I have only a single memory of, and the promised renewal of life each spring.

When Plantboy and I hadn't been married long he unpacked a box that contained several books from his mission. They were warped and water stained. The mildew-smell coming from the box was strong, though the books had long dried out. Plantboy grinned and inhaled deeply, "Ah! It smells just like Brazil!" Even bad smells, when attached to fond memories, can make us smile.

I have other favorite smells.

I smelled wisteria for the first time on my mission. It doesn't grow in Utah, but in Australia many people put it on arbors in their yards where it blooms prolifically in September and October. It was intoxicating to walk under these trellises on the way to knock on a door. It was a companion from New Zealand who identified it for me. I have since seen its popularity in both Oregon and Texas, but it always reminds me of Australia.

Eucalyptus reminds me of Australia too. There are tons of eucalyptus trees in the great south land--they call them gum trees. Just before the rain, the change in pressure causes the oils in the leaves to be released, filling the air with the most amazing smell. But watch out for the rain: as soon as you smell the gum trees it is too late to run for cover.

Fresh-mowed grass reminds me of hard-work and order. Mowing lawns was the first chore I could get more than a few cents for. Mowed lawns are so tidy and organized. Even the most beautiful yards look shabby when the lawns get over-long. The only scent that says summertime to me more than cut grass is grape taffy. I think the grape taffy must be a holdover from all of the ballgames we watched my dad play in when I was a child.

There was (and maybe still is?) a patch of wild roses in one of the beds near the east fountain at the Houston Temple. Most roses people want in their gardens are bred for huge blooms and lovely colors, but their wild cousins aren't much to look at. They were wild and thorny with tiny flowers and lots of leaves. But the smell? Oh. Wow. If you are lucky, you can find wild roses while you are hiking, and wild rose hips make the most interesting and fragrant ice cream you have ever eaten.

Before all you allergy-prone people start sneezing from just reading about all the outside smells that I love, there are inside smells I love too.

Cinnamon and cloves make me think of Christmastime, even more than the smell of pine. I also think of Christmas when I smell my mother's gingerbread--full of yummy spices and molasses. It is the coziest smell in the world.

Any decadent thing baking my oven--cakes, cookies, sweetbread and the like--reminds me of good times. You don't bake treats unless there is money and time for a little bit of frivolity, or an important event coming up.

When my house is freshly cleaned and there is a combination of lemon and disinfectant in the air, I feel so organized and together. I am reminded of Saturday mornings as a kid when we'd all work together in the house for a couple of hours to have the house spic and span before we started each new week.

Then there are the people smells! Now, granted, many of the people smells are not so great, and we go to great lengths to cover them up, but here are a few I love.

When I thought of baby smells before I had children, I mostly thought of Baby Magic lotion or Johnson's baby oil. When my own firstborn turned out to have such sensitive skin that no products whatsoever could be used on his skin, I realized that he had a luscious scent all of his own. Just a good, clean, baby smell. I could smell it the strongest around the soft spot on his gorgeous little head and it made me want to bury my head in his neck and and just kiss him all the time. Baby number two didn't have this smell so much, but baby number three did.

As for covering up smells . . . when I met Plantboy he wore an Abercrombie and Fitch cologne called "Woods." Hubba-hubba. At the time, Eternity was so popular among college and high school guys alike that I felt like that sickly sweet aroma was nearly constantly in my nostrils. Plantboy's chosen cologne was so much more subtle and earthy. Also, he didn't bathe in it, which is helpful. (He recently found an Axe brand shower gel that smells similar. He said he is planning on writing the company to get his money back for false advertising, however. Apparently he expected to see dozens of panting women just outside the bathroom when he finished showering with it, as per the commercials.)

Remember in the mid-90's when all those Victoria's Secret lotions came out? The classics--Pear, Vanilla, Tranquil Breezes--you remember. My second year in college, everyone went crazy with this stuff. The boys would sit in class, hardly able to concentrate on a word being said. A friend turned to Pocohantas one day in class and nearly yelled, "You two smell good enough to eat! You're driving me crazy!" I still can't use any vanilla lotion without thinking about that comment. But sometimes, driving her man crazy is just what a girl needs. Maybe it is time to get back out the vanilla lotion and make more unforgettable moments . . .

Boys LIKE To Be Naked

Youngling got out of the tub the other night and ran down the hall squealing and giggling. I chased him, and he only giggled louder. He loves this game. After about a minute, he corners himself on purpose with a look that can only be described as pure mischief. Then he lets you catch him. Once caught, he expects to be held down, tickled and covered in kisses. Then the giggling really starts. Almost two years old is such a fantastic age.

He especially likes this game when he's naked: after all, what is better than tummy kisses? Anyway, back to the other night. As he lays there giggling and fighting off the diaper I'm trying to put on him, my seven year-old comes running down the hall. Also naked. He is fresh from the shower and he has obviously taken the time to dry off and comb his hair, but he somehow failed to put on the clothes I left sitting outside the shower for him. He threw his arms wide, shook his buns and yelled, "What do you think of ME!"

I yelled right back, in my most amused mommy yell, "I think you're naked! Put some clothes on." (There is a lot of volume set to high in our house.) He ran back to the bathroom.

Just as I got Youngling's diaper on, child number two made an appearance, underwear on his head singing a song he and Jedi made up called "My Underpants." This song has few lyrics but you can only sing it while naked or in the process of putting your underwear on.

I turned to Plantboy, who was watching a basketball game, and said, "You know, I think boys like to be naked."

He nodded and said, "I can prove it."

Scienceteachermommy loves proof. "Okay," I challenged.

"You always went to girls camp, right?" Nod. "Did you ever pee to put out the fire?"

"No."

"Did you ever run naked around the fire, chanting and yelling? And don't even ask me where the leaders were--probably hopped up on benadryl in their tent."

"Never ran around the fire naked."

"Well, did you ever burn your underwear while roasting it on a hot dog stick over open flames?"

"No."

"All of these things happen at Boy Scout Camp."

So. Boys do like nudity. And fire.

I'm now going to add a couple of anecdotes to add to my overwhelming proof for my boys-like-to-be-naked-(and-also-love-fire) theory.

In high school, a large-ish group of us went camping after graduation. The fire was dying low and it was getting very late. We decided to head to bed--boys in one tent, girls in another, if you wanted to know--but the guys hung around for a little while. Finally one of them said, "Girls, we need to put this fire out and you need to go to bed." A few girls had clued in to what was about to go down and helped get the rest of us herded into our tent.

I can't even describe how horrible flame-broiled logs covered in urine smell.

This next story really happened, but if you don't believe me, I don't blame you. If I hadn't experienced this story for myself I'm not sure I could buy it either. I can appeal to Tiffany (who checks in occasionally) to vouch for my honesty here. Chrisw probably also heard this story very shortly after it happened and can back me up too.

In Logan there is lawyer's office with an indoor pool. Apparently the partners wanted to build a pool for their families to use, and since you can only swim outdoors in N. Utah about two months of the year, the practice was the obvious place to put it. They built a small basement apartment with a separate entrance from the office and rented it out to a couple who then maintained the pool in exchange for cheap rent and scheduling rights to the pool.

Tiffany was my roommate (along with PammyLee, Pocohantas and Pocahantas' cousin, Steph), and her sister happened to be living in the pool apartment at the time. For several weeks she had promised we could come, and finally was able to get a Friday night free for us. She put our names on the calendar and gave Tiffany the key, as she was out of town that night.

It was a dark and stormy night (I swear I am not making this up), and freezing outside. As soon as we walked in the door at the law office, we knew something was wrong. We could hear a bunch of voices coming from the pool. We were so bugged. We'd had the pool scheduled for like two weeks and some spoiled lawyer-brats were using our pool time! We debated on staying or going, but righteous indignation won out.

Tiffany said that she just wanted to see what was going on before we started kicking people out, so we went into her sister's apartment and Tiffany walked up a short flight of stairs to the back pool entrance. She crept very quietly.

Twenty seconds later she came shooting back down the stairs like she had seen a ghost. "Naked," she said, rather breathlessly, "All naked. Probably 20 guys. All naked."

AAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!! That is when the giggling started; but of course, the question of kicking them out was answered. Being naked in the pool is like licking the sucker--man, you own it.

Steph, who had seen a bit more of the world than the rest of us, didn't buy into the "let's leave now" proposal. She'd come from Dixie College to the land of the frozen chosen without even a sweater. She had a bikini drawer, for crying out loud! Steph was not afraid of the melee up the stairs.

She walked right past us, and we saw her stand at the top of the stairs, hand on her hip, and we just knew she was giving the eyebrow as only Steph could. Oh, and she was a total babe.

About fifteen seconds after she planted her hot self on the top stair, the screaming began. And then the running. We heard a lot of swearing and at least 20 variations on the "Dude! It's a chick!" theme. Wild Steph, her hand on the hip and the eyebrow had cleared the room in less than a minute. She didn't say a word.

All of these naked guys were now holed up in the law office. She walked over the door, ripped it open and very sweetly asked who was hosting the party. A very sheepish looking individual, probably a college freshman, made his way through the crowd and she told him, in those same honeyed tones that WE had the pool reserved and they had about five minutes to be dressed and GONE before we started making some phone calls.

She flounced her lovely curly head back down to where we huddled, laughing our heads off at the bottom of the stairs. We waited five minutes, swept the last few out of the office, locked the doors and changed--one at a time, behind locked doors, thank you very much. No group nudity for us.

As if this is not all weird enough, we think that some of them actually came back and were looking in through the windows. Other than Steph, and maybe Pocahontas, none of us were girls that you would seriously scout out in their swimming suits. Especially if you had to climb a hedge to do it. In February. In the snow. So they were exhibitionists, desperate AND creepy. Still, if I was going to write a horror novel this would probably be a great start. At one point we thought we saw both hands and faces pushed against the glass poolhouse through the steam and condensation.

So fire, nudity . . . and, oh, yes, lightsabers. We had a Dos de Mayo party at Tabula Rasa and Jamin's house Saturday. She and I wanted to make homemade tamales and it is always fun to hang out with them. Between us, there are five boys: we watched a lightsaber fight that probably went on for a good hour--two if you count the Wii. My favorite is when Jedi yells, "Now in slow motion!" and everybody fights in slo-mo. The facials are awesome. When I asked Jedi the other night why he wasn't firing his dart gun back at me, he said, "Mom, my bullets won't defeat you! My moves will." Ah. I think his moves need a little bit of work. I probably hit him forty times.

So I guess my boys like to be naked, but maybe this momma likes violence.

I've Noticed

Oregon has three counties which rank in the top ten for greatest job loss in the last 12 months. If this statistic seems a bit obscure, let me clarify. Bend, #2 on said list, had 7.8% unemployment last year in March. This year it is 17%. My city, ranked fourth, has also lost nearly 10%, with the current rate being around 14%. This means that one in seven people in my county is out of work.

I've noticed that our city, already a veritable Mecca for homeless people, has panhandlers on every corner now.

I've noticed that more and more these people begging on the side of the road look like me--younger, better groomed, more nicely dressed. This must be the look of recent homelessness. There are also more women.

I've noticed that it is harder for charitable organizations to raise the money or goods they need, even as the numbers of those in need swell to record numbers.

I've noticed that a whole lot of trials are assaulting our nation all at once, and that years of plenty have made us forget that hard times must be prepared for.

I've noticed that there are dozens of houses for sale in my neighborhood: including my next door neighbor's which will have been on the market two years come May.

I've noticed my newspaper route steadly shrink over the last several months as older people on fixed incomes look for every possible way to save $12 a month. The newspapers are also thinner than they were a year ago as advertisers shrink their budgets too.

I've noticed that it's easy to find a parking space at the mall, even on a Saturday. Although soon this will be a moot point--so many stores have shut their doors in recent months that there is little reason to even go to the mall. The parking lot at the Goodwill, however, is packed even in the middle of the day on a Tuesday.

But for all of these things I've noticed that tell me people are in trouble all over, there are a lot of other things to notice that tell me there is still reason to rejoice.

I've noticed that gardening, already popular here, has become the norm for many families as people tear up their grass to grow food. Homemaking skills--cooking, sewing, canning, knitting, etc. are suddenly very chic.

I've noticed that people are a little bit kinder to one another and actually listen when troubles are shared. There is an unspoken recognition that as the economy continues shrinking more and more jobs will be shed. Anybody's fortunes can turn on a dime.

I've (finally) noticed that the selling of the house we hung on to for 8 months after we left Texas was a huge blessing. If even a couple of more months had passed we would have likely been in foreclosure. And if we hadn't felt inspired to move that year, we probably would have never sold the house. Learning from our own housing market troubles has given me enormous empathy for those who don't hear the word "equity" without placing the word "negative" in front of it.

I've noticed that the lilacs and cherry trees bloomed this week despite all of the troubling news from around the world. I had forgotten how mesmerizing and lovely it is when the spring breeze blows the old blossom petals to the ground, creating swirling pink drifts on the sidewalks and gutters. These simple, beautiful things are more prominent in my mind than in years past.

I've noticed that my food storage is growing and for the first time in my adult life I feel like I am doing all I can to live in compliance with directives about provident living.

I've noticed that our debt to income ratio is continually shrinking and there is real peace of mind over the ease at which we meet our obligations each month.

I've noticed that so much of what I thought mattered a decade ago is all dross compared to what really matters.

Our newspaper here is very liberal. It isn't uncommon for a picture of lesbians embracing or an alternatively life-styled family to show up on the front page. One of the cover stories today, in fact, was about our mayor's endorsement of medical marijuana. But the main picture, in full color, was of a jobless African-American woman. In bold, black lettering next to her face was her quote, "I've got to pray, like everyone else. As Americans we've got to ride the wave."

The second part of her sentiment is the bald-faced American optimism that makes this country great. And if the first part is true about the "everyone else," then I think we are going to be okay. So today, I'm going to pray for God to watch out for those who, through little fault of their own, have found themselves victims of difficult circumstances. I'm going to pray that those who want to work will find jobs, and that those who DON'T want to work will find joy in succeeding through their best efforts. I'm going to pray that our leaders will have the wisdom to make the most informed, compassionate and forward-looking policies that they can, regardless of their political party. I'm going to pray for my heart to be more open and generous so that when we do have a little bit of extra we can give more help. I'm going to pray that I'll recognize the difference in my wants and needs so that there IS a little bit of extra that can be used to help others.

In short, I'm going to "pray like everyone else."

Will you join me?

"I'm Sorry" Cards Don't Come in a Big Box

When you have a big event in which you are honored, loved adored, helped, whatever, it is customary to buy the Costco-sized box of "Thank You" notes and send them to everyone you know.

Or, if you are extremely clever and crafty, you have a supply of gorgeous, stamped cards on hand all of the time when there are special thank you's involved. You are so organized that you actually stock up on your supply of breath-taking stationary at a "card party" with your friends every month.

So what do you do when you have a week where you've put your foot in your mouth so many times that you can constantly smell shoe leather? (Where DOES this expression come from anyway? The problem is NOT my foot in my mouth. If my foot was in my mouth then I might be quiet, and then I wouldn't have any problems. The traditional "put a sock in it" is much more apropos in my case.)

A week when you feel so confident in your own ability to dazzle people that you forget how dazzling those in your life are?

A week that your own skin feels so uncomfortable that you'd trade places with an ostrich if only to bury your head in the sand for an hour or two?

A week when you are certain enough of your own big mouth that you KNOW those few awkward looks from people days later are not accidental?

"Thank you" cards are sold in bulk. "I'm sorry" cards are sold as singles. I found this out yesterday when I hunted around a few different stores for the $5 budget box. Perhaps this is the real lesson: if I remember to be more grateful, maybe I won't find as many accidental opportunities to offend.

So, if you read here, and I said something stupid to you this week, or acted overbearing, I really am sorry. If that is too general an apology, fire me off a really nasty e-mail telling me exactly how much work my personality needs and I will try to make it up to you. Really.

For those of you that don't read here . . . . well, I'm going to make time today to sit down and write a few notes. And pray earnestly that my nature might be changed.

Venting. Venting. VENTING.

I'm absolutely certain this will come back to bite me in the butt.

AND I DON'T CARE.

Why is the Young Men's Organization so colossally disorganized? Here is my latest and favorite.

Our ward does an annual spaghetti dinner to make money for the scouts. $20 per family for a really lousy dinner of coldish spaghetti and bagged salad. After the dinner, there is a dessert auction--all desserts donated, all proceeds going to the scouts. Most of the ward shows up and the Scouts make a killing. My favorite part about this is that they do the Friends of Scouting drive just a few weeks prior to this.

Friends of Scouting?

You mean there is a pledged amount to ensure that a group of ungrateful, grumbling boys get to do whatever they want, activities-wise? Yes, there is.

Plantboy was just released from the Young Men's but had a friend at work who raises beef and agreed to supply 15 pounds of meat for the dinner, free of charge. Very cool. Plantboy did a bit of legwork and it has been sitting in my freezer for the last few days. In addition, the scoutmaster, on Wednesday night, asked all of the YW leaders if they would be willing to make a batch of spaghetti--no sign-ups, no real notice. Oh, and by the way, could each of us also bring a dessert or two to auction off? Then, on top of my Friends of Scouting pledge, my spaghetti and my dessert, we are supposed to pay $20 to go to this thing. Unless we want dessert, in which case we'll pay $30.

When the YM president showed up to pick up the meat today, he said, "How much do you think you can make?" Uh, how much do you need me to make? "Well, I don't really know; the scoutmaster was only able to get 8 people to say they were making spaghetti." Well, how many do you expect to feed? "About 200." So I need to make spaghetti for 25 people. "Sure!"

When I told him that 15 pounds of meat (the donation) will only adequately feed about 75 people, and that the Scouts may need to purchase more, he shurgged it off. He said that it didn't really matter if the spaghetti had meat or not--the unspoken message beng that nobody really expects a worthwhile meal anyway. So, for about a $30 investment (the YM buy Brand X sauce and noodles), the Scouts in our ward will probably bring in a few thousand dollars this week.

Our young women, on the other hand, need to come up with our own fundraiser if we want to go to camp. We are selling very cute breakfast baskets for mother's day. The leaders will make the sign-up sheets, collect the money, make homemade rolls, buy all the materials (which, no doubt will come at least partially out-of-pocket), and assemble them at six in the morning on Mother's Day.

As frustrated as I'm going to be when only 1/3 of our YW women show up to help assemble said baskets on Mother's Day, it is nothing compared to the blood I'm going to be after if ALL of the YM leaders and fathers of the 12-18 year-old boys in our ward don't sign up for at least TWO of these babies.

Even then, I bet we still have to hold a car wash in mid-June to get everyone to camp.

There are a few men who stop by here regularly. Please, help me to understand why the men are disorganized, delegate any real planning and responsibility to the women and still take the majority of the budget reserved for the youth? If you can offer me even a smidge of insight here, I'm happy to make a full apology.

And Memory

My trip memories need to be preserved today, but this morning a news report triggered another memory. One much less pleasant, but which has had a powerful impact on my life.

I had been teaching school at my first job for just 3 1/2 months when I got a message over the intercom to go and pick up the phone immediately. This in itself was strange, but when the secretary said that the phone call was from my aunt, the weird meter hit the roof. Was something wrong with my grandmother? My parents? I hurried to the phone in an adjoining teacher's supply room. My aunt proceeded to tell me a story about teenage-gunmen, a hostage situation, SWAT teams, the Trenchcoat Mafia and pipe bombs at a school in south Denver. She wondered if I knew what high school my Colorado cousins attended; she had been unable to reach their dad and I was the next best person to know. Somehow I pulled a memory out of nowhere, "No, I think they go to a Denver school that has an Indian-sounding name."

I was right. My cousins were at Arapaho. Not Columbine. Neighboring schools, same community, same demographic.

I walked back to my students in a daze, repeating what I had heard to them. One student laughed out loud; I looked at him in surprise. He was an extremely nice kid. He backpedaled, "I mean; it just sounds so weird! They must be joking, right? It must all be a big hoax!"

The next day he apologized profusely for his cavalier attitude. Within the week, our school counselor asked us to have a conversation in each class about what had happened. Some classes wanted to talk a lot; other groups brushed it off and wanted to move on. One student, whom I'd never noticed anything strange from, said, "Those jocks got exactly what they deserved." I knew then that the counselor had asked us to talk about it in class both to help the kids work through emotions they might be having, but also to identify those who might sympathize with the perpetrators.

Public schools entered a new era, a post-Columbine era. Teachers, counselors, administration and communities approach bullying differently now. The school safety plan and classroom evacuation procedures are given as much weight as lesson plans. And our trust has eroded just a little bit further. I didn't know that a columbine was a flower until I married my Colorado boy. They grow wild in the Rockies; the ones you buy and plant as perennials in your garden have hardly been engineered at all, and look much the same as the ones you find in unexpected places in the Colorado Fourteeners in the middle of summer. I love these hardy and beautiful flowers. I never seen one now without thinking of that school. Those kids held graduation just a month and a half later: to show they world that they could not be defeated. Those there that day would never to be the same again--in the summer of 1999 I worked at a tutoring center in Denver just after Plantboy and I got married. One of my colleagues was a history teacher at Columbine. He was there that day. He wouldn't talk about it. No doubt the memories were too fresh and painful. Maybe they always will be.

Memories don't always come from things we anticipate. Maybe the most powerful memories are things that surprise us for good or ill. Things that throw us off balance so much that we never look at our lives the same again.

And anticipation doesn't always lead to great memories, nor does anticipation and planning necessarily mean that snafus will not occur. If this doesn't sound like an exactly promising start to a post about a vacation, well, there is reason for that. We knew we should take care of a muffler issue on our family car before heading out of town. We did not. When we DID get it to a shop near my parents' house before heading to Dixie, the mechanic told Plantboy that we were lucky not to have blown ourselves up; the burning smell that had plagued us all the way from Oregon was melting plastic and carpet fibers--from a big hole just inches under our luggage. We got rid of the burning smell only to spill a gallon of water into said carpet from a container with a slow leak. It was too cold in Southern Utah for the car to ever properly dry out and mildew was a constant and aromatic companion for the duration. (I know--it is an enigma. Too cold to dry out and yet warm enough to grow mold.)

As we headed south, the weather seemed to actually get colder. Because of the car issue we were way behind schedule and I called our bed and breakfast at the mouth of Zion Canyon to find out I'd made my booking a week late and there were no vacancies. Thinking that it MUST be their mistake, I called to confirm our second bed and breakfast. Oh, it was actually MY mistake. I booked both places for a week that we would not actually BE in Utah. Perfect. When we stopped to take our first hike, there was about four inches of uber-sticky red mud at the trailhead.


We drove (at least) two hours out of the way in a snowstorm to attend a session at the Manti Temple, which we have never done before. When we pulled up to the temple, the parking lot was practically deserted and the workmen at the front who were dismantling the doors informed us that the temple was on shutdown. This two week hiatus for deep cleaning and noisy and/or messy repairs is generally done in February and again in July. No, the engineer, informed us, with so many temples now in operation, the shutdown periods are staggered.

In ten days we drove 2000 miles. This car-time has been so kind to my back that I think it is finally time to break down and find a chiropractor here in my fair city. The mountain of laundry in the hallway does not rival Mt. Everest, but it probably gets at least K2 status. Today I have two kids with croupy coughs. It is like living with seals.
And yet . . .
We had a wonderful time.
I'll spare you the travel log, and instead I will just show some of my favorite pictures from the trip. I'll try to keep the commentary brief. (After all, brevity is my strong point.) They are not in any particular order. It is hard to say on how many levels I hate the way blogger loads pictures and I just don't have the patience to arrange them chronologically today.


This is the view just outside Capitol Reef National Park. Yes, this is outside the park. I loved this park--in part because I've never been there before and it was cool to try something new. It reminded me a lot of Lake Powell. The south end of CRNP actually touches the Glen Canyon area, which is where Lake Powell is. The mountains all around our bed and breakfast looked just like this. Amazing.

This is Torrey Pines Bed and Breakfast, which is just outside Torrey, Utah to the east a little bit. Because we were a week early, the proprietress wasn't there; it was just her husband. He took excellent care of us, including biscuits and gravy with fruit on a very pretty table setting for breakfast. He also gave us a recommendation for a fantastic restaurant. Eldon said that the county Torrey sits in has the cleanest air rating in the entire country. I believe it. Even with the clouds we could see for hundreds of miles at any vantage point between Bryce and Capitol Reef.

If you ever find yourself in Torrey, sans children, you must eat at this restaurant. It is probably our most mediocre photo from the entire trip, but I did find a picture of Planboy's meal on their website.

What do you think it is? Here are your choices:

a) Turnip ribbons on lamb chops

b) Radish shreds over fried potatoes and pork roast

c) Baby back pork ribs, slow roasted in chipotle, molasses & rum glaze, squash & zucchini, with mashed sweet potatoes

d) Not food at all. A centerpiece.

These are Anasazi wall carvings found in CRNP. The Mormon pioneers settled the area not long after arriving in Utah, like many communities in the western US. When they arrived in the Fremont River valley, they found lush grasses growing along the river's edge, a micro-climate perfect for growing fruit trees, and thousand year old irrigation ditches. They built their own community the same place the Indians had generations and generations earlier. Like the Indians, the fickle river eventually flooded out the Mormon pioneers and a permanent community was never established right on the river. The surviving area is called "Fruita" and has been a part of the park for decades. In the summer you can camp in the park and pick seasonal fruit for about a dollar a pound. Bargain.

This was the only view we got of the Fruita orchards with any sun in the background. We had clouds and wind that entire day. When the sun peaked out for a moment, Plantboy got the above shot.

These close up shots are Plantboy's speciality. I think his plant pictures are always so amazing because something about him speaks to the soul of a plant. They show their beauty to him in a way they don't reveal to me.

This tree was at the top of a hike to a bridge called Hickman Bridge. Plantboy found a place to scramble up about two stories of rock which came out to a plateau that connected the bridge. Initially he was hoping to cross the bridge, but there was a gap too wide and too narrow to safely cross. He backpedaled and saw this tree on the other side of a wash through a slot canyon. I walked down the bridge and waited and saw him pop his head out of a small divet to the side of the arch, 200 feet above the ground. He called, "I guess this way doesn't go out!" Uh, no. His voice echoing all around the wash under the bridge. My heart nearly stopped at how close he was to the edge.

I didn't hear an all-clear from him for several minutes and began to have visions of Sevier County Search and Rescue pulling my husband's half-dead frostbitten body from the top of a cliff when I finally heard him coming back. He presented me with a tiny twig with one of these lovely pink flowers on it, apologized, and said that the tree made him do it. How could I stay upset?

This is my tiny self dwarfed under the bridge referenced above. There is still fifty or hundred feet of ground below the picture, the niche that Plantboy hovered in was to the right of the arch, just out of the picture. This was a fantastic hike and the arch was amazing. Not quite as picturesque as Delicate Arch, but I think I enjoyed the hike more. There were a lot fewer people also and the arch was just enormous. The rocks I'm sitting on fell to form part of the arch.

This cool wash was on the way up to the bridge. If you look past Plantboy, there was a whole room in there. We scrambled around a little bit and explored both the inside and got up on top of it. When I see such amazing places it is no wonder to me that the Native Americans so resented the encroachment of the whites. No doubt, such natural retreats were sacred to them. It must have been like bile for them to watch each place systematically desecrated both literally and figuratively with our indifference. I'm immensely grateful to the presidents and politicians in the early part of the 1900's who insisted that some places be set aside.

Oh look! A little chair, just my size.

Look at those natural steps. How convenient! Okay, not really, but I love groomed trails that have attempted to become such a part of the landscape. I think they are beautiful. It also keeps you from straying off the path when you see how hard they worked to make a path for you. I don't mind trailblazing; it is actually pretty fun, but if everyone takes that attitude, then eventually the thing that was once so lovely becomes ruined.

Remember those views I talked about? Seeing for hundreds of miles, even on a cloudy day? Well, the best place for such views is the highway between Bryce and Capitol Reef. In a very controversial move in the last month of his presidency, Clinton designated thousands of square miles in southern Utah as a national monument. The environmentalists were pleased--the move effectively kept oil and gas and shale exploration OUT of that region. The locals were furious. The cattle and sheep grazers who have used those public lands for generations were no longer allowed in, and the future revenue from the jobs and taxes brought in my oil companies was lost. It sure is pretty country.

I didn't know until this trip that the reason this region is called the Grand Staircase is because, geologically speaking, the bottom layer of Bryce is the top layer of Zion and the bottom layer of Zion is the top layer of the Grand Canyon. Seeing a cross section of the parks lined up on a poster with one another was fascinating. It made me wish for a moment that I was teaching 8th grade science again. It also convinced me that if I had to kidnap them to do it, I'm taking my Young Women hiking this summer. (I might have to. My 16 year-old neice said of their own trip to the parks, as we were showing our pictures around, "That was the worst vacation ever!" She did not just say it once. )

This is Bryce Canyon near sunset. We were going to head out earlier that afternoon, but the sunrise had been so amazing that we decided to have one day that we didn't drive at all and wait for the sun to go down. Alas, after a gorgous morning, the clouds rolled in that afternoon and we didn't see anything more interesting than a wonderful couple from New Zealand. It was our day in Bryce that really convinced me not to miss the kids--sunrise hike, late breakfast, a rigorous mid-morning hike, afternoon nap and a very late supper after more hiking. One day, when the kids don't need their routines and hovering parents quite so much, this will be exactly the vacation that we'll take. It will be a few years.

It is so easy to photoshop things now that if I hadn't been there that day to witness it myself, I would be absolutely convinced that these photos from mid-morning in Bryce Canyon had been doctored up to make the sky that color of blue. They have not been. It really was that blue. I've never seen anything like it. The clarity it gave me was equally sublime. Several of these shots are from a hike called the Navajo Trail. Plantboy once had a backpacking magazine that ranked it on a list of 100 best hikes in the US, with some contributors arguing that it was the BEST hike in the entire continental US. They may be right.

More from the Navajo Trail. It wasn't until that day that I understood why The North Face called the color of my jacket Sky Blue.

We hiked portions of the Rim Trail at Bryce several times in a 24 hour period: our camp site was just fifty yards down from it. Before sunset we hiked almost as high as inspiration point then hoofed it back down just in time to see clouds instead of any kind of sunset. This is such a cool shot with the hoodoo formations in the background and those tree roots surviving against all practical chances.

We were there early enough in the season that you can still see ice forming in the mud. The tracks above are ice patterns in the soft, red earth. It is a micorcausm of the millions of years of freeze and thaw that have created the amazing landscape at Bryce Canyon. No wonder early man went to the tops of the mountains to commune with God.

A tree with a second tree growing out of it in the slot canyon at the bottom of the Navajo Trail: Sunset Point side.

Again, real sky. In many places we could still see quite a lot of snow too. I've never seen such vibrate colors--blue, white, orange, green--in a natural place before.

Natural arch over the switchbacks on the Navajo Trail. I was so short I didn't even have to duck going through it.

I just love the late sunrise light on this shot.

Again, cool lighting. I think Plantboy plans to mimic this very tree in his next Bonsai creation. We'll see!

Sunrise. Wow. The wind was very cold that morning and at one point I realized that tears were just spilling out of my eyes. At first I credited the wind entirely, but then I knew that no breeze could make me feel so emotional inside as well. I stood on the lookout listening to the soft cacophony of foreign voices around me and felt such a deep love and connection to all living things that I wept for the beauty of it. Every setback, expense and difficulty was worth that ONE moment. For all the years I've been told that you-have-to-see-Bryce-Canyon-at-sunrise, I'm glad I've never done it before now, and that I was with just Plantboy. He understands things like this; he understands this deep and beauty-loving part of me in a way that nobody I've ever met understands it. He and I are different in many ways, but all of those differences pale compared to being able to feel this way and not having to explain it. It was a glorious morning.

This is at the top of Emerald Pools in Zion National Park. (The third pool.) It was a great hike, moderately strenuous; I imagine it would be quite brutal in July, but the coolness of the water was nice. If we'd had two days I think I would have attemtped Angel's Landing, but I'm glad we picked this instead. Not as scary.

At the mouth of the narrows, a very large blue heron was looking for a meal just a few yards away from where I sat on a rock. This was about the only shot we got and it really doesn't do it justice; the light was fading. The reality is that he was gorgeous and had a huge wingspan.

Plantboy and I waded in the frigid water while he stared longingly up the too-deep Narrows and dreamed, no doubt, of a time in the future when he'll bring his three adventurous boys back to this spot and keep going right up the creek. I think Mom will come too.

A shot at Zion Park. We were constantly shedding and adding layers throughout the day, never quite sure if we were warm or cold.

The top fall at Emerald Pools.

I'm such a geology freak, and the ripples in the stone at the bottom of this waterfall just made me so happy. I love seeing natural processes of the past and speculating about what the geologic footprint of similar processes would look like. I think this one is proof.

This shot, no doubt, is how emerald pools got its name.

When I realized the mistake at our first bed and breakfast, we saw this charming place off the side of the road in Rockville, a very small town just before Springdale (at the mouth of Zion Canyon). On a whim, we whipped into it and sure enough, she had plenty of rooms. She was waiting only on a German couple (who were about our age and very cool; we ran into them at Bryce two days later also) and threw in a free room upgrade because of our bad luck and long day. Breakfast was fantastic and generous and her decorating was amazing. In the summer, the Desert Thistle has a pool with a ton of deck furniture as well. Yes, I'm making a plug for them. When you go, tell them we sent you; she said she'd give you a 10% discount. They lived their lives in the airforce and she is from Scotland. They were full of fascinating and hilarious stories.

No pictures of the inside, but you can link to their site to see more. Absolutely charming.

These pictures are from Kolob Canyons, which is the northwest entrance of ZNP. Nobody really goes there and it is very remote. I'd love to go back when it is a little bit drier and earlier in the day and go in a couple of miles deeper. It was getting dark and fairly chilly on us and so we didn't go in as far as we would have liked. Apparently there are a couple of arches up there and some really great slot canyons. It is just south of Cedar City and only a few minutes off the highway. A great day trip.

Bryce again, in the late afternoon. This is a bit out of place from where the others were, but it is just too gorgeous to leave out.

These are some shots of my adorable children in the new clothes grandma bought for them (not the baby--he is in his grubbies) just before we loaded up to come home and at a really nice state park we found in Idaho to picnic at.

A last word on memory: eleven years ago, I was trying desperately to get a fresh start and was helping my mom with some spring cleaning. I pulled tons of junk out of my room that had all been moved when my parents moved, but between college and mission I hadn't taken time to really decide what needed keeping and what needed tossing. There was a stack of letters from someone I had once loved in the pile of things-I-didn't-quite-know-what-to-do-with. They were tied with a silk ribbon. I held the stack in my hands for a long time.

Then I took the whole pile and threw them in the trash. No soul-cleansing bonfire, no keeping them for a good laugh some five or ten or twenty years later, no re-reading them and breaking down into a storm of weeping. I just threw them out.

Poignant memories, I quickly learned, are not so easily discarded. The letters were gone, but my heart was still tender. Just five months later I met Plantboy and began making memories to help heal. I was pleasantly surprised to feel less pain about the old memories, even as new ones too their place. There were times I could even look back on the good days and genuinely smile. My last trip to southern Utah was with that someone-I-once-loved. How grateful I was this week for the chance to form new and happier connections to such beautiful places.

Our last alone-vacation spot was at the Timpanogas temple. The snowstorm and side-trip to Manti had set us back timewise and Plantboy and I decided to do proxy sealings instead of an entire endowment session. As he and I knelt on behalf of others, I felt the power of those covenants that he and I made nearly ten years ago. The workers at the temple were so kind and congratulatory over our ten measley years--there were enough gray-hairs in the room that we were, no doubt, in the presence of decades upon decades of covenant marriages--that it gave me immense hope for the future. There are unlimited numbers of memories yet to make.

Anticipation

Several weeks back I wrote a post about looking forward to things. The post was prompted by our vacation plans. We leave tomorrow.

As I rush around today to finish the rest of the myriad things that need doing, I have realized something. In my great anticipation for the next big event, I have failed to recognize a lot of the wonderful things about daily, mundane living as well. I've been a rather hands off mother for the past several days--worrying more about my laundry and my vacuuming and packing than my kidlets. My sleeping patterns in the past two weeks are nearly as poor as if I have a newborn baby in the house, and I was in full grouch mode yesterday.

I'm trying harder today to just breathe and tell myself that even if it is not all perfect, it will certainly all work out. I'm learning the hard way (as too many of my lessons come) that while it is important to look forward to something, it is perhaps more important to not look beyond the something we already have. The future is worth planning for, but only the present is worth living in.

In the spirit of focusing on the little things that made this week interesting, here are some entirely random thoughts.

My last post pointed out Plantboy's gift for ruining (or improving?) any chick-thing I might be interested in watching. Last week at the Goodwill I was looking for old Disney movies on VHS. The kids don't care a whit for about the poor picture quality and I can pick them up for a couple of bucks apiece. I scored Emperor's New Groove. The big boys got giggling so hard at one point they could hardly hear the movie. I also picked up this:


Plantboy saw it in the stack and said, "That is a cool movie, but its soundtrack is terrible." Soundtrack? What was he talking about? He can't even remember his kids' birthdays. How can he remember the soundtrack of a movie made in like 1985?

"So do you want to watch it or not?" Says I. A little bit testily I might add.

"Of course. I always love doing anything with you." Plantboy has a way of taking the wind out of any tirade I might be prepped to start. So while I was in the middle of making Hazelnut Ring-a-Lings, we decided to give in a try.

Plantboy said nothing as the music started up and just waited for its utter cheesiness to sink into my astonished psyche. After about ten minutes I said, "It is really like Manheim Steamroller meets the Boston Pops. In an elevator."

"Told ya."

The in between moments were okay, but every time that soundtrack got going at top volume I just about had to plug my ears. "I'm sorry; I think I've ruined it for you."

"How hard would it be to just orchestrate over the top?"

"Easy. They could hire John Williams."

"Or Danny Elfman."

"Or maybe they should just remake the whole thing."

"I don't think anybody but Michelle Pfieffer could do this part. And this is easily Matthew Broderick's best movie."

"But Rutger Hauer?"

Long pause. "Why is he the only one without an accent?"

Anyway, it is official: Ladyhawke is the coolest movie with the worst soundtrack. And don't even get me started on why there is and extra "e" on Hawke. Ye Olde Bad Musique.

We had a couple of supremely gorgeous days this week. Sunday afternoon it hit 75 degrees. We don't normally do the park thing on a Sunday, but we just couldn't help it this week. It was too nice to stay home. I think part of my anticipation thoughts today have to do with the bleakish weather forecasts we are reading for our destination. Even with the best preparation and dearest excitement, there is nothing to be done about chance.

The garden doesn't look like much, at least this portion of it, but in a few weeks it will be growing like crazy. As long as it isn't too warm and dry while we are gone, this whole area should be sprouting by the time we get home. You'll have to excuse the ugly grass. My darling water-boy has it in his head that we should be growing food instead of grass. Go figure.

In my last salute to living in the moment, I have to attribute the funniest phrase of the week to Jedi Master. We have had some extremely serious and highly frustrating potty training issues with my oldest darling. Just when we think the problems are over and past, something will happen to set us back. Sure enough, he wet his pants TWICE at school this week. After the second time, when I was finally calm enough to discuss it with him, I asked him about what happened. He explained, "I was on my way to the potty both times and I just didn't make it."

"Did you go to your teacher then?"

"No. I went straight to the office."

"To the secretary?"

"No, there is a special office you can go in if you have problems." I said nothing for a moment figuring he probably meant the counselor's office. In my pause he must have decided I was confused because he clarified, dropping his voice to a whisper for some reason, "Not math problems, Mom. Other kinds of problems." I wish we all had an office like that.

The video is of the kids dancing to Beyonce. The baby wants to listen to my iPod all the time, but only if I put on "Single Ladies." 1000 songs to choose from and he wants the only piece of dance music in the bunch. I guess The Youngling likes his music bouncy.

The children are looking forward to seeing grandma and grandpa too--how could they not? But I need to try harder to make sure that they are just looking forward to getting out of bed each day, and that my enthusiasm matches their own.