Whirlwind Week

I forgot to tell you that I went to Oregon and went to a pot party. A bunch of Savannah's friends were getting together to learn how to use an instant pot.  It's kind of like a pressure cooker/crockpot combination.  They had 5 or 6 pots there, all plugged into one extension cord, so they must be pretty energy efficient since they didn't blow a breaker.  We had rice, General Tso's chicken (pronounced TeeSo by the woman explaining the process.) New York Cheese cake, spaghetti squash,yogurt, hard boiled eggs, and maybe a few other things I can't remember.  I was impressed with how easy it was to cook the squash and how the hard boiled eggs came out of the shell easily.  The cheese cake was also tasty.

 This is the control panel on the pot. It can saute, slow cook, make yogurt, and pressure cook.  I'm thinking one of these needs a home at our house.  Tom was less certain until Adam and Savannah made chocolate lava cake in ramekins for dinner the next night. This picture must have been a picture of Adam's.  Tom added chocolate sauce and icecream, but didn't pollute it with whip cream or caramel sauce.

 We enjoyed our time at Adam and Savannahs.  We got to go to the temple twice. We visited Adam's office and got shown around and met his staff. By good fortune, See's candy store is just behind his office, so we went there as well.  One morning we painted the bedroom we were staying it. You know how the paint chip is different than the way it looks on the wall? Yeah, that was the color it had been painted. Savannah wanted it toned down, so we painted it the same color as the living room- kind of a soft green.

It was fun to interact with the children. They each have such outgoing personalities. And they are really very well behaved children. Piper loves playing dress-up.

 We also read stories, played on the trampoline, and introduced the littlest two to the knee bouncing game "This is the way the lady rides..."  We spent some evenings with Randy and Geneve and sometimes Grandma Apodaca.  The time seemed to fly by and Wednesday morning Adam took us to the airport to fly back to Kansas City. It was a faster trip back- fewer flights, less layover time.

We drove down to Jonathan and Kristy's house and got there about 6:30.  They were busy prepping for the trek the next day. We got introduced to how to milk the cow and which cows needed watering. Miri fed the bottle lambs.

By 7:15am the trekkers were off on their adventure.

Truman is the boy on the left. He is the son of Kristy's sister's husband's brother. He came to stay for a month or so and has been fitting in well. Katie also came up to join the family for a few weeks and went on the trek.

This was the week we closed on our house.  So the closing paperwork awaited us at Jonathan's house when we arrived. We signed it and on Thursday Tom and David made the trip to Mountain Home to deliver the paperwork and collect the check. Also to cancel the insurance, turn off the power, and find out about taxes we'll need to pay on it. He decided the lawn could live a few more days without mowing it and so came back that night.

I was happy about that. I really appreciated his help milking the cow. They have an automatic milker, but you still have to clean and sterilize everything. Fortunately cow and calf are very docile and easy to move around. As long as the cow had grain, she was happy to stand there and be milked.

The kids that stayed behind were really easy to be with. They did their chores and enjoyed screen time.  They read and put together jigsaw puzzles. Emily really has a good eye for puzzles. Miriam was great at organizing the kids and helping them get their work done. David made sure everyone obeyed the rules and Zackary just went around being happy.

Miriam had done such a good job of cleaning up the kitchen, I just couldn't see getting it dirty again! So when Tom and David were gone, we went to McDonalds for dinner and had ice cream cones afterwards.

I had a few dribs and drabs of writing work to do, but also managed to read two books during the flights and at Jonathan's.

The tired crew came back from Trek about 3:30. We got a review of the journey. Good, but hard. Pretty good food. They had great families, some families struggled with less-fit siblings who weren't able to work as hard.

We left for home about 5pm. It was hard to walk into the house and realize that we'd left it 12 days before at the same time Miranda and crew left. It was actually pretty neat, and it was nice to sleep in my own bed. It's just a little puzzling to pick up the pieces again. Oh, yard to mow, garden to weed, flowerbed to weed and organize. Reunion to finish planning, jobs to reach out to... or not. Friends to greet at church and pick up on the threads of their lives.

Tom had Bishops Youth Discussion today and asked me to help with the lesson as we discussed topics on the drive home.  So this morning I put together my thoughts. I got to choir practice late... and found out we were singing today. Oh. Good thing the music was pretty familiar.

We had great talks in Sacrament meeting. One brother spoke of how he came to join the church and the blessings of reaching out to lift and help others. A sister spoke of listening to the spirit. The Sunday school lesson was on "Seek Learning, even by Study and Faith." It was interesting to hear comments on how faith increased our ability to learn both religious and secular things.

Now Tom is off to help a homeless woman. She was in a shelter a few weeks ago, then got an apartment, abusive husband moved back in. She got kicked out of the apartment and is now homeless again.  How do you help someone with unhealthy friends, poor decision making abilities, and no money? What is the most effective way and the best use of resources?

It makes me grateful for families who love one another and great parents who raised us with good decision-making skills. "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

Looking forward to the family reunion!