Tonight my friends and I went out to dinner at Ruby Tuesdays to celebrate my birthday and the birthday of one of my friends - we are birthday buddies, born 3 days and 1 year apart. We are affectionately referred to as the "oldest members of the group", because we are.
We had great food and a very attentive waiter who kept our water glasses full, looked the other way when we went back for seconds at the salad bar, accepted all the coupons that we brought, split our check 6 ways, and even brought us 6 complimentary cupcakes at the end of our meal in honor of our special occasion. That Ryan is a good guy! The BYU football game and the Republican National Convention speeches were showing on the 2 TVs conveniently located by our table and we felt right at home.
Whenever we go out for a birthday celebration, it seems like we are trying to discretely exchange money and sign cards under the table so the birthday girl is "surprised" when a card appears in front of her sometime during the meal. Some attempts are more successful than others. I was in charge of purchasing the card and collecting the money for my birthday buddy this year. I ended up purchasing a card that I thought was entertaining, but it was one that unfolded to become the size of a poster board. Needless to say, it was difficult to sign it inconspicuously, but it was fun to try.
One friend ended up coming in late and a little frazzled. Somewhere between the ATM and the restaurant, she had lost the 2 twenties that were supposed to be included in the cards. She had been searching for them, with no success. The conversation turned to who had given money to who and who owed who money and so on and so forth. All the sudden my birthday buddy says to me, "Did I give you money?" I say, "Yes, I collected money from everyone except #6 (the late friend with the missing money)." BB says, "Oh yeah, I remember walking it down to your house (we are next door neighbors as well as birthday buddies)." In the meantime I am thinking, "Wait, I don't remember getting money from her. Did she bring me money?" I envision the chest in my entry way and the money from friend 1 and the money from friend 2, but no money from BB. Friend 3 gave me money tonight and we aren't sure where friend 6 put her money, but what did I do with BB's money? I say "I don't know what I did with your money. Look in your card and see how much is there." That's when I realized, she wasn't supposed to give me money for her gift. We were giving her money!
But wait, she remembers bringing me money. Finally we figured out that that was 2 months ago for friend 2's birthday.
There for a minute we thought we were having some "old age" memory loss.
As for #6, she is the youngest member of the group and has no excuse for forgetting where she put her money.
P.S. I took my camera to the party, but I forgot to take any pictures.
Today I am thankful that
I have good friends to celebrate with.
I can laugh at myself when I do kind of dumb things.
#6 chose to only get $40.00 out of the ATM and not the $80.00 that she was going to get.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
It's My Birthday!
A while back my youngest daughter posted the #1 song from the day that she was born on facebook. Of course, that made me wonder what MY #1 song was. I think this is a good birthday song, even if it may seem a little bit sad. It reminds me of where I came from.
I had a good birthday! The grandson called to sing me Happy Birthday, but when he found out the cake was going to be at my house he got upset and changed his mind. Oh well, his mom said I could watch him sing on her blog and just pretend he was singing to me.
I got lots of well wishes on facebook and by phone. Today was election day and a lot of the phone calls were from politicians, but enough of them were from my friends and family that it made answering the phone numerous times worth it.
Tonight was Relief Society temple night and my hubby was nice and went with me. The temple always makes me happy. I have several birthday dinners planned for the next few days so I'll keep celebrating all week.
Today I am thankful for
people who remembered me on my birthday in so many special ways.
my roots..
the cute photo book my sister made celebrating me. She worked really hard to find lots of fun pictures and I appreciate it.
If you want to see the whole book you'll have to come and visit.
I had a good birthday! The grandson called to sing me Happy Birthday, but when he found out the cake was going to be at my house he got upset and changed his mind. Oh well, his mom said I could watch him sing on her blog and just pretend he was singing to me.
I got lots of well wishes on facebook and by phone. Today was election day and a lot of the phone calls were from politicians, but enough of them were from my friends and family that it made answering the phone numerous times worth it.
Tonight was Relief Society temple night and my hubby was nice and went with me. The temple always makes me happy. I have several birthday dinners planned for the next few days so I'll keep celebrating all week.
Today I am thankful for
people who remembered me on my birthday in so many special ways.
my roots..
the cute photo book my sister made celebrating me. She worked really hard to find lots of fun pictures and I appreciate it.
If you want to see the whole book you'll have to come and visit.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Catsup Cooking at the Cannery
Today the youngest daughter and I volunteered at the Mesa Cannery. It's always exciting to try to guess what product we are canning by the smell that wafts out at you as the door opens. Our cannery only produces a few items including salsa, ketchup and syrup so it's usually pretty easy to narrow it down. My canning sessions with salsa are always followed by an intense desire for Mexican food and the last time we did syrup I had to make pancakes for dinner. It's sometimes nice when we do ketchup because, since I'm not a ketchup fan, it doesn't bring any food cravings with it. (However, the hubby did take me to Culvers for a Butter Burger tonight. I had mine ketchup-less).
As we entered and sat down by a gentleman from our ward I said, "Smells like we're doing ketchup today" and he replied, "Unless we're doing cat-sup." Now I grew up in small town Utah and we (most people, but not me) ate ketchup. Sometimes it was spelled ketchup and sometimes it was spelled catsup, but it was all the same thing and the names were interchangeable. According to this gentleman there is a difference. Of course when I got home I had to google ketchup vs. catsup and I am still pretty sure they are the same thing.
This is what I learned:
ketchup was what it was called back when it was first introduced to the world pre-1700.
The British called it catsup somewhere along the way.
Southerners seem to prefer catsup.
Some people say catsup is spicier.
Ketchup is the most accepted name today and is what is printed on most brands.
Also, if you type catsup it shows up as a mis-spelling on the computer.
If you are interested in more info (and some ketchup/catsup pictures) you can go here.
Well, back to the cannery. Today we canned (or bottled) catsup. See Exhibit A below.
I got the job of putting lids on the bottles after the catsup was squirted in. This is my most regular cannery assignment. I must look like I have good manual dexterity or something. The bottles come out 4 at a time, pretty quickly, but there are usually 3 or 4 people in this area, so if you are at the front of the line and you miss a bottle someone else will catch it later. If you are at the end of the line this is a REALLY BORING job and you spend most of your time spacing the bottles evenly to go through the machine that sucks the air out of them. Today I was 2nd in line, a good spot to be.
The youngest daughter got to remove the bottles from the cooling tunnel and place them on the conveyor belt to get labeled and boxed. I worked this area once. I liked it because it is a loud area, I got to wear ear plugs and I could sing my entire repertoire of songs, at the top of my lungs and no one could hear me. (The daughter says she thinks they could still hear me and that is embarrassing, but I asked the man who was standing next to me and he said no, and I trust him. He was reciting a 2 million stanza poem that he memorized and I only know that because he told me, not because I could hear him.)
We worked the afternoon shift and luckily we only had to work for about 2 hours. I got to man one of the clean up hoses when we were finished and squirt catsup off of all the equipment. I managed to get a lot of hot, catsupy water all over me, but it was fun to spray everything. I enjoyed spending some time giving service with my daughter, but I'm glad I don't have to work a production job everyday.
A final note concerning catsup. Even though it is spelled catsup and the pronunciation dictionary says to say it cat- sup. I was raised to call it all ketchup (catch up). Cat sup sounds like something I would give my cats for dinner. However, they might actually like some catsup on their cat food. They have been extremely interested in the shoes that I wore to the cannery since they got marinated in catsup water.
Today I am thankful for
the opportunity to do service with my daughter. I am enjoying having her around.
cheap and yummy wholewheat raisin bread from the Alpine Bread Bakery Outlet.
lentils.
As we entered and sat down by a gentleman from our ward I said, "Smells like we're doing ketchup today" and he replied, "Unless we're doing cat-sup." Now I grew up in small town Utah and we (most people, but not me) ate ketchup. Sometimes it was spelled ketchup and sometimes it was spelled catsup, but it was all the same thing and the names were interchangeable. According to this gentleman there is a difference. Of course when I got home I had to google ketchup vs. catsup and I am still pretty sure they are the same thing.
This is what I learned:
ketchup was what it was called back when it was first introduced to the world pre-1700.
The British called it catsup somewhere along the way.
Southerners seem to prefer catsup.
Some people say catsup is spicier.
Ketchup is the most accepted name today and is what is printed on most brands.
Also, if you type catsup it shows up as a mis-spelling on the computer.
If you are interested in more info (and some ketchup/catsup pictures) you can go here.
Well, back to the cannery. Today we canned (or bottled) catsup. See Exhibit A below.
I got the job of putting lids on the bottles after the catsup was squirted in. This is my most regular cannery assignment. I must look like I have good manual dexterity or something. The bottles come out 4 at a time, pretty quickly, but there are usually 3 or 4 people in this area, so if you are at the front of the line and you miss a bottle someone else will catch it later. If you are at the end of the line this is a REALLY BORING job and you spend most of your time spacing the bottles evenly to go through the machine that sucks the air out of them. Today I was 2nd in line, a good spot to be.
The youngest daughter got to remove the bottles from the cooling tunnel and place them on the conveyor belt to get labeled and boxed. I worked this area once. I liked it because it is a loud area, I got to wear ear plugs and I could sing my entire repertoire of songs, at the top of my lungs and no one could hear me. (The daughter says she thinks they could still hear me and that is embarrassing, but I asked the man who was standing next to me and he said no, and I trust him. He was reciting a 2 million stanza poem that he memorized and I only know that because he told me, not because I could hear him.)
We worked the afternoon shift and luckily we only had to work for about 2 hours. I got to man one of the clean up hoses when we were finished and squirt catsup off of all the equipment. I managed to get a lot of hot, catsupy water all over me, but it was fun to spray everything. I enjoyed spending some time giving service with my daughter, but I'm glad I don't have to work a production job everyday.
A final note concerning catsup. Even though it is spelled catsup and the pronunciation dictionary says to say it cat- sup. I was raised to call it all ketchup (catch up). Cat sup sounds like something I would give my cats for dinner. However, they might actually like some catsup on their cat food. They have been extremely interested in the shoes that I wore to the cannery since they got marinated in catsup water.
Today I am thankful for
the opportunity to do service with my daughter. I am enjoying having her around.
cheap and yummy wholewheat raisin bread from the Alpine Bread Bakery Outlet.
lentils.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
So Worth It
At the start of the summer a new sister moved into our ward. She is youngish and she is vocal and she has been a breath of fresh air in our classroom discussions. She openly shares the fact that she hasn't always been a practicing member of the church and that she has made some bad decisions in her life, but her past is overshadowed by the testimony she shares at every opportunity. She has come so far. She makes me want to be less judgmental; more loving and willing to embrace and encourage those who are struggling with their testimonies. She brings hope to my heart when it starts to feel hopeless.
A couple of weeks ago she attended our visiting teaching interviews and then asked for directions to the bishop's house. She is getting married the start of September and had an appointment to get her temple recommend so she could go to the temple for the first time. She was so excited! She shared how she had almost gone to the temple a few years before, but her divorce got in the way and it didn't happen. How hard it had been to wait, when she wanted to go so badly. When she left she told us she would be back in a while for her interview with a member of the Stake Presidency.
I was in the hall when she returned with tears running down her face. I was worried that something hadn't turned out the way she had planned. As I walked toward her she raised her signed recommend for me to see and said, "He signed it. I signed it. I am going to the temple." We embraced and joyfully cried together. So very, very happy. She couldn't contain her excitement as she bounced around sharing the news with everyone that would listen.
Tonight I had the opportunity of being in attendance at her temple endowment session and as we embraced again in the celestial room we shed a few more happy tears and rejoiced in her accomplishment. She did it! and it seems that all the struggles just made the final outcome that much sweeter. She was so happy and thankful to be there.
As I sat in the celestial room, watching her and those who had come to support her, I reflected on some of the things she has experienced in her life, the choices she has made, and how she was finally able to worthily stand in the temple. I pondered on why the road to the temple seems so simple for some individuals and so difficult for others. Entering the temple for the first time was pretty easy for me. Luckily my choices had helped to make it that way, but I probably looked on the event as more of a rite of passage than an accomplishment or a privilege, just one more thing I needed to do before I left on my mission. I was happy to be there, but I think my joy at that moment was minuscule compared to hers, and to the joy I felt for her tonight.
There were 2 other people going through the temple for the first time tonight. A young man who looked like he was getting ready to go on a mission and another girl who was soon to be married. I wondered if they were as amazed and appreciative of this great blessing in their lives as my friend was. Had their choices in life led to a fairly smooth path to the temple or had they too struggled to get there? What had they done and gone through to make this opportunity a reality? Did they see their temple covenants as the marvelous blessing that they are?
As most of the patrons left the celestial room the young man and his father sat talking quietly in one corner while the unknown bride-to-be sat on a couch next to her future husband, her brother and mother nestled by her side as her father stood protectively near them. It was such a sweet experience as the spirit of the temple sunk deep into my soul. I hope they felt that spirit too. I hope they realize what a great blessing it is to be temple worthy. I hope they continue to visit the temple often and come to appreciate more and more each time they come how truly blessed they are to have the temple, and all it represents, in their lives.
As I have.
Whether the climb to the temple seems fairly simple or wrought with difficulty I testify it is So Worth It!
Do what you need to do to get there and then make it a priority to go often. It will be worth any effort it takes!
But you don't have to just take my word for it. Here is what the living prophet, President Thomas S. Monson has to say on this topic:
"Those who understand the eternal blessings which come from the temple know that no sacrifice is too great, no price too heavy, no struggle too difficult in order to receive those blessings."
This quote comes from a conference talk Pres. Monson gave in April 2011 and you can read his entire message here.
Today I am thankful for
the new converts or re-converted members of my ward who help me see the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessings that are mine through fresh eyes. I learn so much from them.
temple promises.
the spirit that I feel in the temple. Nothing in this world can compare to it.
A couple of weeks ago she attended our visiting teaching interviews and then asked for directions to the bishop's house. She is getting married the start of September and had an appointment to get her temple recommend so she could go to the temple for the first time. She was so excited! She shared how she had almost gone to the temple a few years before, but her divorce got in the way and it didn't happen. How hard it had been to wait, when she wanted to go so badly. When she left she told us she would be back in a while for her interview with a member of the Stake Presidency.
I was in the hall when she returned with tears running down her face. I was worried that something hadn't turned out the way she had planned. As I walked toward her she raised her signed recommend for me to see and said, "He signed it. I signed it. I am going to the temple." We embraced and joyfully cried together. So very, very happy. She couldn't contain her excitement as she bounced around sharing the news with everyone that would listen.
Tonight I had the opportunity of being in attendance at her temple endowment session and as we embraced again in the celestial room we shed a few more happy tears and rejoiced in her accomplishment. She did it! and it seems that all the struggles just made the final outcome that much sweeter. She was so happy and thankful to be there.
As I sat in the celestial room, watching her and those who had come to support her, I reflected on some of the things she has experienced in her life, the choices she has made, and how she was finally able to worthily stand in the temple. I pondered on why the road to the temple seems so simple for some individuals and so difficult for others. Entering the temple for the first time was pretty easy for me. Luckily my choices had helped to make it that way, but I probably looked on the event as more of a rite of passage than an accomplishment or a privilege, just one more thing I needed to do before I left on my mission. I was happy to be there, but I think my joy at that moment was minuscule compared to hers, and to the joy I felt for her tonight.
There were 2 other people going through the temple for the first time tonight. A young man who looked like he was getting ready to go on a mission and another girl who was soon to be married. I wondered if they were as amazed and appreciative of this great blessing in their lives as my friend was. Had their choices in life led to a fairly smooth path to the temple or had they too struggled to get there? What had they done and gone through to make this opportunity a reality? Did they see their temple covenants as the marvelous blessing that they are?
As most of the patrons left the celestial room the young man and his father sat talking quietly in one corner while the unknown bride-to-be sat on a couch next to her future husband, her brother and mother nestled by her side as her father stood protectively near them. It was such a sweet experience as the spirit of the temple sunk deep into my soul. I hope they felt that spirit too. I hope they realize what a great blessing it is to be temple worthy. I hope they continue to visit the temple often and come to appreciate more and more each time they come how truly blessed they are to have the temple, and all it represents, in their lives.
As I have.
Whether the climb to the temple seems fairly simple or wrought with difficulty I testify it is So Worth It!
Do what you need to do to get there and then make it a priority to go often. It will be worth any effort it takes!
But you don't have to just take my word for it. Here is what the living prophet, President Thomas S. Monson has to say on this topic:
"Those who understand the eternal blessings which come from the temple know that no sacrifice is too great, no price too heavy, no struggle too difficult in order to receive those blessings."
This quote comes from a conference talk Pres. Monson gave in April 2011 and you can read his entire message here.
Today I am thankful for
the new converts or re-converted members of my ward who help me see the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessings that are mine through fresh eyes. I learn so much from them.
temple promises.
the spirit that I feel in the temple. Nothing in this world can compare to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)