Garden: Before

I think I'll use this as the "Before" picture of the garden this year. I have great plans for this spot!  No long vacations planned, time off each Wednesday for watering, a new sprinkler.  We may not have any water...that may prove problematic, but time will tell.  I hope to be able to keep all the weeds (well, most of them) under control this summer.

And please note the very straight row.  Thank you, Dad!  All those years of hoeing in the Texas garden paid off. I don't need any stakes and strings to get a row in. ;-)

I never knew that cabbage (young ones, with just a few leaves on them) would survive being under a foot of snow, but they did.  That one very low branch hanging over the wall on the right is a broken apricot limb. I sawed that off and hauled it away.  THAT back yard is a mess. We haven't been back there, but I'm sure there are way more broken branches that need to be cared for.  That snow. Wow. It really took a toll on the trees.  The University is STILL hauling away branches and trimming up poor, sad, broken trees.   Mr. Flanigan (the original tree-planter guy) is probably turning over in his grave at all the broken trees.

Now to get the block wall completed between the lawn and garden....

More to come in the weeks and months ahead!

Peony and Iris

Amazingly, they survived the snow.

Foodies, Part 3

http://librarylindasblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/foodies.html

http://librarylindasblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/foodies-part-2.html

http://librarylindasblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/conference-weekend-and-april-food.html
 

Just how obsessed with food AM I, anyway??!! (Please don't answer that.)

I just keep finding these books.  I suppose there really are shelves full.  I started the one on drinking water today at lunch. I think I will finish it. 

Conference Weekend and April Food

Yes, it's KIND OF a typo.  April Fool or April Food?  

Food First.  And last.  

For General Conference Weekend, we have eaten Cinnamon Rolls for YEARS.  Its our tradition.  We love Cinnamon Rolls.  Athena in Hawaii got us started by bringing real live Cinnabon from the Mall in Kaneohe when she'd come to our house to watch conference on our TV with us because she didn't have a TV. Yes, we generally save them for Sunday morning and then eat them most of the day, and now they are homemade, not from the Cinnabon shop.  (We have fruit and milk, too. Sometimes.)  Today is Saturday and the other night I had made some interesting little bars whose recipe I found on the internet.  I admit--it was on Facebook.  It was called something like "No Added Sugar" treat.  And I need things like that.  I have a giant sweet tooth.  I happened to have all the ingredients.  Well, most of them.  Ripe bananas, oats, almond milk (I did have to buy that, but we were going to the store anyway), applesauce, vanilla.  Interesting.  It just said to bake at 350 for about 15 to 20 minutes.  So I tried it.  I added in some flax seed meal, too, just for fun and nutrition.  They did set into bars.  They were....eh.  Nothing really special; however, they tasted MUCH better the next morning with Nutella on them!  So that's what I had for breakfast this morning.  Grapefruit, milk, and berries, too.

Can you tell we are attempting to eat better?  Hey, it beats cinnamon rolls or carrot cake for breakfast (which I had twice this past week--the carrot cake, not cinnamon rolls.)  I'd like to say it's helping my weight, but I guess the Nutella might have something to do with that little problem.  The milk is non-fat, just in case you wondered.  And these are made of all good foods and I don't intend to just throw them away just because it's not spectacular and cookie-like.  How COULD it be with no flour eggs and sugar??!!  Mike tasted one and is done.  Looks like this is my breakfast and snacks the next few days. Would someone like to calculate the calories in one of these for me? 

OK, that was Part One of April Food.  Now for April Fool!

We had a most exciting April Fool Day at OUR house!! Damian came for a visit!  We were so surprised.  He is on his way to take his Oral Board Exam in Chicago and stopped in Utah and California for visits and to take care of some business with their home in Temecula.  What a fun time he had, surprising his Mother-in-law, his Grandma Liebhardt, his Dad, and me!  He and his family did a great job of not saying anything about where he was or what he was doing.  Little secret-keepers!! 

Tuesday, I was leaving my office just before 4 pm to go to a meeting, but I'd had Facebook open (on the Sherratt Library page, initially.  Really.)  As I was closing out most of my programs before leaving, I looked at Pam's post that said, "I just got to hug my son-in-law!" It had been posted an hour before. 

Huh?  She has Damian as her only son-in-law. I wondered where Damian was...where SHE was? I tried calling her cell phone number, but it didn't work.  So I puzzled over it a bit with my co-worker who was at the desk. I did remember that Damian was supposed to be on the mainland the first part of April, so I just instructed my co-worker to call me if he came by!  Who knew I'd walk right out the door and just about into his arms?  It wasn't really quite like that, but close.  I went out my office door and saw Mike coming into the library front doors and went to him. He had such a goofy look on his face!  I knew something was up.  I said, "I have to go to a meeting right now! Why are you here??  Do you know what I just saw on Facebook!?" and told him, and that's when Damian walked up to me.  So fun.  Brief hugs and scruffing of his beard, more giggles, questions, hugs, plans made for dinner, finals hugs and kisses before I rushed, floating and grinning, off to my meeting. 

No other April Fool jokes.  We did enjoy having him here until Thursday. Katie and her family were able to meet up with him in Chicago and spent this afternoon with him!  I hope SHE or HE will post some photos of that fun excursion.

We hope and pray Damian will do well on his Board Exams in the Windy City on Monday, and have a safe long journey home to his far-away, long-suffering family. He's been gone 2 weeks!

Quite the beard.  Graying fast.  My baby's getting gray!!

The photo above was Damian talking to Eric on the phone.  He surprised Eric and Katie via phone on Tuesday night, as they had both called while he was there.  He is such an April Fool!

Also, Eric shared with us in Friday that he's done with training, finished FOURTH in his class, was assigned to work on the Coral Princess cruise ship doing 11-day western Caribbean cruises. YAY!  He ships out tomorrow.  Good Luck, Eric!!!

*******************

Now the ending of April Food.  Here's another FOOD and CULTURE  book I found on the New Books shelf.  My co-worker, Jill M. was raised in NYC and she can't wait to see what restaurants is mentions.  Jill also attended pastry school.  She has her Master of Library Science degree, too.  I'm tellin' you, I supervise some really smart and talented folks.

I plan to enjoy eating somewhat healthily the rest of this conference weekend.  Mike's mom took us out to eat at Applebee's this afternoon, along with Mike's sister, Gayela.  It was good. I just had a burger. Haven't had a good burger for a while.  Tomorrow I'm fixing veggie soup for our Sunday Dinner.  April Food.  It's all about spring.

And Conference. I watched the Priesthood Session on the computer with Mike this afternoon/evening.  I've never done that before, but I didn't feel like an intruder. The weather was just yucky, so Mike opted to watch it from home for a change. And I enjoyed it, too.  It was on TV, as well, but that station was all skippity, so I found it on the computer for him and it was nice and clear all the way through.

Enjoy the messages from Conference.  They have been great so far, and I know they will be tomorrow, too.

Two Relief Society Birthday Celebrations

MY ward had a Relief Society birthday celebration about the 19th of March.  It was just a very fun evening of food and fun.  We have quite a number of new, young families and couples in our ward, so it was great to have "getting-to-know-you" games.  We had taco salad, fruits platter, and ate the pretty cupcake centerpieces for dessert.  (Connie Weaver Donohue[?] made the pretty centerpieces. She used to live in our ward and caters now!)

We were assigned a color of table to sit at, determined by the color of name tag we put on when we arrived.  Then, part way through the meal, we were instructed to get up, take our plate and move to the table number on the BACK of our name tag, so we mostly had a whole new group of people to visit with.

Of course, I didn't think to take any photos while there, but the table decorations were cute and spring-y.  There were getting-to-know-you questions written on the paper on the table, as part of the centerpiece.  "Would you ever consider sky-diving or base jumping?"  "Where were you raised?"  "Tell about your first kiss"  Just a good variety of fun stuff.  Favorite books, oh, the list went on and on and we didn't have enough time to share everything and find out everything about everyone that we wanted! 

After that, we had a bingo game with more of those similar things. We got to find people who had done things them like "Lived in a foreign country"  "Been visit taught this month"  "Wearing Red"  "Served a Mission"  "Eaten sushi"  "Likes artichokes"  "Done their visiting teaching this month" "Read scriptures today"

And of course, there were a few fun prizes for the first few "Bingo's" and the first couple of black out bingo's.

THEN

My mother-in-law invited me to attend her ward Relief Society birthday celebration Thursday night of this week (March 27) with her.  It was a combination of the 19th ward, the Indian Hills Ward and the Greens Lake Ward--the three wards who meet in the Greens Lake chapel.  I went with her and figured I might see a few people I knew since we have lived in the 19th ward over the years.  . .Many, MANY years ago when we lived in Mike's parent's home.

Those women worked really hard and presented a very tradition Jewish wedding feast dinner, simplified and Americanized.  It was plenty of food and lots of fun.  They had a good turn out from all the wards and filled their little cultural hall.  We had time to visit with sisters around us.  Then they treated us to a really well-done presentation of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, a musical presentation written by Emily Freeman.  Beautiful music, beautiful costumes and voices and setting.  And I had a front-row seat.  It was really nice. I've never really noticed it before, but these newer little-er LDS chapels don't have a stage in their cultural hall! Hmm.  So it was good to have a front row seat. 

It did last a long time, but I'm very glad I went, as I have not seen a production of that before. I understand it is out of print now, but the ladies who presented it did a fine job. I could tell they had ALL worked very hard on the decorations, the food and the presentation.

Happy Birthday Relief Society!