Christmas Romance

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I took a personality test last night and was SURE I'd be the "romantic".  I was really sure.  Nope.  I was the "helper".  What "the helper" sounds like is a person that would do anything for people to love them.  Kinda pathetic? that's what I thought.  Sigh.  Oh well. I've known for a long time that I really like approval from those around me; not that I'd sacrifice my principles (that showed up in the test too).  ANYWAY, back to the romance.  I'm not talking Harlequin here, I'm talking about a way of looking at things --everything --and seeing things with rose-colored glasses.  I'm talking about finding the "romanticism: an exciting and mysterious quality (as of a heroic time or adventure)" in everything.  It's like taking the world, and finding the Disney in it.  That's what I like to do.

So what's my favorite time of year?  Of course. What other time of year do you decorate your whole house and city, and stylize everything from sweaters to Oreos (did you know they have Christmas Oreos)?   What other time of year are you allowed to go all goopy-eyed over movies, and songs, and faith-promoting rumors and people just say you have "the Christmas spir't"?  This is the time of year, when I can make almost three hundred 6" gingerbread snowflakes --covering every inch of my counters and no-one thinks I'm crazy (except Jeff --and frankly, he's probably right).

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So I wanted to tell you where I always go with my best Christmas fantasies.  England.  When I was little (OK, and again many times as a teenager and young mom) I read a book called "The Children of Greene Knowe" and it is still influencing me now.  There is a scene in the book where the little boy goes to midnight mass with his grandmother in the local church, and travels back in time to the church's glory days when the original family that owned the manor house was alive, and had a boy singing in the choir, the building was decorated with greenery, and there were candles.... can you see it?  The picture above is of the village church near the house the book is based on. It's not midnight, but can you picture it anyway?  I always wish I had big tall stone walls decorated with greenery, and the Vienna Boy's Choir singing the Messiah as part of my personal Christmas decorations.

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The Messiah has always been a big part of my Christmas fantasies. What a stunning piece of music. Growing up in San Diego, and when I lived in Tooele (I KNOW!), they had a big community production of this piece every year.  I scored a solo of some sort three different years, and even now, thinking about it makes me tear up. There is so much FEELING in that music.  I sang with everything I had in me --everyone does because It's part of the piece and you really can't go halfway.

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One year BYU decorated their bookstore with streamers of what looked like sheet music for Christmas decorations, and maybe you wouldn't think it appropriate, but for me it looked exactly right. The carols and songs --especially the Messiah, are a big part of the romance of Christmas for me; especially the English ones --or OK, European ones --I just picture them all in England. I don't get into "rocking around the Christmas tree" so much, but "Deck the Halls", or "Greensleeves", or "The Angel Gabriel's Message" really speak to me.  Sometimes I wonder if it's my ancestry from that part of the world, my roots, calling to me, but I know it's probably just the same thing as always. The romance.

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Halloween Party

 Welcome to wonderland!  Friday we co-hosted the neighborhood Halloween party.  My biggest regret was that we couldn't invite everyone I wanted to.  My house just isn't big enough.  My only consolation is, I can always do another party.  Wanna come? 

 We played the game "Curses" for part of the night, and I thought I was going to lose it at one point.  We had one neighbor that just couldn't help herself setting off another neighbor --who was SUCH a good sport. 

 Sorry this picture is blurry, but it was the only one I had.  Leslie had to say "You're always after me lucky charms" whenever someone touched her.  Oh my gosh --Kelli probably poked her 20 times.  I kept thinking she had to stop, but she didn't and we just kept laughing.

We had some scary treats too. Goblin boogers and eyeball cake....

And a hot chocolate bar on the back patio.  We also had some great costumes!

Fancy Nancy

  The black-eyed......guess?

  The Super Mario Brothers family minus a few...

A couple of Katniss's

We did a bunch of games and crafts including a skeleton bone naming competition, cookie decorating, and the funnest photo opp: Donut Races!

My favorite picture: Jeff had to work really hard for this one, but we finally figured out Sierra's strategy for winning --it was her prehensile tongue!

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Girls' weekend in Moab

I'm a little late and need to do two posts today.  I went with a group of girls to Moab last weekend to do some hiking.  I really only had a couple of people in the group I knew pretty well, and the rest were just acquaintances or people I'd never met before.  You'd think that would be a recipe for an uncomfortable weekend, but it was just the opposite.  I feel like I made some really good friends --especially with the people I rode down with.  They were so much fun.  We discussed crazy family stories, politics, college boyfriends, you name it. 

 The thing about Arches national park?  A lot of arches.  I thought there were one or two that the park was named after, but there are HUNDREDS.  It was UEA weekend, so it was too crowded to do the hike we were planning on, so we did three other short ones instead.  I couldn't believe the colors.  My camera doesn't do justice to the bright red against the bright blue.  Yum.  Breathtaking.

 We stayed overnight in Green River (that's how you know it was a girls' weekend --no camping, hotel.  Great breakfast too by the way --let me know if you need a good hotel there.  Really good breakfast.  Worth staying for.) and the second day we went to Goblin Valley.  We planned on hiking Little Wild Horse Canyon which I was a little skeptical of since I'd never heard of it.  Oh my gosh!  Go!  So beautiful.

 Don't go when it's raining though.  We kept thinking about how that canyon would fill right up to the top within minutes.  We passed some grown men hiking through there, and I wondered how they fit.  They must have turned sideways for their shoulders to make it through. 

 We had a little trouble coming back, we started the drive, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up, we were in Capitol reef national park.  Not really on our way.  We took a wrong turn (or two).  We estimate we drove through seven counties in Utah trying to get back.  Luckily I was with the funniest mother/daughter team on the planet, and another lady from South Africa that was a REALLY good sport.  So I THINK I could find my way back again if anyone (Meesh and the boys?) wants to go back, but we won't be going through Hanksville that's for sure. 

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Butternut Squash Tortellinis and Whole Steamed Artichokes

So I wanted to tell y'all about a yummy dinner we made the other night.  We had 4 artichokes from my sister that I was excited to eat.  I think the last time I ate artichokes whole was in college.  I went and bought a 5th one so we'd all have our own, and steamed them.  Just get a big old stock pot and put about 6 inches of water in the bottom, cut off the bottom of the artichoke stems, and throw them in to steam for about 1/2 an hour.  You know they're done when you poke a fork into the base, and it's soft.

 Along with the artichokes we made butternut squash tortellinis.  I had a big butternut squash I roasted the other day to make these with, but I've been sneaking half cups into my morning protein shakes with cinnamon and nutmeg.  I figured I'd better make the tortellinis before it was all gone.  I mixed a little chicken boullion and a little brown sugar into it, then dropped 3/4 teaspoons worth of puree into the center of a wonton wrappers (talk about easy peasy homemade pasta!), folded and sealed the edges, then gave them a quick boil.  Served with sage and melted butter.....heavenly, and so quick. 

 I put one artichoke on each kid's plate and they all said "hey! I can't eat that big guy!"  The thing with artichokes is that you don't eat most of it.  You pull off a leaf, dip it into butter-lemon-garlic sauce (yeah! go vegans!  We could have purchased "Earth Balance" for this, but what's the point?  You're artificially hydrogenating vegetable oil to make that stuff, and so I'm doubting it's any better for you and you gotta have that butter flavor.  Huh.  I wonder how they'd be with a good quality olive oil?  That sounds pretty good actually!) and scrape off the bottom of the leaf with your teeth.  Notice the scraped leafs in the picture?  When you get to the purple leaves, you stop and get out your knife.  That's the "choke" and you don't want to eat it.  You carefully cut it off, angling your knife downwards and to the center making a circle.  If you see little hairs on the base that you missed, cut those off too.  Then you get to eat the "heart"  the best part.  On good artichokes, the stem is just as good, but a couple of ours had some stringy stems.

 So turns out that the kids liked them.  They almost always like things you "dip".  It was a lot of butter for one meal --I'm estimating we each had 1 1/2 to 2 T. , but it was worth it for a splurge, and really?  that's probably still less fat than a dish of ice cream or slice of pie.  Mmmm. Pie.  Thanksgiving is COMING!

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Pleasant heat.

 Have you tried this?  You should.  Just one teensy square....I may regret letting this bar come over to my house to play, but Oh my gosh.  Yum.  Not a real strong taste of pepper, just a warmth in the back of your mouth to go with the warm fuzzys chocolate always gives you.  Speaking of Chocolate (yes it IS capitalized in my world), I'm trying to round up some of the usual suspects to go to a chocolate tasting class at Tony Caputo's in Salt Lake.  Here's the schedule. So it would have to be a way out at the end of November --the 29th, or October 11th.  25 bucks.  But have you ever tried the chocolate they've got up there? Holy spumoni. I'll drive.

OK, here's the picture I should be sharing with you.  This is my last week of the CSA produce thing.  It didn't turn out at all how I planned, their produce overlapped all of my own garden's bounty, producing some waste --like I made spaghetti sauce out of heirlooms for crying out loud.  They should each and every one be eaten sliced on olive oil toast with fresh basil chiffonade, but there's only so many I can eat myself!  Anyway, look at the colors there: red orange yellow, green and purple.  No blue food.  Didn't I have a conversation about that with someone recently?  Have you read the Lightening theif? Have you ever tried Coldstone's cotton candy ice cream?  Blue food is sometimes amazing --but not as amazing as that chocolate.  Takers on the class?

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Personal Trainer

Just thought I'd give an update on the personal trainer thing. I passed (yay!), and now I'm trying to get the business thing up and going. I've got some forms I need to get copied, but at least I found them all, and I'm ordering some equipment, but I've got one (count 'em one!) official client (my sister-in-law), and one other potential client (my OTHER sister-in-law).

It's a little hard to give Training the time it needs because I'm teaching 6 classes a week, and I take a lot of time preparing them (this last week I taught 7 classes). Tia and Ari are doing classes after school, and once again we have speech twice a week up at BYU.

I gotta tell you though, I REALLY like it. I've put together a few programs for people so far and I'm loving it. I do the same kind of thing for 4 of my classes, looking for new ways to work your muscles, and researching safety and things, and I just love it.

Also, after that comment from my brother "you're crazy", I realized I was. I stopped being so strict and regimented with my diet, and went back to tracking calories online. It is sooo working for me. OK, I'm not losing 10 pounds a week, but I'm able to control my eating a lot better with a little more leeway in my choices. I am glad I did the other diets just to help train me to make better choices, but now if there is a fun-size butterfinger offered to me in my YW class, and I'm starving, I eat the dang thing and just enter it in when I get home. My only guidelines are that I try to get in at least 100 grams of protein a day, avoid junk food for the most part, and I try to get in a lot of vegetables at every meal. If I do those three things, I usually do pretty great in my eating. No comments from girls on my bowling team!! :0 We had some treats there at our Friday tournament, and I swear --I had close to 900 calories of stuff that left me hungry in a half an hour!! That's rotten. I did some extra exercise, but then didn't beat myself up when I didn't make my calorie goal. I just tried to go a little lighter the next day, and I was OK.

I plan on counseling clients to use the free calorie counter I'm using, but if they want a nutrition plan, will work with a dietitian from the Utah clinic to develop one for them. I know it was helpful in training me to figure out good choices . It's just that when my diet's too restrictive, I binge. I guess that's a common problem with restrictive diets. 

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Do you let people make mistakes?

Made a mistake last night. Kinda a biggie. I had 4-5 of my young women in the car, and went to change lanes to the left, and someone was in my blind spot. To say I didn't see him is putting it mildly. I checked my mirror more than once, and was focused on the car behind him. I must not have turned my head at all. The sun was going down on that side, so maybe that was why? Sun in my eyes? The poor guy moved into the turning lane and stopped completely, while I moved into a construction zone, and was trapped between cones for a mile. I must have RUINED his day. I didn't hit him --no thanks to me. My young women were a little traumatized, but bowling at BYU for an hour or two and they seemed fine. So, here's my question: we all screw up right? How do we move past it?

I did this catering job with my friend a few yeas ago, and screwed up the planning. We ran out of two side dishes and a salad. We blamed the hogging vegetarians, but I know it was my fault, because the numbers I gave to my friend to prepare were just plain wrong. I hadn't done anything but reception catering for years, and a dinner is a different animal. I swear I had post traumatic stress syndrome for a couple of weeks over that one. I kept looking in the oven that night, but there was just no more food in it. I ended up going to Macaroni Grill and buying some pilafs, and salads and serving those. I kept crying in church even, because it seemed like forgiveness from Heavenly Father wouldn't even help. At least when you sin, you can get forgiveness and be clean, but a screw-up?

One way that helps me to get past these times, is to let everyone else make mistakes. I had another catering job last summer, and wanted to use a local bakery for the pitas. They couldn't get them right, but I remembered my mistakes and kept giving them the chance to get it right. I kept bringing in examples, and asking them to try different things, and had high hopes, but have to admit, finally the day was upon us, and when I picked them up I was disappointed. they worked, but just barely. Still, it helps me feel better knowing I gave them the chance to make it right. I don't know if my client agrees....but I REALLY want people to succeed after they've made a mistake. I really want to believe it can make you better at what you do. I feel like I became a very careful caterer after my fiasco, and I hope I can become a much better driver after last night.


I read an article last year in Time about Hillary that profiled some huge mistakes she'd made as Secretary of State (I hope I finally got the right link) doing probably the hardest job in the world --negotiating middle east peace talks. They kinda jumped all over her and it made me sad. I didn't vote for her, but I've gotta say I've always admired her. Sue me. Anyway, the headlines this morning looked so good --she had a great sound bite: "This is the time, these are the leaders". Maybe she's pulling something off over there. I'm rooting for her.

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