Ziggy all the way

With Ziggy headlining, former BYU players perform for NFL scouts at Pro Day : CougarBlue.com
check out this video to see Ziggy in action 

If you want to know what all the fuss is about, check out this article in Sport Illustrated to ready about Ziggy's story.  It's pretty amazing. 

We were on campus last night attending a banquet and we passed Ziggy in the hallway. He gave us a nod.  I thought Rick was going to pass out. That guy is B * I * G!!!

I'm in love with an appliance

Last year I got this wonderful Blendtec at work as a gift.  It grinds up stuff like no other.  It's an amazing blender and we love it!  We've been going strong with it all year long and most days I make a green smoothie for breakfast before I head out the door.  It gives me a lot of good energy and it is chock full of nutrition and not a lot of calories.  My good friend Patsy gave me a zip-lock bag with the ingredients for a green smoothy in it the morning of my birthday.  It had six ingredients in it and was delicious.  I've made it may times since.  Here is the recipe for Patsy's green smoothy:
1 cup baby kale
1 cup fresh spinach
1 banana
1 pear
1 cup purple grapes
1 orange or four little "cutie" oranges
1/2 cup water
1 cup ice
If I'm missing a certain fruit, then I just put in another one that I have on hand.

My brother-in-law Brian is a long time guru of making healthy breakfast drinks.  He shared his list of ingredients with me and I've incorporated some of his ideas.  He uses a combination of fruits and vegetables with nuts and spices that give it more flavor and texture.  Here is his list:

Pomegranate juice (available at Costco) about 1/3 cup since it's very concentrated
tart cherry juice or dark cherry juice (great anti-oxidant juice) about 1 cup
any combination of fresh fruits including:  apple, orange, banana, pineapple, strawberries, etc.
any combination of vegetables including: beets (fresh or from the can), carrots, spinach, kale, etc.
handful of mixed nuts
handful of flax seeds
handful of whole wheat germ
handful of dried cherries, cranberries and or blueberries
big handfuls of frozen berries (cherries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, etc.)
heaping tablespoon of cinnamon
tablespoon of nutmeg
teaspoon of Chinese Five Spice
chunk of crystallized ginger or a tablespoon of powdered ginger)
tablespoons of any sort of protein powder or super green food
teaspoon of pure vanilla

Also, I "liked"  Blendtec on my Facebook page and they give out great recipes to make with a Blendtec.  This week the link was to a variety of green smoothies and I'm going to give some of them a try.  Hooray for green smoothies and for Blendtec.  I LOVE that appliance!

Rupert 5th ward reunion

I grew up in an LDS congregation called the Rupert, ID 5th ward.  The size of our group was about 350 members and the geographic boundaries included all the LDS people who lived in an area roughly five miles by 20 miles.  Many of the families who made up this group were the original homesteaders who homesteaded farm ground in the "Magic Valley" of Idaho north of Rupert.  These early farmers drew in a lottery for the chance to win 80 acres of untouched ground that had the potential to become rich farm ground.  The families who entered the lottery were soldiers who fought in WWII and had moved to Idaho to start their farms and their futures.  They were required to build a home on their 80 acres, thus insuring that they would stay in the area at least for a period of time.  While my dad didn't "win" in the draw for the 80 acres, he and my mom moved to the area to teach school and ended up buying a 40 acre farm in the geographic boundaries of the Rupert 5th ward.  Thus our futures and our stories combined with these families and we mixed and mingled for the 30 years that our family lived in the area.  We became very well acquainted and we grew to love and respect the good farm people who were our friends.

I often affectionately refer to the farm way of life and values instilled in me as "the Rupert Way."  This is a way of living that was exemplified by the people who lived in our neighborhood ward area.  They were farmers and dairymen who worked with their hands and toiled in the soil.  They worked hard and their wives and children learned to work alongside of them.  Some came to church with manure on their boots and bolo ties cinched around the necks of their white shirts, with calloused hands from all the hard work they did.  They helped their neighbors and shared the wisdom and knowledge they gained as they fought to tame the wild desert and start their mostly prosperous farms.  They were unassuming folks who were the salt of the earth.  The men had interesting names like Parl, Woody, Lamar, Walt, Sherill, Bud & LaVerl and some of their wives were named more endearing  names like Grace, Fay, Merentha, Pat, Betty, Phillis, Lila and Ruth.

Our group of girls growing up consisted of 8 girls who were my age and who were the same grade in school, along with 9 boys the same age. We got to know each other very well. Their names were Carla, Celia, Brenda, Kathy, Lynn, Rita, Sue and Lorene.  We didn't always get along and unfortunately I wasn't as kind as I should have been to several of them.  I had the change to see  four of them at the 50 year reunion of the Rupert 5th ward that was held in Rupert last Saturday.  It was so fun to see them and to have a chance to visit and catch up (and apologize to those I was rude to as a kid.)  They are good women who have been through the ups and downs of life and who are still standing and keeping the faith now as grandmothers.
The reunion was so well organized and fun to attend!  Hundreds of people attended and we got to reconnect with many friends and neighbors from across the years.  My mother, two brothers Paul and Gary and sister Janet attended as well and enjoyed their time visiting with old friends.  These good people influenced my life in so many ways.  Their examples of hard work, determination, kindness, goodness and faith continue with me today.  My testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ was strengthened by many of these down-to-earth people who taught me in church and who were my leaders through my youth. I got to see two of my young women leaders and thank them for being such a good influence on me.  I'll be forever grateful for their influence in my life and for their strength of character that showed us how to live life the "Rupert Way."

More products that I love

My mom introduced these little beauties to me.
 They are perfect for the two of us since we can't (shouldn't) eat a whole cake.

This product is a wonder.  Where have I been all these years?
  Walking around with stains on my clothes, that's where I've been.
 I'll give a shout out to my  DIL Courtney who enlarged my world.

Another product that I've heard about but never tried.
 Thanks again to Mother Mary for gifting me this for my B-day.
 I'm now stain free and fuzz free.

No home should be without one of this little wonders
 and thanks to Janet I'm the proud new owner of my own oven mat.
 Just put it on the lower rack of your oven and your clean up time will evaporate.
 Now I have a clean oven while walking around in my stain free clothes that are
 fuzz free while eating a delicious little cake for dessert that was baked in the microwave.
  Does it get any better than this??

To Charlie, with love

When our 1st grandchild turned one year old, I made a little scrapbook for her of her first year of life, with one picture for each month.  It was well received, so I did it again for her sister who came along a couple of years later.  That started an expectation and a tradition, so I decided to to keep going with grand daughters number 3 and number 4.  I'm not a great scrapbooker, but the industry makes it so easy now by providing a kit that includes most everything needed for one book.
Then along came the first boy grandson, little man Charlie.  I've been working on his scrapbook for the past month or so.  It's been so fun to see his pictures and watch him grow and develop in pictures through his first year.  His mom Courtney was a great help in getting me the pictures I needed to add to my own.  I finished it up today and I'll put it in the mail to send to him tomorrow.  I love that little, happy, dimpled boy!

Celebrate LIFE!

I'm not gonna lie, the Celebrate LIFE party was a blast!  It was so fun to see so many of our family and friends and an added bonus was that Jord, Jake and the girls got to come at the last minute.  Jake's sweet grandmother C. passed away and her funeral was scheduled for the following Monday, so they came to town and got to attend the party as well.  I feel so blessed and so humbled by the out pouring of love and well wishes from so many people.  It was great to visit and get caught up with some who we haven't seen for a long time.  Chelsea's Mom and sister came from Las Vegas and it was fun to have them stay for the weekend and to make more progress in wedding planning.  Here is a look at the refreshment table and some of the people who attended my pink-breast-cancer-awareness-birthday-bash-celebrate-life-thank-you party.  All in all, a great weekend!

Some thoughts on trials

I taught a lesson to the girls in our neighborhood ward at church yesterday on overcoming adversity.  I learned a lot as I usually do when I prepare a lesson.  Here are some of my favorite parts from the lesson found HERE.

When some people face adversity, they complain and become bitter.
They ask questions like,
“Why does this have to happen to me? Why do
I have to suffer this now? What have I done to deserve this?”
But these questions have the power to dominate their
thoughts. Such questions can overtake their vision, absorb
their energy, and deprive them of the experiences the Lord
wants them to receive. Rather than responding in this way,
consider asking questions such as,
“What am I to do? What am I to learn from this
experience? What am I to change? Whom am I to help? How
can I remember my many blessings in times of trial?”
Different kinds of adversity require different responses.

When you trust in the Father and the Son, you are confident
that They love you perfectly—that They want you to be
happy and that They will help you grow spiritually. You keep
the commandments. You seek to know Their will, and you do
what They require even when you desire something else.
Your prayers for relief are accompanied by the understanding
that Heavenly Father will not resolve all matters immediately—
that He may allow you to wait so you can continue
to learn and grow. Through it all, you find comfort in the
assurance that the Savior understands your trials perfectly.
As part of His infinite Atonement, He took upon Himself
“the pains and the sicknesses of his people.” He took upon
Himself “their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with
mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to
the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities”
(Alma 7:11–12). Because He has experienced your pain,
He knows how to help you. If you look to Him in faith, He
will strengthen you to withstand any trial you experience. 
“Adversity,” True to the Faith (2004), 8–11

The Savior has suffered not just for our iniquities but also for the inequality, the unfairness, the pain, the anguish, and the emotional distresses that so frequently beset us. There is no physical pain, no anguish of soul, no suffering of spirit, no infirmity or weakness that you or I ever experience during our mortal journey that the Savior did not experience first. You and I in a moment of weakness may cry out, “No one understands. No one knows.” No human being, perhaps, knows. But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He felt and bore our burdens before we ever did. And because He paid the ultimate price and bore that burden, He has perfect empathy and can extend to us His arm of mercy in so many phases of our life. He can reach out, touch, succor—literally run to us—and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do through relying upon only our own power. David A. Bednar, “The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality,” Ensign, Apr. 2012, 40–47

I'm grateful for the knowledge that I have that I am not alone, that God hears and answers my prayers, that the Savior understands my trials and pain and that through Him I can be comforted with peace and assurance that all is well, come what may.  It's like putting a warm, soft blanket around my shoulders when I feel cold, or alone, or anxious, or afraid.  The comfort I feel from the love of the Savior is like wrapping up in a warm blanket on a cold night.  I'm like a rough stone rolling that needs the refining process of adversity to become all that He would want me to become.   It's a process and I have a long way to go, but I understand the goal and I'm working to submit my will to His.

Dixie cup conversion story

I was raised on a farm in Idaho, right?  We didn't have a lot of conveniences and we basically lived off the land.  We grew our own food, raised our own beef and milked the cows right along with the best of them.  We worked from sun up to sun down.  We picked raspberries until our fingers bled. We slept out in the summer and got a bazillion mosquito bites.  We woke to the sound of magpies squawking at the first sign of the new day.  We swam in the murky waters of the Snake River when our dad flood irrigated our 40 acre farm and you would have thought that we had just spent a day at 7 Peaks Water Park.  Our pets lived off of table scraps and never came in the house. We were terribly tough folks.  And we didn't use Dixie cups in the bath room.  We just used our hands (clean or dirty) to scoop the water in the bathroom sink to rinse our mouths after brushing or to get a drink.  (Some of the above statements could be considered a bit exaggerated, but not the part about the Dixie cups.)

A few years ago I visited my fancy California friend Marcy in her home in Palm Desert.  We had a glorious time enjoying a girlfriend weekend.  Marcy was the perfect hostess and I noticed something different in her home that I had never had in my home or in any home I had lived in.  Dixie cups.  She had a tidy little dispenser attached to the wall in the guest bathroom with a stack of those cute little Dixie cups all ready to be dispensed on a moments notice.  One morning I was talking to her in her bathroom while she was brushing her teeth.  To rinse her mouth, she grabbed a little Dixie cup from the dispenser and daintily filled it with water and use it to rinse her mouth. Her hand remained dry and she didn't ruin half of her make up having water drip down her chin. I thought this was amazing and took note of it.  I returned to the guest bathroom where I was staying and brushed my teeth.  To rinse, I did what I've done for over 50 years.  I filled my hand with water and sucked it up into my mouth, swished and spit it out.  My hand was wet and I had water dripping down my face.  Even though there was a cute little Dixie cup dispenser on the wall, I didn't want to be to presumptive and assume that I could use one of them. I figured that only sophisticated California girls used such conveniences. 

Over the years, we've had some adventures with the bathroom water supply.  First off, my husband insists that bathroom water isn't as good as kitchen water.  He rarely if ever drinks water from the bathroom sink.  However, when our small children would request a drink from their beds, he would go into the bathroom and find whatever container he could find to take them a drink.  Sometimes it would be the lid of the toothpaste, other times the lid of the hairspray can.  If only we had had a nice Dixie cup dispenser on the wall.

Now in my advancing years, I've come to the conclusion that I am worthy of a Dixie cup dispenser and I went right ahead and bought myself one.  For $6.32.  100 refill cups cost $2.45.  This is a simple pleasure that I've been denying myself far too long and I deserve it, right?