Great times with Claire

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He's back

It's a bird... It's a plane...

It's Angel Moroni!

I previously reported on his hard luck here.

BUT,

He's back and better than ever!!! He's shiny and new and ready for the upcoming dedication.

He's reinforced with extra protection and like the article states "He did his job — he's the end of the line." Hooray for the Angel Moroni!!

Check out the story here.

Hey, I want to hug the Angel Moroni!

Summertime favorites

Denise Millett's salad
Spinach - Pasta - Chicken Salad
1/2 box bow tie pasta - cook, drain
1 bag fresh spinach
1 cup grape tomatoes
1/2 cup crasins
1/2 cup pine nuts
a Fuji apple cut in small pieces
1/2 cut feta cheese
2-3 chopped up chicken breasts (already cooked)
(These amounts can be adjusted to suit your taste and it can be made without the chicken. It's a complete meal otherwise!)

Basil dressing
put these ingredients in the blender, blend and let set awhile. Blend again right before serving.
1/4 c. red wine vinegar
1/2 c. olive oil
4 T. fresh basil (in a pinch I have used freeze dried basil and it works pretty well. Fresh is best)
2 T. brown sugar
2 garlic cloves or 1 T. bottled chopped garlic
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper

It's a taste sensation!



































Homemade ice cream in minutes
(it takes about 20 minutes to make this ice cream from start to finish! Of course you need the ice cream machine to make it happen.)

1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract, to taste
This batch makes enough for about six servings.

Sometimes I like to add a crushed Butterfinger candy bar or other crushed fruit. Yum, Yum!
What are your summertime favorites? Please share them here or email them to me.

An up and coming vocalist - Nathan Pacheco

Today I received this email from my friend Sue B. who lives in the Bay Area. Their family members were former neighbors and we've kept in touch for many years. Sue shares a great story! Their son Jason is an amazing artist and I featured his work earlier here. This new vocalist Nathan Pacheco is amazing. I love the quality of his voice. I love that HUGE operatic richness of it and the expressive emotion with which he sings. I hope he has a bright future. Be sure and read his bio. He might even be better than....dare I say it...Josh.

Dear Friends and Family,

When I was in Italy this year helping Jason and Shelley, we had a wonderful opportunity to go to church in Terni (two times). At the first meeting, I met this wonderful young couple who were on their honeymoon. The LDS branch had a potluck after church, so we had a lot of opportunity to chat with members and visitors. Nathan Pacheco and his wife were spending six weeks in Italy. Nathan related the following story to me. He was so modest. I kept probing him for more information. He wasn't bragging to me, but this is what I learned. He studied opera at BYU, then went onto New York to study opera. He told me he had gone on a mission to Brazil. He is a committed member of the LDS church. The second Sunday he bore his testimony in Italian. Through a series of amazing events, he has become affiliated with Yanni. Even though I have my own thoughts about Yanni's music, Nathan told me this story.

Please check out the following website. Turn up your volume! It is worth listening to this amazing voice.

www.yanni.com/Voices/nathan

If you have any problems, just type in Yanni.com and look up Nathan Pacheco's name.

Now, let me tell you the rest of my story. After Sacrament meeting, I told his wife I was disappointed, because I wanted to hear him sing. She told him and he said, "Come with me". We went into a small classroom. I had my three oldest grandsons with me. They finally got their dad, Jason, to join us. Jason was embarrassed that I asked him. Oh well. He changed his mind later. Nathan shut the door and told me he would sing a song to me. Jason asked him if he wanted to be another Andrea Bocelli. He said, "We shall see." He told the boys to cover their ears because he would be singing very loud! Then he sang at full volume, "O Solo Mio". We were blown away. This isn't just some amateur hoping to achieve greatness. He is already there! He made it seem so effortless. He was so darling to us. Then, his wife told me to go to the Yanni website and hear him sing more. He has it all, looks, personality, name, stage presence and an amazing voice as well as genuine kindness. When he sang to us at full volume, I was overcome with emotion. Wow! A 29 old amazing person who has it all. What a treat!

Listen to what Yanni says about him. He now travels about six months of the year with the Yanni group. He has an unlimited contract, for many years to come. The rest of the year Yanni will introduce him to venues, provide opportunities and promote him. Sounds like what Sara Brightman did for Andrea Bocelli. I wish him well. I hope to hear him sing again in the live concert. Just wanted to share with you this sweet experience. Sue

Hotel ~ Motel

When I was a little kid, I couldn't tell the difference between a hotel and a motel. (I confess that I still have to think about it even now...) I remember thinking that since hotel started with the letter "h" that meant it was "high" in stature. Since motel rhymed with "low" that meant it was "low" in stature.

It's a stretch I realize now, but don't dispute the reasoning of a little kid.

Years passed. I still had trouble telling the difference between the two. I surmised that staying at a motel usually meant that you could enter the room from the parking lot and hotel usually meant that you had to go through a lobby and enter your room from inside the building. Since we were usually more interested in cramming lots of people into one room on trips to save money, we opted for the motel version so that we could enter discretely from the parking lot along with our sleeping bags and foam pads and not fall under the watchful eye of the front desk staff member.

I've finally come to a definite conclusion. I can now tell the two apart. It has to do with the way the toilet paper is presented. If it is folded in a nice sharp point, you can rest assured that you are staying in a hotel. It costs A LOT of money to fold toilet paper into the crisp sharp point you see when you enter the bathroom. The fancier the toilet paper presentation, the fancier the price, which usually means that you are indeed staying in a hotel my friend. If it has a toilet paper shield like the one shown here (kind of like its own coat of arms) well, just get out your charge card because you are in for a whopper of a bill. On the other hand, if the toilet paper is just hanging there all blunt and sad like, well you know that the blunt edge of the toilet paper means you are staying in a motel and not a very good one at that. You have a way to go up the chain before you reach the realm of the pointed toilet paper hotel (or occasionally the nice motel room.) We've stayed in them all over the years, the blunt-edge-recycled-off-color-harsh-scratchy-toilet paper rooms to the easy-to-grab-causing-no-delays-pointed-toilet paper that feels like a fluffy wash cloth when applied.

Case in point -(pun intended)

My columnist friend Ann Cannon agrees.
(Check out the comments at the end of her column, they're pretty funny too.)







And...in in case you need vodka, tequila, rum or vine in your room, or some organic blueberry gummy panda snacks, you need look no further than here. It even includes hangover pills, an intimacy kit, snacks & beverages all for 500% over cost. The bottle of water - $5.00 for 8 oz. Another sign that you aren't in Kansas any more and that you are definitely in a hotel.












So, take a look below... which is it? Hotel or motel? Here's a clue - It's all in the toilet paper!