What we've been up to lately!

Happy 8th Anniversary to us!!! 

We have so much to be thankful for!  Especially each other!

This is the vanilla chiffon cake I made as part of our tradition to eat cake for our Anniversary.  (I turned the other into an English Trifle that we ate for several days before this cake--yum!)  Well, this cake had a pretty icing circle in the middle, to form an inner wall that, along with the outer "wall", would form a nice pool for the berry sauce to go into.  Somehow, that berry sauce smooshed the icing into the hole of the chiffon cake,  and here the hole is going...

...going...

...gone! 

Kind of fun to watch, like a purple Niagra Falls!  Only a small line of frosting is left in the middle.

 

We ate the cake with Kirstan and Kandy to help celebrate their 2 July birthdays as well as our Anniversary.  It was so scrumptious!  Our "eating cake for days" tradition started on our Honeymoon, when we didn't take time to make our wheat-free muffins before we drove to our honeymoon place in Cedar City, Utah.  But we did take the cake left over from our wedding cake.  (Our wedding cake consisted of 4 of my wheat-free chiffon cakes, which my friend Jana Obarr turned into a lovely wedding cake.  3 cakes formed the bottom layer, and 1 was the top layer.)  So anyway, we ate cake throughout our honeymoon, and during each anniversary week since!

Here is the cake next to some of our garden's harvest:  yummy peaches, drying basil, and the berry sauce on the cake is made from our wonderful black raspberries! 

Most of our garden has been very prolific this year.  You can see how the berry bushes are trying to take over the entire garden with it's swooping huge branches!  And Bill had cut them back a couple weeks before this photo, and they grew again already!  Jumanji-like, almost!  Inside the barrel of flowers is some rosemary---smells great!  Behind those are some sugar snap pea vines---those are done now, but we enjoyed eating those fresh as a watching movies snack for many movies!  Bill did a great job this summer with our back yard and garden.  It is the prettiest it has ever been!

 

Here is Bill with our first zucchini of the season!  The funny thing about our garden this year:  we have only had a few zucchini!  Lots of other produce, but only a few zucchini!  How weird is that?!  And we had hoped to have TONS of zucchini for the yummy muffins we like to make!  We have enjoyed days of "aroma therapy" as I have dried basil on our tabletop and countertops.  Because of all the moisture from the lovely rains we have had this year, it took extra long to dry the 3 kinds of basil we are growing (Genovese, purple, & Thai), but it was lovely to have that great smell surrounding us extra long!  The only NOT great thing about our garden and the rains this year has been the huge crop of mosquitos we raised!  Those, combined with the spiders that multiplied under my sewing counter kept me sick and swollen from bites quite a bit this summer--aack!  But I am healing well, and back to feeling a lot better.

 

This is my new favorite thing to bake before guests arrive:  LOTS of little pizzas, in 3 flavors:  cheese, pepperoni, and hamburger/bell pepper.  I made 25 in this batch (2 are missing cuz we ate them!)  Worked out great!  Those who were hungry took a frozen, foil-wrapped one, and popped it in the microwave!  And they are all from our wheat-free dough, so the smells were safe for Bill & me.

 

I have made quite a few beaded gifts this summer.  This set is for Charla.  I forgot to take photos of Amy's, oh dear.  But the most jewelry I have put together is for a friend who is making lots of necklaces & bracelets for her daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters!  We have spent quite a few days already, she strings them, I attach the clasps and do the specialty wiring.  It has been a fun project!  She claims I opened a huge can of worms when I gave her a bracelet for her birthday and some ladies in her family wanted one too!  It has been fun for me to "play" with the beads she bought, some of which I have never played with before!

What fun it is to have grandchildren artwork on our fridge!  These are from Raylin & Kiley!  We have enjoyed visits from several families this summer, and Michael even came by himself for a week!  But, oh how we wish we could afford to send money to all of our children's families to spend time here!  We miss those of you who haven't been able to visit yet, even tho we understand how hard it is to travel sometimes, money-wise and time-wise.  Please know that you are "as welcome as the flowers" (to quote my mother), to visit whenever you are able, our children!  And our siblings, too!

We also enjoy visits from our sweet neighbor, who is one of HoneyBear's best friends!  She often visits on days when I am especially lonely for children and grandchildren.  She even helped us with HoneyBear's haircut one hot summer day!

 

We have also gone on a couple of trips to the Snowflake Temple with 2 different couples who we don't get to see much otherwise anymore since our ward boundaries changed.  This has been a summer of changes! 

 

Speaking of changes, Bill was recently called as assistant ward clerk, and has been pretty busy, even tho he is still "in training"!  I am very thankful for his willingness to serve the Lord faithfully, in each calling he has had.  Bill's faith that the Lord will strengthen him to be able to do all that is needed, in spite of his health challenges, well it is inspiring to me and others!  Bill is also very kind and helpful to his Home Teaching companion, who is terminally ill.  He helps his friend do as much as he is able, and quietly steps in to do it himself when he is unable.  I am very thankful for the "attitude of gratitude"  that Bill demonstrates every day.  Bill recently also became a trainer for bus drivers in addition to his regular route-driving, which we have been so thankful for.  It provided a little summer income which helped us get through the summer, making it so we could afford our little trip to Utah.  Things are still tight financially, and we are trying to get out of debt and repair vehicles.  But we have enough for our needs, and are over-flowing with blessings in so many amazing areas of our life!  School starts in early August here, and Bill has enjoyed getting back to the work routine.  It is fun to be around town, walk past children of different ages, and see their faces light up when they realize it is their "bus-driver Bill"!  He has friends everywhere we go! 

 

As for me, I have lots of projects to keep me busy!  After a lot of weeks of "roller coaster" health, I am finally feeling stronger more often!  We hope it lasts and continues to improve!  It has been wonderful to be able to do more cooking, cleaning, some continuing ed courses on line for my license requirements, even to attend 3 ward events in 8 days besides Sunday meetings!!!  A couple of months ago, those things were not always possible.  I enjoy serving as the music leader in Relief Society, and as a Visiting Teacher.  I recently got a new route and partner, and am looking forward to getting acquainted with more sisters! The Lord is truly blessing us.  We pray that these improvements continue, but if His will is for us to have more challenges, we pray that we may have the faith and strength to endure them well.

 

Well, those are some of the things we have been up to!  We would love to hear from you what some things are that YOU have been up to!